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The Detroit–Windsor Border and COVID-19
No full textThis brief essay chronicles the closure of the Detroit–Windsor tunnel during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the Canadian government’s containment measures in the spring/ summer of 2020 from the authors’ perspectives as both residents and researchers living in the border city of Windsor, Ontario (Canada). Drawing upon crossings in March and June 2020 as well as reflections on the urban cross-border context that Windsor and Detroit facilitate, the article details the changes in border operations and the resulting difficulties faced by local communities. In conclusion we point to the current, local quagmire that Windsor–Essex finds itself in, having some of the highest case COVID-19 counts in Canada as of July 2020. Caught between a laissez-faire approach to managing the migrant worker outbreaks in Essex County, and slow-moving county/provincial and federal responses to the pandemic, local attitudes toward reopening the border here seem more divided than in other parts of Canada. 
From Replacement to Elimination: Developments in Anti-Jewish Protestant Theology and the Holocaust
No full textMost scholars agree that the majority of German Protestant churches were silent in response to the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany; however, the so-called “German Christian” movement was different, as it enthusiastically supported the Nazis’ goals, attempting to extract “Jewish” elements from Protestant texts. This article examines the precursors to this movement, looking at to what extent German Protestant theology was radicalized in the years leading up to the Holocaust. I argue that this radicalization of Protestant theology acted as a transition between traditional Protestantism and the later more radical anti-Semitism of the German Christian movement. During the years directly preceding the Holocaust, Protestant theology not only began emphasizing the irrelevance of Judaism, but argued that it was necessary to completely eliminate Jewish influences from Christianity. I approach this topic by situating an analytical overview of theological texts from this time period within the broader historiography on this subject.
Keywords: Anti-Semitism; anti-Judaism; Holocaust; Jewish-Christian relations; Protestantism; theolog
Opium Poppy Agriculture and Consumption: Contextualizing its Functions as Food, Medicine, and Narcotic
No full textAs a crop, the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, has been part of multiple human cultures since at least 5000 BCE. Its role as both food and medicine has made this plant an important traditional agricultural product. However, today research on such functions has been largely eclipsed by the narcotic use of opium and its derivatives and the economies that stem from them. The historical uses of poppy and related cultural conceptualizations of its nutritive and medicinal aspects contrast against practices and commodification introduced by European colonization. The commodification of the narcotic potential of the opium poppy has been used by multiple actors since the onset of globalized economic expansion as a means of attaining financial and political power. This paper draws on research compiled from academic, journalistic, and other sources to create a holistic framework for examining the complex health, social, and economic issues related to contemporary production and use of the opium poppy. This paper concludes that future research, specifically anthropological field research grounded in historical and sociopolitical contexts, can offer important insights into the lived experiences of individuals and cultures that produce, distrubute, and consume the poppy as food and medicine. Such future research may offer critical insight into the relationship between the cultural constructs of food and medicine and the effects of narcotic substance consumption. Such research may also offer insight into the possible restructuring of cultural meanings and economies on a broader scale in order to mitigate the harmful effects of narcotic substances within foods
