The Political Aesthetics of Middle Class Housing in (not so) Neoliberal Mozambique

This article explores the social and material repercussions of middle class aspirations in a system that is still infused by socialist aesthetics in Maputo, Mozambique. We argue the activation of “middle classness” reproduces ingrained inequalities and boundaries. This is demonstrated through two ethnographic case studies of urban housing, long central to imaginaries of prosperity. First, fearing downward mobility, members of the upper middle class seek to embody a liberal ideology of “autonomy”, while simultaneously being dependent on state structures. Second, members of the lower middle class attempt to create enclaves to experiment with forms of privatisation normally only accessible to a privileged elite. Through this examination of the ways in which a spectrum of privileged urbanites attempts to secure their position in the face of a precarious future, the article outlines middle classness under contemporary capitalist conditions and how this is shaped by the legacies of the past.     

When Does Government Listen to the Public? Voluntary Associations and Dynamic Agenda Representation in the United States

The aim of the article is to examine how the population size of voluntary associations affects the process through which the public's issue priorities are translated into policy priorities. We conduct a time series analysis of political attention in executive and legislative agendas at the U.S. federal level in the period 1971–2001, covering all issues addressed by the U.S. government. We show that the number of voluntary associations in a policy area has a positive conditioning effect on the link between public priorities and attention for the president's State of the Union Address. However, our results do not find a positive effect for voluntary associations at later stages of the policy cycle, which experience a higher degree of institutional friction. The findings underline the importance of distinguishing between different stages of policymaking when considering the impact of voluntary associations on dynamic agenda responsiveness.     

LATE NEOLITHIC STENILDGÅRD GRAVE: RE-EXCAVATED,RE-ANALYSED AND RE-INTERPRETED

Occasionally, it becomes possible to re-excavate and re-analyse prehistoric monuments. Within the geographical area managed by Vesthimmerlands Museum, this happened in the case of the Late Neolithic Stenildgård grave on the western periphery of the town of Aars, Northern Danmark. The grave was excavated for the first time at the early 1930s and re-excavated in 2015 in connection with the construction of a ring road around the southern parts of Aars. In 2015, a series of state-of-the-art scientific analyses were conducted in relation to this grave. Following a detailed presentation of the original publication and later interpretations, this article presents the results of the new excavation and scientific analyses. The new results include identification of the human bones, the development of the stratigraphy, strontium isotope analysis, pollen analysis, macro-fossil analysis, and the analysis of pitch. Since the 1930s, the Stenildgård grave has been considered a burial, which, to a great extent, deviated from usual practice showing one of the earliest examples of cremation in prehistoric Denmark. Furthermore, the recent investigation revealed that the grave was equipped with a surrounding wooden structure and possibly influenced by West European Bell Beaker Cultures. Also, the grave seems to form part of an extensive Late Neolithic burial and settlement system, where complex rituals were carried out.     

Towards Culture 3.0 – performative space in the public library

The aim of this article is to analyse and discuss the development of performative spaces in public libraries from a cultural policy perspective. First, a framework of three concepts of culture, 1.0–3.0, is used as a tool to analyse the overall development of public libraries. Against this background, we introduce the notion of performative spaces in public libraries by highlighting Nordic examples. The tendency can also be seen on a broader level in European and North American libraries, where a ‘performative turn’ can be seen as the relationship between the library and its users, especially the younger ‘digital natives’. The rationales behind the emergence of performative spaces in public libraries are analysed and discussed: democratisation, empowerment and economic impact. This article concludes that the performative spaces are legitimized by multiple rationales in the same way as cultural policies and cultural institutions are legitimised today.     

Molecular and morphological analyses of avian eggshell excavated from a late thirteenth century earth oven

Using ancient DNA (aDNA) extracted from eggshell of the extinct moa (Aves: Dinornithiformes) we determined the species composition and number of eggs found in a late thirteenth century earth oven feature at Wairau Bar (South Island, New Zealand) – one of New Zealand’s most significant archaeological sites. Mitochondrial and nuclear DNA signatures confirmed this oven feature contained fragments of at least 31 moa eggs, representing three moa genera: Emeus; Euryapteryx; Dinornis. We demonstrate through the genetic identification of 127 moa eggshell fragments that thickness is an unreliable character for species assignment. We also present a protocol for assessing the preservation likelihood of DNA in burnt eggshell. This is useful because eggshell fragments found in archaeological contexts have often been thermally modified, and heat significantly increases DNA fragmentation. Eggshell is widely used in radiocarbon dating and stable isotope research, this study showcases how aDNA can also add to our knowledge of eggshell in both archaeological and palaeoecological contexts.