Rude Accountability: Informal Pressures on Frontline Bureaucrats in Bangladesh

This article is about ‘rude’ forms of accountability — the informal pressures used by citizens to claim public services and to sanction service failures. Rude accountability is characterized by a lack of official rules or formal basis and a reliance on the power of social norms and rules to influence and sanction official performance. The article draws on evidence from Bangladesh, a state which has not reformed its social sector governance, to explore when and why poor citizens resort to ‘rude’ accountability, whether they have a comparative advantage in the use of informal mechanisms, and whether these work, in terms of gaining better service. It asks what informal accountability mechanisms imply for governance reform in social services, and discusses lessons for other ‘unreformed’ states like Bangladesh.     

New radiometric ages for the Fauresmith industry from Kathu Pan,southern Africa: Implications for the Earlier to Middle Stone Age transition

The Fauresmith lithic industry of South Africa has been described as transitional between the Earlier and Middle Stone Age. However, radiometric ages for this industry are inadequate. Here we present a minimum OSL age of 464 ± 47 kyr and a combined U-series–ESR age of 542₋₁₀₇⁺¹⁴⁰ kyr for an in situ Fauresmith assemblage, and three OSL ages for overlying Middle and Later Stone Age strata, from the site of Kathu Pan 1 (Northern Cape Province, South Africa). These ages are discussed in relation to the available lithostratigraphy, faunal and lithic assemblages from this site. The results indicate that the Kathu Pan 1 Fauresmith assemblage predates transitional industries from other parts of Africa e.g. Sangoan, as well as the end of the Acheulean in southern Africa. The presence of blades, in the dated Fauresmith assemblages from Kathu Pan 1 generally considered a feature of modern human behaviour ( McBrearty and Brooks, 2000, The revolution that wasn't: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior, J. Human Evolution 39, 453–563),-provides evidence supporting the position that blade production in southern Africa predated the Middle Stone Age and the advent of modern Homo sapiens.     

Intervention publique sur le développement de grappes industrielles au Québec

This article describes the conditions for the development of four industrial clusters and the mechanisms of their integration in the regional economy. The case studies are the aerospace and apparel clusters in Montreal, and the agri‐food and marine science and technology clusters in the Lower St. Lawrence region. Clusters are defined as arrangements of businesses, government actors, public authorities, and local intermediary organizations in a local area. However, the study shows that clusters are based on actors and processes operating at different scales, from the local to the global. It also shows the importance of the sectoral leadership acknowledged by the different stakeholders.     

Myth,Primogeniture and Long Distance Trade‐Friends in Northwest New Britain,Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT The origins of ceremonies for firstborn children and long distance trade networks are embedded in Bariai mythology and cosmology. Based on my ethnographic research and the ethnographic reportage contained in the Australian colonial Patrol Officers' Reports, this paper explores the pre‐ and post‐contact trade networks of Bariai parents as they pursue a reputation for ‘renown’ by entering into complex trade‐friendships (sobo) and exchanges for the necessary wealth to undertake one (of seventeen) firstborn ceremony, the mata pau or ‘new eye.’ My intent in this paper is to (1) reiterate that a people and their culture can only be understood within regional systems of relationships; (2) indicate the manner in which long distance trade‐friendships were created and maintained over a long period of time; (3) show how these socio‐economic institutions are embedded in Bariai cosmology and thus made meaningful; (4) attest to the vitality and importance of these systems despite the impact of modernity, missionization and money.     

Sheltering from domestic violence: Women’s experiences of punitive safety and unfreedom in Cambodian safe shelters

This paper explores the experiences of Cambodian domestic violence survivors who have fled their abusive partners to live in NGO-run safe shelters. Through in-depth interview research undertaken in 2016, we explore the stories of seven women whose experiences speak to tensions between having safety from violence and freedom to live as they choose. The pervasive impunity of the legal system means that Cambodian society operates as a safe space for perpetrators of domestic violence and spatially excludes survivors from it to guarantee their safety from injury and even murder. Just as violence against women has been described as a major area of ‘unfreedom’, we contend also that safe shelter provision in Cambodia, albeit essential, does not necessarily afford freedom from violence, but rather a punitive safety from it which can curtail women’s bodily integrity. Survivors are too often being excluded from decision-making processes in the shelter and treated as passive recipients of physical safety. Making the argument that safety and freedom are not coterminous, we contribute to recent feminist scholarship in geography and aligned disciplines focused on the significance and workings of safe space for marginalised groups. As such, the paper complicates singular viewpoints of safe spaces as enabling environments which can challenge oppressive forces both inside and outside of them.     

An Anglo-Saxon Great Hall Complex at Sutton Courtenay/Drayton,Oxfordshire: A Royal Centre of Early Wessex?

An archaeological evaluation at the site of an Anglo-Saxon ‘great hall complex’ at Sutton Courtenay/Drayton, Oxfordshire (NGR 448733 193671), previously known primarily from aerial photographs and metal-detector finds, included the partial excavation of two large timber buildings. One of these had been cut into a prehistoric mound or bank and proved to be the largest Anglo-Saxon ‘great hall’ yet identified. The smaller building overlay an earlier sunken-featured building of probable sixth-century date. The geophysical survey and excavation provide significant new information regarding the site, which is probably that of an undocumented royal centre associated with the earliest rulers of the West Saxons.     

The origins of New Zealand’s first government house

SUMMARY: In 1842 the former first government house located at Okiato, New Zealand, burnt to the ground and the site was abandoned. A well on the site was excavated in 1994–95, revealing a base layer of burnt timbers, a Maori digging stick and ceramic sherds with an estimated manufacture date range of 1823–41. We argue that this deposit is derived from the 1842 destruction of the Okiato government house building. An analysis of the wood identified kauri (Agathis australis) and kahikatea (Dacrycarpus dacrydioides), confirming that the building was not a prefabricated imported structure, but rather was constructed on site from locally available timber.