Trans objects: materializing queer time in US transmasculine homes

Emerging from a participatory research project, this article draws on in-depth, semi-structured interviews, and home tours with trans masculine individuals and couples in the US Northeast to examine how homes come to function as spaces of both grounding and disidentification for transmasculine participants. In this article we argue that photographs and items of décor–particular, meaningful objects in trans homes–function to materialize the queerness of transition, and thus constitute a material expression of queer time. They provide a means for trans folks to acknowledge the queerness of the multiple life course temporalities co-present in the intimacy of private space, and we suggest that through these objects trans bodies engage in a process of becoming through moments of ‘co-substancing’ with the objects that are cherished, displayed, or hidden, in trans homespaces. In this article we suggest that objects on display in the home allow not just for a stretching of normative temporalities of the self, but also for the performance of home space as trans. We argue that more scholarly attention needs to be paid to the everyday, mundane geographies of transgender lives.     

‘La doble condición’: landmine victims,forced displacement,and disability in Colombia’s Magdalena Medio

The small body of scholarship that examines the intersection between forced displacement and physical disability draws important attention to the material difficulties simultaneously disabled and displaced people experience. Instead of focusing on disability as a condition lived against the spatial backdrop of forced displacement, this paper approaches disability and displacement as mutually referential spatial conditions. Based on fieldwork with internally displaced landmine victims in Colombia’s Magdalena Medio region, this research highlights how the intersection between physical impairment and forced displacement produces both disabling spatial imaginaries of fear as well as painfully embodied rhythms of daily life. Nonetheless, this paper draws attention to urban agricultural projects’ enabling potential to produce grounding rhythms of labor for landmine victims. Finally, this paper suggests that contexts of forced displacement require close consideration of spatial imaginaries of fear as well as experiences of direct structural violence as key factors underpinning the social production of disability.     

Reinforcement of the 18th Century Buttresses of Maniace Castle: Design and Execution

ABSTRACT

Maniace Castle, built on Ortygia island in Siracusa (Italy) in the first half of the 13th century and hosting a magnificent hypostyle hall (the Salone), a square area covered by 25 cross vaults supported by columns, was severely damaged by the 1693 earthquake and the explosion of the ammunition dump in 1704. The buttresses, built immediately afterward to counteract the thrust of the 10 surviving vaults, did not guarantee adequate seismic safety so that a metal scaffolding was installed in 2001 to prevent an overturning mechanism. This article discusses the design and execution of an external pre-stressing steel system to increase existing buttress strength and the seismic capacity of the Salone, starting with historical and constructional analyses and dealing with both analytical and technical aspects. The monitoring system installed to detect structural response during and after the working execution is shown, along with some of the data acquired so far.     

A PATH ANALYTIC EXPLORATION OF INCOME CLUSTERING AND LOCAL INEQUALITY

This article explores relationships among income status, economic resources, service needs, and taxing policies for municipalities and schools in 39 metropolitan suburbs of the Milwaukee SMSA. The results indicate some modest support for those who are concerned about the impact of class and income clustering, as well as government fragmentation, on inequalities regarding local tax policy. Use of path analysis to explore some of the possible alternative linkages that account for patterns of fiscal inequality among suburban municipalities shows that fiscal disparities resulting from income clustering by jurisdiction is only partially attributable to resourse and need inequities. It might also be that income status, reflecting differing service preferences, operates directly to generate inter municipal fiscal disparities.     

Reviews

LYNDON B. JOHNSON AND THE WORLD. Philip Geyelin. Frederick A. Praeger, U.SA., 1966. Pp. viii + 309. $5.95 (U.S.).

AN EXPLANATION OF DE GAULLE, Robert Aron. Harper & Row, New York, 1966. Pp. xiv + 210. $4.95 (U.S.).

DE GAULLE AND THE WORLD. THE FOREIGN POLICY OF THE FIFTH FRENCH REPUBLIC. W. W. Kulski. Syracuse University Press, 1966. Pp. xvi + 428. $8.50 (U.S.).

MODERN CAPITALISM. THE CHANGING BALANCE OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE POWER. Andrew Shonfield. London, Oxford University Press, for the Royal Institute of International Affair?, 1965. Pp. xvi + 456. $8.33 (Aust).

THE DISINTEGRATING MONOLITH. PLURALIST TRENDS IN THE COMMUNIST WORLD. /. D. B. Miller and T. E. Bigby (eds.). Canberra, Australian National University, 1965. Pp. xiii + 264. $6.00 (Aust).

AUSTRALIA AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Anthony Chinies Ross and Peter King. Sydney, Sydney University Press 1966. Pp. 111. $2.00 (Aust.). ASPECTS OF AUSTRALIA'S DEFENCE. Max Teichmann (ed.). For The Political Studies Association, Monash University, 1966. Pp. 88. $1.25 (Aust.).

AUSTRALIA, BRITAIN AND THE E.E.C. H. G. Gelber. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1966. Pp. xii + 296. $9.50 (Aust.).

AUSTRALIAN POLICIES AND ATTITUDES TOWARD CHINA. Henry S. Albinski. Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1965. Pp. 468. $14.75 (Aust.).

TOWARDS PEACE IN INDO‐CHINA. Anthony Eden {Earl of Avon). Chatham House Essays No. 14. London, Oxford University Press, 1966. Pp. x + 41 + 30 Select Documents. $1.80 (Aust.).

THAILAND AND THE STRUGGLE FOR SOUTHEAST ASIA. Donald. E. Neuchterlein. Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1965. Pp. 279. $6.70 (Aust).

MASK OF ASIA. THE PHILIPPINES. George FarweU. Melbourne, F. W. Cheshire, 1966. Pp. 227. $4.50 (Aust.).

JAPAN. LAND OF SUN AND STORM. Mildred Watt. Melbourne, F. W. Cheshire, 1966. Pp. 195. $5.00 (Aust).

THE ANGLO‐JAPANESE ALLIANCE: THE DIPLOMACY OF TWO ISLAND EMPIRES 1894–1907. I. H. Nish. London, Athlone Press, 1966. Pp. 420. 63/‐(stg.).

THE NEW ELITES OF TROPICAL AFRICA. P. C. Lloyd (ed.). London, Oxford University Press, 1966. For the International African Institute. Pp. x + 390. $7.80 (Aust.). This book is an attempt to open a new field in modern African studies.     

An Overview of Maritime Archaeological Research of the Colonial Period in the French Antilles

This article provides a summary of the various maritime archaeology projects undertaken in the French Antilles (Guadeloupe and Martinique) since the 1980s that date to the 17th–19th century Colonial period. These projects are presented in the context of the principal maritime archaeological research questions. The results are analysed thematically touching on different aspects of archaeological research in littoral and underwater zones: coastal plantations, ports, and micro‐islets. Research carried out on wreck‐sites is presented with respect to their maritime use (commercial, naval, and cabotage). The nature and distribution of such sites provides information both on maritime routes and traffic, trade, conflicts, and environmental risks specific to the Antilles in the Colonial period.