African being and cultural project

This article examines aspects of African culture seen as projects from an existentialist perspective and seeks to make a robust contribution to African studies and in particular interdisciplinary African studies. It offers a focus on the interiorisation of African cultural project-as-text as an upsurge of being; interiorisation(s) of being projects of African being and consciousness. This study on African subjectivity situates the African cultural constituency within a specific existentialist schematic: the African for itself in the form of cultural project-as-text, a reflective black consciousness, the black ‘I’ or African being-with-others in the form of cultural projects-as-texts, a self-reflective conscious of black consciousness, the black ‘we’-subject, ‘us’, and lastly African being-for-ourselves Black existentialist philosophy is predicated on the liberation of all black people from oppression.     

Rural landlessness,extended entitlements and inter‐household relations in south Asia: A Bangladesh case

This article shows how people in one part of Bangladesh rendered landless and impoverished by river bank erosion make innovative use of kinship and other ideologies legitimating reciprocity and mutual aid to re‐establish themselves rent‐free on the land of others. It thereby addresses a larger empirical issue: where are the fully landless rural poor in South Asia living, and through what means? Theoretically, it extends Drèze and Sen's analysis of entitlements and poverty to instances of inter‐household cooperative conflict and mutual aid among extremely poor people. A culturally informed, gender disaggregated analysis of those locally called uthuli because they have settled on others’ land without monetary payment demonstrates that women's ‘extended entitlements’ [Drèze and Sen, 1989:10] as daughters, sisters and mothers are often critical assets in establishing residence. Women are also key agents in the establishment and maintenance of uthuli residence and in managing the benefits stemming from it. Using this approach, we show how landless women's entitlements are pivotal in securing access to a houseplot for themselves and their families.     

Review essay / against legal paternalism

Joel Feinberg, Harm to Self Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986, xxiii + 412 pp.     

Headspace/solid-phase microextraction/gas chromatography-mass spectrometry: a screening technique for the recovery and identification of volatile organic compounds (VOC's) in postmortem blood and viscera samples.

This paper describes the application of Headspace/Solid-Phase Microextraction/Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (HS/SPME/GC-MS) to the recovery and identification of volatile organic compounds in blood and viscera samples from deceased persons. The technique is used as a screening procedure to rapidly obtain information relating to toxicological investigations. The technique is suitable for the detection of volatiles (of wide boiling range) including butane, halothane, toluene, xylenes, and petrol residues in blood and viscera (lung, brain, and body fat).