The temporary as the future: Ready‐to‐use therapeutic food and nutraceuticals in South Africa

The reconfiguration of food as a pharmaceutical in biomedical regimes has been considered by scholars along two axes: (1) food supplementation as humanitarian intervention, based on a specific value of life and delivered in ‘crisis’ situations with a short temporal horizon; (2) food supplementation as commodity, marketed as enhancing ‘wellness’ or potential, based on notions of risk in broad temporal frames. We consider nutraceuticals and ready‐to‐use‐therapeutic foods as they are deployed by state and commercial actors in South Africa in relation to two key figures: the pregnant woman and the HIV‐positive population. These biopolitical expressions of post‐apartheid regimes of knowledge, care and governance reveal how state distribution and the corporate marketing of supplements employ a future‐oriented logic that appeals to notions of power, energy and potential. Therapeutic foods in this context are thus not merely humanitarian technologies that reconfigure crisis as a chronic condition – the temporary becoming permanent – but are premised on new potentialities, in which the temporary may (re)shape the future.     

CONSTRUCTING CARIBBEAN CHRONOLOGIES: COMPARATIVE RADIOCARBON DATING OF SHELL AND WOOD ARTEFACTS FROM PRE‐COLUMBIAN SITES IN CUBA

The lack of robust chronological frameworks for pre‐Columbian archaeology in the Caribbean limits the interpretive potential of ongoing studies of inter‐site and inter‐island interaction. This paper reviews the dating of 28 wood and shell artefacts from sites in northern Cuba in an attempt to date pre‐Columbian activity in the region and develop dating methodologies for the study of pre‐Columbian interaction in the Caribbean. This research compares dates from wood and shell artefacts from the waterlogged site of Los Buchillones in north‐central Cuba with dates from shell artefacts from sites on eight islands in the Sabana–Camaguey archipelago in the Bahama Channel. In addition to providing a chronological framework based on absolute dates for pre‐Columbian activity in northern Cuba, this paper also considers the methodological issues of using shell for dating pre‐Columbian activity in the Caribbean.     

Gender In Third World Development Studies: An Overview Of An Underview

This paper reviews twenty years progress in the study of gender in Third World development and the extent to which gender has been incorporated within mainstream development theory and practice. Special reference is made to the role geography has played in this arena. It is argued that while gender as a theoretical framework for explaining women's differential but continued subordination should be reaching maturity, there has been little attempt to formulate cohesive models which integrate micro-and macro-level concepts and which could provide a firm base for future theory-building. More important, studies of gender in the Third World development have seldom addressed the question of development policy or put forward practical solutions for the integration of gender issues in development planning. As a case study of gender in development planning the paper examines the Australian Government's women in development (WID) policy, the ways in which it was informed, and the extent to which it has been implemented.     

English Regionalization and Sustainability: Towards the Development of an Integrated Approach to Strategic Environmental Assessment

Central to this article is the suggestion that modern planning and development frameworks in England are currently at a potentially productive, although problematic turning point. Whilst on the one hand the UK is attempting to make the legislative and institutional changes necessary to facilitate the process of regionalization and devolution, it is at the same time facing the challenge of ensuring the necessary levels of inter-agency cohesion and integration required for the delivery of the meta-objectives at the heart of sustainable development. Of particular concern for the English regions is the increasing complexity of organizational relations, the fragmentary nature of provisions, the potential mismatch between the need to preserve environmental welfare and at the same time ensure regional economic competitiveness, and more fundamentally, the failure to provide an appropriate mechanism for the evaluation of sustainable development goals. In the light of these challenges, the authors highlight the value of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) as a mechanism for improving the environmental quality of decision-making and make recommendations as to how the regional level of decision-making can provide an effective platform for the development of an SEA system which is capable of reconciling the sustainability conflicts derived from different tiers of decision-making. Within this discussion, suggestions are made as to the manner in which current ideas for introducing sustainability appraisal for Regional Planning Guidance should be amended.