Accuracy,efficiency and bias: The interpretation of women's work in the U.S. Census of Occupations, 1890–1940

The Canadian Century Research Infrastructure (CCRI) began with the development of designs for large representative samples of the decennial census from 1911 to 1951 and continued with the development of sophisticated SPIDER software for data entry and processing. This work builds on previous research projects in several ways, including the use of digital images within an integrated suite of Java-based software programs. By describing the theoretical and practical questions addressed in the CCRI initiative, the authors seek to contribute to international efforts to enhance construction of historical databases for systematic research on economic, social. and political change.     

Age heaping patterns in Mosaic data

This paper analyzes the extent and nature of age-misreporting in the Mosaic data, currently one of the largest historical census microdata infrastructures for continental Europe. We use demographic measures known as the age heaping indexes to explore regional, periodic and sex-specific patterns of age misreporting across 115 Mosaic regional datafiles, from Catalonia to Moscow, during Europe's demographic ancien régime and thereafter. The paper's second significant contribution is the comparison of Mosaic-based results to those derived from two other big census data projects—IPUMS and NAPP. Beyond this exploratory data analysis, we also investigate possible sources of variation in age heaping across Mosaic data by examining how it relates to variability in socioeconomic, institutional, and environmental conditions. Overall, our systematic inquiry into quality of age reporting in Mosaic consolidates the project's potentially transformative role in comparative historical family demography and suggests some avenues for future research.     

Spatial-temporal trends in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) offices in Ontario,Canada

This paper assesses complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) from a spatial-temporal perspective; it would be of particular interest to those who evaluate health care resource accessibility over space. The analysis compares CAM supply (number of offices, employment, and sales) in Ontario by provincial district, metropolitan influence classification, and health care and social assistance employment quintiles using summary statistics, Kruskal-Wallis and median analyses, and local spatial autocorrelation evaluation. Metropolitan areas throughout Ontario, but especially in the southcentral part of the province, are well endowed with CAM supply and tend to be most important in terms of CAM change. CAM offices are increasing in size in the most populated parts of the province and shrinking in regions that are more peripheral. CAM supply per capita is highest in census subdivisions with moderate levels of health care and social assistance employment, a result that is not offset by significant temporal change. While CAM supply is restructuring in many of Ontario's most populated urban locations, the overall attraction of CAM resources to large and small metropolitan areas is clear. If current spatial-temporal trends continue, CAM spatial disparities will be exacerbated as accessibility to CAM in Ontario's most peripheral locations worsen.     

Step lightly,then move forward: exploring feminist directions for northern research

I discuss the methodological challenges that research with Aboriginal women poses in historical geography, especially in Northern Canada. Drawing a parallel between historical geography and contemporary Northern studies, I explore how the predominance of climate change as a framework for funding Arctic research creates an environment where women's specific ways of knowing and connecting with the land are not adequately captured. A gender approach that is sensitive to the issues women face in their communities reveals that their experience of climate change, as well as the concerns they have about it, are inseparable from the other economic and social issues they face. I argue for the development of a feminist research agenda in the North that allows Aboriginal partners to locate themselves in the frameworks that are constructed for producing knowledge. At times letting the project ‘fail’ may be the surest way to enable the emergence of a locally‐driven agenda that addresses the present and future needs of Northern Aboriginal Peoples.     

3. CARL SCHMITT'S CONTRIBUTION TO A THEORY OF POLITICAL MYTH

My goal in this essay is to show that myths have played a larger role than we might think in politics and in political theory and that myths are essential to politics. For this purpose I will use Schmitt's theory of myth, since he elaborated his theory with strong interpretations of two different myths: Hobbes's Leviathan and Shakespeare's Hamlet. I will compare Schmitt's interpretations of Hamlet with my own, as doing so will provide a critical view of Schmitt's conclusions, and it will enable me to develop my own conception of myth and its relations to political theory and history.     

From nation to population: the racialisation of ‘Métis’ in the Canadian census†

ABSTRACT. Between 1996 and 2001 the ‘Métis population’ of Canada skyrocketed from 204,000 to 292,000, an astonishing and demographically improbable increase of 43 per cent. Most puzzling about this ‘increase’ is not so much the unpersuasive explanations offered by statisticians and others but, more fundamentally, the underlying assumption that such a thing as a ‘Métis population’ exists at all. In contrast, I argue that such an idea constitutes an artifact of Canada's racial/colonial episteme in which ‘the Métis’– formerly an indigenous nation invaded and displaced in the Canadian nation‐state's westward expansion – have been reduced in public and administrative discourse to include any indigenous individual who identifies as Métis: reduced, in other words, to (part of) a race. The paper argues further that the authority of the Canadian census as a privileged forum of contemporary meaning‐making in Canadian society is such that the lack of explicit Census categories to distinguish Métis Nation allegiance further naturalises a racialised construction of Métis at the expense of an indigenously national one.     

Visual media and the construction of the benign Canadian border on National Geographic's Border Security

Visual media have long been instrumental in the production of international borders as sites of spectacle. Such projects involve careful delineations of who may enter and under what conditions. In Canada, this representation often centres on a dialectical relationship between a welcoming and generous, multicultural nation and a threatening foreign immigrant Other. We adopt a visual content analysis approach to examine Border Security: Canada's Front Line, a documentary series produced for the National Geographic Channel that follows the daily activities of Canadian border security agents. Because this series is sponsored by the Canadian Border Patrol Agency, it provides an ideal case with which to interrogate the State's agenda in representing home, Other and risk. Given previous scholarship on the dialectical representation of Other and Canadian multiculturalism, we expected to find similar juxtapositions on Border Security. Rather, our analysis reveals a carefully managed representation of colour and nation-blindness that supports a construction of Canada in opposition to the United States.     

Nostalgia and Titanic commemorations in Cobh,Ireland

The year 2012 marked the centenary of the sinking of the liner Titanic. This event has been commemorated in a variety of ways, including the development of “authentic” and “created” tourist projects related to Titanic. This research presents one location's tourist response to the centenary. The heritage town of Cobh in Ireland was the last port of call for the ill-fated liner. Its commemorative activities focused on a week-long festival of cultural events from 9 to 15 April. It will be contended that its use of nostalgia and “vintage” can be interpreted more as a function of the interpretative agenda of Irish tourism policy and its heritage construction of Cobh than as a genuine symbolic expression of a town remembering its past.     

David's 'Hatred' for the Lame and the Blind (2 Sam. 5.8A)

Abstract

Scholars have often dismissed the rendering of veyigga' batsinnor (2 Sam. 5.8) as 'get up the water shaft' or 'get up the water canal' on the grounds that it has no natural connection with David's expressed 'hatred' for 'the lame and the blind'. This article argues that such a dismissal is perhaps hasty, and that David's reference to the physically afflicted alludes to the custom of their gathering at pools and springs (which were widely held to possess healing powers).     

Dutch Spatial-economic Investment Policy Revised: Strengthening the Role of Parliament

The central research questions in this contribution are: how are spatial-economic investment projects assessed, selected and prioritized nation wide, and how can the role of Parliament be defined and, if necessary, be strengthened? In practice, this centres on the issue of how to avoid “entrapment”. A critical assessment of the current Dutch policies to strengthen the economic structure of the country is followed by a discussion of the proposals presented in 2004 by the Dutch Parliamentary Commission on Infrastructure Projects. This contribution concludes that the acceptance of (the majority of) the Duivesteijn Commission's proposals will greatly clarify and strengthen the position of the Dutch parliament in selecting and prioritizing spatial-economic investment projects. The Dutch experience may be relevant for parliaments in other countries as well.     

Memory,narration and spectrality in Brian Friel's Faith Healer and Frank McGuinness's Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme

This article proposes an examination of how Brian Friel's Faith Healer functions as an intertext in Frank McGuinness's Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme. This shall be the first extensive consideration of Frank McGuinness's debt to Faith Healer, the play that convinced him that drama was the form most suited to his vision. How both plays consider the relationship between history, memory and art will be a key concern. Attention shall also be paid to the shared cultural and historic traditions that unite both Friel and McGuinness. The essays that McGuinness has written on Friel will be shown to be as valuable in interpreting McGuinness's work as they are to illuminating Friel's. It shall be argued that McGuinness, far from merely parroting Friel's aesthetic, uses the earlier writer's legacy to create new and original works.     

5. INDIA,ITIHASA, AND INTER‐HISTORIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE

An effective and enriching discourse on comparative historiography invests itself in understanding the distinctness and identity that have created various civilizations. Very often, infected by bias, ideology, and cultural one‐upmanship, we encounter a presumptuous‐ness that is redolent of impatience with the cultural other and of an ingrained refusal to acknowledge what one's own history and culture fail to provide. This “failure” need not be the inspiration to subsume the other within one's own understanding of the world and history and, thereby, neuter the possibilities of knowledge‐sharing and cultural interface. It is a realization of the “lack” that provokes and generates encounters among civilizations. It should goad us to move away from what we have universalized and, hence, normalized into an axis of dialogue and mutuality. What Indians would claim as itihasa need not be rudely frowned upon because it does not chime perfectly with what the West or the chinese know as history. accepting the truth that our ways of understanding the past, the sense of the past, and historical sense‐generation vary with different cultures and civilizations will enable us to consider itihasa from a perspective different from the Hegelian modes of doing history and hence preclude its subsumption under the totalitarian rubric of world history. How have Indians “done” their history differently? What distinctiveness have they been able to weave into their discourses and understanding of the past? Does the fact of their proceeding differently from how the West or the Chinese conceptualize history delegitimize and render inferior the subcontinental consciousness of “encounters with past” and its ways of being “moved by the past”? This article expatiates on the distinctiveness of itihasa and argues in favor of relocating its epistemological and ideological persuasions within a comparative historiographical discourse.     

Trends in the residential mobility of seniors in Canada, 1961–2006

This article examines residential mobility for seniors 65 years of age and older in Canada using census data from 1961–2006. We addressed three questions. First, have seniors been increasingly likely to change their residential location within Canada or alternatively become increasingly likely to age‐in‐place? Second, has the in‐migration of seniors to Canada from other countries become more pronounced over the years? Third, does the residential mobility of seniors vary by age and sex? We used census data to calculate the percentages of seniors who changed their residence in the five‐year periods prior to each of the 1961–2006 censuses and the percentages of seniors who moved in the previous year for the 1991–2006 censuses. We calculated the percentages of seniors making local moves, longer distance moves within the same province, moves from one province to another, and moves to Canada from another country. We found that rates of residential mobility for seniors tended to increase in the 1961–1981 period but have been lower and relatively consistent from 1986–2006. We found no evidence to suggest a pattern of sustained increase in residential mobility of seniors. We conclude that Canadian seniors tend to age‐in‐place and that when seniors do change residence, the likelihood of residential mobility decreases with the distance of the move and decreases with age. Nevertheless, the likelihood of changing residence may increase for seniors 75+ years of age who need assistance and are at risk of institutionalization. We found that senior women were more likely to change residence locally than senior men. Finally, we found that from 1961 to 2006 between 0.8 percent and 1.4 percent of seniors had migrated to Canada in the five years prior to each census from other countries and that this pattern has fluctuated over the past half century with no clear trend.     

Diplomatic relations through wartime alliance: the Republic of China's relations with Canada

Relations between China and Canada began 150 years ago with the arrival of Chinese immigrants in British Columbia. However, formal diplomatic relations were not established until 1942, when Canada and the Republic of China (ROC) became wartime allies in their common fight against the Axis powers. The Canadian government soon passed a China aid program and earmarked 52 million Canadian dollars in war materials for China. This aid program was not favored by either the United States or Great Britain, but was unilaterally adopted by the wartime Canadian government. However, shipments of war materials destined for unoccupied China were blocked by geographic barriers and could not reach their destination. Canada's China aid program continued during the immediate post‐war years. The main motivation was economic: to get rid of Canada's surplus war materials and to develop bilateral trade relations. The aid program came to a halt in late 1948 only when China's political development made the Canadian government change its China policy. Afterward, Canada's diplomatic relations with ROC were stringently maintained until the Canadian government granted diplomatic recognition to the People's Republic of China in 1970. This article is a brief survey of the Canada–ROC relations during those years.     

Language as an instrument of nationalism in Central Europe

This article presents a brief survey and analysis of the most intimate coupling of culture and national projects that occurred in Central Europe following the success of the Italian and German nation‐states established in this manner during the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Language is the very ‘stuff’ of culture as well as the instrument of communicating and reaffirming cultural difference vis‐à‐vis other cultures. As such, language became central to the processes of nation‐ and nation‐state‐building in Central Europe, leading to politicisation of language and also of linguistics and philology, which were expected to fortify the nations and their nation‐states than rather to lend themselves to objective research. It is proposed that this specific Central European interweaving of language and national projects may be better comprehended through the application of Einar Haugen's model of language standardisation and Miroslav Hroch's model of nation‐building. These two models in the Central European case seem to be closely corresponding to each other. The short catalogue of language elements used to produce national differentiation closes this contribution.     

Constructing the scaffolding: the National Census and the English landed gentry family in the Victorian period

Abstract

The family is the fundamental unit of society and was an important focus for identity, affection and sociability amongst landed élites. Historians of landed society have generally been reticent about studying the gentry family in any depth. This has been partly due to a general reliance on published biographical and genealogical sources as well as a focus on the estate rather than the family in archival material. A more fundamental understanding of gentry society will require greater levels and depths of knowledge relating to the structure and relationships of the family. In order to achieve this on a broad and representative scale new sources and methodologies will be required. This article provides an evaluation of the census enumerator's books as a source for studying landed society and suggests a number of avenues for future research.     

Observations on the Population of Vilnius: The Grim Years and the 1942 Census

An American geographer, commenting on the preceding paper in this issue (Weeks, 2006), focuses more deeply on the results of a little-known but significant census organized by the Germans in May 1942. The author seeks to produce a credible estimate of the city's Jewish population (excluded from the census) some 11 months after the German invasion of Vilnius, and explores the factors underlying various claims that the census distorted the size of the Lithuanian and Polish populations. In the process, he sheds light on a deep interlayering of relationships among the city's diverse ethnic groups that contributes to a unique "sense of place" experienced by city residents. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O15, O18, R14. 7 figures, 3 tables, 63 references.     

Globalising Economic Governance,Political Projects,and Spatial Imaginaries: Insights from Four Australasian1 Cities

This paper explores how territorial economic governance is discursively constituted in a globalising and neoliberalising world. It acknowledges both the increasingly recognised formative role of spatial imaginaries in economic interventions and the workings of co‐constitutive political projects that link particular imaginaries with political ambitions and policy strategies. Embracing recent calls for comparative ethnographic urban research at the local‐global interface, it explores currently dominant spatial imaginaries across the four Australasian cities of Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth. Based on multiple qualitative methods, this study claims that a considerable number of actor's spatial associations and reference points can be related to particular city‐specific governmental projects; Auckland's Super‐City, Sydney's Global and Green City, Melbourne's Liveable City, and Perth's Vibrant City. It is demonstrated how discursive governance techniques such as ‘story‐telling’, benchmarking, and policy transfer have been pivotal in the activation, circulation, and performance of those spatial imaginaries and their transformation into temporarily dominant visions for strategic urban interventions aimed at repositioning urban actors, spaces, and activities. While spatial imaginaries can be related to differently framed global aspirations, the effects of spatial political projects on urban governance and investment trajectories differ significantly across space. Theoretically, the paper stresses the importance of particular conceptions of territorial relations and time‐ and place‐specific institutional mediation in shaping context‐dependent discursive material governance alignments.     

To what extent can online mapping be decolonial? A journey throughout Indigenous cartography in Canada

In this paper, we describe and reflect upon our journey through Indigenous online mapping in Canada. This journey has been planned according to an academic goal: assessing the potential of online cartography for decolonial purposes. To reach this goal, we have followed methodological directions provided by Indigenous scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith to review 18 Indigenous web-mapping sites across Canada. Supported by a series of ten interviews, this content analysis enabled us to sketch some of the contours of contemporary Indigenous cartography. On one hand, Indigenous communities largely control the data that are shared on these websites. They also partially control the way these data are represented through the mobilization of digital storytelling technologies that are better aligned with Indigenous ways of envisioning relationships to places than conventional maps. On the other hand, they do not have much control over the technological aspects of these projects, for which they remain heavily dependent on non-Indigenous partners. Throughout this journey, we noticed that women's voices remained marginal in most of these mapping projects, but we also identified evidence supporting the idea that these voices are starting to play a vital role in the on-going effort of decolonizing mapping processes.