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.     

‘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.     

Researchers,bureaucrats and the lifeworlds of cultural policy

This paper reflects on the value of cultural policy research, particularly when such research forms part of projects that seek to produce insights or ‘outcomes’ that are useful to non-university research partners. The paper draws from the author’s involvement in a project examining cultural diversity in the arts that was funded as part of the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Project scheme. It addresses Eleonora Belfiore’s provocation that this kind of instrumental cultural policy research routinely amounts to ‘bullshit.’ However, in order to understand the critical function of such research, there needs to be greater attention to the lifeworlds of cultural policy and the multiplicity of the policy-making process. This multiplicity both complicates the possibilities for usefulness in policy research, at the same time that it enables such research to be generative in unpredictable ways.     

The canopic jars of Rameses II: real use revealed by molecular study of organic residues

Four blue-glazed faience jars, on exhibition in the Louvre Museum, are referred to as the canopic jars of Rameses II. Their recent typological re-examination rendered this original assignment questionable. In order to clearly determine their use, a study of two successive organic residues from the canopic jars, using molecular biomarkers analysed by GC-MS and LC-MS and absolute dating by ¹⁴C, was initiated. The results revealed that these two materials were not contemporary to the reign of Rameses II. The first one, scraped from the interior face of one jar, was identified as an unguent made of coniferous oil and animal fat and dated from the Third Intermediate Period. The second one, originally stored with glued linen inside one jar, is likely an embalming substance, made of pure vegetable resin (Pistacia) and dated from the Ptolemaic Period. These results clarify a controversy which has been lasting over a century. The famous blue-glazed faience jars are not the canopic jars of Rameses II but are confirmed as situlae which were reused at least two times: first to store unguents during the Intermediate Period and later to store embalming packages of an unknown person during the Ptolemaic period.     

科学观的歧义与中国近代科学史学的多重意蕴

近代中国史学科学化进程中,因国人对“科学”含义理解上的不同,对史学是否属于“科学”有不同的认识;也因对“科学”含义广、狭不同的理解,形成了不同的“科学史学”观;由此造成史学“科学化”进程中观念分歧与实践路向上的差异。     

恩格斯对马克思主义的科学理解探析

恩格斯作为马克思主义的创立者之一,对马克思主义的科学理解主要体现在三个方面,即马克思主义是"完整的科学的世界观"、马克思主义"不是教义,而是方法"、马克思主义是"发展着的理论"。     

人文地理学研究方法论的进展与"文化转向"以来的流派

欧美发达国家现代人文地理学研究的方法论已成系统。本文以国外文献与著名人文地理学者论点为依据,以现代人文地理学哲学思潮与衍生的研究方法论为基础,探讨了方法论与衍生的研究方法与其拓展的研究领域及其动力关系,追索并总结出前沿研究与研究流派脉络,以及探讨不同流派不断延伸的具体研究内容。     

《司马法》成书及版本考述

《司马法》旧题"司马穰苴撰",根据《史记》和《左传》的相关材料可以基本认定,司马穰苴是陈完的后裔,其军事生涯大约在周景王十三年(公元前532年)至周敬王三十年(公元前490年)之间的某一段时期,今本《司马法》5篇应该是齐威王时齐国大夫追述的古司马兵法和穰苴军事思想的混合体,它来自宋代刊定的《武经七书》,有三卷本和一卷本两个版本系统。     

Iktomi in the Land of the Maymaygwayshi: Understanding Lived Experience in the Practice of Archaeology Among American Indians/First Nations

In discussions concerning American Indians/First Nations and the practice of archaeology in North America, the issues are typically presented in a polarized fashion with American Indians/First Nations on one side and archaeologists on the other. Frequently the literature discusses how archaeologists should modify their practice in response to the needs of American Indian communities. Very little of the literature looks at the roles and challenges faced by American Indians who choose to pursue archaeology. This paper addresses this latter issue by examining my own work among First Nations communities in Ontario, Canada. Through the lens of ‘lived experience’, I will examine the interplay of identity, personal and communal histories, and the contemporary situation of my self and the First Nations communities I worked with, looking at how having ‘insider’ knowledge can be both useful and a handicap in fieldwork.