Jews with Knives: Toronto’s Depression-Era Kosher-Slaughter Infrastructure and the Kehilla Enquiry of 1932

ABSTRACT

In the 1930s, a legal dispute upset Toronto’s kosher-slaughter and kosher-retail industry. The Kehilla, the governing body responsible for regulating the city’s kosher system, was accused of charging exorbitant prices for kosher slaughter. Moreover, several community butchers alleged that they had been ostracized from the Municipal Abattoir and coerced into signing binding agreements with a butchers’ association. The conflict escalated to such adegree that the city’s court mediated the dispute at the request of the Board of Control and City Council. Using foodways as a lens into social and cultural dynamics, this article narrates and examines this kosher controversy to illuminate divisions within the city’s Depression-era Jewish community and the larger metropolis. This examination reveals a stratified yet resilient community—one that fostered severe class conflict, but also one that drew on killing-floor activism and an entrepreneurial spirit to secure an economic base in the face of a worsening depression.     

Cultural democracy: an ecological and capabilities approach

ABSTRACT

In recent years, there has been sustained critique of the conceptual and normative foundations of UK cultural policy – the paternalism of ‘excellence and access’ and the neoliberal logic of ‘creative industries’. Whilst these critiques are well established, there is little work offering alternative foundations. This paper makes a contribution to this task. It does so in three ways. Firstly, by identifying ‘cultural democracy’ as a key discourse offering a counter-formulation of what the aims of cultural policy could and should be, and analysing uses of this term, it highlights the need to more effectively conceptualize cultural opportunity. Secondly, drawing on research with one UK-based initiative, Get Creative, the paper identifies a particularly consequential aspect of cultural opportunity: its ecological nature. Thirdly, it shows that the capabilities approach to human development provides ideas with the potential to help build new conceptual and normative foundations for cultural policy. Proposing a distinctive account of cultural democracy characterized by systemic support for cultural capabilities, the paper concludes by indicating the implications this may have for research, policy and practice.     

Automated classification of starch granules using supervised pattern recognition of morphological properties

Image analysis techniques have been used to investigate the likelihood of being able to classify and assign a probability regarding the plant origin of individual starch granules in a collection of granules. Quantifiable variables were used to characterize the granules, and the assignments and probabilities were calculated objectively. We consider the classification of images containing granules of a single species and of mixed species and the possibility of assigning a class to granules of unknown species in an image of a slide obtained from the dental calculus of chimpanzees.     

Elemental analysis of pottery in the study of its provenance: A review

Elemental analysis of pottery is a valuable scientific approach to investigation of its provenance. Increasing use is being made of the approach, and this paper presents a critical review of the basic methodology and experimental procedures. Genenal problems and limitations of the technique are discussed, and the procedures involved in each of the four main stages of such studies are described. These stages are: (1) selecting specimens of pottery for analysis, (2) obtaining samples from the specimens, (3) analysing the samples, and (4) interpreting the results. For each stage, suggestions are made for generally useful procedures and experimental precautions, and for aspects on which further study seems desirable. Much of the discussion is also relevant to the analysis and typing of artifacts of other materials, e.g., metal and stone objects.