People and domestic organization

In Dlonguébougou (DBG), rapid demographic growth has led to a tripling of the village population, but demographic performance remains uneven between households and couples. DBG demonstrates the persistence of domestic groups, of more than thirty people, far larger than comparable households elsewhere in West Africa. Working as a farming group, a residential unit, and an economic enterprise permitting livelihood diversification, these households also generate children and descendants. Institutions are key to managing risks in an uncertain setting. Larger groups find it easier to gather the capital to invest in key assets; they face less risk from failure to reproduce; and there is greater space for individual income earning. In this patriarchal society, women and girls travel well-worn marriage pathways between households and villages. Despite the advantages of large size, households fragment because of conflicts over assets or women, or following the death of the household head.

“Asleep in Their Bed at the Door of Their Cabin”

Chapter Five shifts the action to 1767 and a swampy bayou beyond New Orleans as it traces the love story of Kenet and Jean-Baptiste and their search for a way to be permanently united. Where enslaved women are concerned, testimony about courtship, love, labor, and longing is especially rare. This man and woman belonged to different owners, and their testimony illuminates the multiple and sustained steps they took to secure, over the long term, their affective and physical union, steps which included negotiating with their owners, a perilous escape via waterways towards Mobile, and running away to set up house together. Their words also illuminate what they envisioned when granted autonomy over two gendered corollaries of spousal relationships: domestic organization and household labor, themes that find parallels in the concerns of by free people of color in Louisiana.

Development and testing of a scale to evaluate diet according to the recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population

ObjectiveTo develop and test a scale for healthy eating practices measurement according to the Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population recommendations.DesignMethodological study. The current Brazilian food-based dietary guideline highlights the importance of choosing foods, combining foods to create meals and modes of eating. These recommendations formed the main domains of the scale and served as a basis for the development of ninety-six items, each with a 4-point Likert response option. Content and face validity were tested. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were performed to determine construct validity. Internal consistency was determined using α and ω coefficients, and reproducibility was tested using test–retest.SettingBrazil.ParticipantsA ten-member expert panel was used to assess content validity. Adults aged 18–60 years were included in the face validity (n 20), EFA (n 352), CFA and reliability tests (n 900).ResultsOf the ninety-six initial items, twenty-four were excluded and fifty-five were reworded following the content and face validations. EFA detected a four-domain structure (Food choices, Modes of eating, Planning and Domestic organization), which explained 41 % of the variance. CFA led to a final twenty-four-item model with acceptable goodness-of-fit indices and good reliability measures (α=0·77; ω=0·83). Intraclass correlation coefficient for the total score (0·82) and analysis of the Bland–Altman plot suggested good reproducibility of the scale.ConclusionsThe scale presents good evidence of validity and reliability. This innovative study created a useful tool for evaluation of the impact of the Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population.

Shakespearean Comedy and the Early Modern Domestic Sphere

This essay is about the relationship between comic form and domestic politics—about how Shakespeare makes comedy out of household encounters, and how his plays might have intervened in current political thinking about family life and gender relations. Bringing the plays into dialogue with a range of contemporary prescriptive literature about household practice, it argues that the relationship between comedy as a genre and the patriarchal ideals of domestic organization which structured early modern society was a turbulent one, and that this adds to the plays’ political purchase and their theatrical power. The essay looks in detail at relationships between household heads, children and parents, and servants and their masters, focusing on the qualities of submission and authority which Shakespeare develops in his verse and staging—it aims to answer the question, just how does he put domestic encounters on the early modern stage?

MODERN PROBLEMS OF PREPARATION AND RETRAINING OF PERSONNEL FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

This article analyzes the current characteristics of the training and retraining of personnel for small businesses. In times of crisis survive the organizations that managed to capture trend changes and quickly adapt to them, including through development of its strategy of work with personnel. In this regard, of practical interest are current directions of personnel work of small businesses. Analysis of practical results in this direction in the work of small businesses suggests that today, the domestic organization is often inefficient to implement in practice. This gives grounds to speak about the need to improve work with the staff of small business organizations.

Home, refuse, and reuse during the Early Helladic III to the Middle Helladic I transitional period. A social zooarchaeological study of the Asine bothroi

The practice of digging, using, and filling large pits, cut into the ground and sometimes lined with clay, was extensive from the Early Helladic III to the Middle Helladic Period I (c. 2,200–1,900 BC) in large parts of the Aegean area. This particular type of feature is called bothros and has been reported since the early 20th century from many settlements, mainly from the Greek mainland. Although the bothroi are numerous in the archaeological record, few studies of them have been made. During the excavations at Asine, a prehistoric coastal settlement in the Argolid, a number of bothroi were identified. This paper is a contribution to the study of bothroi, and in particular of the faunal remains found within these features. I propose that the bothros was an important part of the domestic organization at Asine. Not only did it reflect spatial boundaries but it was also vital in the construction of “home”. This is based on the zooarchaeological analysis and subsequent statistical processing of the faunal remains recovered from the features. New radiocarbon dates are presented which are used in establishing a chronology of the bothroi at Asine.

Rebel Diplomacy in Civil War

In the midst of civil war, rebel groups often expend significant resources opening offices in foreign capitals, meeting with heads of state, expanding their overseas networks, appealing to international organizations, and contacting foreign media. Existing scholarship has generally neglected international diplomacy as an aspect of violent rebellion, focusing instead on rebel efforts at domestic organization. A systematic documentation of rebel diplomacy in post–1950 civil wars using new quantitative and qualitative data shows that rebel diplomacy is commonplace and that many groups demonstrate as much concern for overseas political campaigns as they do for domestic and local mobilization. Diplomacy, furthermore, is not a weapon of the militarily weak, but a tactical choice for rebel groups seeking political capital within an international system that places formidable barriers to entry on nonstate entities. An original analysis of the diplomacy of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola in the Angolan civil war using archival sources further demonstrates why rebels may become active diplomats in one phase of a conflict but eschew diplomacy in another. More broadly, the international relations of rebel groups promise to be an important new research agenda in understanding violent politics.

Flexibility in Domestic Organization and Seasonal Migration Among the Fulani of Northern Burkina Faso

Migration patterns among the Fulani of Burkina Faso have changed over recent decades from predominant transhumance, involving whole families, to seasonal rural-to-urban labour migration of young men. This article uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative data to examine the relationships between the new forms of migration and domestic organization. Specifically, it asks the following questions: (1) How do households accommodate the temporary loss of productive members? (2) Does the out-migration lead to new forms of domestic organization, and to changing roles and power relations within sending households? Various forms of flexibility in domestic organization are identified, which serve to maintain viable economic units in the face of the temporary absence of substantial numbers of young men. These include: flexibility in the processes of household division; rapid, temporary restructuring of domestic units; and drawing on extra-household support networks. One consequence of this flexibility is that intra-household gender divisions of labour and power have remained largely unchanged in the face of seasonal labour migration. The extent to which this will remain the case if migration becomes more widespread is uncertain.