Rethinking the place of emotions in the field through social laboratories

The insights of feminist science and technology studies (STS) into the constructed and situated nature of knowledge have proved crucial to informing feminist geography. Since the rise of emotional geographies, feminist methodologies no longer simply reflect on questions of positionality, partiality, and power relations, but also on the role of emotions in the field. In this article, we argue that a feminist STS perspective has much to offer when thinking about the way emotions are engineered, controlled, and negotiated in research processes. Our engagement with what we call ‘social laboratories’ – i.e., spaces in everyday life where (experimental) research is conducted with human beings – advances debates in feminist geography, as these laboratories crystallize the emotional entanglements feminists encounter in the field. Looking at economic experiments in Ghana and fertility clinics in Mexico, we discuss the difficulties of doing feminist fieldwork in these experimental research spaces. We argue that the constant negotiation of emotions and ethics is crucial to access, assess, and do fieldwork in research settings that do not adhere to feminist ideals, but nevertheless have gendered effects on women's and men's lives. Rethinking ‘the place of emotions in research’ (Bondi 2005, in Emotional Geographies, edited by Joyce Davidson, Liz Bondi, and Mick Smith, 231–246, Aldershot: Ashgate) through social laboratories forges instructive links across feminist/emotional geographies and social studies of science.     

Hedwig revisited

The mainstream success of the 2014 Broadway revival of John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch is in stark contrast to the precarity of the central protagonist’s life and the communities out of which the original Hedwig production emerged. While these tensions reveal some of the complicities between homonormativity, gentrification, and neoliberalism, by tracing Hedwig’s other genealogies, a more complicated vision of queer possibility emerges.     

The Comings and Goings of Sheep and Pottery in the Coastal Desert of Namaqualand,South Africa

This paper evaluates chronological trends in the presence and absence of domestic animal bone (sheep, goat, and cattle) and pottery in Namaqualand, the proposed gateway to the rest of South Africa for early herders or hunter-gatherers with sheep and ceramics. We update date calibrations with local ΔR corrections and mixtures of recent calibration curves and include five previously unpublished dates. We use histograms of calibrated medians, sorted in 100-year bins, to assess sustained regional patterns with dates associated with domestic animal bone and pottery (n = 73). While too small to be useful as a population proxy, the current set of dates does reveal three pulses of occupation separated by two clear gaps, which we evaluate with a Bayesian model of three sequential phases. The model's boundaries are used as estimates of the dates of Early (AD 80–210), Middle (AD 490–790), and Late (AD 1180–1690) occupational phases separated by two substantial lapses of 280 and 380 years, respectively. The alternating phases of presence and absence are suggestively correlated with climate shifts, leading to a discussion of the idea that effective moisture was a crucial factor in choosing whether to occupy Namaqualand. The set of archaeological dates has greater temporal and spatial resolution than many regional climate data, so we suggest that these trends may more accurately reflect the variable conditions specific to Namaqualand, at least until they are refined by future climate research.     

The image of ‘all good Italians’. The Eichmann trial seen from Italy

ABSTRACT

The Eichmann trial held in Jerusalem in 1961 marked a turning point in the international public’s collective awareness of the extermination of Jews in Europe. In Italy, the trial contributed to the mainstream narrative of the events that concerned the deportations of the Jews. The Italian case was mentioned in the indictment of the attorney general, Hausner, and in the deposition of the only witness present at the trial, Hulda Campagnano. In this article, our analysis of the trial’s reception in Italian newspapers and media shows that the Jerusalem reports, especially through misrepresenting the words of Campagnano, created the image of Italians as ‘good people’, who would help Italian and foreign Jews, against the wishes of the Nazis. At the same time, the responsibility of Italian Fascism for the anti-Jewish laws in 1938 and the role of Italians in the arrests and deportations of Jews since 1943 have been neglected.     

Performance-based Seismic Design of a Pendulum Tuned Mass Damper System

The study implements the performance-based analysis and design methodology to assess the seismic vulnerability of a coal-fired power plant and to optimally design its equivalent pendulum-type tuned mass damper system such that the direct losses are minimized. A building-specific total loss ratio is developed to link the component level losses with the total repair cost of the original structure. The optimal system configuration is finally derived for cases with the minimum loss. The study demonstrates a systematic way of achieving the optimal pendulum-type tuned mass damper design with considerations of uncertainties in earthquake inputs and the combined component level damages.     

Crowdsourcing Model Research for the Identification of Post-Earthquake Rescue Objects

The quick and accurate identification of post-earthquake rescue objects can minimize the casualties and property loss caused by earthquakes. With the rapid development of remote sensing technology, rescue objects can be identified through high-resolution remote sensing images. There are two main categories of approaches to identify rescue object through high-resolution images: automatic extraction by a computer and visual judgment by professionals. Although results can be obtained quickly by using automatic extraction, the accuracy of the results is unacceptably low. For visual judgment, the large demands for time and professionals restrict its wide practical application. In this study, we introduce crowdsourcing into the identification of post-earthquake rescue objects. First, we integrate the advantages of the computer and crowdsourcing, which means that the computer takes advantage of the speed of information processing, while crowdsourcing makes full use of human recognition capabilities. Second, we take visual judgment tasks out of the hands of professionals and entrust the tasks to workers in a crowdsourcing platform. Not only are the human resources infinite, but we can also improve the efficiency of identifying rescue objects. Third, we propose a crowdsourcing model that improves the quality of the results and saves human resources. Finally, experimental results demonstrate that our solution is feasible.     

‘Together apart’ or ‘apart together’? – middle-class parents’ choice of playgrounds and playground interactions in socially diverse neighbourhoods

Taking an everyday life setting, namely playgrounds, as a starting point, the paper foregrounds a nuanced analysis of the internal differentiations of the middle class’s positioning in regard to social diversity. In so doing, the paper contributes to debates on contemporary segregation research, (dis-)affiliation of the middle classes in inner-city diverse neighbourhoods and geographies of encounter. Empirical findings are based on an analysis of the narratives and daily spatial routines of middle-class parents in three inner-city neighbourhoods in a major German town. The findings contradict the conventional wisdom that middle-class parents would always seek a socially homogeneous environment in which to raise their children and show the presence of a middle-class fraction with a collective orientation. The analysis highlights the need for a closer look at playgrounds as a setting for cross-social interaction and, in terms of micro-level politics, a setting to promote diverse and inclusive neighbourhoods.     

Snail assemblages: interrogating an environmental controversy involving Powelliphanta augusta and the mining industry in Aotearoa New Zealand

In 2004, a controversy arose in Aotearoa New Zealand's coal mining sector that involved Powelliphanta augusta, a species of land snail. This paper considers that controversy in terms of emergent assemblages involving the snail, the mining industry, the Department of Conservation, political action by environmental non‐government organisations, and public expressions of environmental and other values. Three sets of relations embedded in those assemblages are examined—those related to positioning and organising nature; values, politics, and power relations; and human and non‐human materialities. Those relations illuminate how a protracted controversy and its objects form a “social test bed” for contested views in legislation and guidelines dealing with economy, conservation, and restoration. To assess the dynamics, complexities, and contingencies of such relations, attention is paid to the controversy's detailed time line and legal framing, as well as to ontological shifts of snail and habitat and snail metrics. This analytical focus highlights the shifting quality of ideas about how the snail and its habitat are understood as entangled in fraught and mutating strategies of translocation that are played out in a particular regulatory setting. It also provides insights into international geographical efforts to re‐shape environmental governance and management.     

南诏大理国金属佛像制作工艺初探

为研究南诏大理国金属佛像的制作工艺,对部分金属佛像进行了科学分析,表明制作各种铜佛像时,主要使用失蜡铸造工艺,已使用多种金属元素作为材质,阿嵯耶观音像和其他铜像是以含砷的铜合金为特征,金质佛像的材质主要用金银合金,铸造小铜佛像则采用复杂的合金成分配比。根据铭文和绘画资料分析,这些金属佛像主要是大理本地的工匠制作。     

翁牛特旗大营子冶炼遗址研究

大营子冶炼遗址位于赤峰市翁牛特旗五分地镇大营子村南侧的大山的北坡上,包含东西两区冶炼遗存。东区冶炼遗存年代较早,至迟在公元前1 400年已开始冶炼活动。铅同位素、微量元素示踪研究显示大营子冶炼遗址东西两区均使用了来自林西县大井古铜矿的多金属共生矿石,直接冶炼铜砷锡三元青铜合金。大营子冶炼遗址东区冶炼遗存的年代测定,获得了迄今为止最早的夏家店上层文化年代测定结果,为探讨辽西地区青铜时代考古学文化的演变提供了新的科学证据。