One size does not fit all: Organisational diversity in New Zealand tertiary sector ethics committees

New Zealand tertiary ethics committees may work from similar ethical principles but this article demonstrates that the way in which they operate is idiosyncratic. The paper builds on commentaries offered by current or former members of five New Zealand ethics committees on the organisation and practices of their committees. It examines differences among the committees with the aim of initiating an ongoing conversation about the work of ethics committees in the New Zealand context. It argues for the merits of diversity, transparency and openness as core principles for the work of ethics committees and as a platform for dealing with critique

Watson Brake, A Middle Archaic Mound Complex in Northeast Louisiana

Middle Archaic earthen mound complexes in the lower Mississippi valley are remote antecedents of the famous but much younger Poverty Point earthworks. Watson Brake is the largest and most complex of these early mound sites. Wry extensive coring and stratigraphic studies, aided by 25 radiocarbon dates and six huninescence dates, show that minor earthworks were begun here at ca. 3500 B.C. in association with an oval arrangement of burned rock middens at the edge of a stream terrace. The full extent of the first earthworks is not yet known. Substantial moundraising began ca. 3350 B.C. and continued in stages until some time after 3000 B.C. when the site was abandoned. All 11 mounds and their connecting ridges were occupied between building bursts. Soils,formed on some of these temporary surfaces, while lithics. fire-cracked rock. and,fired clay/loam objects became scattered throughout the mound fills. Faunal and floral remains from a basal midden indicate all-season occupation, supported by broad-spectrum foraging centered on nuts, fish, and deer All the overlying fills are so acidic that organics have not survived. The area enclosed by the mounds was kept clean of debris, suggesting its use as ritual space. The reasons why such elaborate activities first occurred here remain elusive. However some building bursts covary with very well-documented increases in El Nino/Southern Oscillation events. During such rapid increases in ENSO frequencies, rainfall becomes extremely erratic and unpredictable. It may be that early moundraising was a communal response to new stresses of droughts and flooding that created a suddenly more unpredictable food base

Utilising a blended ethnographic approach to explore the online and offline lives of pro-ana community members

The article critically interrogates contemporary discourses and practices around anorexia nervosa through an ethnographic study that moves between two sites: an online pro-anorexia (pro-ana) community, and a Local Authority-funded eating disorder prevention project located in schools and youth centres in the north of England. The article challenges the binary distinctions that are often made between anorexia as a serious mental illness on the one hand, and mere lifestyle choice on the other, and argues for a more nuanced and complex understanding of the dilemmas, practices and emergent subjectivities of those who experience a difficult relation to feeding the body. Similarly, the article challenges methodological distinctions between empirical (‘real-life’) and online or virtual ethnography. It demonstrates how the research participants moved between online and offline presence, and attempts to develop a mobile and connective ethnographic methodology that is similarly attuned to both the actual and the virtual, without separating or prioritising one over the other. The article suggests that educational interventions aimed at reducing the incidence of eating disorders, whether in schools or informal settings, are likely to be ineffective if they do not recognise the complex interweaving of virtual and online activity in the daily lives of young people. Moreover, it is argued that current educational interventions aimed at tackling problematic eating behaviours risk being marginalised as a result of educational priorities that place the core curriculum and national testing at the top of schools' agendas in England. The intervention project described here suffered from perceptions of low priority by school staff, and a tendency to allocate students to the project who had been identified as poorly behaved or as low achievers, rather than according to considered view of need. Paradoxically therefore, young people who may be experiencing a difficult relation to feeding the body appear to be a subject both of high anxiety and low priority

A community approach to palliative care : embracing indigenous concepts and practices in a hospice setting

This article documents a community approach to palliative care that took place in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand in 2010. It is based on a case study of a 24-year old woman of Māori and Samoan heritage. While the hospice organization that coordinated the care under discussion ordinarily engages a wide range of social work, medical, nursing, and family services, in this case a broader and participatory level of community engagement was brought to bear on the process of death and dying. In particular, the Māori concept and practice of whanaungatanga—or relational belonging though kinship, shared experience, and/or work—was taken up actively. Implications for ecosystems theory, and for engaging minority cultural groups in processes of palliative care internationally, are considered