Engaging territorio cuerpo-tierra through body and community mapping: a methodology for making communities safer

We propose a new way of collectively creating data about gender violence through active participation and mapping women’s bodies and communities. We see this process of data creation, self-awareness and action as inherently linked to the native concept territorio cuerpo-tierra, the landscape of bodies-lands. The concept erases Western notions separating bodies and land and helps to decenter the public–private divide, which is an important obstacle to eliminating violence against women. Drawing on data from our work with Mexican women in the, U.S. and Mexico, we illuminate the continuity of women’s individual bodily experience of violence and collective spatial knowledge of community safety. We conclude that the process and outcomes of body and community mapping linking bodies and land, afford planners the prospect of engaging as partners and co-actants with community members in the goal of making places safe for women.     

By the People,for the People. The Case of a Community Museum of Traumatic Greek Heritage

Abstract

This article will delineate the history and activities of the Museum of Political Exiles of Ai Stratis in Greece. The museum was founded in the 1980s by a group of former inmates who were banished in the North Aegean island of Ai Stratis, a site of political confinement between 1920s and 1960s. Since its inception, the museum has aspired to be a platform of communication, a place of healing that is by the people for the people. The aim here is to examine how this was achieved and what lessons have been learned from the endeavours of an organization that deals with a rather traumatic chapter of modern Greek history. Emphasis will be placed especially on what role the subjects of history have assumed in the design of the permanent exhibition and the educational and cultural activities.     

Governing the Commercial Streets of the City: New Terrains of Disinvestment and Gentrification in Toronto's Inner Suburbs

This paper explores the commercial shopping street as a site of racialized class struggle. The argument builds around the study of a disinvested inner‐suburban neighbourhood in Toronto, which furnishes an ideal case through which to achieve the paper's objectives of, first, identifying commercial space as an important site of contestation over competing suburban futures; second, delineating how processes of racialization inform the economies of commercial gentrification and urban renewal; and third, highlighting the epistemological and theoretical insights that emerge when research is conducted collaboratively, among academic, community, and activist groupings. The paper argues that such commercial spaces play a key role in making the city accessible to vulnerable and marginalized groups. Two competing planning agendas centred on reordering commercial space, meanwhile, spell the almost‐certain demise of such arrangements: a “real estate” vision featuring new condominium developments, and a new urbanist resistance favouring “green” and “creative” alternatives. Our engagements with precarious, predominantly immigrant‐owned businesses and community‐based researchers reveal the complicity of both modes of development planning with processes of displacement and structural racism. Specifying these dynamics as “racialized class projects” opens up space for intervention and organizing.     

Designing the 11th-century-AD vessel from Serçe Limanı, Turkey

A previous article investigated the methods used to design the 9th-century vessel from Bozburun, Turkey, and a basic methodology emerged which combined Richard Steffy's emphasis on the comprehensive deconstruction of a hull with the segregation of hull-construction into the phases of conception, design and assembly. This article tests this methodology by applying it to the 11th-century craft from Serçe Limanı, a vessel studied and reconstructed by Steffy. It discusses the resulting design-method, the similarities between this method and that used on the Bozburun vessel, and how we gain insight into changes in the maritime community which built these ships.
© 2010 The Author     

华侨华人社团的“拟村落化”现象——荷兰华侨华人社团案例调查和研究

通过对荷兰华侨华人生活的实地调查和研究,分析了华人社团的类型、功能、运作方式及其在社会融合中的作用。认为华侨华人社团在华人世界中扮演着一个关键性的角色——拟村落化,提供了一个非常重要的社会生活和活动空间。他们凭借着原有的历史经验和记忆,将社团当作村落来经营和管理,在社团内进行博弈和地位实现,在一定程度上缓解了他们在移入国的边缘化感受,缓解了因失落而对主流社会的抱怨,这在一定程度上降低了华侨华人与主流社会的对抗。由此可见,荷兰的华侨华人社团不同于专业化的行业组织或政党组织,有着多样的、综合性的社会属性,是一个村落式的我群社会。     

近20年来中国学界的原子弹轰炸及其相关问题研究

80年代以来,我国学术界对原子弹轰炸及其相关问题的研究呈现出十分活跃的局面,并取得了可喜的成果。研究主要集中在美国使用原子弹的原因和动机、原子弹轰炸的历史作用、原子弹轰炸的后果和影响、原子弹轰炸的正当性问题以及关于日本败降的决定因素等问题上。     

Why Citizens Do and Do Not Attend Public Meetings about Local Cancer Cluster Investigations

Why do citizens choose to attend or not to attend community public meetings about possible cancer clusters? To answer this question, we examine self‐report data collected during a series of mail surveys conducted in six communities experiencing current health investigations into suspect levels of cancer or cancer clusters. We analyze the data using quantitative content analysis while also providing qualitative summaries and categorizations of survey participants' reasons for attending or not attending a specific public meeting in their community. In addition, we use survey data related to respondents' past participation and sociodemographic characteristics. The results found that rational reasons (e.g., to get information) dominated citizens' justifications for attending the public meetings, whereas socioeconomic and mobilization factors (e.g., did not hear about meeting, too busy) were most commonly cited as reasons for not attending. Less common but still present were relational considerations, such as believing the people in charge were fair. Taken together, the findings suggest that the majority of citizens who attended the public meetings could be categorized as the curious, the fearful, and the available. In comparison, the majority of citizens who did not attend could be described as the uninformed, the indifferent, the occupied, and the disaffected.     

Sport,Localism and Social Capital in Rural Western Australia

Whilst there has been some research conducted on the role of sport in Australian rural communities, to date there has been little detailed discussion by social scientists and geographers on the association between sport and social capital. This paper identifies elements of social capital, at a community and regional social scale, which have been expressed through the activities and adaptive strategies of twenty‐five sporting clubs from the wheatbelt region of Western Australia. Most of the adaptive strategies are a direct result of the clubs being exposed to the processes of rural restructuring and include amalgamation and the spatial reorganisation of sporting competition locations. The importance of localism in rural communities is also examined through the issues of trust and distrust within a regional hierarchy context. The paper illustrates how sport is not only an important part of rural life but also an activity which plays an integral role in the formation of bonding and bridging social capital.     

Southwest and northwest: Recent research at the juncture of the United States and Mexico

Research within the last 3 to 5 years is summarized for the southern part of the southwestern United States and adjacent northwest Mexico. In an effort to identify important new sources of information, the literature of contract archaeology is cited, along with more widely available journal and book publications. Topics considered include Late Archaic farmers, early ceramic villages, subsistence and agricultural technology, settlement stability and residential mobility, community organization, and developments of the late prehistoric period sociopolitical complexity.