Social integration on the Upper Canadian frontier: elements of community in Essex County 1790–1850

Individuals settling new areas have had to rely on a variety of resources, including the social structures inherent in their culture. This study focuses upon the elements of family, kinship and origin in part of nineteenth-century Ontario. It approaches them from the perspectives of interaction over distance and of sociological institution, the particular institution being that of land conveyancing. Data drawn from the surviving parts of the personal and agricultural schedules of the Census of Canada for 1851/52 were searched for the propinquity of individuals to one another. Social interaction seems to have occurred within two miles for most people. Random samples and a series of t-tests suggest that there were no differences in proximity for the members of the different cultural groups but that there were differences between immigrant and established groups with respect to the desires of kin for proximity to one another. These differences were paralleled by differences in the structure of the family. Kinship was also important in determining to whom land was sold; most sales occurred within the particular community. That this was so suggests, according to the model of Steeves, that the level of integration in mid-century Essex was simply embryonic.     

Investigating self-reported food allergy prevalence in Waterloo Region,Canada

While food allergy prevalence has been studied at the national level, we know little of food allergy prevalence or perceptions of prevalence/management at the local level. This paper uses Waterloo Region as a case study to 1) document self-reported individual and household food allergy and sensitivity prevalence at the local level; 2) investigate perceptions of food allergy prevalence; and 3) explore perceived confidence in anaphylaxis management. Survey data were collected from January to March 2019. Respondents (n = 500) self-reported individual and household food allergy and sensitivity, estimated the percentage of Canadians with food allergy, and were queried about their knowledge of food allergy management. Prevalence estimates were weighted to the structure of the 2016 Canadian Census, and univariate and bivariate analysis were conducted. Prevalence of self-reported food allergy was 12.1% (95%CI, 8.8%-15.3%), and prevalence of self-reported food sensitivity was 26.3% (95%CI, 21.9%-30.7%). When asked to estimate the percentage of Canadians with food allergy, the mean perceived percentage was 35.1% (SD = 22.96). Self-reported prevalence of food allergy appears higher in Waterloo Region, and the estimated percentage of Canadians with food allergy is inflated. Understanding prevalence and perceptions at the local level is important for targeted allocation of public health resources to ensure safe spaces for individuals with food allergy.     

Outsourcing Patriarchy To and Within India: Intersectional and Decolonial Gender Politics Across Scales

Young caste-class privileged gender justice workers in Delhi navigate several relations of power—with Euro-American feminisms, and with less privileged feminisms and recipients of development work within India. Their experiences reveal that decolonial politics in India cannot be conceptualised without consideration of other axes of inequality including caste and religion. There is thus a need to broaden decolonial and intersectional analyses to include multiple spatial scales, from the transnational to the most granular interpretations of the local. By bringing intersectional analyses into greater dialogue with postcolonial feminist theory, this paper demonstrates that patterns of “outsourcing patriarchy” are observable at many scales, and that these patterns at different scales are co-produced, each in turn shaping the other. Such a framework also explains how young caste-class privileged gender justice workers outsource patriarchy and reproduce “mainstream” feminisms even as they seek to avoid doing so.     

Models of Space Searching in Urban Areas

City dwellers occasionally must seek jobs, dwellings, or particular services or goods. Two very different ways exist by which the individual may conduct such a search. Lacking prior information, the person may elect to visit perceived possible locations until an appropriate one is found. Alternatively, an address may first be ascertained and then visited by finding a path to it. Clearly, there is a substantial difference between these two methods in terms of the amount of spatial movement they require in order to satisfy the searcher's needs. In this paper, this difference is modeled for situations that vary in terms of the density of acceptable end points of the search, as well as in characteristics of the signs of these end points, their patterns, and the level of information with which the searcher may begin.     

Privacy and False Identification Risk in Geomasking Techniques

Recent years have seen an increase in location privacy research, including the application of geomasking procedures. Geographical masks aim to protect privacy and preserve spatial information through the displacement of point data. False identification, or the mistaken association of data with the incorrect person or household, is an unexplored issue in geomasking, despite legal protections against false association. This study introduces a topological framework for assessing identification risk and examines the risk of false identification in four masking techniques: random perturbation, donut masking, and the newer Voronoi and MGRS masking techniques. While Voronoi masking is found to best preserve the clustering properties of a sample of urban foreclosure data, the other three masking techniques result in better protection against correct and false identification.     

Reregulating for Freshwater Enclosure: A State of Exception in Canterbury,Aotearoa New Zealand

In this paper, we argue that democracy is increasingly indistinguishable from authoritarianism, in a process that is entangled with neoliberalisms. To build this argument, we examine a case study of central government intervention in regional environmental decision making in Aotearoa New Zealand through the lens of Agamben's “state of exception”. The intervention—unprecedented and unconstitutional—squeezed democratic spaces for decision making about freshwater and sought to smooth the way for capital accumulation. The audacity of government actions indicate, we argue, an abandonment of efforts to disguise neoliberal encroachments on democracy, known as the double truth tactic. Yet we also argue that in identifying this as a state of exception, we can examine it as part of a process and therefore demonstrate the possibilities for counter‐hegemonic actions to emerge.