COVID-19, mental health,and rurality: A pilot study

COVID-19 has caused enormous economic and social disruptions that may have lasting effects on employment, income, and working conditions. Critically, these disruptions often have a negative impact on mental health. While significant research has examined the relationship between COVID-19 and mental health, most of these studies focus on urban centres. This paper presents results from a pilot study conducted in two rural counties in Ontario, Canada on the experiences of residents from small and rural communities related to COVID-19. Based on 3496 survey results, this study quantifies the negative impact of COVID-19 on overall mental health and the confounding role of gender, income, and age. Results must be used to expand the dialogue around rural mental health and to ensure appropriate programs and policies are developed.     

Force-feeding and Mapuche Autonomy: Performing collective rights in individual prison cells in Chile

In August 2010, the decision was taken to feed thirty-two Mapuche prisoners spread throughout prisons in Chile's southern regions intravenously and against their will. Imprisoned Mapuche activists had in the years previous turned to the hunger strike to protest their conviction under anti-terror legislation and the conditions of their incarceration, and the Chilean government eventually responded by force-feeding or threatening to force-feed starving inmates. This paper examines the performativity of the confrontation between prisoners refusing food and the authorities seeking to feed them against their expressed wishes. It analyzes how the strategy of self-starvation and the debate about the hunger strikers' right to make choices about their own bodies enabled starving prisoners to embody the broader struggle for Mapuche autonomy. The distinction between the individual and the collective eroded as the debate moved between, and overlapped, international conventions on the ethical treatment of prisoners and the rights of indigenous peoples. As a result, the collective struggle of the Mapuche people was performed in individual prisons cells, as the Chilean penal system emerged as an important new front line in a centuries-old conflict.     

The new ethnicity: Old wine in new bottles

Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, eds. Ethnicity: Theory and Experience. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976. 531 pp. Tables and index. $5.95 paper.

Abdul A. Said and Luis R. Simmons, eds. Ethnicity in an International Context. New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1976. 241 pp. $12.95.     

The Art of Hunger: Self-Starvation in the Red Army Faction

The founding generation of the Red Army Faction (RAF), a WestGerman terrorist group, spent two frenzied years in the undergroundfollowed by five years in prison, culminating with the suicidesof the group's leaders in 1976 and 1977. This paper examinesthe prison hunger strikes of the RAF as structured acts of communicationthat together with accompanying texts were central to a sustainedmedia campaign run from within prison. It examines the internaland external prison communication networks established to enablethe coordination of the strikes as well as the discursive functionsof the self-starvation of the RAF members. Within the prisonsystem hunger was constructed as ‘holy’ and ascribeda pseudo-religious function used to support a group identityand maintain an internal group discipline. In the texts producedfor publication beyond the prison walls, however, hunger becamea central element in the RAF strategy to counter what it sawas a mainstream medicalization of terrorism. This, in turn,was the tool employed to repackage the group's established rhetoric,as self-starvation allowed RAF prisoners to literally embodytheir long-standing ‘anti-fascism’ and ‘anti-imperialism’.     

Ceramic production,consumption and exchange in the Banda area,Ghana: Insights from compositional analyses

Ceramic production, exchange and consumption in the Banda area, west central Ghana has been affected by historical developments ranging from recent competition with alternative vessels (made of metal and plastic) to political economic upheavals that altered community relationships within and outside the region. In this study, we explore spatial and temporal patterning in pottery production, exchange and consumption using a combination of analytical techniques. Instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) of a large sample (491 specimens) of archaeological and ethnographic pottery, clay and temper samples from sites across the Banda area has led to the identification of seven compositional groups whose differential distribution implies shifts in resource selection through the last thousand years. Laser ablation-ICP-MS analysis was used to explore the effects of distinctive tempering agents (crushed slag) on the bulk chemical signature of a subset of Banda ceramics, while petrographic analysis provides insight into the preparation of ceramic fabrics. We integrate insights from these diverse physical studies to investigate the dynamics of pottery production, exchange and consumption over the course of the last millennium in the Banda area and explore potential linkages with broader political economic transformations.