A Reinterpretation of the Occupational History of the Pendleton Ruin,New Mexico

Abstract

The Pendleton Ruin, an adobe pueblo of approximately 125 rooms in the “boot heel” of sw New Mexico, was excavated by Alfred V Kidder, C. Burton Cosgrove, and Harriet S. Cosgrove in 1933. It defined the Animas phase, dated between A.D. 1150 and 1450. In this paper, the occupational history of the Pendleton Ruin is reexamined, beginning with the excavators' assumption that the lack of trash accumulation indicated a brief occupation. Based on the published report, field notebooks, and collections, it is concluded that the site was occupied longer than thought. Evidence for at least one hiatus in occupation may explain how a long occupation is compatible with low artifact yields. Evidence also points to the construction of a platform mound along the northern side of a plaza. A reinterpretation of regional settlement and social organization, focused on the role and scale of settlement instability, is presented. Finally, the results present a case study of how reanalysis of excavated materials can be a useful archaeological practice.     

A Note on the Meaning of Ḥamas in Ezekiel

ABSTRACT

The entries for ?amas in the biblical lexicons read “violence, wrong”; “treat violently”; or “theft, exploitation, social oppression;” namely, this word is understood as referring to the social sphere. On this basis, in the usual exegesis of the verses in which it appears in Ezekiel, ?amas is understood to refer to social violence. I suggest, however, that a closer examination of each of the seven occurrences of this term in Ezekiel indicates that it refers to the sins of the people that led to the destruction of the Temple—including idolatry and bloodshed—and that Ezekiel utilized and adjusted this pentateuchal concept to his prophetic needs.     

Identity,social interaction,and networks in the region of Wisconsin’s Holyland

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on how a sense of identity, social interaction, and networks contribute to the construction and maintenance of regions. Using Wisconsin’s Holyland as a case study, we conducted fieldwork, collected primary data from residents through a survey, and utilized social network analysis (SNA) to determine how it is defined as a vernacular and functional region. While there appeared to be consensus regarding the key defining characteristics of Wisconsin’s Holyland on the surface, our data analysis revealed contrasting perceptions and definitions of the region. In addition, a SNA of self-reported social interactions by residents highlighted a complex cultural geography through the appearance of subregions and expanded borders of the region overall.     

China’s urban ideology: new towns,creation cities,and contested landscapes of memory

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that “the urban” has emerged as the most significant ideological realm in contemporary China. In developing this argument, I suggest an alternative approach to how we theorize urbanization in China. Seeking to avoid the dichotomized analyses that often characterize scholarship on China’s urbanization, the paper suggests reading “the urban” as an ideological device. Such a reading calls for an analytical distinction between the city as a technology of socialist party-state planning and government and urbanization as a messy social process over which the state struggles for control. It also calls for a recognition of the ways that ideology itself has shifted dramatically in China, from the Mao-era centrality and coherence of class struggle and its overriding goal of proletarianization to a much less coherent post-reform message of “stability”. The paper begins with a brief discussion of ideology and Gramsci’s notion of “common sense” in a Chinese register. It then considers the film 24 City, directed by Jia Zhangke, as a template for understanding urban spaces as sites of conflict between the city as an ideological device and urbanization as a social process. New urban spaces are then explored in an effort to tease out their complex and contradictory ideological renderings. I conclude with an argument about the openness and contradictions of China’s urban spaces and how an ideological analysis can resist the kind of theoretical closure that much work on urbanization in China seems to aim for.     

OF BOUNDARIES,PLACES, AND SITUATIONS

Thomas F. Gieryn's Truth-Spots: How Places Make Us Believe presents eight case studies to support his historical-sociological thesis that “Places … have agency and exert a force of their own on the direction and pace of knowledge and belief” (18). Gieryn adds a new angle to a century-old discourse on the social construction of truth: the emplacement of credibility in narrated material locations. Throughout his career, Gieryn has contributed extensively to the spatial and placeful analysis of knowledge and social power: from advancing the concept of discursive “boundary-work” in the 1980s, to a refined method of “cultural cartography” in the 1990s, and in the twenty-first century, toward investigations of places: defined as meaning-enriched material locations. He has now advanced “truth-spots” as a type of place that credibilizes truth-claims. This essay reviews the key concepts in the career of this historical sociologist of scientific knowledge, through a mapping of Gieryn's own trajectory within the arc of a long pragmatist tradition in US social science. I shall use Gieryn's own case studies to test two key claims in his account of how place operates in the social-cultural construction of belief: (1) The model of “place” that Gieryn proposed in 2000, and has used consistently ever since (termed here a “Gieryn-place”), and (2) Gieryn's claim that features of “truth-spots” exhibit an observably independent (“agentic”) effect on the credibility of claims made there. I argue that both Gieryn-places and truth-spots suffer from incomplete specification of the ways in which people attach meanings to locations; of the boundaries of places; and of the sites of conscious encounter with places. They suffer also from his own boundary-work to exclude imaginary, cultural, and virtual spaces from his conception of place. This essay argues that a credible account of how place operates in/as history will require a focus on situation and situatedness, drawing on the pragmatist tradition of the Thomas Theorem. The concept of situation completes the circuit between meaning-production and the attachment of meaning to places and opens a gate for historical investigation, across the boundary between imagined, virtual, and conceptual spaces, and lived, material embodied places.     

What Is Religion?

Abstract

This essay considers the question: “What is religion and is it essentially violent?” Rather than answer the question directly, Martin suggests that it is a loaded question and reflects on what might motivate it. Through a comparison of the concepts of “religion” and “child abuse”–as analyzed in Ian Hacking’s work on social constructionism–Martin points to the social or political stakes of defining terms tied to normative discourses and which could be designed to pathologize certain behaviors.     

The rise and fall of “individualism” before and after the May Fourth Movement

Abstract

“Individualism” was one of the most important philosophical trends in the May Fourth era, heavily influencing youths seeking personal liberation and independence. However, not long after the May Fourth Movement, positive associations with individualism gradually receded. Compared with devotion to “nation” or “society,” the quest for individual independence was repeatedly criticized as almost synonymous with “selfish.” There were two reasons for this: first was opposition stemming from a traditional Chinese respect for collectivism; second was that individualism had become the theoretical basis for private capitalist production following the First World War and its founding values were coming under increased scrutiny. As the Second World War unfolded, the fight for survival benefitted the promotion of collectivist values and the idea of social organisms. Individualism declined and eventually became supplanted by a heavily politicized form of collectivism.     

Tweet Justice: The Canadian Court’s Use of Social Media

ABSTRACT

Like other political institutions in Canada, the judiciary has entered the digital age. Indeed, Canadian courts have been using Twitter for almost a decade. Despite this, there has been very little systematic examination of how Canadian courts use Twitter and the nature of the content they produce. While digital technologies create new challenges for all political actors, this is especially so for the courts, which exist in a very “traditional and conservative environment”. In this research note, we develop a framework for analyzing court-produced content on social media. This framework draws from concepts from digital politics and legal studies. We then apply this framework by conducting a content analysis of tweets from active court Twitter feeds in Canada.     

“Twitter Bodhisattva”: Ai Weiwei’s Media Politics

Abstract

This article investigates artist and activist Ai Weiwei’s media politics. In 1997 Ai Weiwei imagined a modernist movement that would practise a “non-compromising vigilance on society and power” and since 2005 he has embraced blogging and micro-blogging to enact such intent. We argue that his “communication activism” is part of a broader artistic and political program that long predates his online presence. The study examines how the artist has experimented with blogging and micro-blogging to spread his message of “awakening” in defiance of censorship and surveillance. It shows how Ai Weiwei’s communication strategy combines an international celebrity status, criticism, irony and a round-the-clock interaction with his netizen audience and the media. It also critiques the effectiveness and coherence of this mode of activism from two perspectives – namely, Jean Baudrillard’s analysis of “private telematics” and Jodi Dean’s “blog theory” – and finally assesses its impact. The study aims to enhance our understanding of the web-based communication strategies of Chinese activists, shedding light on cultural production and consumption in Chinese cyberspace as a socio-political barometer.     

Reform and Resistance: A Consideration of Space,Scale and Strategy in Legal Challenges to Welfare Reform

This paper examines the law as a mechanism for resisting neoliberal policy change through a consideration of legal challenges to welfare reform in the United States. The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 marked a sea change in both the content and scale of the American social welfare system. It has entailed a downward shift in policy creation and administration from the national to the state and local level, and conveys a heavy emphasis on the “responsibility” of single mothers to engage in waged labor. In addition to changing the scale at which the social welfare system operates, welfare reform has changed how the more oppressive aspects of this policy might be resisted. While some legal advocates are challenging welfare reform by working within the “policy scale”, others are invoking national level protections by appealing to Civil Rights legislation. By working against the scale imposed by neoliberal social policy, Civil Rights legislation presents the possibility for advocates to “re‐scale responsibility” from that of single mothers to submit to wage labor in order to survive, to the government’s responsibility to protect its citizens against identity‐based discrimination. Herein, I argue both that the law can serve as an important mechanism for re‐focusing the scale of resistance in efforts to challenge oppressive social policy; and that even in the face of policy that imposes a local scale, the national level holds potential as an important terrain of resistance.     

Crisis,Continuity and Change: Neoliberalism,the Left and the Future of Capitalism

Abstract: This essay's point of departure is the coincident economic and environmental “crises” of our time. I locate both in the dynamics of capital accumulation on a world‐scale, drawing on the ideas of Marx, Karl Polanyi and James O’Connor. I ask whether the recent profusion of “crisis talk” in the public domain presents an opportunity for progressive new ideas to take hold now that “neoliberalism” has seemingly been de‐legitimated. My answer is that a “post‐neoliberal” future is probably a long way off. I make my case in two stages and at two geographical scales. First, I examine the British social formation as currently constituted and explain why even a leading neoliberal state is failing to reform its ways. Second, I then scale‐up from the domestic level to international affairs. I examine cross‐border emissions trading—arguably the policy tool for mitigating the very real prospects of significant climate change this century. The overall conclusion is this: even though the “first” and “second” contradictions of capital have manifested themselves together and at a global level, there are currently few prospects for systemic reform (never mind revolution) led by a new, twenty‐first century “red‐green” Left.     

Competing Visions of the Rule of Law in Southeast Asia: Power,Rhetoric and Governance

Abstract

This article introduces a special issue on the emergent relationship between the rhetoric and implementation of the rule of law concept in Southeast Asia. It thematically introduces four country case studies (Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam), and the case of ASEAN’s adoption of the rule of law in region-building, which are included in this special issue. We highlight how ideals that are arguably central to the “tradition” of the rule of law are being excised, marginalised, defended and/or undermined in Southeast Asian contexts. We emphasise how the very concept is deeply contested and far from neutral – at stake is the very notion of “law” for whom, and for what. The article offers insight into the social dynamics affecting how the rule of law is being interpreted by political actors and how it is being contested and consolidated via governance practices in the region, and proposes new avenues for research in assessing how the rule of law is operating in transitional and authoritarian state settings.     

Mamlakhtiyut,Capitalism and Socialism during the 1950s in Israel

The debate over mamlakhtiyut (Zionist republicanism) in the early years of the State of Israel concerned the centrality of the state in the shaping of Israeli society. This article considers whether and to what extent this debate can be seen as a struggle over the possibilities of a “left-wing mamlakhtiyut,” aimed at an egalitarian politics, society and economy, as opposed to a “mamlakhtiyut,” based on structural stratification in the distribution of real political, social and economic power. It concludes that although in the short and medium term Israeli mamlakhtiyut was egalitarian in its socioeconomic policies, its political and educational policies fostered structural inequality in Israeli society.     

Equity Policies for the Production and Distribution of Wealth

Abstract

This paper applies the methodological approach of “see-judge-act” put forward in Pope John XXIII’s encyclical letter Mater et Magistra (1961) to argue in favour of a greater emphasis on social equity considerations in development policies, rather than a more restrictive emphasis on the promotion of wealth alone. As countries move from conditions of underdevelopment and poverty to new levels of economic sustainability and prosperity, the question of who benefits from the distribution of wealth remains crucial. Too often, the rich benefit at the expense of the poor.     

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.     

Governing the Homeless in an Age of Compassion: Homelessness,Citizenship, and the 10‐Year Plan to End Homelessness in King County Washington

Abstract: In 2001, President Bush announced his intention to “end chronic homeless by the year 2012” as part of his broad “Compassion Agenda”. Since then, departmental consolidation, changes in funding allocation, and continued decentralization of services provision have dramatically reshaped the landscape of homeless service provision in the US. In this paper I examine how these roll‐out policies reify and re‐entrench liberal equations of property with rational self‐governance at the local scale. Particularly, I illustrate how tropes of homeless otherness work alongside and through federal neoliberal roll‐out policies to exclude homeless voices from the formation of local social policy. In doing so, I attempt to call attention to the mutually constitutive relationship between the spatial management of homeless bodies, tropes of homeless deviance and dependence, and limits to citizenship in the context of neoliberal urban governance.     

Tecolote,Guatemala: Archaeological Evidence for a Fortified Late Classic Maya Political Border

Abstract

Settlement pattern data in the lower Salt River valley of central Arizona, near Phoenix, have led to different models of Hohokam political community organization during the early Classic period (ca. A.D. 1150–1300). The “focal village” model posits political communities centered on a single large village with monumental architecture surrounded by smaller settlements. The “linear community” model envisions an elongated arrangement integrating populations distributed along the routes of irrigation canals. Each model has implications for the nature of cooperation within and between settlement clusters and the degree to which large-scale irrigation management influenced the development of Hohokam community organization. In this analysis, ceramic sourcing studies are used to outline networks of interaction to examine the different models. Our results provide some evidence for a crosscutting patchwork of geographically dispersed social groups which fits most comfortably within the linear community model.     

Guanhua,Guoyu, and Putonghua: Politics and “proper names” for standard language in modern China

ABSTRACT

Guanhua (official language), Guoyu (national language), and Putonghua (common language) are generally regarded as different names for the same thing in different eras, but from the perspective of cultural history, there are many subtle semantic differences between these three concepts, symbolizing how different social classes and political groups defined their particular experiences, expectations, and efforts to take action. Guoyu, which replaced Guanhua in the late Qing Dynasty, is closely bound up with the construction of modern nationalism. In the 1930s, leftist intellectuals imbued Putonghua with strong proletariat attributes and overtones of indigenous and ethnic equality, wielding it as a tool for critiques against Guoyu. Although Putonghua returned to certain key positions of Guoyu after the mid-1950s, it putatively emphasized the legacy of the leftist language movement, and represented a new political identity. Through these “proper names” for the standard language, it was possible not only to launch a political and social “revolution,” but also to smooth over the historical rifts that this engendered, by repeatedly revising the concepts of “written” and “standard” to form a linear national narrative.     

Tocqueville on Pantheism,Materialism, and Catholicism

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that Leo Strauss was an extraordinary scholar and teacher who strove to open up forgotten vistas of philosophical inquiry. Gigantic controversy rages, however, about the sorts of political and social changes, if any, that he hoped to promote. The fire has been fueled by the alleged contributions of Straussians to the Iraq War—and by the publication of Strauss's 1933 letter that commended “fascist, authoritarian, and imperial” principles. This article reviews and then updates the assessments proffered in my 2009 book (Straussophobia) about the state of the “Strauss Wars.” Critics such as Shadia Drury continue to embarrass themselves in prestigious venues, but newer voices are using innovative strategies to argue that Strauss was attempting to undermine the principles of American democracy. Whereas William Altman relies on “esoteric interpretations” of Strauss's writings, Alan Gilbert illuminates Strauss's behind-the-scenes efforts regarding policy disputes. Although I maintain that Gilbert and especially Altman have made invaluable contributions, I argue that they both overreach.     

Revisiting Settlement Contemporaneity and Exploring Stability and Instability: Case Studies from the Indus Civilization

ABSTRACT

“Map overestimation,” or “the contemporaneity problem,” derives from the assumption that settlements identified during surface surveys were occupied throughout individual periods. Inductive and simulation analysis have been used to ascertain the degree of contemporaneity in surface survey data sets, as variation in settlement location is critical for understanding population density and demography, which inform social, economic and political interpretations. This paper revisits the inductive approach to interrogating survey data developed by W. M. Sumner and the simulation model approach developed by R. E. Dewar to explore the survey data from two regions within South Asia’s Indus civilization. This analysis demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches. It also highlights the variability in settlement systems in different areas within the Indus civilization and shows that consideration of stability and instability within settlement systems is an important factor when considering dynamics of resilience and sustainability.