HUMAN SPACE, TERRITORIALITY, AND CONFLICT: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO ISRAEL AND THE WEST BANK

This brief and speculative paper focuses direct attention on Totem, in particular certain totemic concerns with space as place. Through adopting an overall structuralist perspective, Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel, is considered as a totemic space. This is developed against the broader backcloth of Jewish societal development and advanced through a brief study of the continuing Jewish settlement of Samaria. It is suggested that no deeper comprehension of the proceeding settlement initiatives is attainable unless the importance of such a perspective is realized. The brief review, short case study, and pointers to proceeding work provide crucial subjects for further attention. The contentious, indeed emotive, nature of the paper is to be emphasized     

A ROOM WITH A VIEW: AN EXAMINATION OF ROUND-HOUSES, WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO NORTHERN BRITAIN

Summary. The arrangement of space is fundamental to architectural study. The physical structure of a building is the means of transforming and containing space. The spatial order thus created reflects and reinforces the relations between people. As such, changes in the spatial arrangement within and between buildings are seen as a means of detecting changes in social organization at a domestic level. Approaches to the study of settlement space and later prehistoric buildings are reviewed and form the basis for a re-examination of prehistoric round-houses in northern Britain. Particular emphasis is placed on the various activities that were carried out in these buildings. The reorganization of space within settlements at times of political and economic pressure is also considered.     

THE (DIS)CONTINUOUS HISTORY OF THE POLITICAL

The political is not given. Understood as the space in which collectives think about how they should live together, the political has existed only since the seventeenth century—according to the thesis of Elías José Palti's Archaeology of the Political. Since then, a central problem of the political, namely how transcendence can be founded on immanence, has been posed in a completely new way. Palti follows this development from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, illustrated by a few individual examples. His reading of the problem is a possible one. But aren't the political questions arising from the combination of transcendence and immanence much older? Can the political really be reduced to the period so often referred to as “modernity”? In contrast to Palti, I would like to emphasize more strongly the continuities in the field of the political—continuities that can be attached to a void, to the search for a foundation that cannot be justified. But even if one may and should argue about the thesis of the book, it proves to be above all a stimulating study and an important contribution to the understanding of the political.     

ANALYZING POLITICAL FEASIBILITY: POLITICAL SCIENTISTS1 UNIQUE CONTRIBUTION TO POLICY ANALYSIS

Political feasibility analysis examines the actors and events involved in each stage of a political policy-making process and anticipates the likely resolution of a policy problem as it works its way through the policy process. Despite the prominence of policy analysis in the social sciences over the past decade or so, there has been virtually no scholarly work concerning the analysis of the political feasibility of policy proposals. Political scientists, because of their central concern with the design and effect of the policy-making process, have a unique responsibility to contribute a way to evaluate systematically political feasibility. While all policy analysts, regardless of their disciplinary backgrounds, need to be concerned with assessing political feasibility, political scientists should be particularly mindful of its importance in improving public policy. While anticipating the likely outcome of a dynamic policy process is necessarily a difficult task, an analysis of the political feasibility of a proposed alternative can provide insight into the nature of the policy process as well as identify the criteria that must be met for an alternative to be successful. This article discusses a variety of factors that need to be considered in assessing political feasibility. After arguing the need to design political feasibility analysis frameworks, this essay reviews political scientists' current treatment of political feasibility analysis and outlines a general way to undertake such efforts.     

从自然主义到结构主义:地缘政治学方法论演变

本文透过地缘政治理论中各种具体的解释方法,对不同时期地缘政治学进行方法论特征的考察,发现地缘政治理论的发展经历了从自然主义模式、空间-权力关系模式到结构主义模式的演变。结构主义模式是当代地缘政治理论的重要方法论特征,与其它模式相比,表现出较好的解释能力。对地缘政治学方法论演变的历史考察,有助于我们思考未来地缘政治理论建设的趋向,其中以行为体为主体的新地缘政治结构理论建设是地缘政治理论方法论创新的重要选择。     

THE “THEORETICAL REVOLUTION” IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY: FROM THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL IDEAS TO THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL LANGUAGES

This article intends to clarify what distinguishes the so‐called new “politico‐intellectual history” from the old “history of political ideas.” What differentiates the two has not been fully perceived even by some of the authors who initiated this transformation. One fundamental reason for this is that the transformation has not been a consistent process deriving from one single source, but is rather the result of converging developments emanating from three different sources (the Cambridge School, the German school of conceptual history or Begriffsgeschichte, and French politico‐conceptual history). This article proposes that the development of a new theoretical horizon that effectively leads us beyond the frameworks of the old history of political ideas demands that we overcome the insularity of these traditions and combine their respective contributions. The result of this combination is an approach to politico‐intellectual history that is not completely coincident with any of the three schools. What I will call a history of political languages entails a specific perspective on the temporality of discourses; this involves a view of why the meaning of concepts changes over time, and is the source of the contingency that stains political languages.     

ASSESSING (AND NOT ASSESSING) THE ITALIAN CONTRIBUTION TO HISTORIOGRAPHY AND POLITICAL THOUGHT

Edited by Giuseppe Galasso, one of Italy's most distinguished historians, this large volume seeks to convey the Italian contribution to historiography and political thought from the dawn of the Middle Ages into the present century, though it is overwhelmingly concentrated on the centuries since 1400. It includes six overview essays, but over 70 percent of its bulk consists of short articles, 108 in all, the vast majority on individual figures, and most of them five to seven pages in length. Whereas the approach, through individual figures, makes the volume especially valuable as a reference work, the approach also entails limitations making it hard to delineate and assess a distinctively Italian contribution. Readers must often connect the dots on their own if they are to discern the strands of a distinctive tradition. In his introductory overview, Galasso suggests a special Italian sensitivity to history, or capacity for the philosophy of history, but the suggestion is left vague and is followed up only in the most ad hoc way in the subsequent essays. The book offers little on how Italian idiosyncrasy might have either compromised or enhanced wider impact. Although the extent of Italian international interaction is well documented, there is little attention to reciprocity and the scope for synergy. Nor is there much assessment of the implications of changes in the valences of that interaction over the centuries, especially in breeding self‐criticism and sometimes compensatory myth‐making that might have further complicated the resonance of Italian offerings. But the volume demonstrates the richness of the Italian contribution and implicitly invites us to better encompass it, perhaps through comparative work and further research on multinational interplay.     

外国乡村旅游发展经验及对中国的借鉴

乡村旅游是我国新时期旅游产业发展和社会主义新农村建设的重要组成部分。本文首先系统的介绍了欧美乡村旅游的发展和主要成功经验,包括正确的定位,合理的形式选择,政府和社区的协调参与以及法律法规和专门的管理机构。在这一基础上,结合我国乡村旅游发展的现状和可持续发展的概念,提出了外国乡村旅游发展在几个方面对我国乡村旅游发展的借鉴。     

HEDONIC PRICING WHEN HOUSING IS ENDOGENOUS: THE VALUE OF ACCESS TO THE TRANS‐ISRAEL HIGHWAY*

Standard hedonic house pricing assumes that house prices are independent of the intangible to be priced. A methodology is proposed in which the supply as well as the demand for housing depends on the intangible. The methodology is applied to value access to the Trans‐Israel Highway (TIH). Using spatial panel data (2002–2008) we show that TIH had two effects on the housing market. It increased house prices in locations with greater access to TIH, and it affected housing construction. Standard hedonic pricing would have underestimated the value of access because it ignores the effects of housing construction on the intangible to be priced. House prices began to increase three years before TIH was inaugurated, but housing construction did not anticipate the inauguration of TIH.     

A CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF THE JOURNEY-TO-SHOP WITH PRICE UNCERTAINTY*

ABSTRACT In this paper we extend the contextual theory of demand to consider rational consumer behavior when the household must deal with some random fluctuation in the prices it faces. Prices at stores reflect “advertised specials,” which are potential cost reductions random across goods, and random in-store price changes, which can only be observed by visiting the store. Our theory of rational behavior includes: (1) calculation by the household of an ex ante plan for its planning period; (2) modification to take account of advertised specials; and (3) rational search behavior to take advantage of random fluctuations observable only on a given day. This theory utilizes an active cash balance as a buffer against random variations from planned daily expenditures, and reformulations of trip circuits to account for patterns of cost-minimizing search.     

PEARLSHELL SYMBOLISM IN HIGHLANDS PAPUA NEW GUINEA,WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE WIRU PEOPLE OF SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS PROVINCE

Pearlshells, in their use in exchange in the Papua New Guinea Highlands, have usually been analysed as 'power tokens' in a political context dominated by big men. This article attempts to account for the historically recent acceptance and use of pearlshells in terms of symbolic and aesthetic, rather than political and economic, values. The symbolism of two types of pearlshell found among Wiru people is considered, and an overview of available material on pearlshells in the Highlands is presented. A comparative perspective using historical, ethnographic and linguistic evidence, supports the claim that pearlshells were incorporated into ceremonial exchange because of their symbolic and aesthetic connections with the natural world and a cycle of death and regenesis.