“Go get a job right after you take a bath”: Occupy Wall Street as Matter Out of Place

Anthropological studies of purity reveal how notions of cleanliness influence political and social life. During its 2011 Zuccotti Park occupation in Lower Manhattan, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) contested spatial and symbolic manifestations of neoliberalism by re‐inserting Otherness into sanitized and privatized space. But the demonstration provoked reactions from politicians and news media that entwined discourses of cleanliness and productivity (such as Newt Gingrich's riposte to the protestors: “Go get a job right after you take a bath”). This ethnographic study argues that such representations had spatial and political effects. In particular, our account illuminates the plural agency of Occupiers, where resistance to depictions of dirt and idleness existed alongside the use of such discourses to discipline each other. We trace a discursive legacy of these events as notions of productivity and cleanliness have circulated within activist responses to 2012's Superstorm Sandy and the 2014 Flood Wall Street mobilization.     

The development of a new geospatial framework for the palaeoanthropological site of the Sterkfontein Caves,Cradle of Humankind,Gauteng, South Africa

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) provide an essential element in modern paleoanthropological inquiry through their ability to integrate a diverse range of data within a multidimensional spatial framework which can be used for data storage, analysis and modeling. One of the challenges of creating such a framework is the integration of legacy and new data (collected with digital technologies) at large sites with a long history of research. The Sterkfontein Caves, located in the Cradle of Humankind, is the richest Australopithecus-bearing locality in the world and has been the focus of intense palaeoanthropological research for the past 80 years. A diverse range of spatial data has been collected over this history and future integrative research necessitates the development of a unified, cohesive 3D GIS framework. In this paper we describe three phases of work undertaken to implement such a framework and discuss the next steps in its development and utilization for spatial analyses.     

Definitions and Categories: Epistemologies of Race and Critique

One of the striking and important features of The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics is the breadth and depth of literature over two and a half centuries which is examined. Hobson reveals irrefutably the centrality of racialised thought to the foundations of the disciplinary field of International Relations. Such an exercise necessarily encounters difficult methodological questions. This contribution to the forum reflects on the methodological and epistemological challenges of the critique of racial thought. How should we define racialised or racist thought, and how should we distinguish the various strands of racial and eurocentric thought? Does it matter if a critique of racial thought employs modes of categorisation and typology which seem to mirror the epistemological or methodological features of some strands of racial thought itself?     

A Statistical Examination of Flake Edge Angles Produced During Experimental Lineal Levallois Reductions and Consideration of Their Functional Implications

Recent studies have indicated that Levallois-style core reduction offered potential practical benefits to hominin populations. However, none of these studies have yet considered one of the most important functional attributes of flake tools, which is edge angle. To address this shortcoming, we statistically examined flakes produced experimentally during “classic” or “lineal” Levallois core production and reduction. The primary aim of our analyses was to statistically test the null hypothesis of “no difference” between the edge angles of “Levallois” products and the flakes involved in their production. We employ existing edge angle analytical techniques and develop new comparative methodologies to assess flake blank standardization through the case of Levallois core reduction. Having determined the statistical properties of our experimental Levallois reductions, we thereafter evaluated to what extent edge angles produced may, or may not, have been useful to prehistoric hominins. Our analyses demonstrated that the experimentally produced Levallois edge angles were indeed statistically different from the flakes involved in their production. These differences were evident both in terms of relatively higher (i.e., more obtuse) edge angles than debitage flakes and in being significantly less variable around their higher mean edge angles compared to debitage flakes. However, based on current knowledge of how flake edge angle properties relate to issues of functionality, such differences would not have been detrimental to their functionality. Indeed, the edge angle properties they possess would have provided distinct benefits to hominins engaged in their manufacture. Most notably, Levallois-style core organization and reduction would have provided hominins with a reliable means of consistently producing flakes (i.e., “Levallois flakes”) possessing average flake angles that are beneficial in terms of providing a viable cutting edge yet not being so acute as to be friable upon application. Hence, edge angle properties join an array of other features that provide logical motive for why hominins may have organized core production and reduction around Levallois-style patterns at various times and places during the Mid-Late Pleistocene.     

Really shit work? Bodily becoming and the capacity to care for the urban forest

The urban forest has a significant impact on the city’s social and ecological performance. However, shrinking space and resources needed to care for trees means cultivating community care for the urban forest is an increasingly salient issue. To this end, the paper seeks to deepen our understanding of the powers shaping people’s capacity to care for trees. It identifies the body as one of these powers and turns to Deleuze and Guattari for a theory of corporeality that illuminates the body’s role in the process of becoming a ‘bushcarer’. This highlights the trans-corporeal practices and encounters that endow people with the skills and desire needed to care for the urban forest. With the ethical utility of the body being debated by social and cultural geographers, this article defends its potential by suggesting the body and its encounters are deeply implicated in the development of a dyadic capacity to care for the urban forest. For urban forestry, this means community engagement might be framed as an ethical event that facilitates experiments in bodily composition that might change our ways of thinking, feeling, and being with the urban forest.     

MultiLevel Modeling of Space–Time Variations: Exploring Landslide Voting Patterns at United States Presidential Elections, 1992–2016

Much has been written about the polarization of the American electorate and its reflection in its legislatures, but less about its spatial polarization, which Bishop has argued has taken place in parallel with the ideological and behavioral polarization. The extent of that polarization can be assessed, he argues, by identifying the number of landslide counties, those won at presidential elections by margins of 20 percentage points or more. This paper uses a multilevel modeling strategy to explore changes in the number and extent of those landslide counties over the period 1992–2016, relative to both the location of the counties and their population composition. It shows that a county’s population composition was a major determinant of whether it returned a landslide for either party’s candidate at any election—with a clear change in direction over the period for counties according to their level of affluence—but this was by no means the sole determinant. Holding constant those variations there were additional geographies that were more place‐ than people‐specific.     

Faith and Failure on the Australian Goldfields: Gendered Interpretations of Piety and the “Good Death”

Gold‐seeking in the 1850s Australian gold rush provided opportunity for James and Maggie Hoey, a young Scottish couple, to pursue wealth, experience adventure, and escape some of the strictures of their United Presbyterian religious culture. They hoped that Providence would guide their paths to independence, prosperity, and eventual return to Scotland. Instead, they experienced repeated failure and suffering, becoming keenly aware of the absence of familiar avenues of support and solace. This article examines the gendered strategies family members developed to maintain or reclaim piety under unfavourable conditions on the goldfields. The disparity between their expectations and outcomes draws attention to the ways in which religious beliefs shaped individual response to suffering. The dogged, but ultimately futile, quest for gold undermined the capacity of James Hoey to fulfil his gendered roles, impacting upon his hope in, and assurance of, election to eternal life.