Conceptualizing Intimate Violence and Gender Equality: A Comparative Approach
Part I discusses the treatment of domestic violence as a human rights issue under international law, focusing on the shift in the conceptualization of violence against women from a private matter to a human rights issue. By framing gender-based violence as a means to perpetuate the social, economic, and political inequality of women, the international community has imposed positive obligations upon the state to not only punish but to prevent gender-based violence and to eliminate its root causes. In Parts II and III, I contrast the approaches of the highest courts of the United States and South Africa. Part II analyzes the conceptualization of domestic violence as a private crime by the U.S. Supreme Court and its refusal to constitutionalize a right to be free of genderbased violence. By framing gender-based violence within the framework of formal equality, the Supreme Court erases the relationship between intimate violence and women’s full and equal enjoyment of their fundamental constitutional rights and benefits. The refusal of the Supreme Court to conceptualize intimate violence as an issue of equality threatens the potential of criminal justice reforms to obligate the state to eradicate gender-based violence. The criminalization of intimate violence sends a strong normative message that such conduct violates important social norms and will not be tolerated by the state. Focusing on criminal justice reforms that punish perpetrators, however, can reinforce the traditional notion that intimate violence is the result of individual deviance rather than the systematic subordination of women in society. Part III analyzes the approach of the South African Constitutional Court, which has explicitly conceptualized intimate violence as a means of gender subordination that denies women equality, self-determination, and access to fundamental rights and liberties. The Court has held that the South African Constitution imposes affirmative obligations on the state to prevent and rectify intimate violence. In construing violence against women as a violation of the right to equality, the Court repeatedly has emphasized that the Constitution guarantees substantive rather than formal equality. The Court also has recognized the inter-relatedness of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution, holding that rights to equality, liberty, and dignity are meaningless in the absence of the fulfillment of basic socioeconomic rights. The Court’s jurisprudence, therefore, has tremendous potential to transform both the legal and the socioeconomic subordination of women that reflect and perpetuate violence against women. CONCEPTUALIZING INTIMATE VIOLENCE AND GENDER EQUALITY: A COMPARATIVE APPROACH
Mainstreaming women, equating men : charting an inclusionary approach to transformative development in the African decade for women
A great deal of legal and policy foundation has been laid for promoting gender mainstreaming in development and, since the 1995 International Women’s Conference in Beijing, there have been serious attempts to implement this strategy at various levels. Plausible as the concept may be, this article contends that the status of women can only be advanced through gender mainstreaming strategies that are adapted to each specific culture, place and political context. 
 
Following the African Union’s declaration of 2010-2020 as the African Decade for Women, some critical questions engage the dominant ideas of gender equality and mainstreaming in the continent’s ongoing development initiatives. Should men be integrated into development programming and policies relating to women? How can male integration be made most beneficial to the goal of transformative development in Africa? Highlighting relevant normative and institutional interventions, the article demonstrates how an inclusionary approach to gender mainstreaming for development in Africa resonates in such areas as education, sexual and reproductive health, fatherhood and families, work and economy, conflict resolution and domestic violence.
Archaeology and mud wall decay in a West African village
Abstract A detailed study of the processes of deterioration of mud walls and of the physical evolution and devolution of a contemporary West African village is seen to facilitate the location of decayed mud structures at a nearby archaeological site. Various climatic and pedological conditions at the site make it unlikely that such walls will be discerned. The archaeologist wishing to obtain the fullest and least biased picture of the settlement configuration of the ancient community should therefore heed all the inferential lessons to be had from a focused ethnographic investigation. Given similar climatic situations and practices of house construction, taphonomy and ethnographic analogies may both be necessary for a valid reconstruction of an archaeological settlement.