Understanding the Southern African ‘Anomaly’: Poverty,Endemic Disease and HIV

The epicentre of the global HIV epidemic is southern Africa. Previous explanations point to migration patterns and highly skewed income distribution, both thought to promote risky sexual behaviour. This study emphasizes the importance of common infectious and parasitic diseases that increase the likelihood of HIV transmission by increasing contagiousness and vulnerability to infection. Using multiple regression analysis on country‐level data, the authors find that socio‐economic variables explain statistically only one‐tenth of the difference in HIV prevalence between southern Africa and other low‐ and middle‐income countries. Measures of five cofactor infections together with the socio‐economic variables, however, explain statistically about two‐thirds of the southern Africa difference in HIV prevalence. They conclude that the relative affluence of countries in southern Africa and historical migration patterns have tended to mask the vulnerability of the majority of their populations who are poor and who have very high prevalence of infectious and parasitic diseases. Those diseases replicate a cycle of poverty that produces biological vulnerability through coinfections. An important implication of this research is that integrating treatment of endemic diseases with other HIV‐prevention policies may be necessary to slow the spread of HIV.     

Between anatamo- and bio-politics: Geographies of sexual health in wartime Seattle

We offer an analysis of public health governmentality and its constitutive elements during a moral panic around venereal disease in World-War II Seattle, Washington. Tracing how norms of sexuality, gender, race, age and class were instilled through urban public health practices, we highlight the importance of the local state’s spatial ontologies and imaginations in connecting in particular the elements of anatamo-politics and bio-politics. By doing this, we extend current work on governmentality in geography by suggesting that geographical imaginations and ontological framings by the local state – particularly urban public health authorities – are themselves important elements in the control of populations and identity.     

Ontologies of place,placelessness, and movement: queer quests for identity and their impacts on contemporary geographic thought

The rise of and reactions to identity politics and practice have precipitated renewed debates about ontology in geography. Actor‐network theory (ANT) and ‘non‐representational theory’ have much to offer these discussions. Their de‐centered notions of ‘agency’, topological (rather than Cartesian) spatial imaginations, and what I term ‘humble’ ontologies offer a way out of the seeming paradox presented by various binarisms underlying contemporary social theory and philosophy, such as structure/agency, essentialism/constructionism, subject/object, and theory/practice. The value of these approaches is very apparent when considering a particularly politicized form of identity practice: queer identity quests. They lead to (among other things) ontologies of place, placelessness and movement that are new, fresh, enriching and potentially empowering.     

Evaluating protein residues on Gainey phase Paleoindian stone tools

Blood protein analysis provides a method for acquiring and interpreting archaeological data bearing on human–animal relationships. The present study makes use of cross-over immunoelectrophoresis (CIEP) and a large sample of stone tools (N = 130) from an early Paleoindian site pertaining to the Gainey phase (ca. 11,200 BP) of the Midwestern USA. Results are used to interpret toolkit organization and site structure, and indicate that hafted tools with longer use-life potentialities are more likely to be associated with preserved residues than are tools of a more ad hoc or situational character. Protein residues derived from cervids are the largest category of identified samples, a result consistent with an interpretation that these animals were important first-line resources of Gainey phase populations. The identification of caribou (Rangifer sp.) is notable. Interpretations of subsistence importance, however, must be tempered by an appreciation of the possible confounding effects of tool manufacture and maintenance in early Paleoindian contexts.