Comics and the Demystification of France's Immigration ‘Problem’: Reading Christophe Dabitch's Immigrants

While universalism constitutes the foundation of French republicanism, public discourse and changes in immigration law have revealed that racial and/or ethnic discrimination and exclusion are necessary for cultural assimilation and for the protection of France's ‘universalist’ model. Studies have also shown that at least 40% of the French population is of foreign origin. So how has France justified the reconciliation of universalism and particularism (now referred to as communitarianism) in certain instances but not others? Christophe Dabitch's collaborative comic-book project, Immigrants (2010), aims to deconstruct the French republican narrative of universalism by using a popular medium that is both transcultural and transnational. An effective collage of visual styles, reproduced testimony and scholarship on immigration in France, Dabitch's album proposes writing an alternative French history of immigration and invites readers to question founding mythologies which have erected France as the country of human rights. This article has three objectives: to present Immigrants as a serious historical and artistic project on immigration; to critically examine this publication's purpose (can comics effectively demonstrate that immigration is a common but significant aspect of nation building?); and to explore how comics can positively re-imagine France as a métropole cosmopolite, as an international point of convergence.     

“Where nothing was before”: (re)producing population and place in Ghana's Volta River Project

Significant infrastructural projects, and especially large hydroelectric dams, were envisioned and deployed by postcolonial governments to promote particular visions of industrialization, agriculture, democracy, and modernity. Newly independent states sought to annihilate formerly so-called backward and primitive landscapes and populations alike, promising to re-create both places and people as rational, economically productive entities. In this article, we re-examine such narratives as they related to Ghana's Volta River Project (VRP). Relying on archival and media sources between the 1950s and 1960s, we interrogate the Ghanaian state's pursuit of the VRP from a perspective rooted firmly in cultural geography and pay careful attention to the issues of population displacement/resettlement and landscape reconfiguration that permeated all dimensions of the project. We analyze the ways in which Ghanaian leaders used the VRP to translate a particular suite of cultural, economic, and political values into material reality, utilizing the techniques of displacement and population resettlement in efforts to enroll Ghana into a modern, global, industrial economic system. As such, this article augments the body of literature examining the modernist and state-building aspects of the VRP as well as studies critiquing the various processes of development that have unfolded in West Africa since the mid-twentieth century.     

Integrated geoarchaeological methods for the determination of site activity areas: a study of a Viking Age house in Reykjavik,Iceland

For over a decade, geoarchaeological methods such as multi-element analysis and soil micromorphology have been used to identify and interpret activity areas on archaeological sites. However, these techniques, along with others such as magnetic susceptibility, loss on ignition, and microrefuse, artefact and bone distribution analyses are rarely integrated in the study of a single site, even though they provide very different and potentially complementary data. This paper presents a comparative study of a wide range of geoarchaeological methods that were applied to the floors sediments of a Viking Age house at the site of Aðalstræti 16, in central Reykjavík, Iceland, along with more traditional artefact and bone distribution analyses, and a spatial study of floor layer boundaries and features in the building. In this study, the spatial distributions of artefacts and bones could only be understood in the light of the pH distributions, and on their own they provided limited insight into the use of space in the building. Each of the sediment analyses provided unique and valuable information about possible activity areas, with soil micromorphology proving to have the greatest interpretive power on its own. However, the interpretation potential of the geochemical methods was dramatically enhanced if they were integrated into a multi-method dataset.     

Restructuring British Public Sector Industrial Relations: State Policies and Trade Union Responses

This article examines how Conservative governments restructured public sector in day trial relations in Britain between 1979 and 1997, and identifies the main components of trade union strategic response to change. It argues that Conservative policy is important for its impact upon trade union strategy and practice, and that public sector unions constitute the leading edge of trade union strategic modernization in Britain.     

Túnel: A Case Study of Avian Zooarchaeology and Taphonomy

Although not often considered, there are many osteological characters unique to the avian skeleton that influence the taphonomy of bird bones. These characters are reviewed and their archaeological significance discussed herein. The presence of marrow in many avian long bones is important to interpretation of avian remains from archaeological sites because the presence of marrow affects bone density and, in turn, preservation. Other structural properties that affect avian bone preservation include cortical wall thickness, length and pneumatic state. Based on an analysis of approximately 10,000 bird bones from the archaeological site of Túnel, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, I found that specific breakage patterns resulted from natural taphonomic processes acting as a result of the unique avian bone characteristics. This information may allow researchers to distinguish breakage patterns in avian bones resulting from natural taphonomic processes from breakage patterns that are culturally induced.     

The Demolition of the Roman Tetrapylon in Caerleon: An Erasure of Memory

Excavations in Caerleon, the headquarters of the Second Augustan Legion, have demonstrated the existence of a tetrapylon at the centre of the Roman fortress. Evidence indicates that the structure survived into the medieval period when it was undermined and demolished. A recent review of ceramic finds associated with the demolition horizon suggests that the tetrapylon was razed in the thirteenth century. While stone-robbing for reconstruction of the medieval castle in Caerleon may provide a partial explanation for the destruction, political circumstances at the time provided additional incentives. Association of the Roman remains with resurgent Welsh lordship appears to have created a political reason for removal of the structure.