OF BOUNDARIES,PLACES, AND SITUATIONS

Thomas F. Gieryn's Truth-Spots: How Places Make Us Believe presents eight case studies to support his historical-sociological thesis that “Places … have agency and exert a force of their own on the direction and pace of knowledge and belief” (18). Gieryn adds a new angle to a century-old discourse on the social construction of truth: the emplacement of credibility in narrated material locations. Throughout his career, Gieryn has contributed extensively to the spatial and placeful analysis of knowledge and social power: from advancing the concept of discursive “boundary-work” in the 1980s, to a refined method of “cultural cartography” in the 1990s, and in the twenty-first century, toward investigations of places: defined as meaning-enriched material locations. He has now advanced “truth-spots” as a type of place that credibilizes truth-claims. This essay reviews the key concepts in the career of this historical sociologist of scientific knowledge, through a mapping of Gieryn's own trajectory within the arc of a long pragmatist tradition in US social science. I shall use Gieryn's own case studies to test two key claims in his account of how place operates in the social-cultural construction of belief: (1) The model of “place” that Gieryn proposed in 2000, and has used consistently ever since (termed here a “Gieryn-place”), and (2) Gieryn's claim that features of “truth-spots” exhibit an observably independent (“agentic”) effect on the credibility of claims made there. I argue that both Gieryn-places and truth-spots suffer from incomplete specification of the ways in which people attach meanings to locations; of the boundaries of places; and of the sites of conscious encounter with places. They suffer also from his own boundary-work to exclude imaginary, cultural, and virtual spaces from his conception of place. This essay argues that a credible account of how place operates in/as history will require a focus on situation and situatedness, drawing on the pragmatist tradition of the Thomas Theorem. The concept of situation completes the circuit between meaning-production and the attachment of meaning to places and opens a gate for historical investigation, across the boundary between imagined, virtual, and conceptual spaces, and lived, material embodied places.     

BUILDING FENCES,CROSSING BARRIERS

It was late August, and the weather already turned chilly on the grasslands of Changtang.In our project site we were guiding local villagers on how to build up fences around their sheepfolds and homes. This measure was necessary following the increasing records of human-wildlife conflict threatening the survival of wild bears in the region.     

STOMACHING CHANGE: FINNS,FOOD, AND BOUNDARIES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

The relationship between boundaries, national identity, and food in the European Union is examined empirically in relation to social trust, banal nationalism, and scale. 212 articles published in 2002 in Finland's leading newspaper are examined as deep texts, addressing five juxtapositions: openness/closure; exports/imports; collectives/individuals; fear/opportunity; and defence/promotion. These articles, about food safety and changes in manufacturing and retail, reveal a concern over Finland's “national interest”; the fluidity of the sense of safety; a strong belief in the superiority of “Finnish ways”; and a need to defend “Finnishness” locally and nationally against globalization. The results show that perceptions of trustworthiness and shifting loyalties steer people's behaviour in a way that affects supranational, national, and regional entities. The study confirms the value of examining quotidian elements in the geographical study of boundaries and social trust. The results highlight the importance of considering the reproduction of nations in the geographical assessment of nationalism.     

CROSSING BOUNDARIES: MAKING CONNECTIONS Presidential address to the ISHN,Lausanne, 1999

This Presidential address to the International Society for the History of the Neurosciences was given at Lausanne in September 1999. It reviews some of the contributions given at that conference and provides a brief overview of the history of the mind-brain problem in Western neuroscientific thought.     

CONTESTED BOUNDARIES: STATE POLICIES,FOREST CLASSIFICATIONS,AND DEFORESTATION IN THE GARHWAL HIMALAYAS

Prominent environmental scholars and activists in India have posited that environmental crises in the Indian Himalayas result primarily from adopting forestry practices that override local communities and argue that the region can be sustained only when the state allows local communities to practice indigenous forest management. This paper challenges those critiques: focusing on the Garhwal Himalayas, it shows that forestry practices involve contestation and negotiation between the state and local communities and argues that environmental scholars fail to recognize how particular classes have shaped forest use and management practices and played a central role in determining environmental sustainability for local communities.     

CONSTRUCTING ALLIANCES: A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON MARK ANTONY'S PARTHIAN CAMPAIGN OF 36 BC

<正>Making sense of Mark Antony’s political and military dealings in the Eastern Mediterranean in the period from the Battle of Philippi(in 42 BC)~2 until the Battle of Actium(in 31)is not a straightforward matter.With Antony having been brought into disrepute under the hand of Octavian/Augustus,modern observers are constantly faced with the difficulty of establishing to what extent the literary     

BUILDING MATERIALS OF THE THEATRE OF MARCELLUS,ROME*

The building materials of the Theatre of Marcellus, 44–11 bce , reflect Roman builders' careful selections of tuff and travertine for dimension stone and volcanic aggregates for pozzolanic concretes. The vitric–lithic–crystal Tufo Lionato tuff dimension stone contains a high proportion of lava lithic fragments, which increase its compressive strength and decrease water sorption, enhancing durability. Sophisticated installations of travertine dimension stone reinforce the tuff masonry, which is integrated with durable concrete walls and barrel vaults. The pozzolanic mortars of the concretes contain harenae fossiciae mainly from the intermediate alteration facies of the mid‐Pleistocene, scoriaceous Pozzolane Rosse pyroclastic flow. They have pervasive interpenetrating pozzolanic cements, including strätlingite, similar to high‐quality, imperial era mortars. Concrete walls are faced with refined Tufo Lionato opus reticulatum and tufelli, and opus testaceum of fired, greyish‐yellow brick. The exploratory concrete masonry, which includes some of the earliest examples of brick facings and strätlingite cements in Rome, and the integration of these materials in complex architectural elements and internal spaces, reflect the highly skilled workmanship, rigorous work‐site management and technical supervision of Roman builders trained in republican era methods and materials.     

MICROCHEMICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF BUILDING STONE FROM SEVILLE CATHEDRAL,SPAIN

Enrichment diagrams for trace elements have been proposed as a useful and straightforward procedure to identify ores and stones. The identification of the diverse stone of the exterior of the Cathedral of Seville has been achieved by this means. Fourteen trace elements have been analysed, from both quarry and building material samples, using atomic absorption and flame emission spectrometry in order to apply enrichment diagrams for identification purposes.     

河北省绿道建设瞄准“翡翠项链”

<正>河北省一向是领风气之先的,涉及生态保护和城市建设更是不打折扣,讲求突破和创新。早在2010年,河北省政府就印发了《关于推进城镇绿道绿廊建设的指导意见》,明确提出建设的基本原则:便捷服务、安全舒适、以人为本;因地制宜、因形就势、因陋见巧;生态化、本土化、多样化。并提出要逐步将绿道绿廊网络建成集民生、环境、经济、生态于一体的标志性工程。     

BUILDING IRRIGATION WORKS IN TIBET

Medog is the only county in China with no highway access. The government invested heavily in the construction of such highways, but the efforts failed because of frequent landslides and mud-rock flows. To date, the goods and materials needed by the county still need to be transported by being carried on shoulders over snowy mountains, passing through the places with frequent landslide and primitive woods, and threading a narrow way along cliffs.     

论城市旅游形象塑造——以武汉市为例

本文针对我国城市旅游形象的现状与问题,阐述了如何从理念定位、视觉强化和宣传推销三个环节来塑造城市旅游形象的观点,并以此为依据,对武汉市旅游形象塑造进行了设计。     

寻金记——金色编织鸟大自然中的蜗居建筑高手

随着时代发展,大城市中高楼林立,生活节奏日益加快,蜗居生活成为了大都市年轻人普遍的生活状态.然而在大自然中也有很多善于蜗居的动物,不仅如此,它们还乐此不疲地辛勤建造着属于自己的蜗居,其建造工艺、手法和速度堪称一流,而且其对于建筑实用性的把握绝对不亚于当今世界顶级大师贝聿铭或者弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特.     

EARLY WOODLAND SETTLEMENT AND MOUND BUILDING IN THE UPPER TENSAS BASIN,NORTHEAST LOUISIANA

Abstract

Traditionally overlooked because it lacks hallmarks of material and cultural complexity, Early Woodland in the Southeast is an interval of significant transformation in material culture, settlement, and social organization. Investigations at four sites in northeast Louisiana provide insights into changes taking place at this time. These sites are situated on a crevasse splay created by flooding at the end of the Archaic. This flooding is associated with an occupation hiatus ca. 3000–2500 cal B.P. Evidence suggests a rapid colonization of the crevasse splay by people using Tchefuncte pottery, and there is no evidence at these sites of stratigraphic or cultural continuity from Poverty Point. The Early Woodland occupation in the study area dates ca. 2400–2100 cal B.P., which is later than dates associated with Early Woodland in the Pontchartrain Basin and contemporary with Lake Cormorant culture sites farther north. Early Woodland in northeast Louisiana is marked by a diagnostic Tchefuncte ceramic assemblage and the presence of a settlement system composed of small villages or hamlets nucleated around a conical mound that presumably served as a ceremonial/ritual center. This mound was erected very rapidly; radiocarbon dates suggest it was constructed in no more than 10 years. Although mound building has been suspected, this is the first conclusive evidence it was an aspect of Tchefuncte settlement and ceremonial practices. Data from these sites bear on the question of cultural and demographic continuity and change at the Archaic to Woodland transition. Previous models emphasize continuity of populations with ceramic technology and styles diffusing into the lower Mississippi Valley. In contrast, our data support a model of Early Woodland repopulation of the lower Mississippi Valley from the south and east following a prolonged period of regional abandonment.