Interpreting Rock-Cut Grave Cemeteries: The Early Medieval Necropolis and Enclosure of São Gens,Portugal

EXCAVATION AT SÃO GENS (Guarda district) in central Portugal has revealed an early medieval rock-cut grave cemetery and settlement, along with Roman and prehistoric evidence. The site presents an exceptionally rich palimpsest of archaeological monuments. This paper reviews the findings and seeks to address the problem of interpreting rock-cut grave cemeteries, by describing a spatial analytical methodology that draws on comparisons with early medieval cemeteries in England, as a means of enhancing the information deficit of such necropolises. In the light of these analyses, an interpretation of the São Gens site is offered in conclusion.     

Engaging territorio cuerpo-tierra through body and community mapping: a methodology for making communities safer

We propose a new way of collectively creating data about gender violence through active participation and mapping women’s bodies and communities. We see this process of data creation, self-awareness and action as inherently linked to the native concept territorio cuerpo-tierra, the landscape of bodies-lands. The concept erases Western notions separating bodies and land and helps to decenter the public–private divide, which is an important obstacle to eliminating violence against women. Drawing on data from our work with Mexican women in the, U.S. and Mexico, we illuminate the continuity of women’s individual bodily experience of violence and collective spatial knowledge of community safety. We conclude that the process and outcomes of body and community mapping linking bodies and land, afford planners the prospect of engaging as partners and co-actants with community members in the goal of making places safe for women.     

The Strange Situation of Attachment Research: A Review of Three Books

Attachment theory currently plays an important role in both research and practice concerned with children's healthy development, yet there is mounting criticism of its core assumptions and methods of investigation. Three recent books bring together a number of these criticisms, based on cross-cultural studies of children in diverse environments as well as an historical analysis of how attachment theory was created and sustained over time. The two cross-cultural books (Attachment Reconsidered, edited by Naomi Quinn and Jeannette Mageo, and Different Faces of Attachment, edited by Hiltrud Otto and Heidi Keller) include ethnographic observations of how infants and young children are cared for in many non-Western societies, as well as research on children's behavior in attachment-related situations. Common themes include multiple caregiving, maternal responsiveness, and autonomy versus relatedness, viewed from evolutionary, cross-cultural, and developmental perspectives. Marga Vicedo's historical study (The Nature and Nurture of Love) offers a scholarly account of the creators of attachment theory and the social-historical context of its development. Based on detailed documentation of the intellectual careers of these people, those who influenced them and those who criticized them, Vicedo builds an argument that attachment theory is not as scientifically solid as has been claimed, and that its core ideas are ultimately damaging to mothers. Taken as a whole, these books suggest seven observations on the current “strange situation” of attachment theory, which are summarized at the conclusion of the review.     

French-Caribbean Refugees and Slavery in German Protestant Maryland

The late eighteenth century saw the immigration of thousands of French refugees from France and its Caribbean colonies to the United States. An examination of one family of these refugees, Jean Payen de Boisneuf and his relatives the Vincendières, reveals that the values that the refugees imported, such as plantation slavery and Catholicism, could be antagonistic to social norms in the regions they chose to settle.     

Introduction: Disability Policy as an Emerging Field of Mainstream Public Policy Research and Pedagogy

The purpose of this two-part symposium of the Policy Studies Journal is to broaden theconcept of disability policy from one that has relevance onlyforpeople interested in that substantive area to that of a major field of social policy having ramifications for the study and teaching of public policy broadly construed. The goal is for experiences in disability policy to be regarded in the same way that experiences in Other substantive areas, such as environmental policy, other social services, and civil rights, illustrate broader themes in areas such as public management, policy analysis, or ethics.