WHERE DOES THE SOUL GO?

Ngari, tucked away at an elevation of 4,500 meters, is known for its remoteness. In July 2002,I was offered a chance to revisit the remote area for the first time in 10 years.1 went there mainly out of a desire to return to the great nature. Like many others, I yearned for a chance to escape the workaday life and seek the opportunities offered by a region that has barely been touched by human beings.     

WHERE DOES THE POLAR NIGHT BEGIN?

The Arctic Circle is popularly thought to demarcate the latitude at which darkness is continuous during the winter solstice. The Circle is defined where the minimum zenith angle to the centre of the Sun is 90° on 21 /22 December. Sunrise and sunset occur when the centre of the Sun is at a zenith angle of 90°50′, and therefore the Sun is observed at the Arctic Circle throughout the year. Night begins at the end of twilight, sometime after sunset. The limiting zenith angle for civil twilight is 96°, for nautical twilight 102°, and for astronomical twilight 108°. In the northern winter 24-hour night is not experienced at latitudes south of 72°33′, and astronomical polar night is not observed at any point on the Earth's land surface. Only five settlements, two in Canada, two in Russia, and one in Svalbard are within the limit of nautical polar night. Le cercle arctique est populairement associéà la limite latitudinale à laquelle la noirceur est continue durant le solstice ?hiver. Le cercle est défini là où la distance zénithale minimum au centre du soleil est 90° le 21 /22 décembre. Le lever et le coucherdu soleil ont lieu lorsque le centre du soleil est à une distance zénithale de 90°50′ pour cette raison le soleil se lève et se couche au cercle arctique durant toute ?année. La nuit commence à la fin du crépuscule, quelque temps après le coucher du soleil. La distance zénithale limite pour le crépuscle civil est 96°, 102° pour le crépuscle nautique et 108° pour le crépuscle astronomique. Durant ?hiver nordique, la nuit de 24 heures ne se produitpas aux latitudes au sud de 72°33′ et la nuit polair astronomique n'est observeéà aucun point sur la surface terrestre. Seules cinq stations, deux au Canada, deux en Russie et un en Svalbard se trouvent à?intérieur de la limite de la nuit polaire nautique.     

DO FLOODS HAVE PERMANENT EFFECTS? EVIDENCE FROM THE NETHERLANDS

This study investigates the short‐ and long‐run impact on population dynamics of the major flood in the Netherlands in 1953. A dynamic difference‐in‐differences analysis reveals that the flood had an immediate negative impact on population growth, but limited long‐term effects. In contrast, the resulting flood protection program (Deltaworks), had a persisting positive effect on population growth. As a result, there has been an increase in population in flood‐prone areas. Our results suggest a moral hazard effect of flood mitigation leading to more people locating in flood‐prone areas, increasing potential disaster costs.     

THE CRISIS OF HUMANITY: OR,WHAT IF WE HAVE NEVER BEEN HUMAN?

This collection of nine essays brings together a variety of responses to the question of the “nonhuman turn” within the humanities and the social sciences, understood broadly as a developing concern with overcoming anthropocentrism in its diverse manifestations. Emerging from The Nonhuman Turn conference held at the University of Wisconsin‐Milwaukee in 2012, which was hosted by the Center for 21st Century Studies, it represents the first attempt to account for and consolidate the many intellectual approaches and developments that may now be regarded as constituting the nonhuman turn. The nonhuman turn is contextualized as both “yet another” turn but also a necessary one, and as something critically distinct from “the posthuman turn”—whereas the posthuman turn is concerned with what comes after the human (ways of being, ways of thinking), the nonhuman turn insists (according to editor Richard Grusin) that “we have never been human.” My reading of this volume suggests that this claim is not borne out across the chapters it contains, and that the notion that we have never been human, though a noble gesture to Bruno Latour's widely lauded claim that “we have never been modern,” does not enable a new philosophy, nor does it advance the two primary streams of philosophical thought featured here: object‐oriented ontology (OOO) and new materialism.     

3. MENTALITY AS A SOCIAL EMERGENT: CAN THE ZEITGEIST HAVE EXPLANATORY POWER?1

This paper probes the explanatory value of mentality as a social emergent in general and of the Zeitgeist in particular. Durkheim's contention that social facts have emergent properties is open to the charge that it implies logically inconsistent “downward causation.” on the basis of an analogy with the brain‐mind dilemma and mental emergentism, the first part of the essay discusses and dismisses the notion of social emergent properties that cannot be reduced to the properties of their component parts—individuals—and their internal relations. However, ontological individualism need not compel us to methodological individualism. The second part introduces two challenges to methodological individualism. The most radical is Rajeev Bhargava's assertion that the meaning of a belief is determined not by the individual holding the belief but by the entire linguistic community. Bhargava's “contextualism” is closely related to the (post)structural demand that we focus on discourse as a communal entity instead of continuing a delusive quest for the intentions of individual speakers. a more modest alternative is Margaret Gilbert's plea for using “plural subjects”—social groups in which “participant agents” act jointly or have a jointly accepted view—in the practical syllogisms that are central to rationalizing action explanation. The notion of plural subjects lends credence to, and is reinforced by, “situationist” social psychology, which shows how people conform to peer groups, authorities, and roles. building on Wesley Salmon's and Peter Railton's ecumenical accounts of explanation, the essay argues that both individual rationalizing action explanations and explanations based on plural agents can give explanatory information: we need not choose one or the other. The third part discusses how the Zeitgeist can provide added explanatory value in an analysis of the New left. This is possible if the “spirit of the sixties” is seen as representing the values and worldviews of the “sixties generation” as a social group in Gilbert's terms. Radical youth would suspend judgment and pool their wills to conform to what they perceived were the views of the imagined “sixties community” or—rendering more explanatory force—to smaller parts of it in the guise of peer groups and organizations.     

ALL IN?

This review treats Mark Greif's remarkable inquiry into what he calls the crisis of man and man‐talk: the invocation to inquire into humanity that Greif traces out through various genres of writing (philosophy, journalism, literature, and literary criticism) through a succession of decades (1930s–1960s) within an exclusively North American US context. As seems suitable for this journal, the review focuses primarily on Greif's own standpoint and methods. In its first half, it identifies and ultimately questions Greif's decidedly anti‐hermeneutic stance. Greif cordons off his own discourse from those he treats, picking an approach that prevents his making their questions his own, despite the fact that many of his chosen texts raise issues pertaining to how history, especially intellectual history, is to be conducted. In the review's second half, two key instances are surveyed: Greif's discussions of Hannah Arendt and of Ralph Ellison.     

WHERE IS AN OIL SHOCK?

Much of the literature examining the effects of oil shocks asks the question “What is an oil shock?” and has concluded that oil‐price increases are asymmetric in their effects on the U.S. economy. That is, sharp increases in oil prices affect economic activity adversely, but sharp decreases in oil prices have no effect. We reconsider the directional symmetry of oil‐price shocks by addressing the question “Where is an oil shock?” the answer to which reveals a great deal of spatial/directional asymmetry across states. Although most states have typical responses to oil‐price shocks—they are affected by positive shocks only—the rest experience either negative shocks only (five states), both positive and negative shocks (five states), or neither shock (five states).     

THE HOUSE OF THE JAGUAR: Can it survive?

This narrative discusses the past, present and precarious future of Na Bolom museum in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico – a house museum dedicated to the study, conservation and support of Chiapas' indigenous cultures, communities and their natural environment.     

PARETO OR LOG‐NORMAL? BEST FIT AND TRUNCATION IN THE DISTRIBUTION OF ALL CITIES*

In the literature, the distribution of city size is a controversial issue with two common contenders: the Pareto and the log‐normal. While the first is most accredited when the distribution is truncated above a certain threshold, the latter is usually considered a better representation for the untruncated distribution of all cities. In this paper, we reassess the empirical evidence on the best‐fitting distribution in relation to the truncation point issue. Specifically, we provide a comparison among four recently proposed approaches and alternative definitions of U.S. cities. Our results highlight the importance to look at issue of the best‐fitting distribution together with the truncation issue and provide guidance with respect to the existing tests of the truncation point.     

THE ANTI-POVERTY EFFECT OF IN-KIND TRANSFERS: A “GOOD IDEA” GONE TOO FAR?”*

During the 1970's several policy analysts developed estimates of the effect of in-kind transfers (e.g., Food Stamps and Medicaid) on poverty. Unfortunately, many of these studies have, drastically overstated the antipoverty impact of in-kind transfers, leading some to claim that there are no mart? poor people in America. This article reviews these, studies, provides new evidence on the impact of in-kind benefits on poverty, and concludes that there is still a substantial poverty problem in America today which need be addressed by policymakers.