Reconstructing Middle Horizon mobility patterns on the coast of Peru through strontium isotope analysis

The pre-Columbian coastal site of Ancón, Peru frequently has been interpreted as an important outpost of the highland Wari Empire, inhabited by individuals from the sierra and the coast. In order to test this hypothesis, bone–tooth pairs from 35 Middle Horizon (550 AD–1000 AD) Ancón skeletons were analyzed for strontium isotopes, which vary by geologic provenance. Results indicate that 34 of the 35 individuals have ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr enamel and bone values higher than Ancón's biologically available strontium isotope range. Nitrogen and carbon isotope data from a subset of the Ancón skeletons suggest that the higher than expected ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr values among the Ancón sample likely reflects a diet rich in marine resources rather than migratory activity, and highlight the need to use multiple lines of evidence to track residence change at sites where individuals relied on resources other than locally grown terrestrial foods. The one remaining individual, a young female of elite status, has an enamel strontium isotope signature much lower than the available data for local fauna and soil indicating that she was not raised locally. Her enamel ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratio fits well within the range of strontium isotope values established for the inland Wari site of Conchopata [Tung, T.A., Knudson, K.J. Social identities and geographical origins of Wari trophy heads from Conchopata, Peru. Current Anthropology, in press.], and suggests that highland, Wari immigrants may have been present at Ancón during the Middle Horizon.     

Intervention: Mapping is critical!

This intervention targets the much heralded demise of the map in geography and the recently proposed “rethinking” of maps. It comprises contributions from two political geographers, a military geographer, a political scientist, and two activist cartographers and argues that there is not so much a need to “rethink” maps, but to “re-engage” with the material practices of mapping, and above all to “re-make” maps.     

Assessing the Performance of Voluntary Environmental Programs: Does Certification Matter?

The promotion of voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) as alternative approaches to traditional environmental regulation has fueled numerous researchers to evaluate VEP performance. However, these studies have focused on assessing the environmental performance of a single VEP. As yet, we know little about the overall environmental benefits of these programs. Moreover, questions remain about whether VEPs designed with different monitoring regimes—related to whether programs are self‐monitored or undergo external certification—vary in their ability to improve environmental conditions. Using meta‐analysis methodology, this article evaluates the aggregated environmental outcomes of U.S. VEPs drawing on data from nine studies and over 30,000 firms. We show that collectively VEP participants do not improve their environmental performance over nonparticipants. Rather, nonparticipants improve their environmental performance by 7.7 percent more than VEP participants. Additionally, nonparticipants improve the environment 24 percent more than participants in self‐monitored VEPs, whereas participants in International Standards Organization 14001 as a group exhibit inconclusive environmental performance improvements.     

Seniors’ Long-Term Care in Canada: A Continuum of Soft to Brutal Privatisation

We situate the contemporary crisis of COVID-19 deaths in seniors’ care facilities within the restructuring and privatisation of this sector. Through an ethnographic comparison in a for-profit and nonprofit facility, we explore what we identify as brutal and soft modes of privatisation within publicly subsidised long-term seniors’ care in Vancouver, British Columbia, and their influence on the material and relational conditions of work and care. Workers in both places are explicit that they deliver only bare-bones care to seniors with increasingly complex care needs, and we document the distinct forms and extent to which these precarious workers give gifts of their time, labour and other resources to compensate for the gaps in care that result from state withdrawal and the extraction of profits within the sector. We nonetheless locate more humane and hopeful processes in the nonprofit facility, where a history of cooperative relations between workers, management and families suggest the possibility of re-valuing the essential work of care.     

Progressive and reactionary rhetoric in the municipal reform debate in New South Wales,Australia

Albert Hirschman's rhetoric of reaction is a potentially powerful typology of the arguments made by both proponents and opponents of reform (1991. The rhetoric of reaction: Perversity, futility, jeopardy. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press). However, scholars have identified a number of gaps in the typology, in particular that it has struggled to explain the lines of rhetoric associated with disputed empirical evidence. This paper reviews Hirschman's typology before applying it to the contentious municipal amalgamation debates currently unfolding in New South Wales, Australia. We then examine the lines of attack open to progressives and reactionaries on the basis of empirical data. We conclude that the use of empirical data opens new lines of rhetoric for both ‘progressives’ and ‘reactionaries’ generally, but that both information costs and complexity significantly affect the timing and penetration of the arguments.     

Planning the post‐political city: exploring public participation in the contemporary Australian city

This special section examines the possibility of meaningful debate and contestation over urban decisions and futures in politically constrained contexts. In doing so, it moves with the post‐political times: critically examining the proliferation of deliberative mechanisms; identifying the informal assemblages of diverse actors taking on new roles in urban socio‐spatial justice; and illuminating the spaces where informal and formal planning processes meet. These questions are particularly pertinent for understanding the processes shaping Australian cities and public participation today.