A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE METHODOLOGY OF ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM RESEARCH*

Research on environmental racism has emphasized positive rationality. While useful for policy and legal interventions, this is problematic from a radical political and theoretical viewpoint. By examining two key research questions–is “race” or class responsible for discriminatory patterns? which came first, the people or the hazard?–I explore the implicit assumptions concerning racism within this framework. This reveals a large, pervasive set of misconceptions, including a tendency to reduce racism to overt actions, denying racism as ideology, and insisting on a fixed, unitary idea of racism. Both scholars committed to antiracism and those who challenge environmental justice activists' claims reproduce these conceptualizations.     

The use of reflectance values for the interpretation of natural and anthropogenic charcoal assemblages

Charcoal assemblages occur in both natural and archaeological settings. Cell wall reflectance values of charcoal in polished blocks under oil provide a proxy for temperature of formation. This paper aims to (1) determine whether wildfire charcoals and anthropological charcoals from various pyrotechnical activities can be distinguished using reflectance data and (2) establish if re-charring (i.e. use of charcoal fuel) can be recognised in the archaeological record through analysis of laboratory-produced re-charred charcoals and charcoals from an experimental iron smelt and traditional bronze casting which utilised charcoal fuel. Reflectance frequency data from assemblages representing burning of charcoal, in this case of iron smelting and bronze casting, indicates temperatures from above the mean value of charcoal production (>475°C) up to the maximum temperature reached in the subsequent process (i.e. >475 to >1,100°C). In contrast, wildfire charcoals showed a range of values including material with barely measurable reflectance (minimum values from 0.06% to 0.56%Ro) to maximum reflectance values varying from 1.65%Ro (Tilford) to 3.8%Ro (Zacca). The mean wildfire reflectance indicated temperatures in the range 325–400°C, which can therefore clearly be distinguished from that of the charcoal burning processes. The laboratory-produced re-charred charcoals take on the reflectance value of the highest temperatures experienced; reflectance values were not constrained by the original temperature of formation. High temperatures are most easily achievable by the burning of charcoal fuel, and hence high reflectance charcoals are likely to represent re-charred charcoal. Therefore, this quantitative reflectance method can be used in archaeology to determine the minimum temperature of formation of charcoals in anthropological processes which involve fire, can indicate the likelihood of use of charcoal or wood as fuel and can distinguish between an assemblage of high temperature anthropogenic charcoals and charcoals formed from natural wildfire.     

Generational differences in women's attitudes towards paid employment in a British city: the role of habitus

Most studies of women's work orientations are based on the attitudes and experiences of women with dependent children and conceptualise women's decision-making in terms of moral positions on the combination of paid work and motherhood. Thus, work orientations are understood within a ‘gender model’ (Dex 1988 Dex, S. 1998. Women's attitudes towards work, New York: St. Martin's Press.  [Google Scholar]), which assumes that women's family situation drives their attitudes towards paid work. This article draws on qualitative interview data collected from interviews with women in two age groups living in Oxford, UK, to explore generational differences in women's work orientations and labour market behaviour. Drawing on a Bourdieusian framework, it considers specifically how changing social, economic and moral geographies, incorporating expectations about women's economic and caring roles, have influenced the habitus of older and younger women. The results of the study suggest that whilst caring responsibilities clearly influence women's attitudes and employment patterns, paid work is more important to younger women's sense of themselves and ‘gender models’ of work orientations do not adequately describe their attitudes.     

位于尼姆鲁德遗址的亚述那西尔帕二世的卡拉克西北宫殿中的新亚述浅浮雕彩绘．慕尼黑的研究成果

路德维格一世在1825—1848年间任巴伐利亚的国王,1863年他从尼姆鲁德遗址获得了7个浅浮雕艺术品。最近进行的对这些浮雕作品的修复使得其上残留的原始彩绘重新被人们发现,本文讨论了对这些原始彩绘面貌进行重现的可能性及存在的相关问题。     

阿富汗巴米扬巨佛雕像的色彩装饰

2001年3月,被塔利班摧毁的位于巴米扬山谷悬崖上的两座巨佛雕像引起了公众的注意。这一爆破不仅成为塔利班疯狂的象征,而且还带来了一个问题,雕像的残迹将怎么办。2004年,国际古遗址理事会计划着手移动佛壁龛的材料,并从而拯救雕塑的碎片。这些碎片不仅包括或大或小的石块,而且还有粘土层,锚梁,木桩和绳索。调查显示,雕像表面明显是由粘土层组成,部分用钉和布加固,以增加石头和外形布料的强度。最后在表面施以彩绘。对有机添加物进行放射性碳测年可以确定粘土层的起源,从而确定雕像建造时间范围。佛雕像的276颜料残片被带到慕尼黑进行研究。颜料和粘合剂目前正在确定中。本报告说明该雕塑被涂上明亮的色彩并且至少被涂染过两次。这里所涉及的信息是一个正在进行的研究项目的部分,并提供了对现况研究的调查。     

The Rhetorics of Slavery and Citizenship: Suffragist Discourse and Canonical Texts in Britain, 1880–1914

This article examines the pivotal role played by two canonical texts in shaping the political subjectivities of suffragists in late nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century Britain. Read and discussed by three generations of British feminists, John Stuart Mill's Subjection of Women and Giuseppe Mazzini's Duties of Man shaped suffragist thinking on relationships between family, state, and citizenship and provided impetus for the creation of new kinds of argumentation and organisations for women's political activism.     

Commoner Power: A Case Study from the Classic Period Collapse on the Oaxaca Coast

This article argues that the agency of commoners has not been adequately theorized in archaeological studies of the political dynamics of complex societies. Recent developments in social theory emphasize that political relations are produced through social negotiations involving commoners as well as elites. This paper considers the role of commoners in the Classic period collapse in the lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico. Regional survey and excavation data demonstrate that the Classic-to-Postclassic transition was marked by dramatic changes in settlement patterns and sociopolitical organization, including the decline of the Late Classic regional center of Río Viejo. The research indicates that rather than passively reacting to the sociopolitical developments of the Classic-to-Postclassic transition, commoners actively rejected many of the ruling institutions and symbols that were central to the dominant ideology of the Late Classic state. Early Postclassic people reused and reinterpreted the sacred spaces and objects of the Río Viejo state such as carved stone monuments and public buildings. The evidence from the lower Verde is examined in the context of an emerging theoretical perspective in archaeology that considers commoner power. We argue that commoners contribute to the social negotiation of dominant discourses through three overlapping forms of social interaction: engagement, avoidance, and resistance.     

Misaligned Social Policy? Explaining the Origins and Limitations of Cash Transfers in Sudan

This article examines whether the transitional government in the wake of the December 2018 Sudanese revolution succeeded in realigning social policy with public demands. The article focuses on the evolution of cash transfer programmes from the 2012 cash programme under the Ingaz regime to the transitional government's programme 2021. While the recent programme was popularly viewed as a ‘World Bank programme’, its originators were in fact Sudanese professionals. Similarly, the Ingaz regime experimented with cash transfers before seeking out World Bank technical support. In this sense, cash transfers cannot be seen as an external imposition, as domestic actors have favoured them across different regimes. Yet, their appeal may still reflect the ‘choicelessness’ that Thandika Mkandawire associated with structural adjustment, as in both cases cash transfers were introduced as part of broader economic reform. Sudan's case is distinct in the sense that its domestic policy makers did not begrudgingly accept cash transfers but were enthusiastic instigators of them. The article traces the origins of this enthusiasm within Sudan's recent political history and explores the way in which alignment with international mainstream policy making locks Sudan into a bind. The country urgently needs to reverse the fragmentation of social policy along geographic and racial lines, yet these programmes do little to overcome such regional and racial inequalities. Thus, even after a popular revolution displaced the prevailing political settlement and called for radical change, policy makers remain misaligned to public demands.     

Reproducible Science Is Vital for a Stronger Evidence Base During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Reproducible research becomes even more imperative as we build the evidence base on SARS-CoV-2 epidemiology, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment. In his study, Paez assessed the reproducibility of COVID-19 research during the pandemic, using a case study of population density. He found that most articles that assess the relationship of population density and COVID-19 outcomes do not publicly share data and code, except for a few, including our paper, which he stated “illustrates the importance of good reproducibility practices”. Paez recreated our analysis using our code and data from the perspective of spatial analysis, and his new model came to a different conclusion. The disparity between our and Paez’s findings, as well as other existing literature on the topic, give greater impetus to the need for further research. As there has been near exponential growth of COVID-19 research across a wide range of scientific disciplines, reproducible science is a vital component to produce reliable, rigorous, and robust evidence on COVID-19, which will be essential to inform clinical practice and policy in order to effectively eliminate the pandemic.     

Not a Priority: Infertile Women and the Symbolic Politics of IVF in 1980s Britain

This article considers the early debates over state funding for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment following the birth of Louise Brown in 1978 as a lens through which to re-evaluate attitudes towards womanhood, maternity and sexuality in 1980s Britain. The state's reluctance to devote resources to IVF reflected, in no small part, the financial imperatives on an overstretched National Health Service. Beyond financial considerations, the question of IVF funding sparked deeply gendered debates over the politics and social significance of motherhood and mothering, and the state's role in family planning and maternal and child welfare. In short, debates over IVF operated as a form of symbolic politics. Stakeholders – including patients’ advocates, women's associations, feminist activists and religious leaders – drew a clear link between the female body and the body politic and sought to articulate a policy towards both IVF treatment and infertile women more broadly that reflected their understanding of women's place within modern British society. Despite holding widely divergent views about gender, sexuality and motherhood, women's and religious groups found common ground in opposing state funding of IVF. This coalition facilitated the state's decision not to prioritise funding for IVF even as neighbouring countries, including Germany and France, embraced the procedure to help combat demographic decline.