Post-glacial environmental change and hunting-gathering societies of the southern Prairie Peninsula

Evidence from several disciplines supports the proposition that following the Wisconsinan and an initial but brief moist phase of the Holocene, there was a gradual drying trend in the mid-continent Prairie Peninsula that peaked about 7000 years ago, a pattern that was not reversed until about 4000 years ago. Except for minor perturbations, conditions during the past four millennia have essentially been similar to those of the present. Studies in palynology and geomorphology have shown that the climatic regimes of the early/mid Post-glacial had a marked influence on both the biota and landscape erosional patterns, especially along the margins of the Prairie Peninsula. Measurable changes in the landscape and attendant biota show a time-transgressive pattern of drought related phenomena recorded palaeo-ecologically from west to east.Few studies of archaeological sites in the Prairie Peninsula have examined the evidence in and around the sites themselves for data reflecting local environmental dynamics. In fact, earlier models proposed for explaining the evolution of food-procuring systems in eastern North America virtually ignored potential changes in the natural environment. This paper examines data from two archaeological sites along the prairie-forest border in Missouri that contain long cultural sequences. Evidence is presented that pronounced changes in the natural environment occurred and that these biophysical variables are indeed critical for understanding the evolution of food-procuring societies in the American Midwest.     

“Protect the women!” Trans-exclusionary feminist issue framing and support for transgender rights

An increasingly salient policy innovation pursued by LGBT+ rights groups and socially liberal policy entrepreneurs is the right of trans people to bring their legally recorded sex in line with their lived gender by way of self-identification. In response to these moves toward trans inclusion, a unique coalition of trans-exclusionary (gender critical) feminists and traditionalist conservatives has emerged to challenge these reforms. This coalition of policy opponents, mirroring historical issue frames that present homosexuals as predatory sexual deviants, campaign on a salient issue frame that presents transgender individuals and the expansion of trans rights as an inimical threat to the security, safety, and welfare of (cisgender) women, particularly in single-sex spaces. In this paper, we address two questions. First, we ask: do trans-exclusionary “protect women” issue frames over the alleged threat of trans persons to (cis) women shape mass public opinion? Second, we ask: in a relatively LGBT+ friendly policy environment, who supports the right to self-identification for trans individuals? We answer these questions via an original pre-registered survey experiment embedded within the 2021 Scottish Election Study. We find that trans-exclusionary issue frames appealing to (cis) women's safety significantly depress support for trans rights, particularly among women respondents. Highlighting these concerns is an effective means of increasing already robust opposition to reforms designed to improve the welfare of transgender individuals, which should be of concern for proponents of self-identification policies.     

Racialising global relations: the Rwandan genocide and the ethics of representation

At a time when the historical experience of the Rwandan genocide continues to be invoked to imagine and affirm international responsibility for the suffering of others, this article examines one way in which this event has been made to mean. Through a critical reading of Hotel Rwanda (a feature film) and Shake Hands with the Devil (a memoir), the article examines how the Rwandan genocide has been framed as an event of ‘white’ Western racism towards ‘black’ African injury. Without disputing the veracity of this explanatory framework, this article interrogates its representational politics and ethics. I problematise its continued use of inherently discriminatory racial categories, demonstrate its Eurocentric nature and call for a mode of understanding the ethical significance of the Rwandan genocide that is not limited to an already existing global relation between suffering ‘black’ bodies and potential ‘white’ saviours. In critiquing these texts and this discursive framework, my aim is to enable ways of coming to terms with the genocide that can accommodate the complex connections that do and may exist between non-Rwandans and the 1994 Rwandan genocide.     

Book reviews

CHINA

NI ZHEN. Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy: the Genesis of China's Fifth Generation, trans. Chris Berry. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. 234 pp. US$54.95, hardcover; US$18.95, paper.

CHUNHOU ZHANG and C. EDWIN VAUGHAN. Mao Zedong as Poet and Revolutionary Leader: social and Historical Perspectives. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2002. x, 140 pp. US$60.00, hardcover.

SUSAN BLUM and LIONEL JENSEN (eds). China off Center: mapping the Margins of the Middle Kingdom. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2002. Maps, photographs. 400 pp. US$165.00, hardcover; US$64.95, paper.

JIE TANG and ANTHONYWARD. The Changing Face of Chinese Management. London: Routledge, 2003. Tables, figures, bibliography, index. 234 pp. A$66.00, paper.

FRANK DIKÖTTER. Crime, Punishment, and the Prison in Modern China, 1895–1949. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 264 pp. US$38.00, hardcover.

JAPAN AND KOREA

BOB JOHNSTONE. We Were Burning: Japanese Entrepreneurs and the Forging of the Electronic Age. New York: Basic Books, 1999. xxiii, 422 pp. US$27.50, hardcover.

ANDREW C. ROSS. A Vision Betrayed: the Jesuits in Japan and China, 1542–1742. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994. xvii, 207 pp. US$30.45, hardcover.

SOUTH, WEST & CENTRAL ASIA

PREMA CLARKE. Teaching and Learning: the Culture of Pedagogy. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2001. 223 pp. Rs 450, hardcover; Rs 250, paper.

ROBERT DELIEGE. The Untouchables of India. Oxford and New York: Berg, 1999. xiii, 229 pp. Tables, bibliography. £42.00, US$65.00, hardcover; £14.99, paper.

BINA GUPTA (ed). The Empirical and the Transcendental: a Fusion of Horizons. Lanham, Boulder, New York and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. 284 pp. US$69.00, hardcover; US$24.95, paper.

JYOTSNA AGNIHOTRI GUPTA. New Reproductive Technologies, Women's Health and Autonomy: freedom or Dependency ? New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000. 704 pp. Rs 775, hardcover.

PRADEEP BARUA. The Army Officer Corps and Military Modernisation in Later Colonial India. Hull: The University of Hull Press, 1999. iii, 234 pp. Illustrations, introduction, notes, bibliography, index. No price given, paper.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

KEES VAN DIJK. A Country in Despair. Indonesia between 1997 and 2000. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2001. viii, 621 pp. Plates, index. 31.80 Euros, paper.

CHEAH BOON KHENG. Malaysia: the Making of a Nation. Singapore: ISEAS, 2002. xviii, 264 pp. No price given, paper.

ROBERT L. WINZELER (ed). Indigenous Peoples and the State: politics, Land, and Ethnicity in the Malayan Peninsula and Borneo. New Haven, CT: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies Monograph 46, 1997. xii, 316 pp.

ANDREA WHITTAKER (ed). Women's Health in Mainland Southeast Asia. New York, London and Oxford: The Haworth Medical Press, 2002. 128 pp. No price given, paper.

JAN BREMAN and GUNAWAN WIRADI. Good Times and Bad Times in Rural Java: case Study of Socio‐economic Dynamics in Two Villages towards the End of the Twentieth Century. Leiden: Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal‐, Land‐en Volkenkunde No. 195, KITLV Press, 2002. viii, 330 pp. Maps, tables, photos, glossary, index. US$33.00, paper.

WILLIAM CASE. Politics in Southeast Asia: democracy or Less. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2002. x, 318 pp. £60.00, hardcover; £17.99, paper.

ANDREW McWILLIAM. Paths of Origin, Gates of Life: a Study of Place and Precedence in Southwest Timor. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002. xvi, 331 pp. Figures, maps, plates, orthography, glossary, bibliography, index. US$40.00, paper.

PATRICIA M. PELLY. Postcolonial Vietnam: new Histories of the National Past. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. 344 pp. US$19.95, paper.

SALLY ANN NESS. Where Asia Smiles: an Ethnography of Philippine Tourism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. xvii, 300 pp. 4 maps, 11 photographs, notes, references, index. US$55.00, hardcover; US$24.95, paper.

GENERAL ASIA

JOHN KELLY and MARTHA KAPLAN. Represented Communities: Fiji and World Decolonization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. vii, 243 pp. US$40.00, hardcover; US$18.00, paper.     

Review of the 6th PGCA conference

ABSTRACT

This is a review of the 6th Postgraduate Conflict Archaeology conference held in Glasgow in October of 2019. It summarizes the presentations and keynotes delivered at the two-day conference, and reflects on the benefit of postgraduate and ECR specific conferences, the gender disparity within the field of conflict archaeology, and the importance of a supportive network of colleagues.