Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This study explores the emotional and physical work involved for women in rescuing, fostering, and finding homes for dogs. I am conducting approximately fifteen to twenty, one-hour interviews with women who rescue dogs.
First this work will shed light on the actual emotional and physical work involved in rescuing animals. Similar to women’s work of caring for children or the elderly, the work involved in rescuing and fostering dogs is invisible and taken-for-granted. Somehow, dogs are rescued and are placed in a good home, but most people do not understand the labor involved in this process. Therefore, it is crucial to place rescue work in the context of women’s unpaid domestic labor and caring work.
Second, this research will address how the commodification of animals enables dogs to be treated as disposable. How do people who release the family dog perceive their pets? What are the reasons for releasing their dog to the rescue league?
Finally, this research explores the social, interconnected oppression of women and animals. Do the women who devote their lives to rescuing and fostering dogs adopt an eco-feminist ethic, which sees the connection between the subordinate status of animals and women? Or is this volunteer work based on the traditional gender identity of caring for others? In what other ways do these women incorporate the ethics of care towards animals? Are they actively engaged in protests? Are they vegetarians? Do they consider themselves animal rights activists?

Publication Type: Abstract Proposal
Abstract: Recent archaeological work in the Fayum has brought spectacular new information to light on the Fayum Neolithic, as well as the Greco-Roman period. A team from the University of California, Los Angeles and the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (the Netherlands) has recovered important new data on ancient subsistence economy and agriculture, while working almost literally in front of the plough. The desert landscape of the Fayum is increasingly in danger of destruction by large scale industrial and agricultural development. The type sites for the Fayum Neolithic are under serious threat, while recent work has shown that their potential to yield new information is enormous. The UCLA/RUG team is involved in a large scale survey and excavation project in order to preserve and study these important remains. Results from the 2006 excavations provide a diachronic depth to the Fayum Neolithic which has been lacking so far. Based on these results it can be demonstrated that the large Neolithic settlements of Kom K and Kom W were functioning in an increasingly arid period, which required constant adaptation to new circumstances.

Preservation and site management are also key features of the UCLA/RUG project in the Greco-Roman site of Kom Aushim/Karanis. 2006 saw the start of a site management project for this vulnerable earthen architecture site. The work was supported by a grant of the Antiquities Endowment Fund, administered by ARCE. Based on the work of past season a position paper has been composed which outlines the necessary degradation studies and measures required to protect the remains of the ancient town of Karanis. Part of the measures will be geared to enhance the experience of visitors, while at the same time limiting the damage done by uninformed tourists, guards and policemen. Routing and evocative explanations of the complicated stratigraphy, site functionality and daily life of a Greco-Roman Egyptian town will make the site more comprehensible to visitors. One of the tools developed for research purposes is a virtual reality model of Karanis. The model will also be used as an instrument for site management and at the same time provide a reconstruction of the town’s development over time. The archaeological research in Karanis focuses on aspects which have barely been touched upon by previous excavators of the site. A methodical excavation strategy, geared to a thorough analysis of the stratigraphy and analysis of all finds from these well defined contexts form the back bone of a reassessment of Karanis. Emphasis is put on archaeobotanical, zooarchaeological and other organic remains, which have been preserved in excellent condition and provide important insights in the spatial and diachronic development of Karanis.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper explores how the identities of those who rescue purebred dogs are shaped in reaction to the social stigma they apply to activists. The rescue workers associate activists, especially animal rights activists, with extremism and radicalism, which violates their apolitical, “mainstream” principles of animal care and social change. Rather than perceiving themselves as part of a social movement fighting for the rights of animals, the rescuers perceive themselves as individual advocates working quietly to change the lives of individual dogs. By lacking a collective identity as activists, they disengage themselves from the history of animal rights and animal welfare programs. This reinforces the notion that identities are constructed in relation to other collective identities and social movements.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This article considers the representation of traumatized firefighters in the television show Rescue Me. Such representations are important for the messages they offer in regard to the issue of traumatization—who can claim it, what it looks like, and how it should be dealt with—as they in fact function as a reflection of national concerns about the aftermath of tragedy. Rescue Me explicitly suggests that mainstream (Christian) religious faith is the best means of combating personal trauma, a move which makes the handling of trauma a personal issue rather than a social one.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper will compare cases of rescue in Nazi-occupied Denmark, France, and the Netherlands, asking why collectively organized rescue operations emerged to save persecuted groups at certain times and in certain locales, while elsewhere rescues were absent or initiated by individuals acting alone. In the early fall of 1943, the threat of deportation of Danish Jewry provoked something resembling a popular movement, involving all parts and strata of society in a successful effort to bring the 7,000 Danish Jews to safety in Sweden. Previous explanations have revolved predominantly around individual altruism, ‘national character,’ and responses to genocidal policies at the level of the nation state. Comparing the Danish case to the community-based rescue effort in the French village of Le Chambon and to individually initiated rescues in the Dutch city of Amsterdam, this project will focus specifically on the level of collective action. Drawing on the literatures on moral exclusion and mobilization, it will place particular emphasis on interpretive dynamics of constituency-building and the structure and quality of social networks conducive to high-risk, clandestine mobilization.