Water Use at Palmetto Point and Middle Island, Saba, Dutch Caribbean: A Modeled Approach for Settlement Viability

The neighboring abandoned villages of Palmetto Point and Middle Island, on the northwest of Saba, Dutch Caribbean, relied upon rainwater caught in cisterns as their primary source of potable water. The island of Saba is located in the northern Lesser Antilles, and thus is subject to a rainy and dry season in the course of a year. Using measurements of the village cisterns and their respective catchments combined with variations in monthly rainfall data over the course of a year, a study of water replenishment versus water consumption is possible for Palmetto Point and Middle Island. As a result, fluctuations in population in villages with measurable, finite supplies of potable water allow a researcher to determine the viability of the villages at particular points in time, and the resultant effects on internal economies and social dynamics during these periods.     

Sex ratios and life tables: Historical demography of the age at which women outnumber men in seven countries, 1850–2016

Abstract

The male/female sex ratio (SR) and its age-specific patterns vary considerably across time and place. The SR generally begins male-biased at birth and becomes female-biased later in life, but this relationship should respond to historical trends and events. Temporal trends in SRs remain largely unstudied and formal demographic relationships are not well defined. We (1) define SRs in a life table framework, (2) estimate the age at which the number of males and females achieves parity—the sex ratio crossover (SRX)—using basic life table methods, and (3) explore historical and international patterns in these trends. Using publicly-available data from the Human Mortality Database, we construct SR and SRX measures from period and cohort life tables. Analyses explore temporal patterns for seven countries in different global regions since 1850. Overall temporal trends show the SRX advancing to older ages. The SRX also appears to respond to historical events such as wars and epidemics. The measure is simple to construct from life table data, and provides additional insight into the historical context of gender dynamics.     

‘People don't do odd,do they?’ mothers making sense of the reactions of others towards their learning disabled children in public places

This paper will demonstrate how a focus upon the practices and interactions in and of the everyday lives of mothers of learning disabled children can provide rich insights into the position of a group of children who may not be able to conform to appropriate ways of behaving and using space. This focus will illustrate how the spatial practices and experiences of the mothers and their children are shaped by the reactions of others present and the mothers' interpretations of, and responses to, those reactions. It will, moreover, raise questions about the position of older learning disabled children whose unconventional behaviour in public spaces can threaten disorder.     

"I Didn't Do Anything Important": A Pragmatist Analysis of the Oral History Interview

In the course of gathering oral histories from women who servedin the Navy and Coast Guard during World War II, an unusualconversational pattern has emerged. The women almost invariablydiminish the importance of their wartime contributions; a commonrefrain is "I didn’t do anything important." Their individualexperiences, as revealed during the interviews, belie that assertion.In this paper, I will use the women's words to parse what ismeant by this rhetorical move. Do the women really believe theydid not do anything important? If so, why do they find it necessaryto participate in the very public process of oral history, placingtheir names and life stories within the historical record? Consideringboth the content and the context of the women's words from afeminist pragmatist philosophical base will help explain thisseemingly incongruent act. This article demonstrates that thewomen do not really mean to belittle their life experiences(and military service), but instead are using the phrase asa way to acknowledge society's expectations. The oral historyinterview, meanwhile, is used by the women to not only placetheir experience into the historical record but also to affirmthe importance of their wartime work.     

Sit,Cook, Eat,Full Stop: Religion and the Rejection of Ritual in Auhelawa (Papua New Guinea)

ABSTRACT The Auhelawa people of Normanby Island (Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea) typically observe the death of an individual through a series of feasts in which the lineage of the deceased and its lateral relatives exchange food and perform rituals of mourning. Recently, a number of people have decided to reject all forms of ‘custom’ in favor of a practice of ‘Christian custom’ in which no food is exchanged and no rituals are performed. This paper examines the way people view custom and its Christian alternative. It argues that the basis for Christian forms of mortuary feasting is a shift away from thinking of feasts in terms of reciprocity and towards thinking of them in terms of traditional customary rules. In this context, active church members have begun to represent the absence of markers of custom as itself a marker of an alternative Christian custom. I argue that this reformulation of the relationship of custom and change is meant to give concrete form to the value of Christian individualism as the basis for sociality. The paper then concludes that in order to explain historical changes in ritual systems, the study of ritual needs to examine ritual in relation to the values that underlie it.