title: British Women Travellers And The Harems: Liberties, Enslavement and Domesticity

authors: Ammar, Hiba

abstract: This thesis examines the complex perspective of a woman traveller. Wortley Montagu, Martineau, Burton and their contemporaries, represented the harem through various lenses. The Oriental harem has fascinated Western civilization since time immemorial. This sacred place, reserved for the women and children of the Muslim household, had long been a terra incognita to British outsiders, until the publication of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s (1689-1762) Turkish Embassy Letters (1763), which gave impetus to a whole tradition of travel writings, particularly harem accounts, penned by British women. The aristocratic Wortley Montagu recasts Turkish women from their previous Western image as over-sexed and soulless beings to idealized domestic goddesses, living in an ideal world, the harem. Harriet Martineau(1802-1876) , travelled to the Ottoman Empire more than a century after Wortley Montagu’s residency in Oriental lands. Martineau was a rare talent. She was an accomplished journalist and a pioneering figure in Western sociology. She spent her life validating a place for herself and her sex in a patriarchal and male-dominated society; she earned her own keeping, and lived independently. Martineau related her eastern experience in Eastern Life: Past and Present (1848), in which the Oriental harem figures very little. Martineau pitied the women she encountered in Egypt, and depicted them as slaves of a corrupt system, the harem and the practice of polygamy. My thesis ends with the travel writings of Lady Isabel Burton (1831-1896) whose view of the Oriental women she met in Syria is the most tempered. Her Inner Life of Syria, Palestine and the Holy Lands: from my Private Journal (1875) displays a tolerance of other cultures and a move toward moral and cultural relativisms.
Each of the women considered in this thesis formed her own harem, projecting on to this distant Oriental structure her fears, hopes and desires. Wortley Montagu’s harem was a utopia for women only. The Victorian Martineau opined that the Oriental harem was a hell on earth. Lady Isabel Burton constructed a happy medium between the two. Although at times ambivalent towards the Syrian women she encountered, she partook in their customs and manners, particularly public bathing, smoking and other Eastern indulgences. Her attitude illustrates that the British home and the Oriental harem are not so dissimilar, bridging the gap between us and them.

text: British Women Travellers And The Harems: Liberties, Enslavement and Domesticity This thesis examines the complex perspective of a woman traveller. Wortley Montagu, Martineau, Burton and their contemporaries, represented the harem through various lenses. The Oriental harem has fascinated Western civilization since time immemorial. This sacred place, reserved for the women and children of the Muslim household, had long been a terra incognita to British outsiders, until the publication of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s (1689-1762) Turkish Embassy Letters (1763), which gave impetus to a whole tradition of travel writings, particularly harem accounts, penned by British women. The aristocratic Wortley Montagu recasts Turkish women from their previous Western image as over-sexed and soulless beings to idealized domestic goddesses, living in an ideal world, the harem. Harriet Martineau(1802-1876) , travelled to the Ottoman Empire more than a century after Wortley Montagu’s residency in Oriental lands. Martineau was a rare talent. She was an accomplished journalist and a pioneering figure in Western sociology. She spent her life validating a place for herself and her sex in a patriarchal and male-dominated society; she earned her own keeping, and lived independently. Martineau related her eastern experience in Eastern Life: Past and Present (1848), in which the Oriental harem figures very little. Martineau pitied the women she encountered in Egypt, and depicted them as slaves of a corrupt system, the harem and the practice of polygamy. My thesis ends with the travel writings of Lady Isabel Burton (1831-1896) whose view of the Oriental women she met in Syria is the most tempered. Her Inner Life of Syria, Palestine and the Holy Lands: from my Private Journal (1875) displays a tolerance of other cultures and a move toward moral and cultural relativisms.
Each of the women considered in this thesis formed her own harem, projecting on to this distant Oriental structure her fears, hopes and desires. Wortley Montagu’s harem was a utopia for women only. The Victorian Martineau opined that the Oriental harem was a hell on earth. Lady Isabel Burton constructed a happy medium between the two. Although at times ambivalent towards the Syrian women she encountered, she partook in their customs and manners, particularly public bathing, smoking and other Eastern indulgences. Her attitude illustrates that the British home and the Oriental harem are not so dissimilar, bridging the gap between us and them.

year: 2013

title: Comparative phylogeography in the genomic age: Opportunities and challenges

authors: McGaughran, Angela

subjects: community genomics

abstract: Aim: We consider the opportunities and challenges comparative phylogeography (CP) faces in the genomic age to determine: (1) how we can maximise the potential of big CP analyses to advance biogeographic and macroevolutionary theory; and (2) what we can, and will struggle, to achieve using CP approaches in this era of genomics. 
Location: World-wide. 
Taxon: All. 
Methods: We review the literature to discuss the future of CP - particularly examining CP insights enabled by genomics that may not be possible for single species and/or few molecular markers. We focus on how geography and species' natural histories interact to yield congruent and incongruent patterns of neutral and adaptive processes in the context of both historical and recent rapid evolution. We also consider how CP genomic data are being stored, accessed, and shared. 
Results: With the widespread availability of genomic data, the shift from a single- to a multi-locus perspective is resulting in detailed historical inferences and an improved statistical rigour in phylogeography. However, the time and effort required for collecting co-distributed species and accruing species-specific ecological knowledge continue to be limiting factors. Bioinformatic skills and user-friendly analytical tools, alongside the computational infrastructure required for big data, can also be limiting. 
Main conclusions: Over the last ~35 years, there has been much progress in understanding how intraspecific genetic variation is geographically distributed. The next major steps in CP will be to incorporate evolutionary processes and community perspectives to account for patterns and responses among co-distributed species and across temporal scales, including those related to anthropogenic change. However, the full potential of CP will only be realised if we employ robust study designs within a sound comparative framework. We advocate that phylogeographers adopt such consistent approaches to enhance future comparisons to present-day findings.

text: Comparative phylogeography in the genomic age: Opportunities and challenges Aim: We consider the opportunities and challenges comparative phylogeography (CP) faces in the genomic age to determine: (1) how we can maximise the potential of big CP analyses to advance biogeographic and macroevolutionary theory; and (2) what we can, and will struggle, to achieve using CP approaches in this era of genomics. 
Location: World-wide. 
Taxon: All. 
Methods: We review the literature to discuss the future of CP - particularly examining CP insights enabled by genomics that may not be possible for single species and/or few molecular markers. We focus on how geography and species' natural histories interact to yield congruent and incongruent patterns of neutral and adaptive processes in the context of both historical and recent rapid evolution. We also consider how CP genomic data are being stored, accessed, and shared. 
Results: With the widespread availability of genomic data, the shift from a single- to a multi-locus perspective is resulting in detailed historical inferences and an improved statistical rigour in phylogeography. However, the time and effort required for collecting co-distributed species and accruing species-specific ecological knowledge continue to be limiting factors. Bioinformatic skills and user-friendly analytical tools, alongside the computational infrastructure required for big data, can also be limiting. 
Main conclusions: Over the last ~35 years, there has been much progress in understanding how intraspecific genetic variation is geographically distributed. The next major steps in CP will be to incorporate evolutionary processes and community perspectives to account for patterns and responses among co-distributed species and across temporal scales, including those related to anthropogenic change. However, the full potential of CP will only be realised if we employ robust study designs within a sound comparative framework. We advocate that phylogeographers adopt such consistent approaches to enhance future comparisons to present-day findings.

year: 2022

title: Māori men, relationships, and everyday practices: towards broadening domestic violence research

authors: King, Pita

subjects: Māori

abstract: Relationships are central to the health and wellbeing of Māori (indigenous people of New Zealand). Through processes of colonisation, cultural ways of relatedness embedded within Māori social structures experienced disruption and were reshaped over decades of assimilation. Māori knowledge and everyday practices that assisted in protecting Māori from societal problems, such as domestic violence, began to dwindle. In contemporary New Zealand, Māori are over-represented in domestic violence statistics. Utilising an auto-ethnographic approach and case studies, our research focuses on five Māori men’s experiences within intimate relationships and whānau (extended family) life. A significant feature of this research is that it provides insights into the ways Māori men draw on their cultural ways-of-being to enhance intimate relationships and maintain bonds within whānau and community life to forge new ways-of-being. Such insights have the potential to inform preventative measures against domestic violence within Māori communities.

text: Māori men, relationships, and everyday practices: towards broadening domestic violence research Relationships are central to the health and wellbeing of Māori (indigenous people of New Zealand). Through processes of colonisation, cultural ways of relatedness embedded within Māori social structures experienced disruption and were reshaped over decades of assimilation. Māori knowledge and everyday practices that assisted in protecting Māori from societal problems, such as domestic violence, began to dwindle. In contemporary New Zealand, Māori are over-represented in domestic violence statistics. Utilising an auto-ethnographic approach and case studies, our research focuses on five Māori men’s experiences within intimate relationships and whānau (extended family) life. A significant feature of this research is that it provides insights into the ways Māori men draw on their cultural ways-of-being to enhance intimate relationships and maintain bonds within whānau and community life to forge new ways-of-being. Such insights have the potential to inform preventative measures against domestic violence within Māori communities.

year: 2017