Opportunity,willingness and geographic information systems (GIS): reconceptualizing borders in international relations

This article reports on a continuing project which has developed a major reconceptualization and revision of how borders may be seen and measured through the use of GIS. Using the data layers of the ARC/INFO GIS system, a new dataset has been developed which allows analysts to talk about the specific qualities of borders in terms of opportunity and willingness, that is, the ease of interaction and salience, respectively. The theory and method behind this reconceptualization is described. The results are represented both in visual terms—maps—and through the use of a quantitative dataset which lets us go beyond simply observing the number of borders a state possesses, whether or not a border existed between two states, or the length of that border. The dataset is presented and discussed, as well as preliminary analyses of the borders of conflict dyads from three separate conflict datasets. The basic ‘interaction opportunity’ model that underlies the opportunity and willingness framework is supported.     

The impact of royal government in the French Ardennes: the evidence of the 1247 enquête

Louis IX's enquête of 1247 was designed to investigate the misdeeds of loyal royal officials, and the reports of the cases investigated by the enquêteurs reveal the impact of royal government at the village level. The complaints heard in the upland Ardennes voice the protests of a remote region as it found itself increasingly subject to royal control. The local agents of the crown, usually outsiders, were characterised by an arbitrariness of procedure and a disregard for local feeling and custom which suggests that, in this area, royal justice was seen as a violent intruder as much as a preserver of order.     

Historical geography and the society/nature “problematic”: the perspective of J. F. Schouw,G. P. Marsh and E. Reclus

The “retreat” of the recent past within geography to a conception of the discipline as an ahistoric science which is either spatial or ecological is seen to be an atavism—a throwback to a disciplinary framework or “problematic” which dichotomizes human society and nature into fixed exclusive categories. This essay explores an alternative “problematic” which integrates society's spatial and ecological dimensions in a study of the historical process of “dialectical” interaction between society and its geographic environment, and the political and economic consequences of this interaction. The significance of this alternative approach is elucidated through an examination of its emergence, at the time of the origins of modern geography in the early nineteenth century. Its developing importance for the present-day position of the discipline is exemplified in the work of three prominent, socially engaged, nineteenth-century geographers. Although these geographers have tended to be either ignored or misunderstood in the recent literature, their approach has much to offer the field at a time when its division into ahistoric spatial and ecological disciplines is being questioned.     

Positive and negative ion densities and mobilities in the middle atmosphere over India—rocket measurements

This paper discusses the results from four rocket experiments conducted from Thumba, India, during the Indian Middle Atmosphere programme (IMAP). These rockets carried instrumented Gerdien Condenser payloads to measure ion densities and their mobilities. In the first two flights only positive ion measurements were attempted while the other two measured both positive and negative ion values. The results show that the positive ion density profiles go through a minimum around 62 km, as expected from the ion production models for this region. The ion density distribution is a function of solar zenith angle. An asymmetry with respect to noon is seen in these measurements, which is not expected theoretically. The positive ion mobilities indicate the ions to be water clusters, of the type H⁺ (H₂O)_n with n = 2 or 3, similar to the earlier reported ones. The negative ion density profile exhibits a maximum around 85 km, which is not predicted by the currently available ion density models and theories of D-region ionisation processes. The negative ion mobility measurements show the ions to have a mass range of 30–60 amu, which is within the range of mass spectrometric measurements.     

An aspect of the question of continuity between antiquity and middle ages: the origin of the Flemish cities between the North Sea and the Scheldt

Most historians of the Flemish cities have argued that there was no significant Roman habitation north of the civitates of Belgica secunda. Urban development in Flanders was thus seen essentially as a creation of the Carolingian period and after. But recent archaeological excavations have shown a substantial Roman presence at six cites which later were towns of medium or considerable importance. Although the buildings were evidently abandoned in the fifth century, settlement and political and ecclesiastical organization developed around them in the Merovingian age. The Roman background thus had a considerable effect on the development of town life in medieval Flanders.     

Diet in the Iron Age cemetery population at Wetwang Slack,East Yorkshire,UK: carbon and nitrogen stable isotope evidence

This paper reports δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values for human and animal bone collagen from the middle Iron Age site at Wetwang Slack, East Yorkshire, UK. The data indicate a human diet which was high in animal protein, with no evidence for any significant marine food input. No differences were found between high-status vehicle (or ‘chariot’) burials and the rest of the population and no other status differentiations are visible according to burial rite, age or sex groupings, although the data obtained for the older males display an unusual trend. No dietary variation is seen between two site phases and no evidence for an early immigrant group is present. The range of isotope values for the adult human group as a whole is small, indicating that the diet is likely to have been consistent over time and across the population, although two individuals stand out as unusual amongst the 62 analysed.     

Intentional ethics and hermeneutics in the Libellus de symoniacis: Bruno of Segni as a papal polemicist

The Investiture Contest has at regular intervals been considered as a ‘revolution’, largely because it contributed forcefully to the reorganisation of the Church in the centuries to come. But the Contest has also been seen as heralding a new and more critical way of thinking, in which the traditional reliance on authorities was giving way to new approaches to the textual past. These new approaches are best evident in an extensive polemical literature that accompanied the struggle. From the 1030s and until the end of the Contest with the Concordat of Worms in 1122, a number of contending issues were discussed by contemporary churchmen. One issue scrutinised was that of simony and the validity of sacraments of simoniacs. In the following, the Libellus de symoniacis of Bruno of Segni will be analysed in order to address several aspects. First, the Libellus shows a new and more critical approach to the textual past, foreshadowing the juggling with auctoritas of the twelfth century. Second, Bruno's analysis is a witness to the efforts taken to justify papal reform in the last decades of the eleventh century.     

Eiscat observations of the ionospheric D-region during auroral radio absorption events

Electron densities in the D-region have been observed with EISCAT during energetic electron precipitation events. Sample results are presented which demonstrate the value of the technique in studying variations of electron density with fine temporal and spatial resolution. Different types of absorption event can be characterized in terms of the changes in the incoming electron spectrum inferred from profiles of electron density. We contrast the D-region behaviour of night- and day-time events in terms of precipitating spectrum and absorption profile. A softening of the electron spectrum during the course of a morning event is clearly seen.     

Mobilité de la population et pauvreté dans une vicomté normande de la fin du Moyen-Age

Important in number and spread very evenly throughout the fifteenth century, the Norman rolls of the monnéage are a very important source for statistical study of the population of Normandy. The information about names they provide allows one to grasp the importance of mobility of population in urban and rural areas. Information about the different categories of exempted persons permits a study of the problem of poverty. The region under scrutiny in this article is the vicomté or vice-county of Bayeux and the city of Caen. Documents concerning this region reveal a highly mobile population, a fact which war by itself cannot explain. The highest rates of mobility are to be found among the populations of the different parishes of Bayeux and Caen. As one might expect, the poor are amongst the most mobile of all. Moreover, the persistence of poverty throughout the fifteenth century, as seen in the rolls of the monnéage, raises the problem of the continued stagnation of this part Normandy.     

Satellite observations of zonal electric fields near sunrise in the equatorial ionosphere

We report here on a number of examples of anomalous enhancements of eastward electric fields near sunrise in the equatorial ionospheric F-region. These examples were selected from the data base of the equatorial satellite, San Marco D (1988), which measured ionospheric electric fields during a period of solar minimum. The eastward electric fields reported correspond to vertical plasma drifts. The examples studied here are similar in signature and polarity to the pre-reversal electric field enhancements seen near sunset from ground-based radar systems. The morphology of these sunrise events, which are observed on about 14% of the morning-side satellite passes, are studied as a function of local zonal velocity, magnetic activity, geographic longitude and altitude. The nine events studied occur at locations where the zonal plasma flow is generally measured to be eastward, but reducing as a function of local time and at satellite longitudes where the magnetic declination has the opposite polarity as the declination of the sunrise terminator.     

Governmentality and comic propaganda: Mighty Man,the black superhero of apartheid

Recent years have seen growing academic interest in the proliferation of a distinct genre of African superheroes. There is, however, a much longer – and at times, problematic – history of superheroes in and from Africa, a history often heavily infused with colonial and imperial ideology. Using the 1970s South African Mighty Man comic book series, this article highlights how popular culture and media can be used as covert and mundane tool of governmentality. Mighty Man can be understood as a technique of power deployed in service of the apartheid regime's philosophy of separate development, illustrating the use of popular culture as a technology of (colonial) governmentality. The landscapes, narratives and additional content of Mighty Man were used in efforts to instil and frame a conduct of conduct amongst Black subjects – both in accepting separate development and the apartheid government, and in framing the everyday practices and dispositions that would allow for governing at a distance by the white minority regime. Mighty Man provides a powerful example of state-commissioned, covert comic propaganda which was indelibly framed by government policy and an ambition to create and impose a set of values and ideals around the dispositions, behaviour and actions of Black subjects. Ultimately, Mighty Man embodied a segregationist fantasy in which the absence of non-Black characters both denied the possibility of inter-racial contact and normalised social and spatial segregation – as well as class-based aspirations – while simultaneously promoting the conduct of conduct amongst subjects that would maintain these divisions. Through the construction of moral township landscapes, the Mighty Man series not only sought to regulate the conduct of the colonised subject through the condemning of ‘immoral’ behaviours but also attempted to offer illusory hopes of aspiration and freedom.     

Further evidence for a 6-h tide above Arecibo

Since the publication of results suggesting the existence of a 6-h tide in the E region above Arecibo [(Tonget al., 1988) J. geophys. Res.93, 10047–10051], much more data has been collected and analyzed. In particular, the time-height trajectories of middle and upper E region Tidal Ion Layers (TILs) for early January 1989 closely resemble those from early January 1981, which first revealed the presence of a 6-h quasi-periodic intermediate layer structure. Further, the January 1989 observations form an ‘overture’ to the March–May 1989 AIDA (Arecibo Initiative in Dynamics of the Atmosphere) campaign, which yielded a total of 28 days of additional data regarding TIL motion. Interestingly, the AIDA data set is dominated, above about 120 km altitude, by sporadic intermediate layers [(mathewset al., 1993) J. atmos. terr. Phys.55, 447–457] and certainly does not show the consistent 6-h period TIL feature seen in the two January data sets. In reviewing all data collected over the past 10 yr and the extensive 1989 observations in particular, we conclude that the basic TIL structure is controlled by two separate tidal wind patterns. We refer to these as the normal pattern and the ‘deep-winter’ pattern. The normal pattern includes the combination of diurnal and semidiurnal tides, while the deep-winter pattern has an additional 6-h tidal component. The deep winter pattern remains unexplained, but we suggest that the 6-h periodicity, which appears to be phase locked with the semidiurnal tide, is generated via in situ non-linear frequency doubling of the semidiurnal tide. The January 1989 results also manifest a TIL structure, below 100 km altitude, which has not been previously reported.     

EISCAT observations of a sequential Es layer

An experiment was carried out during the summer of 1982, using the EISCAT incoherent scatter radar, to investigate sequential Es: layers of enhanced electron density in the ionospheric E-region. Results are presented for an event occurring on 30 July, and the observations compared in a simple way with those expected from the wind-shear theory. Comparisons are made with data available from ionograms from Tromsø, Kiruna and Sodankylä, at which sites Es layers are also seen, though with differences that may be due to differences of wind direction.     

L’autobiographie allemande du XVIIIe siècle,interprétée à la lumière de la sociologie de niklas Luhmann

With the help of Luhmann’s theory, this essay tries to define the connection between the boom of autobiographical writing in the late 18th century and the rise of the middle classes. Central to this, is his definition of “career”, with which he describes the individuals’ behaviour in the new functional bourgeois society. Strictly speaking, the individual gains personal and social identity, through his or her spoken or written autobiography as can be seen clearly in Jung-Stilling’s autobiography, which was published bit by bit. The individual hereby improves its prospects of social advancement. On the other hand, K. P. Moritz in hisAnton Reiser describes his hero’s life as the “career” of a failure whose hyperactive imagination interferes with the formation of his identity. Thus autobiographical writing in the 18th century shows itself as the literary autopoiesis of the authors’ concrete individuality.     

Derrida and fidelity to history

In the first part of this paper Hugh Rayment-Pickard challenges Mark Bevir's assumption that Derrida does not care about historical or other kinds of truth. A consideration of Derrida's early work on Husserl shows deconstruction to be a kind of skepsis or epoche launched in search of the truth. Yet deconstruction reveals the truth as ‘undecidable’, which means that Derrida's commitment to the truth must take the form of ‘faith’. The second part of the paper considers an example of definite intentional meaning given in Mark Bevir's Logic: Petrarch's ascent of Mont Ventoux. On examination, Petrach's motivation can be seen to be radically divided between secular and religious concerns, a split vividly illustrated in his imaginary dialogue with St Augustine: The Secret. Finally, Rayment-Pickard looks briefly at Derrida's own dialogue with St Augustine, ‘Circumfession’, which also argues that human intentions are irreducibly complex and plural.     

Radiocarbon age determinations of fossil Margaritifera auricularia (Spengler) from the River Thames in West London

In the early 1900s shells of a large freshwater mussel, Margaritifera auricularia (Spengler), were discovered in calcreted gravel dredged from the channel of the Thames at several sites between Mortlake and Battersea in west London. These specimens were said to have been associated with Neolithic polished stone axes, supposedly as food remains. M. auricularia is now extinct in Britain, but it has been reported living in several large rivers in southern Europe although apparently not in recent years. Three radiocarbon dates of 4140±50, 4340±45 and 4860±40 bp have been obtained from Thames specimens, supporting a Neolithic age for these shells. The theory that the shells represent debris from imported human food is discounted and it is considered more likely that M. auricularia was actually living in the Thames in Neolithic times. Its extinction in Britain should be seen as part of a general recession during the Post-glacial, as revealed by fossil occurrences to the north and east of its present-day range.     

Truth,plausibility, and the virtues of narrative at the millennium

While it is widely understood that medieval historiographers employed the techniques of rhetorical invention in their work, less attention has been paid to the way in which the standard of plausibility, upon which rhetorical invention was premised, could be reconciled with the historian's traditional obligation to tell the truth. This paper examines the ways in which the rhetorical doctrine of narratio probabilis was understood and put into practice by three authors active around the turn of the millennium: Richer of Saint-Rémi, Dudo of Saint-Quentin, and Adalbero of Laon. All three had been trained in the schools of northern Francia in the late tenth century and all reveal a sophisticated understanding of the doctrines of Ciceronian rhetoric, according to which plausible inventions were not seen to be incompatible with historical truth.