Girlhood,participation and empowerment in Tanzania: climbing material and discursive walls

In this paper I reflect upon encounters with ‘young people’s participation’ during ethnographic research on girlhood and sexual agency with teenage girls in Tanzania. I argue that methodology which centralises participants’ experiences is particularly important in research on issues related to sex and sexuality, where young people’s voices are often disregarded or downplayed. However, such an approach might run up against a number of practical challenges. This paper draws on fieldwork conducted in two sites during 2014 and 2015 to show that attention to the networks of relationships within which young people are embedded and the structural conditions which might generate or obstruct sexual agency is essential for research which seeks to promote their meaningful participation.     

Neolithic dogs: A reappraisal based on evidence from the remains of a large canid deposited in a ritual feature

A canid skull and mandible, dated to the late neolithic, produced a series of measurements which indicate an animal significantly larger than any dog recovered from this period. The skull showed evidence of healed trauma with associated asymmetry. Metrical and morphological criteria have been applied to identify the remains as those of wolf Canis lupus, and the results of these tests are inconclusive. The possibility that the remains are of a large dog, Canis familiaris, is discussed, together with the implications that this may have for the archaeological consideration of this species.     

Biofuels and the politics of mapmaking

On a world scale companies and governments are acquiring tracts of land from rural communities across the developing world in what some describe as a global “land grab.” Yet looking into local settings reveals that negotiations and arrangements are often piecemeal and halting, with little resemblance to a coordinated seizure of land. Conflicting maps, overlapping territorial claims, and unclear acquisition processes are creating land disputes, mistrust, and ambiguity. Resulting cycles of contention are enabling companies to obtain—even appropriate—some land. Still, in at least some locales the process is doing more to undermine development opportunities for all parties.To probe into these local politics of mapmaking, this article draws on fieldwork from 2010 to 2011 in Tanzania's Rufiji District, located in the lower floodplain of the Rufiji River. Companies, one might surmise, should be able to exploit information asymmetries to wrest control of land from local villagers. Interviews, primary documents, and field observations reveal, however, that this is not occurring as much as one might expect along the lower Rufiji River. The politics of such land acquisitions, we argue, would seem to be better understood in terms of cycles of contentious politics, as an ongoing process in which movements and counter-movements vie for control through the strategic use of images, maps, and discourse.This research extends the understanding of the processes changing global agriculture and energy production by bridging the frames of the “politics of mapping” and “cycles of contention” to more fully reveal how and why control over land and resources is shifting in the global South.     

History and Tradition

English-speaking soldiers of the Great War created a large ‘trench press’, a body of periodicals by, for, and about their experiences. They contain a wealth of folkloric material and indications of its significance and functions. While acknowledging the constraints involved in retrieving once-living traditions from the fragmentary survival of mostly makeshift periodicals, this article describes and discusses the processes involved in the creation and development of an especially well-defined folk culture in unprecedented and extreme circumstances. While some elements of soldier folklore, especially song, verse, and language, have been the subject of usually discrete interest by folklorists, this is the first attempt to understand a range of folkloric practice and expression in the context of a particular set of combat circumstances.     

Spectral geographies: haunting and everyday state practices in colonial and present-day Alaska

Haunting is an analytic that foregrounds connections between the past and the present day. I employ haunting to analyze everyday practices of the colonial state in Alaska, thereby reinforcing the material connections between everyday activities and narratives and the imaginaries they create, questioning the timeless character of many studies of everyday geographies, and demanding attention to justice. A case study from Alaska involving federal non-recognition of the Qutekcak tribe demonstrates connections between colonial histories and present-day practices of the state, connections that take shape as a ‘spectral geography.’     

Gender,work and technology in the information workplace: from typewriters to ATMs

We consider the relations between gender and technology in the workplace, focusing on clerical work in the information workplace, especially the finance and insurance sector. Our goal is to excavate a ‘hidden history’ of how clerical work and the artifacts which sustain it have been understood and deployed under different cultural and economic circumstances. We employ an analysis of technosocial relations developed in Science and Technology Studies in which meanings about ‘technology’ and ‘society’ are mutually constitutive, changeable, and in need of maintenance in order to sustain their conceptual coherence. By drawing on examples from the USA and Canada, we argue that at various points over the twentieth century particular office technologies became ‘feminized’, or associated with characteristics coded as feminine, as a means of shaping spatial practice and social relations in the workplace.