Baseline Models for Two‐Mode Social Network Data

Baseline models have been used in the analysis of social networks as a way to understand how empirical networks differ from “random” ones. For the purposes of social network analysis, a “random” network is one chosen—at random—from a population of possible graphs derived from a given generating function. Although these principled hypothesis tests have a long history, many of their properties and extensions to multiple data structures—here, specifically two‐mode data—have been overlooked. This article focused on applications of different baseline models to two data sets: donations and voting of the 111th U.S. Congress, and organizations involved in forums on watershed policy in San Francisco, USA. Tests using each data set, but with different baseline reference distributions, will illustrate the range of possible questions baseline models can address and the differences between them. The ability to apply different models and generate a constellation of results provides a deeper understanding of the structure of the system.     

The Landscape Archaeology of Southwest Sardinia Project: New Data and Method from the Insular Mediterranean

Sardinia has played a vital integrative role in the Holocene Mediterranean, most notably—although not only—as a key locus in emergent maritime “Mediterraneanization” and as an object of contestation among mainland polities over the last three millennia. Yet, despite the florescence of Mediterranean survey archaeology, this standard method has only been sparsely employed in Sardinia, with a pronounced focus on large, urban, coastal sites. Accordingly, we have little understanding of the ebb and flow of human settlement in the Sardinian interior. This represents a significant lacuna in the study of Mediterranean archaeology and history. Here, we report data from the first two seasons of the Landscape Archaeology of Southwest Sardinia (LASS) Project, a multidisciplinary project designed to correct this bias and to investigate how episodic integration into—but also disintegration from—larger economic and political structures drove sociocultural and socioeconomic change in southwestern Sardinia over the Mid-Late Holocene.     

Spatial Cluster Detection in Spatial Flow Data

As a typical form of geographical phenomena, spatial flow events have been widely studied in contexts like migration, daily commuting, and information exchange through telecommunication. Studying the spatial pattern of flow data serves to reveal essential information about the underlying process generating the phenomena. Most methods of global clustering pattern detection and local clusters detection analysis are focused on single‐location spatial events or fail to preserve the integrity of spatial flow events. In this research we introduce a new spatial statistical approach of detecting clustering (clusters) of flow data that extends the classical local K‐function, while maintaining the integrity of flow data. Through the appropriate measurement of spatial proximity relationships between entire flows, the new method successfully upgrades the classical hot spot detection method to the stage of “hot flow” detection. Several specific aspects of the method are discussed to provide evidence of its robustness and expandability, such as the multiscale issue and relative importance control, using a real data set of vehicle theft and recovery location pairs in Charlotte, NC.     

Oil and the House of Saud: Analysis of Saudi Arabian Oil Policy

This article analyzes the process of how the Government of Saudi Arabia determines oil policy. It focuses on oil production because it accepts that the Saudis are “price takers” rather than “price setters.” It applies economic and political explanations as determinants of how much oil is produced. Two periods of Saudi oil policy are compared—1987–1991 and 1997–2001—using open‐source data from various newspapers and newsletters. The article concludes that oil production in Saudi Arabia is, in large measure, a function of Saudi Arabian estimates of how its oil reserves may provide long‐term revenue and political stability at the risk of short‐term economic gains.     

Evaluating an Entropy‐Maximizing Solution to the Ecological Inference Problem: Split‐Ticket Voting in New Zealand, 1999

For geographers, one important aspect of the ecological inference problem relates to the analysis of spatial variations in individual behavior. Obtaining estimates of this behavior, in the absence of direct data, is often difficult, and the “solution” to the ecological inference problem propounded by G. King is not relevant in all circumstances. An alternative, using a different approach, has been used for some time in electoral studies but has lacked “real” data against which to assess the accuracy of its estimates. The availability of such data for New Zealand's 1999 general election allows such an assessment to be made—with very favourable results. The estimates are then used to test hypotheses regarding the spatial variation in split‐ticket voting, again with considerable success.     

ON PITCHFORKS AND TOMAHAWKS*

ABSTRACT The core‐periphery model of the new economic geography has two “dramatic” implications: catastrophic agglomeration and locational hysteresis around the symmetry breaking level of trade freeness. In this note, we study a generalized version of this model with constant elasticity of substitution (CES) instead of Cobb‐Douglas upper tier preferences. The possibility of a continuous and easily reversible transition from symmetry to agglomeration now arises. One of the most prominent results of the new economic geography literature—the catastrophic consequences of small parameter changes—therefore, hinges crucially on specific functional forms for consumer preferences.     

Institutional and cross‐institutional research clusters: A community detection analysis of #IAG2019Hobart

Academic conferences create an opportunity to disseminate new research, network with like‐minded researchers, and make new connections. The use of Twitter at these conferences continues to expand. This article focuses on how the Twitter data generated during conferences can be visually analysed in terms of community detection, connectivity, and information flows. Using social network analysis techniques and an online survey, the article analyses the subgroups within the entire network, their institutional affiliations, and research interest, and then focuses on the roles of the highly connected Twitter uses in the network. Through in‐depth analysis, the data revealed both how Australian geography academics use Twitter during a conference and how they cluster based on affiliations and research interest and also identified the information bridges in the social media conference network generated by using #IAG2019Hobart. The article concludes with some recommendations for further research.     

The Policy Sciences of Social Media

Twitter, Facebook, and other social media are increasingly touted as platforms not merely for networks of friends and for private diversion, but as vehicles that allow ordinary people to enter and influence the many arenas of public life. On the surface, the disparate and shapeless population of “i‐reporters,” policy “tweeters,” and anonymous news web site “commentators” would appear to challenge the comparatively well‐defined cast of professional diplomats, journalists, and propagandists that Harold D. Lasswell identified as policy‐oriented communicators. However, to illuminate the roles and impacts of social media in politics and policymaking, insights from Lasswell's “science of communication” must be embedded in Lasswell's broader lessons on value assets and outcomes. A closer look at the so‐called democratizing functions of social media in politics reveals the influence of powerful intermediaries who filter and shape electronic communications. Lasswell's insights on the likelihood of increased collaboration among political elites and skilled, “modernizing intellectuals” anticipates contemporary instances of state actors who recruit skilled creators and users of social media—collaborations that may or may not advance experiments in democracy. Lasswell's decision process concept is deployed to discover social media's strengths and weaknesses for the practicing policy scientist.     

Storm Drains as Assemblages: The Political Ecology of Flood Risk in Post‐Colonial Bangalore

Cities around the world are increasingly prone to unequal flood risk. In this paper, I “materialize” the political ecology of urban flood risk by casting stormwater drains—a key artifact implicated in flooding—as recombinant socionatural assemblages. I examine the production of flood risk in the city of Bangalore, India, focusing on the city's informal outskirts where wetlands and circulations of global capital intermingle. Staging a conversation between Marxian and Deleuzian positions, I argue, first, that the dialectics of “flow” and “fixity” are useful in historicizing the relational politics of storm drains from the colonial to the neoliberal era. Second, flood risk has been heightened in the contemporary moment because of an intensified alignment between the flow/fixity of capital and storm drains. Storm drains—and the larger wetlands that they traverse—possess a force‐giving materiality that fuels urban capitalism's risky “becoming‐being”. This argument raises the need for supplementing political‐economic critiques of the city with sociomaterialist understandings of capitalism and risk in the post‐colonial city. The paper concludes with reflections on how assemblage thinking opens up a more distributed notion of agency and a more relational urban political ecology.     

Class,Citizenship and Regeneration: Glasgow and the Commonwealth Games 2014

Abstract: Through a focus on “consumer‐citizenship” this paper foregrounds the class practices inherent in urban regeneration. Using Glasgow's 2014 Commonwealth Games (CWGs) as an illustrative example of regeneration, it seeks to highlight the market‐led processes that underpin state interventions. The paper demonstrates how these processes are implemented to transform “problem people, and problem places” ( Damer 1989 , From Moorepark to “Wine Alley”) into sites of “active” consumption and “responsible” citizenship. Yet, access to this “consumer citizenship” is stratified. In doing so, we synthesise conceptual insights from the Marxist‐influenced gentrification literature and the Foucauldian‐inspired housing renewal literature. We forward this to initiate further academic debate and empirical enquiry on the specific issue of mega sporting events.     

History and folklore: a historiographical survey

This article is designed as an introduction to the other articles in this special edition of Folklore. It argues that the relationship between historians and folklorists has undergone three phases: the “age of harmony” prior to the First World War, when both disciplines were in their infancy; the “age of suspicion” from the 1920s to the 1970s, when historians tended to define their field narrowly as the development of the nation‐state, and to stress their “scientific” methodology based on contemporary archival documents; and the “age of rapprochement” since the 1970s as historians ventured into new areas—popular culture, micro‐history, “history from below”—borrowing methodologies from the social sciences as they did so. And it looks forward to an “age of co‐operation” between the two disciplines.     

Estimation of OSL trap parameters by optical “cleaning” — a critical study

The so-called thermal “cleaning” applied in thermoluminescence analysis allows distinguishing TL signal originating from different traps of comparable thermal depths. Here, the detailed study on the suitability of a similar approach — which can be called optical “cleaning” — for the analysis of OSL process has been carried out by means of computer modelling. The optical “cleaning” is realized by short optical stimulation applied directly after irradiation. It turns out that this approach does not help to separate signals related to various traps having similar optical cross-section (OCS) values. For some sets of trap parameters, sufficiently good reconstruction of the trap optical cross-sections can be achieved by the analysis of the conventional OSL curve obtained directly after sample irradiation, while the OSL curve analysis after “cleaning” does not provide any additional data. For other cases the analysis of both curves with and without “cleaning” leads to optical cross-section values different from those assumed in the model, but just in such situations the optical “cleaning” can be helpful. The differences between the OSL components of the conventional curve and the one obtained after “cleaning” can be used as indicators of an incompatibility of the trap parameters obtained from the OSL analysis with their actual values.     

地铁站点可达性、客流与站点商圈零售商业结构关系研究——以广州市为例

地铁与城市商业地域的结构存在极大关系。实地调查获取广州15个地铁站点商圈零售商业营业面积、地铁网络等数据,利用栅格分析方法计算不同地铁站点的可达性程度的差异性。运用回归模型分析不同地铁站点可达性、客流与站点商圈零售商业空间结构的相关关系。以广州天河市级商业中心为例,微观上分析地铁站点客流对商业中心空间结构的影响。结果表明:地铁站点交通可达性、客流量与站点零售商业营业面积存在较强关联性,但换乘站点的可达优势与客流优势在商业上未能完全体现;地铁客流与较高等级的商业存在较大的相关性,而与低等级的商业相关性小,甚至负相关;客流的增加促进了地铁附近的商业形态从传统零售业向更高级业种演化。     

A Framework for Exploring Urban Retail Discontinuities. 探索城市零售业不连续性的框架

A key area in the analysis of urban structural evolution is identifying discontinuities. Effective analysis could improve long‐term forecasting and provide a better understanding of how to steer an urban system toward a desirable future state. We use a simple aggregate retail model to demonstrate an algorithm for identifying discontinuities in model parameter space. Explorations of retailing in both Greater London and South Yorkshire in the United Kingdom illustrate how understanding a system's potential for discontinuity can provide insights for both policy makers and retail businesses. The Harris and Wilson model, described in the section so‐named, is used as a simple archetype to illustrate the new framework. This model can be developed in a straightforward way to incorporate further refinement. In “ Executing the model and visualizing the results ,” we describe a single model run and in “ Investigating discontinuities ,” we explain our framework for detecting and analyzing discontinuities. “ Identifying discontinuities in the London retail system ” shows the results of applying this methodology to the Greater London retail system, and in “ Practical applications ,” we explore the policy applications for this technique as related to the decline of town centers in the South Yorkshire retail system. Some concluding comments are offered in “ Conclusions .”     

THE DETERMINANTS OF THE RECENT INTERREGIONAL MIGRATION FLOWS IN ITALY: A PANEL DATA ANALYSIS*

ABSTRACT This study investigates the determinants of interregional migration flows in Italy in the light of the upsurge occurred in 1996, after two decades of decreasing internal migration rates. The fixed‐effect vector decomposition estimator (FEVD) is applied to a gravity model using bilateral migration flows for the period 1996–2005. It is shown that the FEVD improves the estimates with respect to the traditional panel data estimators. The GDP per capita and the unemployment rate appear to be the key determinants whose changes push migrants out from their regions and direct them to “better off” destinations. Migrants leaving the regions in the Center‐North respond differently to the push and pull forces compared to southern migrants. The dynamic model provides evidence for the presence of social networks, which in this analysis take place for each pair of regions.     

EXPERIENTIALITY AND “NARRATIVE REFERENCE,” WITH THANKS TO THUCYDIDES1

Lately, the concept of experience, which postmodernist theoreticians declared dead, has seen a renaissance. The immediacy of experience seems to offer the possibility of reaching beyond linguistic discourses. In their attempt to overcome the “linguistic turn,” scholars such as Ankersmit, Gumbrecht, and Runia pit experience against narrative. This paper takes up the recent interest in experience, but argues against the opposition to narrative into which experience tends to be cast. The relation between experience and narrative is more complex than is widely assumed. Besides representing and giving shape to experience, narratives are received in the form of a (reception) experience. Through their temporal structure, narratives are crucial to letting us re‐experience the past as well as to representing the experiences of historical agents. This potential of narrative is nicely illustrated by Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War in which “side‐shadowing” devices restore history's experientiality. Through “side‐shadowing,” narrative can challenge the tendency toward teleologies inherent in merely retrospective histories and can re‐create the openness intrinsic to the past when it still was a present. However, the “side‐shadowing” devices used by Thucydides are fictional. To conceptualize the price and gain of “side‐shadowing” in historiography, the paper advances the concept of a “narrative reference” (a concept analogous to Ricoeur's “metaphorical reference”). Introspection, speeches, and other “side‐shadowing” devices sacrifice truth in a positivist sense, but permit a second‐level reference, namely to history's experientiality. In a final step, the paper turns toward modern historians—most of whom are reluctant to use the means of fiction—to briefly survey their attempts at restoring the openness of the past.     

Was the Revolution Tweeted? Social Media and the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia

Tunisia's Internet freedom prior to the “Jasmine Revolution” that overthrew longtime authoritarian leader Zine el‐Abidine Ben Ali has been described as roughly on par with that of China. Despite that, Tunisia's revolution has been described as one of the first “Twitter” or Internet revolutions, in which Internet technologies are said to have played a significant role This article illuminates how Internet technologies were (and weren't) used in challenging the Ben Ali regime. Based on interviews with Tunisian activists in early 2013, the research sheds light on Internet activities bridging street activism and Internet dissent. Whether through Internet or traditional face‐to‐face means, building the capacity to mobilize street protests long before mass mobilization was crucial to Tunisia's successful revolution.     

Spatial Competition and Bounded Rationality: Retailing at the Edge of Chaos

The spatial dimension of competition among retail outlets is well researched and typically captured with spatial interaction models. A stream of theoretical research has studied the consequences of incorporating various types of dynamics into these models. We build on this research by incorporating a behavioral decision process based on bounded rationality, and by allowing for unexpected adversity in the environment in the form of exogenous shocks. Given these characteristics—spatial competition, boundedly rational decision making, and environmental adversity—we study the long-run dynamics of a model retail industry. The model reaches a stochastic steady state which is “poised,” in the sense that a shock may—or may not—trigger a wave of innovation which sweeps the entire system. Detailed investigation of this steady state shows that it has the characteristics of a general type of organization, known as self-organized criti-cality, that has been described in both theoretical biology and statistical physics.     

The “Science” of Policy Development During Administrative Rulemaking

The legitimacy of government agencies rests in part on the premise that public administrators use scientific evidence to make policy decisions. Yet, what happens when there is no consensus in the scientific evidence—i.e., when the science is in conflict? I theorize that scientific conflict yields greater policy change during administrative policymaking. I assess this claim using data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). I identify policy change—what I refer to as “policy development” in this article—between the FDA's draft and final rules with a novel text analysis measure of shifts in regulatory restrictions. I then go on to find that more policy development does occur with scientific conflict. Moreover, using corresponding survey data, I uncover suggestive evidence that one beneficiary of such conflict may be participating interest groups. Groups lobby harder—and attempt to change more of the rule—during conflict, while an in‐survey experiment provides evidence of increased interest group influence on rule content when scientific conflict is high.     

PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN THE OLD AND NEW EUROPE: THE ROLE OF AGGLOMERATION EXTERNALITIES

As Europe is currently characterized by huge disparities in the economic performance of “old” and “new” states, we investigate whether this is the result of local agglomeration—specialization and diversity—externalities. Our spatial econometric analysis focuses on total factor productivity dynamics over the period 1996–2007 for 13 industries located in 276 European regions. Consistently with the “nursery cities” theory, we find that diversity exerts a positive effect in the knowledge‐intensive services of the “old” Europe urban areas, while specialization is still effective in the “new” Europe low‐tech manufacturing. Human and technological capital has also a positive impact.