A love story: for ‘Buddy System’ research in the academy

This article makes a case for a ‘buddy system’ approach to research and scholarship, or a kind of ‘caring with’ our colleagues, as feminist praxis and as an intentional, politicized response to the neoliberalization of the academy. Through autoethnographic writing on our travels together into farmed animal auction yards, we explain the buddy system as a mode of caring, solidarity, and love that differs from collaborative research, focused as it is on caring for and about our colleagues and their research even (or especially) when we have no direct stakes in the research being conducted. We contribute to three feminist conversations with this approach: feminist care ethics in geography; emotional geographies; and critical perspectives on the neoliberalization of the academy. We advocate the buddy system as an extension of feminist care ethics, enriching how feminists think about ‘doing’ research. We draw on feminist geographies of emotion and our own emotions (grief especially) experienced while witnessing processes of nonhuman animal commodification to politicize the act of researching and to develop a more caring way of inhabiting the academy. This is particularly important, we argue, in the context of deepening neoliberal logics that turn the academy into a place where care and love become radical acts of resistance and transformation.     

Spatial variation in cervical cancer screening participation and outcomes among Indigenous and non‐Indigenous Australians in Queensland

Indigenous women continue to experience a disproportionately higher burden of cervical cancer than non‐Indigenous women in Australia. The National Indigenous Cervical Screening Project used probabilistic record linkage to combine population‐based administrative databases and identify Indigenous women on Pap Smear Registers. This study aimed to quantify the spatial variation by local government areas (LGAs) for Indigenous and non‐Indigenous women in Queensland in cervical screening participation rates and related outcomes. Empirical Bayes local geostatistical smoothing was performed to reduce the likelihood of spurious variation between small areas. The cohort included 1,091,260 women (2 per cent Indigenous) aged 20 to 69 with 2,393,708 Pap smears between 2006 and 2011. Indigenous women had smoothed LGA‐specific 5‐year participation rates (interquartile range (IQR) 38.9–53.3 per 100 eligible women) consistently lower than non‐Indigenous women (IQR 80.7–85.3). The non‐overlapping confidence intervals of these rates suggest that the Indigenous differential was significant. Compared with Indigenous women, non‐Indigenous women had consistently lower and more stable prevalence rates of histologically confirmed high grade abnormalities (IQR 8.0–10.1 versus 15.0–21.3 per 1,000 screened women). Although the LGA‐specific rates also suggest that a higher proportion of non‐Indigenous women were followed‐up within two months of an abnormal screening result, the wide confidence intervals for these estimates limit our ability to draw definitive conclusions about spatial patterns for this outcome. These findings highlight the importance of continued monitoring and ongoing efforts to identify drivers of these patterns and develop effective strategies to improve participation and potentially reduce the cervical cancer burden among Indigenous women.     

Walking the Land: Aboriginal Trails,Cultural Landscapes,and Archaeological Studies for Impact Assessment

Aboriginal people have occupied northern Alberta since the end of the last ice age. For most of that time they travelled across the land by foot, producing complex networks of trails, many of which may have great antiquity. Aboriginal people also modified the landscape extensively by the use of controlled burning. Lastly, they are immersed in and “read” the land as places with multiple cultural meanings, which in turn helped shape their cultures and identities. Together, these elements indicate the existence of a series of overlapping cultural landscapes for which the cross-country trails and waterways provide the grid. This article addresses the importance of traditional trails for identifying the cultural landscapes of northeastern Alberta and points to the rapid disappearance today of knowledge about such trails. It considers how archaeological investigations done in Alberta for Impact Assessment purposes fail to consider either trails or cultural landscapes in their surveys or to consult with Aboriginal people. As a result, government Review Panels making recommendations for whether or not an industrial project should be approved are basing their findings on incomplete information about Aboriginal land uses and meanings.     

The Zoutsteeg Three: Three New Cases of African Types of Dental Modification from Saint Martin,Dutch Caribbean

Dental modification was widely practiced in sub‐Saharan Africa as a form of cultural expression, and during the era of the transatlantic slave trade, it was regularly identified in enslaved Africans who were transported to the Americas. Here, we report three new cases of African types of dental modification from the Caribbean island of Saint Martin that were recently encountered during construction activities in the Zoutsteeg area of Philipsburg, the capital of the Dutch half of the island. The artifacts associated with the burials indicate that they date to the late 17^th century, prior to the foundation of the town of Philipsburg in 1735. The dental evidence further suggests that the three individuals were born in Africa, as opposed to the Americas. This could be confirmed by tooth enamel strontium isotope measurements which yielded values that are inconsistent with an origin in the Caribbean but consistent with an origin in Africa. Unfortunately, neither the dental patterns nor the strontium isotope values allow us to determine their specific origins in Africa. However, both the methods used to modify the teeth and the isotope ratios suggest that the ‘Zoutsteeg Three’ originated in different parts of Africa. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Immigrants and Apprentices: Solutions to the Post-War Labour Shortage in the West Yorkshire Wool Textile Industry, 1945–1980

After the Second World War, the wool textile industry faced a significant labour shortage as its traditional workers escaped the poor wages and conditions of wool mills for better-paying, cleaner jobs. Three broad solutions to this crisis were adopted: the employment of immigrants, mainly from the Indian Subcontinent and Eastern Europe, the re-formatting and promotion of apprenticeships and the recruitment work undertaken by the Wool Industry Training Board. Of these solutions, employing immigrants was by far the most successful in bringing workers into the industry, while the latter two were resounding failures. In prioritising the recruitment of young, white, British men, the industry, trade unions and government missed a key opportunity to train immigrants and women to take the places of the skilled workers they so desperately sought.     

Kingship and Catholicism in Posthumous Representations of Charles II, 1685–1714

Examining Charles II's changing posthumous reputation from his rumored deathbed conversion to Catholicism through the political upheaval of the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries demonstrates the profound effects affairs of state during the reigns of James II, William III, and Anne had on ideas of kingship. From elegists' depictions as the glory of the Stuart monarchy, Charles became James' feared counterpart during debates over the Copies of Two Papers Written by the Late King Charles II, and finally a distinctly human ruler. Published posthumous representations of Charles II suggest increasing willingness to consider kings as fallible men who made contestable decisions.