State policy and contraceptive choices: evidence from China 1979–2012

This study examines the relationship between China’s contraception policy and married women’s (20–49 years) choice between long-acting and short-acting contraceptive methods during two periods–1980–1994 and 1995–2012. The aim is to examine the link between strictness of the contraception policy and married women’s contraceptive choice. Using data from the 1988 and the 2006 National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Surveys, we estimated the effect of contraception policy in the tightened and the loosened policy periods using a permutation test. The results show that while contraception policy promoted long-acting contraceptive methods, many married women themselves preferred short-acting contraceptive methods. During the tightened policy period, we found married women on average were 2.7 times more likely to use long-acting methods. The effect was only 1.7 times during the loosened policy period. The effect was also parity dependent. The more stringent the contraception policy was, the more likely married women used a long-acting contraceptive method. This study provides the first ever proper estimation of China’s contraception policy effects during the two periods.     

Monitoring and Management Options in the Preservation of Urban Waterlogged Deposits,Nantwich, UK

A baseline survey in 2007 characterized the physical and chemical conditions for preservation within waterlogged remains at Nantwich. Installation of eighteen dipwells has allowed a five-year monitoring programme to be conducted from 2011. Two add-on projects supplemented this monitoring programme by examining the different methods for redox measurement, and for soil moisture measurement using Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR).

Initial results show two main zones of preservation, with reducing conditions attributed to location of the deposits in the floodplain, and a second zone uphill with more variable conditions for preservation. This study shows that sediment-coring programmes combined with dipwell installations can provide useful data to assess and monitor in situ preservation conditions, which can help to formulate management strategies for conservation of waterlogged archaeological deposits. This paper focuses on the efficacy of the methodology, referencing in particular comparative monitoring techniques and lists a series of recommendations for future studies.     

‘Tracking,tracking and more tracking was their motto’: bush tracking and warfare in late twentieth-century Southern Africa

Tracking, the skill of following a subject by signs left behind in the environment, dominated the experience of state forces and insurgents during Southern Africa’s late twentieth-century guerilla conflicts; particularly in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) from 1965 to 1980 and South African occupied South-West Africa (now Namibia) from 1966 to 1989. Rhodesian and South African forces emphasised tracking to locate and eliminate their elusive enemies, and learned that the only way to do this was by using horses, motor vehicles or helicopters to gain ground. Both security forces established tracking training institutions and specialist tracker units. However, only the South Africans were able to create large and highly effective tracking units in the context of a specific environment and the mobilisation of indigenous communities. In response, insurgents in both conflicts shifted their activities to areas less conducive to tracking and developed anti-tracking techniques. Despite the failure of these counter-insurgency campaigns to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the civilian African majority, their attempts to use tracking to engage insurgents can provide useful lessons.