The margin to act: a framework of investigation for women's (and men's) medieval art-making

ABSTRACT

One of the challenges faced by medieval art historians is to recognise the diverse roles women played in matters of medieval art, while seeing also the impact of society on their artistic choices. By tracing how one work of art can open new critical insights into another, and how disparate objects and buildings – if thought through together – can illuminate our understanding of the Middle Ages overall, we can discern the multi-layered stages of the creative process. The term ‘makers of art’ is proposed as a shift away from the commonly used words – artist, patron, recipient – and the preconceived notions about the individuals who fulfilled those roles. The paper also lays out a framework – ‘the margin to act’ – for the investigation of the multi-levelled interactions of women with medieval art and, ultimately, the writing of history.     

The Neolithic Macro-(R)evolution: Macroevolutionary Theory and the Study of Culture Change

The macroevolutionary approach in archaeology represents the most recent example in a long tradition of applying principles of biological evolution to the study of culture change. Archaeologists working within this paradigm see macroevolutionary theory as an effective response to the shortcomings of neo-Darwinian biological evolution for studying cultural evolution. Rather than operating at the level of individual traits, macroevolutionary archaeologists emphasize the role of hierarchical processes in culture change. While neo-Darwinian archaeologists disavow any element of human intent in culture change, to macroevolutionary archaeologists human agency is a key component of cultural evolution that allows cultures to respond to pressures more quickly and with greater degree of flexibility and directedness than found in biological evolution. Major culture change, when it happens, is likely to be rapid, even revolutionary, with periods of rapid change separated by periods of relative stasis of actively maintained stability. The emergence of Neolithic cultures has long been recognized as one of two periods of major revolutionary culture change in human prehistory. Here I examine the record for the Near East, tracing the empirical record for the origin of agriculture in this region, as well as other demographic, social, and ideological components of Neolithic emergence. While the empirical record from the Near East subscribes in a general way to basic principles of macroevolutionary theory, cultural evolution cannot be understood through appeal to principles of biological evolution alone, whether based in macroevolutionary theory or neo-Darwinianism. Instead, the key role of human agency in culture change distinguishes cultural evolution from biological evolution and requires a more pluralistic and less doctrinaire appeal to multiple models of change based in both the biological and social sciences.     

Servants and Bourgeois Life in Urban Sweden in the Early 20th Century

By 1900, most Swedish servants had a rural background. They had migrated to the city from the countryside to perform domestic service in private households. Here they met bourgeois ideals of the comfortable home where the masters could demand home-cooked meals, clean clothes and pleasant surroundings. Servants were needed in order to fulfil this ideal. Yet, the number of domestic servants declined strongly in urban Sweden during the first half of the 20th century. This problem is often called ‘the servant crisis’. We explore the background to the scarcity of servants, the relationships between masters and servants and the role of servants in creating economic and cultural distinctions. We analyse the various adaptations of bourgeois households to the decline of domestic servants. Qualitative sources from private letters, diaries and autobiographies are combined with quantitative evidence from censuses.     

Teaching and learning global urban geography: an international learning-centred approach

The recent drive for the internationalization of curricula, together with calls for the internationalization of the sub-discipline of urban geography beyond the “west”, and the growing shift towards learning-centred paradigms in higher education, provided impetus for the design and delivery of an upper level undergraduate urban geography module – “Global Urbanism” – that is reported here. Using this module as a case study, the paper demonstrates the ways in which student learning and engagement with internationalized global urban geography can be facilitated by a learning-centred approach that is enhanced through the design of, and engagement with, assessment items, particularly research-led learning journals.     

Unfolding various academic mobility experiences of Southeast Asian women

This article draws on data from a qualitative research study undertaken with the main aim of investigating the issue of the gender dimension of the academic mobility of Southeast Asian women. Our research describes Southeast Asian women’s experiences of mobility, narrating why they choose to be mobile, how the experience of going abroad was responded to and/or rejected by their family, how they experienced life in a different country, and what evaluations they make about these experiences in personal, familial, and professional terms. The article stresses the need to improve the understanding of the factors that are still determining the chances of women to be mobile and obtain fruitful gains from these experiences. For this to be attained, the article follows through an intersectional approach to mobility, considering it is of much use as it allows to comprehend that the disadvantages associated with gender are cumulative, multi-layered, resulting from effects of several variables, including of the emotional, social, economic, and political contexts.     

Is domestic work a worst form of child labour? The findings of a six-country study of the psychosocial effects of child domestic work

In this paper, we report on a study of the psychosocial effects of child domestic work (CDW) in six countries and the relevance of our findings to international legislation. Our results suggest that CDW is highly heterogeneous. While some young child domestic workers work long hours, suffer physical punishment and are at risk of psychosocial harm, others are able to attend school and benefit from good relationships with their employers and networks of support. Child domestic workers in India and Togo were most at risk of psychosocial harm. We conclude that classification of this employment as hazardous would not be appropriate and could be counterproductive and instead propose that legislation focuses on protective factors such as a social and community support.     

Assessing the reliability of criteria used to identify mandibles and mandibular teeth in sheep, Ovis, and goats, Capra

Criteria developed to distinguish between the mandibles and mandibular teeth of sheep and goats are evaluated using modern specimens from the collections of the National Museum of Natural History and the Field Museum of Natural History. Certain teeth prove to be quite reliable in this regard (dP3, P3, P4). Other dental elements, however, are not reliable and should not be used in dental based identifications of these closely related species (dP4, M1, and mandibular bones). Overall, the identification of sheep dentition using these criteria is more reliable than it is for goats. However, the generally greater likelihood of incorrect identification of goat teeth and mandibles means that specimens identified as sheep are likely to contain high proportion of misidentified goats. Both the proportion of remains that can only be classified as ‘Ovis-Capra’ and the proportion of incorrectly identified teeth and mandibular bones varies with age, with identifications of younger and older animals less reliable than those of animals in the 1.5–6 year age range. Reliability of identifications increases when more criteria and more elements are used. Identifications based on whole mandibles with complete tooth rows are quite reliable. However, the proportion of specimens likely to be classified as ‘Ovis-Capra’ also increases in whole mandible identifications, especially in goats. Systematic differences in the proportions of indeterminate and incorrect identifications have a significant impact on species-level dentition-based harvest profiles. Recommendations are made for the use of dentition and long bone based harvest profiles in the study of sheep and goat exploitation strategies.