STRUCTURES OF LANGUAGE AND MYTH: AN ANALYSIS OF A GOONIYANDI TEXT

In this paper we analyse a text in Gooniyandi (southern Kimberley, Western Australia), a myth about the acquisition of fire. Our analysis, broadly structuralist-functionalist in orientation, uses a number of complementary modes of myth analysis, including a variety of structuralism which draws on Lévi-Strauss. Our main point, however, differs from his concerns. It is that the analysis of a myth (indeed, of any text) cannot be pursued independently of its language, and of the linguistic choices implemented by the narrator. Relevant choices include not just lexical, but also grammatical ones, selections of grammatical construction (and patterns in them), not, of course, in the language of translation (English), but in the language of the text. We suggest that our method should be generally applicable to myths in any language.     

A Persistent Place for Hunter-Gatherers During the Late Holocene: The Case of Burials in Pit on the Coast of Lángara Bay,Argentine Patagonia

In Argentine Patagonia, the type of archaeological burial “in pit” has been only identified on the coast of Lángara Bay. This modality is characterized by the presence of single and multiple primary burials. Studies on five human burials in pits are presented in this article. The aim is to compare the contexts of burials in pit at the site level and the spatial characteristics of their distribution in the Lángara Bay locality from a diachronic perspective. The approach focuses on mortuary practices and social relations of hunter-gatherer groups during the Late Holocene. A characterization of the burials, their chronologies, bioarchaeological determinations, stable isotope studies, and their spatial distribution are included. The results allow us to chronologically place the contexts between ca. 3000 and 2000 cal BP. A spatial pattern in the distribution of burials in the coastal landscape was identified. Finally, it is proposed that this part of the Patagonian coast was a persistent place of burials in pit.     

How not to build a world wireless network: German–British rivalry and visions of global communications in the early twentieth century

Abstract

Edward Snowden’s revelations laid bare an unprecedented scale of state influence on communications technology. But government elites have frequently shaped technological development through their beliefs about potentially nefarious uses of communications. This article argues that beliefs about how other states or groups might use a technology can shape innovation. In particular, German visions about the British use of cables spurred German investment in developing wireless telegraphy. Germans imagined that the British were using cable technology to damage Germany’s reputation, spy on Germany and ‘poison’ neutral countries against the Central Powers. The German government and military at first created a colonial wireless network to bypass British cables. In World War I, however, they sought to establish a world wireless network. In the end, innovation was significantly shaped by how Germans imagined their enemies’ uses of communications technology.     

UNION DISCUSSIONS OF GENDER EQUALITY IN THE SWEDISH TRADE UNION NEWSPAPER JOURNALISTEN, 1961–1989

Sweden is arguably one of the most gender-equal countries in the world, and the historical development of that equality has been studied in detail. However, less is known about how the idea of gender equality was adopted in different professional spheres. In this article, I focus on this topic by using one profession, journalism, to analyse how gender equality was placed on the trade union agenda and negotiated in Sweden between 1961 and 1989. Drawing on a framing analysis of the discussion of gender equality in the trade union newspaper Journalisten, I argue that the Swedish Union of Journalists and its members took a somewhat moderate position in the struggle for gender equality, which, during the decades in question, was mostly framed as a women’s question. For the most active advocates of gender equality, it was nevertheless a deeply felt issue, and their work can be defined as trade union feminism.     

Into the arms of dolls: Japan’s declining fertility rates,the 1990s financial crisis and the (maternal) comforts of the posthuman

Abstract

Japan’s 1990s financial crisis proved psychically traumatic for many men, their trauma exacerbated by decades of falling fertility rates and related sociospatial attenuation. The crisis disrupted a range of heteronormative practices that had stabilized post-war gendered identities, especially marriage and stay-at-home motherhood. Some men consequently began seeking comfort in the company of youthful-looking, large-format, hyper-feminized commodity-dolls of which there are two psychical kinds: ‘infantile’ dolls used largely by precariously positioned young men for comfort and play; and expensive ‘Oedipal’ silicone sex dolls associated with Japanese salarymen whose jobs had become less secure. Both have worked emotionally for two reasons: dolls are evocative of the maternal – the basis of intersubjective (be) longing/Eros; and the dolls are owned, ownership allowing pleasure and control more securely to intertwine. Following the oil crisis and the de-industrialization that followed, men in racially and economically privileged terrain across the US and Europe turned to similar kinds of commodity dolls for comfort, if for differently sexed and racialized reasons. Japanese men’s doll markets therefore speak to certain particular and general conditions of masculinity and geopolitical economic trauma.     

In the shadow of Moundville: A bioarchaeological view of the transition to agriculture in the central Tombigbee valley of Alabama and Mississippi

Biocultural patterns surrounding the emergence of agriculture from 11 sites in the central Tombigbee River valley (500–1200 AD), 50–100 km west of the emerging Moundville polity, suggest that while food production may have alleviated some ecological stress, it came at a cost. Markers of childhood arrest indicate earlier weaning, likely creating a cycle of rising fertility and competition, but surviving adults appear better off following intensification. Health disparities at farmsteads, including more prevalent anemia, growth defects, lower limb infections, and accidental trauma, are consistent with increasingly competing demands of domestic and corporate modes of production. Although these agricultural settlements in the hinterlands were not severely compromised as predicted by a strictly top down model of provisioning, health risks assumed by farmsteads may have resulted from provisioning to centers and/or corporate lineages while simultaneously mitigating larger risks (e.g., raiding). The greater health risks assumed by farmstead females suggest that they had less control over production and decision-making than women buried at centers, while height and upper body strength at mound centers, in addition to rare but extreme trauma, point to identities that were mapped not only onto the landscape, but onto the bodies of men and women occupying elite spaces.