Multi‐scalar Labour Agency in Global Production Networks: Contestation and Crisis in the South African Fruit Sector

Integration into global production networks poses significant challenges, and also opens up opportunities, for labour agency. Governance by lead firms affects working conditions and can drive precarious employment; this interacts with and can constrain national labour legislation covering labour rights. The global production networks (GPN) approach facilitates examination of commercial value chains, their interaction with institutionally and societally embedded labour markets, and potential leverage points for labour contestation transcending local, national and global scales. This informs analysis of commercial/societal articulations as contested processes opening space for multi‐scalar labour agency within global production networks. This article examines how tensions between global commercial and societally embedded dimensions of global production networks drive precarious work, and seeks to understand the implications for emergent forms of multi‐scalar community‐based labour agency. These questions are explored through an examination of labour casualization and contestation in South African fruit production in 2012–13, using the GPN approach. The authors find that multi‐scalar channels of labour agency leveraging both global commercial and government actors can enable reworking by unorganized community‐based labour to bargain for better pay and conditions, but if the underlying global commercial logic is to be challenged, more systemic strategies are required.     

Ancient DNA Analysis of Anatolian Goat Remains Excavated from a Urartian Castle in Eastern Turkey

In recent years, mitochondrial diversity of goats has been extensively studied, in order to shed light on domestication processes. There are limited studies on genetic diversity and demographic history of Anatolian goat breeds, and these studies have focused only on modern goats. Until today, no research has been conducted on DNA analysis of ancient Anatolian goats. In the present study, seven ancient DNA samples of goat remains from Van‐Yoncatepe archaeological site in Eastern Anatolia, Turkey, dating 1000 BC, were successfully extracted and amplified for the first time. A 230‐bp fragment of mitochondrial DNA Hypervariable Region 1 of the samples was analyzed. All of the ancient sequences belonged to haplogroup A, which is the most widely distributed and frequently encountered haplogroup in modern goats. The results also pointed out that Anatolian ancient goats might have contributed to the genetic structure of modern goats in the Near East, the Mediterranean Region and South‐Southeastern Asia. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Combining Odontochronology,Tooth Wear Assessment,and Linear Enamel Hypoplasia (LEH) Recording to Assess Pig Domestication in Neolithic Henan,China

Mandibles of Sus scrofa (wild boar/pig) from ritual pits H160 and H208 of Longshangang, a Late Yangshao Neolithic site in Xichuan County, Henan, were analyzed for evidence of domestication. Three methods of dental analysis were applied: odontochronology, tooth wear assessment, and linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) recording, which provide age at death, season of kill, and season of birth data. We investigate whether: (i) the LEH height frequencies on the second molars of the mandibles correspond with the possibility of double farrowing and (2) double farrowing is supported by the season of and age at slaughter data. If so, these data suggest a substantial degree of human management of suids at the site. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

National Identity and Consciousness in Everyday Life: Towards a Sociology of Knowledge of Greek-Cypriot Nationalism

Abstract. The concomitants of nationalism and ethnic separation upon Greek-Cypriot consciousness are examined from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge and phenomenological analysis. The focus is upon the perception of Self and the social construction of Greek-Cypriot identity. The issue is examined in light of the ideological contest between Greek nationalism and Cypriotism. Whereas Greek nationalism sets the parameters of ideological orthodoxy and is the dominant force on the level of political consciousness, Cypriotism predominates on the level of everyday consciousness. One key consequence of the ideological class between Greek-Cypriot nationalism and Cypriotism is a structural ambivalence that characterises Greek-Cypriot perceptions of Self and Other. This ambivalence has been one of the main obstacles to the legitimation of an independent Cypriot polity and continues to impede the functional coexistence of the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot people on the island.     

Stable Lead Isotope Studies of Black Sea Anatolian Ore Sources and Related Bronze Age and Phrygian Artefacts from Nearby Archaeological Sites. Appendix: New Central Taurus Ore Data

The accumulated published database of stable lead isotope analyses of ore and slag specimens taken from Anatolian mining sites that parallel the Black Sea coast has been augmented with 22 additional analyses of such specimens carried out at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Multivariate statistical analysis has been used to divide this composite database into five separate ore source groups. Evidence that most of these ore sources were exploited for the production of metal artefacts during the Bronze Age and Phrygian Period has been obtained by statistically comparing to them the isotope ratios of 184 analysed artefacts from nine archaeological sites situated within a few hundred kilometres of these mining sites. Also, Appendix B contains 36 new isotope analyses of ore specimens from Central Taurus mining sites that are compatible with and augment the four Central Taurus Ore Source Groups defined in Yener et al. (1991).     

Mexico‐US Bilateral Planning: Institutions,Planners and Communities

This paper examines developments in bilateral planning in the border regions of Mexico and the US. Pressures of globalization and regional integration are transforming institutions and communities in these border regions, changing planning from a diplomatic to a transborder and translocal process. Drawing on institutional examples and community case studies, the paper highlights the role of political mobilization and community collaboration across the border as an effective mechanism to address Mexican-US border region planning issues.     

THE ELEMENTAL COMPOSITION OF BENIN MEMORIAL HEADS*

Among the Nigerian cast copper‐alloy artefacts, the chronology of the Benin memorial heads has been the most fully worked out. Therefore, a study focused upon their elemental compositions is particularly likely to be interpretable in terms of development of the alloys used in their making. The elemental analyses, both published and unpublished, of 66 Benin heads, supplemented with seven analyses of some artefacts excavated from a well‐dated, very early Benin site, have been collected, analysed statistically and computed to the elemental analyses of 11 heads and figures from Udo. All but a very few of the Benin heads and artefacts separate into five compositional groups, indicating a chronological sequence of different alloying traditions. All but one of the Udo objects fall into a distinctly separate compositional group, together with two Medicine heads. The compositional groups correlate remarkably well with the stylistic types proposed by Dark.