Conversing with the minority: relations among Christian,Jewish, and Muslim women in the high middle ages

This essay introduces a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History on the topic of ‘Conversing with the minority: relations among Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Women in the High Middle Ages’. Despite the fact that both interfaith relations and women's history are now well established subdisciplines within the field of medieval studies, the question of how medieval women themselves established cross-sectarian relations has rarely been explored. Documenting women's history is almost always problematic because of limited source materials, but this essay suggests that much can be learned by looking at areas where Christian, Jewish, and Muslim women shared certain facets of their lives: either by reason of social relations tied to religion and ethnicity (money-lending being a common bond between Jewish and Christian women, slavery between Christian women and Muslims) or by reason of events that connected them due to their shared sex and gender (childbirth, caring for the dead, even cosmetics). By actively looking for ‘spaces’ where women would be found, we can begin to hear the dialogues that passed among women across religious lines.     

Tacit knowledge transfer via interlocking directorates: A comparison of Canada and the United States

This paper explores geography as a contributing factor to knowledge transfer among Canadian and American firms. We argue that the knowledge networks of the two countries are moving in opposite directions. Canada's network is converging into fewer cities while the American network encompasses a greater number of cities. When the knowledge networks of Canada and the United States are explored, national and local boundaries are found to impede the movement of corporate knowledge. Prior to our discussion on its spatiality, the concept of knowledge is introduced and its relation to individuals and firms of the Canadian and American corporate network is examined.     

An Early Prehistoric Shaft on Cranborne Chase

Continuing field work on Cranborne Chase has examined a unique shaft in Fir Tree Field, Down Farm in the parish of Gussage St Michael. Although shafts are known in prehistoric contexts elsewhere in England in the form of Neolithic flint mines, ritual shafts and even Bronze Age wells (Wilsford), the shaft reported here is particularly early and remains, at present, unexplained. Excavation and augering has revealed a shaft over 25 m deep containing evidence of Mesolithic to Beaker activity.     

Vault thickness in two Pleistocene Australian crania

This study examines vault thickness in two Pleistocene crania at the centre of discussions about the evolution of Indigenous Australians and competing scenarios about modern human origins: Willandra Lakes Human (WLH) 3 and WLH 50. We estimated total vault thickness and thickness of the diploë, external and internal table on CT-scans, and undertook a quantitative comparison of them. We found that they differ significantly in absolute thickness, but are similar in terms of the relative contribution to thickness made by the diploic space and total table. They also differ significantly in terms of relative variation in thickness, and in several instances, WLH 50 shows greater variability than WLH 3. This finding undermines pathology as an explanation for thickness in the former cranium. Among later hominins, WLH 50 is highly unusual in possessing an extremely thick vault at bregma. We show, however, that vault thickness at this landmark is positively allometrically scaled in Indigenous Australians, but negatively scaled in Ngandong Homo erectus. Thus, vault thickness is mostly explained by the extremely large size of WLH 50: one of the largest hominin crania ever found. Moreover, its extreme thickness firmly establishes its affinities with modern humans rather than the Ngandong group. Despite the important role played by epigenesis in the development of the cranial vault, similarities between WLH 3 and WLH 50 indicate some canalisation in the extent to which the various vault components contribute to total thickness.     

Regulating Over-indebtedness: Local State Power in Cambodia's Microfinance Market

Cambodian microfinance borrowers are suffering from an over-indebtedness crisis. In the past 20 years, the Cambodian government has implemented financial reforms that have commercialized the microfinance sector and promoted industry self-regulation. Echoing long-standing concerns about neoliberal microfinance, critics maintain that these reforms have hollowed out the Cambodian state's ability to regulate a highly competitive market, thereby exacerbating the problem of over-indebtedness. In contrast, based upon 20 months of ethnographic research in southern Cambodia by the author, this article argues that the microfinance market would not function without local authorities performing key regulatory roles of the state. These local authorities include commune councillors — elected representatives of multiple villages — who work closely with village leaders and local police. They are the primary state actors who enforce the property rights and loan contracts upon which Cambodia's microfinance market depends. The author analyses how this local state regulation contributes to household indebtedness by encouraging multiple borrowing, rural out-migration and land repossession. The article advances development studies scholarship on over-indebtedness by demonstrating that the inequitable outcomes of neoliberal microfinance can be better understood, and contested, by interrogating the multi-scalar spaces of state regulatory power.