Assertions and aspirations: agency among accompanied asylum-seeking children in Sweden

Research on asylum-seeking children tends to disregard those in parental care. In particular, little is known about children’s own perspectives. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Sweden, this article explores the ways in which accompanied children experience and seek to overcome challenges posed by asylum reception. The focus is on children’s ambition and ability to form their everyday life, given their ambiguous position of tentative emplacement. Theoretical inspiration is sought in Ortner’s ‘agency of personal projects’ and de Certeau’s concept of ‘tactics’, analysed through the prism of liminality. The study found that while some tactics aimed at avoiding situations and settings that made children uncomfortable, others involved influencing their situation through pursuing ‘personal projects’. Many children’s strivings were directed at creating ‘a normal life’ and a place for themselves in Swedish society. The findings challenge the idea that accompanied children are more protected from difficulties and responsibilities than those seeking asylum alone.     

‘What about my voice’: emancipating the voices of children with disabilities through participant-centred methods

Children with diverse physical, communication and/or cognitive impairments are often overlooked as active research participants. This paper challenges and lays bare norms and constructs, such as ableism and adultism, which lead to children with disabilities being left out or researched by-proxy. Additionally, the paper contests these constructs through discussing and presenting participant-centred research methods that seeks to enable children’s involvement and establish them as legitimate research participants. The application of these methods in children geography studies is illustrated through the author’s own use of creative methods of activity-based interviews and co-construction narration with older children with various physical/neurological impairments. Overall, the aim of the paper is to bridge some gaps, dispel assumptions and inspire researchers with additional ways of conceptualising and approaching research with children with disabilities, since the inclusion of all children in research rests with researchers and their understanding and use of appropriate research methods.     

Mansfield Park and Political Theology

ABSTRACT

This essay examines Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park in the light of classical understandings of political theology. It does so by placing the novel in its Anglican and Erastian contexts as well as by showing that it belongs to a lineage of English prose fiction, whose famous names are Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding, which also had theopolitical interests.     

Look the Other Way: Dealing with Child Sexual Abuse Outside of Institutions in 1980s Australia

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has provided a depth of knowledge about sexual assault within institutions, highlighting the multiple ways that adults failed to protect victims. This article will show that this elision of responsibility towards children also occurred outside of institutions. It argues that many key players – including doctors and other professionals – did not step up to protect victims, and that the Australian community continued to ignore, overlook or discount evidence of abuse. Outside of institutions, it was easier to look away than to deal with the horrors of sexual violence against children.     

Letting skeletons out of the closet: the ethics of displaying ancient Mexican human remains

In the wake of Native North American activism and moves to decolonize archaeology, some academics have begun to avoid displaying human remains. Though recent World Archaeological Congress accords detail a consent process for ethical display, some journals, museums, and individual scholars have blanket policies covering even those remains whose descendants favour display. This article examines one context affected by these policies: the central Mexican town of Xaltocan. Here, Indigenous residents advocate for archaeological study and exhibition of ancient human remains, yet they have been criticised and censored by North American audiences. We consider two factors behind their desire to display the dead as part of efforts to reclaim Indigenous identities: long-standing Mesoamerican relationships with the dead and the materiality and symbolic capital of bones. We argue that an academic reluctance to display any human remains is problematic – even if it is a well-intentioned acknowledgement of respect for their sensitive nature – because it imposes the wishes of one Indigenous group on another, and may thereby lead to the unwitting perpetuation of colonial practice. We suggest that decolonizing archaeology may sometimes necessitate allowing the exhibition of skeletal remains; ethnographic research in individual communities is needed to ensure respect for descendant perspectives.     

A Very Remote Storage Box Indeed: The Importance of Doing Archaeology with Old Museum Collections

Although our practice has come to be defined by a focus on excavation as the trademark of archaeological research, research on archaeological collections lies at the scientific heart of the discipline. We demonstrate through two very different case studies how a return to primary sources (in this case, boxes of artifacts) can upend our understanding of the objects themselves and create new narratives of social and technological change. At the same time, access to museum collections is becoming increasingly difficult as institutions struggle with the growing pressure to enhance public outreach and modernize data management, while simultaneously contending with persistent budget cuts. As archaeologists who work closely with museum curators and museum collections, we offer suggestions for how researchers can work with museums to ensure that future generations of researchers and the general public can learn from the ancient materials preserved within their collections.     

Preliminary report on fish remains from the 18th- and 19th-century pearl fishing and trading settlement of Al Zubārah,Qatar

This paper presents initial results of continuing work on the fish remains from excavations at Al Zubārah in northwest Qatar. Al Zubārah flourished as a political, cultural and economic hub during the 18th and 19th centuries following the establishment of a settlement by the ?Utūb tribe from Kuwait. Comparison is made between faunal material from contexts dating to the initial settlement of the site in the mid 18th century and occupation deposits from houses inhabited once the town was at the height of its importance as a trading centre. This allows comparison of fishing strategies employed as the town expanded, cultural changes in the preference of fish and the effects on the marine environment as the town's population grew. Analysis also examines evidence for the preparation of fish within the houses and cooking practices.