Breaking silence: exploring motherhood and social transformation in a participatory action research with Alteñan mothers

In November 2012, a researcher, two social workers and five mothers embarked on a participatory action research (PAR) journey with the aim to develop new ideas for interventions for children and young people in street situations of the city of El Alto in Bolivia. In this article, we attend to the topic of personal and social transformation in PAR. We explore how the mothers of young people in street situations perform and negotiate their subjectivities as mothers in their everyday life; how they create (new) subjectivities in exchange and in interaction with each other during the mother project; and how the performance of their (new) subjectivities can bring social change. The mothers in our group shared stories of being silenced by social services in their everyday lives, as their motherhood is declared not good enough or as they are perceived too guilty to claim for help. It was the first time the mothers shared their stories with other mothers of their lives with their children in street situations. By noticing that they all experienced or heard of similar events that their children were subjected to in the streets, the mothers grew confident enough to talk back. Mothers talked back by denouncing injustice and by transforming doubts into questions, providing them with more knowledge. Finally, as the mothers reached out to social services, mothers’ presence, questions and stories confronted aid workers with their own flaws, and their comfortable discourse of blaming families, creating new paths towards social transformation.     

Negotiating male gatekeeper violence in team-based research on Bangladeshi migrant women in Malaysia

While the field of migration studies is expanding to understand the nuanced experiences of women across Asia, there has been little discussion of how these studies were conducted. This article draws on the reflective accounts of three researchers on a team project investigating the lived experiences of female Bangladeshi migrant workers in Malaysia. While the research aims centred on understanding the lives of the Bangladeshi migrant women, the team spent a significant amount of time negotiating male gatekeeper violence in the field. The article further describes the researchers’ experiences of sexual harassment and intimidation, and explores these through the complex locations of the migrant workers and the female researchers in the field site. In addition, the article deals with the way in which the team’s feminist research sensibilities were challenged in the context of negotiating that violence. The ethical dilemma of continuing the research in the face of persistent violence was dealt with by discussing approaches employed in managing the violence. Analysing male gatekeeper violence in the field, allowed for conversations around the intersection of migration and masculinities. This auto-ethnography reveals methodological concerns for female researchers and exposes the negotiated nature of the front line of migration research.     

Historical Use of Metal Tie-Rods in the Italian Territory: Treatises,Essays, and Manuals through Four Centuries of History

The use of metal tie-rods in buildings is documented and visible in many Italian areas since the 15th century. This article refers to the study of treatises, manuals and essays from the 15th to the early 20th century, mainly in the Italian context with some exceptions of certain foreign texts that, due to their diffusion and importance, have greatly influenced the technical literature on the subject. Technology is an expression of the social, economic, cultural, political and juridical events of a country and, as such, is deeply linked to the times and territories in which it develops. However, it is also closely linked to the laws of nature and to forms of communication, therefore it is useful to compare, underlining the analogies and differences, the knowledge and the ways of the productive and technical process in a long-term analysis.     

A place in the sun? Discursive constructions of positive outcomes in post-migration stories in the Algarve

This study argues for more comparative research between seemingly different migrant groups, bringing a new focus on intra-European migration in Portugal by examining and comparing the reasons why migrants from different geographical origins choose to settle in the tourism-based Algarve region. Drawing on data collected from a questionnaire survey and interviews, the study first compares the profiles of two apparently distinct migrant groups – Northern and Eastern Europeans – and goes on to explore their discursive representations of migration experiences. Findings reveal that despite differences in initial motivations for moving to the Algarve, there are similarities between the two groups in terms of what leads them to settle in the region. Among both groups there is a high level of positive place-identity, suggesting that the specific context of the destination place plays a significant role in positive post-migration outcomes, something which is often overlooked in migration studies. Furthermore, the lived and perceived lifestyle affordances of the destination place, especially when discursively compared with the place and lifestyle left behind, are flagged by both groups and lend support to the idea that the role of lifestyle in migration has a wider significance than is usually credited.     

Biomechanics of coaching maximal instep soccer kick for practitioners

Kicking in soccer has been the subject of scientific research for more than 40 years yet review articles summarizing the biomechanical fundamentals of kick optimization as a guide to coaching are scarcely to be found. The current review article aims to bridge the gap between scientific research into the maximal instep kick (including studies employing 3D motion capture and full-body biomechanical modelling) and the application of such research in coaching. It does so by supplying a scientifically founded, coaching-friendly article explaining identifiable characteristics and motor control sequencing that define this skill. Relevant biomechanical factors are identified in a way that should help coaches better develop training programmes and, at the same time, foster better understanding of the skill among athletes. Such information will contribute to both accelerated skill acquisition and, by concomitant gains in skill efficiency, the development of programmes that minimize risk of injury to athletes during training.     

‘Handle with care’: literature,archaeology, slavery

This article examines the relationship between literary and bioarchaeological approaches to slavery, and investigates how the methods and priorities of each discipline might inform each other in understanding what it was like to be enslaved. Both bioarchaeologists and creative writers have attempted to access the inner lives of enslaved people, yet there has been little interaction between them. This paper offers an account of a research project which brought together a literary scholar, two archaeological scientists and seven creative writers to explore how writing might not only communicate a history understood through archaeological evidence, but could itself inform approaches to that evidence. We discuss two key themes which emerged from the project: Conversation and Caring. These themes were crucial to the interdisciplinary process, as it was only through attention to our relationships with each other that we could begin to reassess the nature of material in each of our disciplines.     

Humanists and Travellers,Gorgons and Gorillas: Hanno the Navigator's Periplus and Early Modern Geography (1530–1630)

This article is concerned with early modern interpretations of Hanno the Navigator's Periplus, an ancient travel account of a Carthaginian voyage down the coasts of Africa. The early modern period saw a rise in interest in geographical knowledge, and the ways in which different authors used Hanno's voyage reflects their understanding of the role of geography in conceptualising the world. In these discussions, writers had to negotiate between the confusing portrayals of the voyage in the received classical tradition and new reports brought by voyages of exploration. Here, I will discuss how these syntheses between humanist methods and contemporary travellers' accounts were shaped by the economic and political concerns tied to the first wave of European overseas expansion. Amid this climate, ancient geographical knowledge found pragmatic applications in contemporary issues of navigation, commerce and claims of territorial possession, as well as shaping European perceptions of ‘self’ and ‘the other’. This paper thus seeks to situate humanist practices and classical knowledge within the wider context of overseas voyages and early modern political and economic developments.     

Diaspora and nostalgia: travelling Jewish tales in the Mediterranean

The article addresses narratives that tell of a member of the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel who comes to the rescue of a Jewish community. The tales were documented at the Israel Folktale Archives, in the second half of the twentieth century, and were told by informants from Morocco and Greece. While it is probably impossible to trace the exact routes of these “cultural possessions”, around and across the Mediterranean, the texts nevertheless provide a glimpse into the ways in which a network of Jewish communities shared a meta-narrative while adapting it to their own regional contexts. Although these tales are quintessentially diasporic, they also provided a platform for negotiating post-exilic identities in the new Israeli national context.     

Analysis of Heavy Metals in Smoke Deposits in the Limewash of the Royal Artillery Factory of Seville (17th Century): Contributions to the Location of the Furnaces

The Royal Artillery Factory of Seville in Spain originated from pre‐existing private bronze foundries dating from the 16th century. The paper analyses the stratigraphy of wall cladding in the areas traditionally known as the ‘Old Foundry’ and the ‘New Foundry’, through its characterization by optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy with energy‐dispersive X‐ray spectrometry (SEM‐EDX), micro‐X‐ray fluorescence (μ‐XRF) and micro‐X‐ray diffraction (μ‐XRD), in order to analyse the metal deposits that have accumulated since the 17th century. The data obtained allowed the verification of the available historiographical information and the location of the original bronze smelting furnaces. The analysis of patinas deposited on the overlapping layers of lime also confirmed that neither the raw materials nor the composition of the alloys used presented any substantial changes.     

Lisbon's Red Belt: A Cautionary Tale on Politicisation and Depoliticisation of the Urban Realm

Within the making of Portuguese liberal‐representative democracy, the Portuguese Communist Party became a major actor in local government in urban deprived peripheries, shaping Lisbon's Red Belt. In this article, we analyse the communist discourse on the Portuguese urban question, showing how it politicised the urban as a site of unevenness and deprivation, but simultaneously depoliticised it by refusing to acknowledge it as a proper space for conflict. This historical account leads us to a critical debate with proposals that discuss urban politicisation by ontologising “the urban” or “the political”—we argue that these approaches tend to be less helpful in understanding processes of contingent, partial and inter‐related forms of politicisation/depoliticisation of the urban in itself. In contrast, we argue for a more attentive theorisation on politicisation–depoliticisation of the urban condition as a most valuable path to grasp situated formulations of citizenship and, hence, configurations of political regimes.