This article is an outcome of a search for the Tamil plantation woman in Malaysia and her voice—her stories and memories, in her own words. Through the plantation songs of Tamil workers in Malaysia, first collated and published in the 1980s, we explore the experiences and memories of these women, singing about their lives and work in the Malayan plantations. As memory-work, these songs constitute an oral history that provides an uneasy counter to hegemonic discourses like that of the colonial planters who employed the women, or the nationalist historiography of India and Malaysia where they are sidelined and reduced to figures of abject victimhood in the clutches of colonial capitalism, or the post-colonial discourse where their memories and experiences constitute a shameful past that obstructs optimism for the future. Tamil plantation songs call for a comparative approach to history and memory—between the position of the woman and that of the man, or the labourer and the supervisor/planter, as well as more problematic and shifting positionalities like seducer and the seduced, or the victim and the perpetrator.

Until recently the faculty jurisdiction did not extend to trees in churchyards. This article explains how trees in churchyards became subject to that jurisdiction and explores the complicated law relating to churchyard trees.1

Several anthropological and historical studies based on comparative research show that there is no universal concept of ‘cleanliness’ or ‘hygiene’ common to all cultures in all historical periods. Ideas about what is considered clean, the means used to keep persons, objects and places clean, and the frequency or appropriate timing of cleaning actions differ between cultures, and even within a given culture. The latter implies that, sometimes, these differences depend on social position, mainly because this position allows or prevents certain cleansing practices. In addition, the concept of ‘cleanliness’ may sometimes be intertwined with the idea of ‘purity’, and thus be related to religious beliefs and practices. The present article examines the concept of ‘hygiene’ for the case of the Hittites, and aims to do so from an historical perspective by reflecting on modern vocabulary related to hygiene, investigating Hittite terminology related to cleanliness and analysing textual sources. Archaeological evidence will be examined alongside the textual sources to establish correlations regarding locations and objects used for hygienic practices. The objectives are to investigate who practiced cleanliness and when in Hittite culture, how and where these practices occurred, and what objects were used, as well as how the Hittites understood hygiene and whether perceptions and practices varied by social group.

This study is concerned with the evaluation of a recently discovered Aramaic inscription and other archaeological remains found at Rabat Fortress (in Tunceli, Türkiye). The Hellenistic period Aramaic funerary text was composed in memory of a local lord from Sophene’s local political elite, with connections to the Orontid dynasty. This is the first known local Aramaic inscription from Sophene. The Aramaic inscription introduced in this study provides significant new information about the Hellenistic-period context for rock-cut stepped tunnels and single-roomed rock-cut tombs known across eastern Anatolia. The Rabat Fortress site provides corroborating evidence for the dating of the stepped tunnels that exhibit the same rock-cutting techniques in the same region to the Hellenistic and later periods in the rocky landscape. The inscription is rendered in a unique Sophene adaptation of the Middle Aramaic script extant on a corner block inside the Fortress. Its funerary context in rocky landscape and the inscription’s script and content indicate that the local elite at Rabat Fortress used Aramaic, and the notion of Orontid lineage to connect with the kingdom of Sophene’s central authority, which positioned itself between Hellenistic and Iranian traditions.

The Progressive Era was characterized by debates about the future of the United States and the role of individuals, households, and organizations in shaping that future. These debates included those about domestic work, sometimes specifically referred to as the “servant question” or the “servant problem.” This discourse considered not only paid household labor, but also the nature of race, gender, and American life after slavery. This article reviews the servant question in Washington, D.C., and reveals how commentators engaged with modernity and nostalgia to understand the contradiction between their sense of white and African American women’s failures and their belief that both groups of women belonged in white households. The servant question is key cultural context for a 1917 “favorite servant contest.” The second half of the article examines the clubwomen who organized the contest and the experiences of an elderly, formerly enslaved woman named Theresa Harper. The organizers responded to the D.C. servant question with an effort to carry racial hierarchies into the twentieth century, a vision of the future of household labor very different from that of Black domestic workers.

This essay reconsiders the possibility and prospects for the relationship between business ethics scholarship and the world of business practice. More specifically, to a field that often considers the question, “What should be the role of business in society?” it poses the question, “What should be the role of the Society for Business Ethics in business?” My intent is not to solve the related epistemological question of whether we have to “be one to know one.” It is, however, to encourage scholars to leave our laboratories more often to engage with the work and world of those we study. To that end, the essay poses a series of questions for us – individual scholars, members of the Society, and the Society itself – to consider about our relationship with business. It concludes with a postscript response to one of those questions: When, if ever, should the Society make public statements?