Counter-narratives of coping and becoming: Karen refugee women’s inside/outside figured worlds

The purpose of our research is to understand the socially and culturally constructed architecture within which refugee women produce and negotiate identity. This ethnographic case study discusses findings from data collected through participant observation and informal interviews in two refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border. As Karen refugee women described their positionality within and negotiation between the socially constructed Inside and Outside Figured Worlds of the refugee camp, they depict the negotiation of a hybrid Third Space. Created at the intersection of the refugee camp structures that dominate individual agency and the discourses of gender and displacement that influence the social practices of women, this third space is characterized by the response strategies Karen women engage to support individual, family, and community health. Within the transformational spaces that refugee women constructed, the processes of coping and becoming reflected the relationship between structure and agency. Within these intersections a woman could express her resistance to a system that in its design represented a majority she was not a part of. As Karen refugee women moved to redesign their position within these systems, shifts in meaning of cultural norms resulted, inclusive of those that influence or define the role of women.     

Stable oxygen (δO) and hydrogen (δD) isotopes in ovicaprid dentinal collagen record seasonal variation

Understanding paleoenvironmental conditions, including the frequency and amplitude of seasonal variation, is crucial to understanding a wide array of human behaviors in prehistory. In vertebrate calcified tissue, inorganic oxygen isotopes derived from apatite have been widely used as a proxy for paleoenvironment and seasonality in the archaeological record. However, organic sources of δ¹⁸O and δD in mineralized tissue have remained largely unexplored. Here we measure the oxygen (δ¹⁸O) and hydrogen (δD) composition of dentin collagen sequentially sampled from the lower cheek teeth of four modern ovicaprids from the Baga Gazar'in Chuluu (BGC) region of the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. A significant correlation between trends in hydrogen and oxygen isotope values within individual teeth was identified. The amplitude of isotopic variation observed in sampled tooth dentin is similar to the yearly range of hydrogen and oxygen isotopic variation observed in meteoric precipitation for the region. These data indicate that dentin collagen δ¹⁸O and δD isotopic values reflect seasonal variation in the organic oxygen and hydrogen isotopic composition of diet and ingested water. We argue that paired measurements of dentin collagen δ¹⁸O and δD appear to be reliable seasonal climatic indicators.     

Economic geography under postcolonial scrutiny

Because the economy is not found as an empirical object among other worldly things, in order for it to be 'seen' by the human perceptual apparatus it has to undergo a process, crucial for science, of representational mapping. This is doubling, but with a difference; the map shifts the point of view so that viewers can see the whole as if from the outside, in a way that allows them, from a specific position inside, to find their bearings. ( Buck-Morss 1995 , 440)     

Abundant Gifts of Stone and Bone

An abundance of points, flakes, bones, shells, and bodies is considered sufficient to raise the hypothesis that these offerings and their places constitute a type of fertility shrine. This paper documents several possible lithic and bone-offering places in eastern North America, among them Allumettes Island, Quebec; Tick Creek Cave, Missouri; James Creek, West Virginia; and Pen Point, South Carolina. Perhaps the most significant Late Archaic shrine marked by an abundance of points, deer bones, and human burials is Indian Knoll, Kentucky. The proposed fertility or increase rite practiced was that for a hunt god.     

Cutting Power Lines within the Palace? Countering Paternity and Eurocentrism in the 'Geographical Tradition'

This paper attempts to combine critical feminist and post-colonial approaches to suggest how more inclusive histories of geography may be written. Drawing on the specific example of women travellers in West Africa during the late nineteenth century, the paper proposes strategies to disrupt the masculinist and eurocentric construction of 'the geographical tradition'. These strategies include moving beyond a disciplinary focus, disrupting essentialisms, interrogating whiteness and authority, and attempting to reveal the historical agency and resistance of colonized others. The problematic and antagonist relationship between the recovery of the agency of white women and the recovery of non-Western agency and resistance is recognized, and it is suggested that countering eurocentrism requires a rethinking of current forms of countering paternity.