War rape, natality and genocide

Feminist philosophy can make an important contribution to the field of genocide studies, and issues relating to gender and war are gaining new attention. In this article I trace legal and philosophical analyses of sexual violence against women in war. I analyze the strengths and limitations of the concept of social death—introduced into this field by Claudia Card—for understanding the genocidal features of war rape, and draw on the work of Hannah Arendt to understand the central harm of genocide as an assault on natality. The threat to natality posed by the harms of rape, forced pregnancy and forced maternity lie in the potential expulsion from the public world of certain groups—including women who are victims, members of the 'enemy' group, and children born of forced birth.     

The Eleventh- and Twelfth-century Waterfront and Settlement at Queenhithe: Excavations at Bull Wharf,City of London

Evidence for the development of London’s riverside settlement c. AD 1000–1200 was found on the east edge of an important dock known successively as Æthelred’s hithe and Queenhithe. A sequence of embankments and tree-ring dated revetments advanced the waterfront nearly 40 m into the Thames and small inlets provided access to the foreshore. Building and rebuilding took place on a row of properties, with up to a dozen buildings identified; after c. 1150, passages were created for two narrow lanes connecting Thames Street with the quays and foreshore. Important reused building and ships’ timbers and dated groups of metalwork and other artefacts were recovered from the waterfronts.     

In and Out of the Classroom: The Promise of Material Culture

Amish women have contributed to the preservation of their sect's material culture by making distinctive quilts. Their quilts created from 1870 to 1935 epitomize the uniqueness of the Amish lifestyle and can be distinguished from the body of American patchwork quilts of the same time period. While Amish quilts may be distinguished from other quilts by the use of solid colors, dark material and unique patterns, regional differences between Amish quilts are also apparent. The quilts of the Amish communities of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and Holmes County, Ohio have characteristics that define them as Amish, but also as unique to each region. Pennsylvania quilts are distinguished by a square shape, central design, wide borders and intricate quilting stitches. Ohio quilts show greater use of color, repeated patterns and rectangular shapes. Major variations in Amish quilts developed between geographic areas rather than over time.     

AIDS as Occupational Hazard: Racial Mixing and Historical Space in Malaysia's Multinationals

In Malaysia, bangsa, a term blending race and ethnicity, structures modes of social and political‐economic organization that reflexively challenge and reinforce the significance of race, not just to the country's three main groups but to the construction of risk as well. Tracing this reflexivity, the author bridges a historical rendering of Malaysia's colonial‐capitalist incorporation with an ethnographic unpacking of its social artifacts: notions of space, place and race that confer on factories a high‐risk label for HIV/AIDS. It traces how multinational corporations, as landscapes of multiracial modernity, are both the quixotic trophies of Malaysia's global integration and a source of social dread. Risk is ethnographically shown to be more a sociohistoric dynamic than a statistical probability, reflecting ideas of racial individuation and ideals of social stability and cultural immiscibility anchored in colonial governance structures of nineteenth‐century Malaya and operative in contemporary Malaysia.     

The politics of contemporary ethno‐nationalist conflicts

That the 1990s began and ended with wars in the Balkans, often evoking reference to ‘ancient hatreds’, might suggest little has been learned since the fall of the Wall on how to address the recrudescence of violent ethno‐nationalist conflict – and indeed some fatalism as to whether this can be done at all. Yet the rethinking of notions of national sovereignty, the increasing minority‐rights jurisprudence and the development of anti‐essentialist concepts of identity in recent times have begun to indicate new policy instruments which might better allow such conflicts to be managed in the twenty‐first century. As ever, however, policy lags behind intellectual innovations, and the predominant approach of the international community remains for the moment significantly more conservative in character.     

Rooms of Their Own: Public toilets and gendered citizens in a New Zealand city, 1860‐1940

Differences in the provision of public toilets for men and women point to the gendering of citizens. In the later nineteenth century, provision of public toilets in the city of Dunedin centered on the management of male bodies as the meaning of 'public decency' was transformed, while women were catered for as consumers. By the beginning of the twentieth century, when provision for women became a public issue, it was debated in terms of women's special character as citizens. The bodily and spatial characteristics of public and private were renegotiated around this issue: as women became more public, toilets became more private. This article draws on debates about the sexed and gendered body in public space, maternal citizenship, the civilising and modernising of landscapes and bodies, and shifting conceptions of privacy and public.     

Cross-cultural interaction on Wuvulu Island,Papua New Guinea: the perspective from use-wear and residue analyses of turtle bone artifacts

Recent studies have emphasized the importance of Indigenous producers and traders in the formation of ethnographic museum collections, but have found difficulty in finding concrete evidence for their active roles. A use-wear and residue study of turtle bone cleavers from Wuvulu Island, Papua New Guinea provides the opportunity to test whether objects that comprise a significant component of early collections were made specifically for sale, as hypothesized by contemporary observers in the late 19th century. Comparative studies of used and unused turtle bone artifacts from the Caroline Islands and Papua New Guinea identified differences between wear traces resulting from manufacture and use. Analyses of the Wuvulu turtle bone cleavers showed they had been heavily used prior to sale. Rather than produce artifacts to meet the high demand from German traders, the local people sold old, worn-out objects, many of which had been repaired. The study demonstrates that archaeological approaches to ethnographic museum collections can trace Indigenous agency within cross-cultural interaction. It also showcases the potential of use-wear and residue analytical techniques for the analysis of bone tools and the utility of digital, hand-held microscopes for the analysis of large artifacts.     

“Wilderness” revisited: Is Canadian park management moving beyond the “wilderness” ethic?

This paper questions whether the rescaling of conservation practice in Canada to include local and Indigenous communities, NGOs, and private market-based actors represents a move away from wilderness-thinking in conservation, and what implications this might have for the future of conservation in Canada. We explore the links between Cronon's “wilderness” ethic and coloniality, racism/sexism/classism, and political economy, and the extent to which recent trends in conservation practice, such as co-management arrangements, private tourism proposals, and a shift in programming to attract a diverse public to parks, help us to move beyond the limited vision for conservation and environmentalism that the wilderness ethic provides. We interrogate the ways in which the concept of wilderness is being employed, resisted, and transformed by a multitude of actors in three parks and conservation areas across Canada. We argue that although recent developments in conservation practice help to redress some of the worrisome aspects of wilderness-thinking in parks, they also reinforce and re-emphasize problematic lines of thinking and praxis. While the wilderness character of Canadian parks has shifted a great deal since the turn of the 20^th century, the wilderness ethic remains deeply embedded within conservation discourse and practice.