Cancer and contaminated food: Toxic uncertainties in western Kenya

During fieldwork on cancer in Kisumu, western Kenya, the author slowly began, like those around her, to ask questions about its location and its temporalities, its beginnings and endings, its boundaries and entanglements with toxicants. In this article, the author describes the landscapes of exposure that people in western Kenya associate with an increasingly visible cancer epidemic, including concerns based on partial and tentative knowledge about the toxicity of foods. Starting from conversations about cancer, home, food and toxicity, she moves towards livelihoods, economies and ecologies, and the food and agricultural systems in which these exposures and uncertainties are embedded.     

Landlord villages of Iran as examples of political economy and materiality

SUMMARY: This paper uses a political economy framework to explore the role of external agents of change in Iran, and the impact of foreign trade during the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly with Russia and Britain. The results of an historical archaeology exploring landlord villages in the Tehran Plain are analysed here to show how the extremely long-lived landlord village form of land tenure and economic and social control offers a useful case study through which to approach an understanding of the impact of the political economy on rural populations of the period.     

The architecture of the Iron Age II fortified settlement at Muweilah (Sharjah,United Arab Emirates)

Excavations at Muweilah have uncovered twelve buildings encircled by two pairs of walls and ditches. We have published preliminary studies of several buildings. Research has now progressed to a stage where it is possible to produce a more complete analysis of the architecture. In this report, we present a detailed discussion of the fortifications and each building with its installations. Our assessment of the architecture identified the repeated combination of three rooms in many of the buildings in the Central Area of Muweilah. Moreover, a detailed study of the fortifications revealed several means of accessing Building II, the columned hall, in the Western Area. These findings offer insights into the organisation of Iron Age II settlements in south‐eastern Arabia.     

Social sustainability tool for assessing land use planning processes

The aim of this paper was to develop a social sustainability tool to clarify what social sustainability means in land use planning processes. The tool was developed through a robust research process covering a large amount of scientific literature and built environment sustainability assessment tools. To assess how the developed tool works in practice, we used it as a coding system for the assessment of social sustainability in a case study from Finland. The case study includes the master planning process of a medium-sized city and the legal framework guiding it. The theoretical contribution of the paper lies in creating a holistic tool for the assessment of social sustainability in planning processes. This study also provides a strong practical contribution, as it goes beyond theoretical definitions to the pragmatic level by providing exemplary measures to be used in designing and implementing processes. Therefore, this paper is a valuable source for those stakeholders (for example planners, developers and policymakers), who struggle with the issue of the successful implementation of social sustainability practices, and it will help them to benchmark their processes against the themes found in the tool.