Rethinking the role of the arts in politics: lessons from the Négritude movement

The arts can be a powerful tool for emancipation, community building and political expression. This article makes the argument that artistic and cultural expression should be viewed by politicians and policy makers as an effective form of political engagement and an important feedback loop for understanding the political dissatisfaction of the electorate. It draws on one particular historical example, the Négritude movement, to highlight the value and strength of cultural movements in responding to questions of politics and to draw out lessons for current policy makers in recognising the value of culture in effecting political change. Against a contemporary political and scholarly narrative of disaffected citizenship, this article demonstrates that a lack of trust in a political model does not necessarily demonstrate a disinterested citizenry; rather it can suggest a citizenry who have found new and innovative ways to engage. The Négritude movement provides one such historical example.     

Human soft tissue preservation in the Cova des Pas site (Minorca Bronze Age)

The preservation process of soft tissues in an archeological context is mainly unknown because they occur only in truly exceptional situations. The Cova des Pas is a Bronze Age site in Minorca where the special conditions enabled the preservation of some soft tissues associated with 66 individuals. This finding allows the study of the preservation process that took place by means of the analysis of the histological and chemical characteristics of the tissues. Our results show that the preservation mechanism was the adipocere, because the fatty acids profile shows higher concentration of saturated than unsaturated fatty acids. The evidence indicates that the kind of funerary ritual and the environmental conditions favored this preservation.     

Heritage,identity and community engagement at Dunluce Castle,Northern Ireland

As Northern Ireland transitions out of conflict, increased attention is being paid to the role heritage can play in building peace across society and developing a more sustainable future. Recent archaeological investigations at Dunluce Castle have uncovered elements of the site’s Gaelic past and the remains of an early seventeenth-century town built immediately prior to the Crown-sponsored Plantation of Ulster. The project included a dynamic programme of community engagement and outreach that created opportunities to work as a group in the embodied act of recovering the physical past. This formed a space in which to challenge aspects of the region’s contested past and facilitated the renegotiation of accepted local histories and existing identity constructs.     

Comparison of Original and Modern Mortars at the Herculaneum Archaeological Site

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to evaluate mineralogical, elemental, and thermal differences among original Roman joint mortars and those used in twentieth-century restoration campaigns taken from different areas at the Herculaneum archaeological site. The purpose is to improve the compatibility of restoration mortars. Roman and modern mortars were studied with petrography, thermal analysis and x-ray fluorescence investigations. The results indicate significant differences between the Roman and modern mortars which could facilitate the degradation process. Roman mortars, in particular, were composed of a coarser aggregate which was present in a lower ratio with binder in comparison with modern mortars.     

When the personal becomes political: using legal reform to combat violence against women in Ethiopia

This article focuses on Ethiopia's first civil society organisation, the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association (EWLA), which has been campaigning for legal reform to secure women's rights and address violence against women. Implementing legal changes to benefit women in Ethiopia is impeded by difficulties in using the formal legal system, by poverty and deeply embedded gender inequalities, by plural legal systems, and by entrenched cultural norms. However, the article argues that the most significant challenge is the increasing degree of authoritarianism in Ethiopian state politics, that this is crucial in determining the space for activism, and that this shapes the successful implementation of legal change. The research shows how women's activism around personal rights challenges public/private and personal/political boundaries and can be seen as a political threat by governments in contexts where democracy and rule of the law are not embedded, leading to repression of women's activism and hindering the implementation of measures to protect women's rights when states become more authoritarian. Little is known empirically about the impact of democratisation on the implementation of measures to protect women's rights in Africa. This article shows how the emergence of democracy and legal reform intersects with the emergence of women's rights, especially with respect to gender-based violence. It shows how trying to secure women's personal right to be free from violence through the law is profoundly political and argues that the nature of democratisation really matters in terms of the implementation of measures such as legal changes designed to protect women's rights.     

Abbott’s ‘budget crisis’, CALD women’s loss? Service providers explore the impact of funding cuts

Women have been disproportionately affected by funding cuts to services following the 2008 global financial crisis. Using a feminist intersectional analysis of austerity measures applied to family violence (FV) services in Victoria, Australia, including 11 service provider interviews, we find that: the Australian government drew on global narratives of austerity in constructing a ‘budget crisis’, with subsequent cuts to funds addressing FV; budget cuts negatively impacted services’ abilities to address the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) women; there is a lack of qualified interpreters and multilingual services, and; there are missed opportunities to engage and support young CALD people in FV services. Policy recommendations to support FV services and their abilities to help CALD women and young people are provided.     

Defusing Land Disputes? The Politics of Land Certification and Dispute Resolution in Burundi

There is a growing interest in localized land registration, in which user rights are acknowledged and recorded through a community-based procedure, as an alternative to centralized titling to promote secure tenure in sub-Saharan Africa. Localized land registration is expected to reduce land disputes, yet it remains unclear how it impacts disputes in practice. This is an urgent question for war-affected settings that experience sensitive land disputes. This article discusses findings from ethnographic fieldwork in Burundi on pilot projects for land certification. It identifies three ways in which certification feeds into land conflicts rather than preventing or resolving them. First, land certification represents a chance for local people to enter a new round of claim making, as those ignored or disenfranchised in earlier rounds see new opportunities. Second, it offers an avenue for institutional competition between different land-governing institutions. Third, certification provides politicians with openings to interfere in tenure relations and to expand their support base. The authors conclude that these problems are not simply a matter of inadequate policy design. Rather, there are crucial political dimensions to land conflicts and land tenure in Burundi, which means that land registration programmes run the risk of inflaming conflictive property relations in rural communities.     

Talk,technologies and teenagers: understanding the school journey using a mixed-methods approach

This paper focuses on the methods used in a project which set out to capture the movements and to consider the wellbeing of 30 teenagers on their journeys to and from school. A mobile phone linked to a GPS receiver was used to automatically log travel patterns whilst the respondents added ‘blog’ images and text about how they felt on the journey. Follow up interviews further explored the data. The paper shows that by using a range of methods the young people became involved in the project in different ways providing a rich picture of contingent and complex school journeys.     

Small and slow is beautiful: well-being, ‘socially connective retail’ and the independent bookshop

Despite the loss of much-loved bricks and mortar retailers, little has been said about how shopping contributes to well-being. Yet notions of social connectivity and cultural participation figure increasingly in attempts to define social well-being. Using ethnography at a cooperative, independent bookshop, observations at bookshop events and 30 bookseller interviews, and analysis of the diversity and geographies of UK-wide independent bookshops, this paper finds that independent booksellers must now be ‘skilled capitalists’, requiring an increasing array of skills and resources and a commercial disposition in order to survive in a highly competitive market that favours fast, high volume selling. Analysis of bookshop locations shows that high-street book shopping choice is restricting as numbers and variety of bookshops decrease, with a troubling rise in ‘independent bookshop deserts’. The paper argues that compared to other book retailers, independent bookshops are unparalleled in their ability to produce well-being: providing a socially valuable ‘socially connective retail’ that is present, participatory and particular.