Bringing the Art Inside: a Preliminary Analysis of Black Linear Rock-art from Limestone Caves in Erromango,Vanuatu

While surveying and recording rock-art on Erromango over two field-seasons in 1996 and 1997, I had the pleasure of working with Vanuatu Cultural Centre (VCC) fieldworkers Jerry Taki and Sophie Nempan Sei. During this time, both Jerry and Sophie constructed a context of ‘meaning’ for the ‘black linear’ pictures that predominate in the rock-art of the island. Their ideas were highly influential in determining the direction of my research. Jerry spoke of the association of rock-art with warfare and women. Sophie identified certain motifs as clan designs, particularly those located in sites close to where she lives, at Happyland village in the south of the island. The aim of this paper is to understand more about the rock-art of Erromango by combining local knowledge and archaeological techniques of rock-art analysis. I focus on the black linear rock-art, describing its temporal placement and context of production. Temporal information is gleaned from patterns of superimposition among particular rock-art techniques and motif forms, as well as from independent archaeological and ethnographic contexts. It is proposed that black linear rock-art belongs to the most recent period of rock-art production on Erromango, likely within the last 400 years. Rock-art production and use is explored through artistic motifs evident on other items of material culture, including objects which are known, from ethnographic records, to be produced by either women or men. I suggest that black linear motifs were at least in part produced by women, perhaps to register their connection to place during periods of displacement. In accordance with Jerry's statements, ethnographic and archaeological evidence indicates that a salient feature of the island's social landscape over the last 400 years was small and large-scale intra- and inter-island wars. The black linear rock-art is interpreted in relation to this unstable social context.     

Black sisterhood: The situation of urban aboriginal women and their relationship to the white women's movement 1

The article argues that Aboriginal women in urban aboriginal society experience very different oppressions than do white women in urban white society. Aboriginal women believe that their greatest oppression is racism not sexism. When their objective conditions are examined it becomes obvious that this is indeed so. In fact Aboriginal women are statistically better educated and better employed than are Aboriginal men. Other economic and societal factors combine to produce a situation whereby a black woman's status within her own society is very different to that of her white sisters. Black women are more likely to be heads of household; more likely to be political leaders and less likely to be child‐burdened than their white counterparts. Consequently women's movement demands such as abortion, child‐care, the right to work and sexual liberation are not given high priority by the Aboriginal women's movement. Aboriginal women's demands stem from the politics of poverty and discrimination. These are caused by racism not sexism.     

‘AIDS Capital of the World’: Representing race,sex and space in Belle Glade,Florida: La Capital de SIDA del Mundo: Representaciones de raza,sexo, y espacio en Belle Glade,Florida

In 1985, a small agricultural center in south Florida became the site of a controversy when two scientists reported unexpectedly high numbers of AIDS cases and proposed that mosquito transmission might be the explanation. This article examines the representation of Belle Glade in print mass media and professional research journals from 1985 to the mid-1990s in order to demonstrate the role of racialized constructions of space in producing the category of heterosexual transmission and in establishing its distinction from normative heterosexuality. Employing a strategy of scalar shift, representations of Belle Glade invoked various and sometimes incommensurate spatial registers to construct racialized hierarchies which promised to provide effective borders around the mobility of HIV. The trope of containment not only misrepresented the spatiality of sexual networks, but also treated those most at risk of HIV infection as a threat to the nation rather than as those most in need of intervention and support. In Belle Glade, the material effects of this exclusionary practice included placing responsibility on the town's residents for its difficulties while effacing larger structural forces that produced its particular geography. Although these events took place in the first decade of the AIDS crisis, they offer a rich opportunity to integrate Belle Glade into an understanding of the US AIDS epidemic as well as to consider many of the challenges HIV/AIDS continues to present globally, especially around the intersection of race, gender, poverty, international capitalism and locally diverse experiences.

En 1985, un pequeño centro agrícola en el sur de Florida se convirtió en lugar de controversia, cuando dos científicos reportaron cifras inesperadamente altas de casos del SIDA y propusieron como causa de transmisión a picadura de mosquito. Este trabajo examina la representación de Belle Glade en las periódicas y revistas académicas de 1985 hasta mediados de los 90 para demostrar el rol de construcciones racializadas del espacio en la producción de la categoría de ‘transmisión heterosexual’ estableciendo a su vez la diferencia con la heterosexualidad normativa. Empleando una estrategia del escalas variables, estas representaciones de Belle Glade usos de variados y a veces inconmensurados registros espaciales con el fin de construir jerarquías racializadas que prometían fronteras efectivas para contener la movilidad del VIH. La preocupación por contener el virus no solo tergiversó la espacialidad de las redes sexuales sino que también definió a quienes estaban en mayor riesgo infección del VIH como una amenaza a la nación en vez de cómo recipientes de intervención y apoyo. En Belle Glade, los efectos materiales de esta práctica de exclusión incluyeron de hacer responsable a la población de sus dificultades ocultando así las fuerzas estructurales que producirán esta geografía particular. Aunque estos eventos sucedieron en la primera década de la crisis del SIDA, ofrecen una valiosa oportunidad para comprender Belle Glade dentro del contexto de la epidemia del SIDA en los EE.UU., así como también considerar muchos de los desafíos globales de la VIH y el SIDA, especialmente en las intersecciones raza, género, pobreza, capitalismo internacional y experiencias locales diversas.     

Migration and adaptation of popular Balladry in the US Appalachian region

Scottish ballads were carried to isolated hamlets in the Appalachian Mountains of North America through successive waves of migration in the 17th and 18th centuries. The cultural diffusion of ballad singing underwent divergence as the songs were transmitted orally. Place names, local festivals, and current events were especially plastic components of this process. In the beginning of the 20th century, the intrusion of the radio and rural disturbances brought about by the coal industry functioned as barriers to cultural transmission of the ballads. Even so, songs were kept alive as evidenced by the metamorphosis of My Boy Tammie into Billy Boy and the more recent resurrection of The Elfin Knight into popular culture as Scarborough Fair by Simon and Garfunkel. The relationship between orality and literacy is multi‐faceted and difficult to categorise and evaluate.