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.     

Late Middle Pleistocene horse fossils from northwestern Europe as biostratigraphic indicators

Biostratigraphy provides a crucial tool for establishing temporal correlations between late Middle Pleistocene sites. The caballoid horse lineage is one of the few large mammal groups that underwent changes in size and morphology over this period. Here, univariate, bivariate and multivariate statistics are used to identify temporal affinities of late Middle Pleistocene horse remains from northwest Europe.     

The Persistence of Milpa Agriculture in Highland Guatemala1

In southwestern Guatemala, within the western realms of the basin of Quezaltenango, peasants have maintained the traditional system of milpa agriculture in the face of repeated cultural intrusions. The Spanish conquest resulted in the adoption of a plethora of tools, crops and domesticated animals that modified, but did not alter the basic character of the milpa. The milpa system has evolved more recently to accommodate the production of cash crops, principally wheat and potatoes. Chemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and improved varieties of seed have been accepted as necessary adjuncts in the production of these crops. In contradiction of the counsel of well-intentioned advisors, however, the Guatemalan peasants persist in their adherence to the traditional milpa. Many Westerners are inclined to regard this as irrational behavior. Although not capable of articulating fully all of the subtle advantages of milpa agriculture, the majority of the region's peasants perceive the milpa as an economically secure and culturally compatible agricultural system that has evolved on a trial-and-error basis over a long period of time. This is not to suggest that the subsistence-oriented milpa will not ultimately give way to the commercialization of agriculture, as has occurred to a limited degree elsewhere in Guatemala. Given the veneration of maize as embodied in rituals and native religious beliefs, however, agricultural commercialization will likely occur only to the extent that the peasant perceives the potential monetary gain to outweigh the security and cultural good embodied in the traditional customs and practices.     

Explaining everything? The power and perils of reading Rosenberg

This article examines the writings and teachings of eminent American medical historian Charles E. Rosenberg from the perspective of one of his former graduate students. It examines the appeal of the integrative quality of Rosenberg's historical approach; his attention to imperfect and inconsistent ideology; his use of graphic examples to shock and engage; his preference for continuity over change; his rejection of nostalgia and romanticism; the influence of his teacher Erwin Ackerknecht; and Rosenberg's response to American health policy issues. The article also places Rosenberg within the history of the rise and fall of American social medicine and assesses the potential influence of his work for twenty-first-century American medical history and health policy.