The Failure of Popular Justice in Uganda: Local Councils and Women’s Property Rights

Advocates of alternative dispute resolution argue that informal, community‐based institutions are better placed to provide inexpensive, expedient and culturally appropriate forms of justice. In 1988, the Ugandan government extended judicial capacity to local councils (LCs) on similar grounds. Drawing on attempts by women in southwestern Uganda to use the LCs to adjudicate property disputes, this article investigates why popular justice has failed to protect the customary property rights of women. The gap between theory and practice arises out of misconceptions of community. The tendency to ascribe a morality and autonomy to local spaces obscures the ability of elites to use informal institutions for purposes of social control. In the light of women’s attempts to escape the ‘rule of persons’ and to seek out arbiters whom they associate with the ‘rule of law’, it can be argued that the utility of the state to ordinary Ugandans should be reconsidered.     

Home and away: constructing family and childhood in the context of working parenthood

Little is known about children's views and experiences of their parents’ work?life reconciliation and how these are negotiated in everyday family practices. This article examines families' experiences of work?life reconciliation from both children's and parents' perspectives, drawing on a qualitative longitudinal study with 14 families in Scotland. Such experiences have implications for the spatial and temporal construction of family and childhood in the UK, where working parenthood is increasingly the norm.     

Congenital scoliosis: possible causes and consequences in a skeleton from Nubia

Reports of congenital scoliosis (CS) are rare in the literature of paleopathology. This study details severe CS in the complete, well preserved skeleton of an adult male, dated to AD 550–800, from the Sudanese site of Kulubnarti. This skeleton, designated as S‐16, is the most complete archaeologically derived example of CS to be documented. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Forging Creative Partnerships

While much public attention focuses on the impact of immigration policy at the national level or in major metropolitan areas, the realities of political policy regarding refugees and immigrant populations are also felt in smaller, more rural communities as well. Local decisionmakers increasingly face new community needs at a time when mandated programs are being shifted as federal responsibility changes. This article recounts the work of a unique, ongoing collaborative effort that began in 1996 establishing a partnership between health care and public safety services in support of low-income and immigrant populations in the city of Portland, Maine. The project seeks to address two of the most pressing problems associated with immigrant populations: preventive medical care and the reduction of neighborhood violence. The project is predicated on the belief that community building works best when all residents are stakeholders in a vision that includes strong schools, safe neighborhoods, and healthy families. The elements of the Portland experience in service provision are recounted for other state and local policymakers in forging new and collaborative working relationships among service providers and government agencies     

Archaeological ethnography: Conversations around Kruger National Park

Este artículo esboza las posibilidades para una práctica mixta, a la que yo denomino etnografía arqueológica, que enlaza la arqueología y antropología sociocultural. Mi trabajo de campo se ha realizado en los límites del Parque Nacional Kruger con individuos de la comunidad de Malatji, y también con ecologistas sociales, guardas del parque, intérpretes y agentes del patrimonio que trabajan en el parque nacional. La investigación contribuye y evalúa críticamente el centralísmo del patrimonio arqueológico de Sudáfrica y sus múltiples papeles en la formulación de nuevas subjetividades en la nación cosmopolita y postcolonial.

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Résumé Cet article illustre la possibilité d'utiliser l'ethnographie archéologique comme pratique hybride permenttant de faire le pont entre l'archéologie et l'anthropologie socioculturelle. Mon travail de terrain se déroule à la limite du Parc National Kruger avec des individus de la communauté Malatji et aussi des spécialistes en écologie sociale, des agents de la conservation, des guides interprètes et des représentants du patrimoine employés du parc national. Cette recherche entend contribuer et faire une évaluation critique de la centralité du patrimoine archéologique en Afrique du sud et de ses r?les multiples dans la formation d'une nouvelle subjectivité dans la nation cosmopolite postcoloniale.