When will they ever learn?

George M. Foster. Traditional Societies and Technological Change, 2nd ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. vii + 286 pp. Bibliography and index. $3.95 (paper).     

Redistricting and partisan fluidity: do we really know a gerrymander when we see one?

Redistricting analysis and the concept of gerrymandering are based on the assumption that the electorate is comprised of durable racial, ethnic or partisan blocs of voters. Accordingly, vote dilution analysis is employed to determine whether the constituencies comprised of these durable blocs have had their aggregate voting power diminished by a particular redistricting scheme. In this article, I demonstrate that this assumption does not hold for partisan redistricting analysis because partisan blocs of voters are not durable. Instead, their partisan profile changes in response to incumbency, electoral competition and redistricting. These findings not only contradict prevailing analyses of redistricting, but also undermine the logic of remedial redistricting.     

Health geography in Canada: where are we headed?

This paper overviews the emergence of medical/health geography in Canada. The paper discusses the key questions that Canadian health geographers have explored in the past two decades, how these enquiries have featured in the field and how they contribute to the wider discourse of human geography. It also addresses questions on emerging themes and where Canadian health geography will go in the years ahead. With shifting health landscapes in terms of changes in social, political and physical environments, and changes in health care restructuring, Canadian health geographers are entering a new phase of research, teaching and policy. The complexity of the questions that health geographers seek to address means it is necessary to continue to highlight the policy implications of their findings. Health geographers need to emphasize the public agenda through interdisciplinary research and by continuing to work with geographers in other subfields.     

Deep Impact: What Happens When Archaeological Sites are Built on?

Abstract

Increasingly, developers and archaeologists search for ways to build on archaeological sites, while at the same time preserving the remains underneath. However, deciding which effects of construction on archaeological sites are acceptable and which are not is hampered by the lack of knowledge on the impacts of construction on archaeological sites. This paper provides an update on some of the effects of building on archaeological sites. Recent research had shown that displacement piles cause less disturbance in soft soils than previously thought. Moreover, replacement piles may be less benign that assumed up till now. Effects of loading on archaeological sites are described, and gaps in the knowledge on these effects are indicated. More research is needed in this field, especially on predicting soil disturbance and damage to weak materials. Impermeable surfaces and constructions on top of sites may affect the visibility of soil features due to decreased rainwater infiltration. Finally, a series of non-physical effects are mentioned that will have to be taken into account when deciding on allowing building on archaeological sites.     

Diagnostic uncertainty and medical geography: what are we mapping?

The administration of the Canadian health care system requires the collection of large quantities of health data that some health researchers have used to map the spatial distribution of disease. The authors discuss the difficulty of separating genuine geographic variations in health and disease from geographic differences in how diseases are diagnosed, and how these diagnoses are represented in an administrative data system. Although there have been attempts to deal with this problem at the international scale, little research has considered the issue at intranational or intraprovincial scales. There are several strategies available that can help separate spatial patterns of disease from nonmedical confounders, though they remain largely untested in medical geography. Future research should consider the scale of the problem and the effectiveness of existing approaches in mitigating the effects of geographic diagnostic inconsistency on the representation of health statistics in space.     

HIV,AIDS and security: where are we now?

HIV/AIDS is one of the greatest single causes of death and suffering on the planet. Over the last decade the societal impact of HIV/AIDS has been widely discussed in terms of national and international security. This article assesses the securitizing move and suggests that HIV/AIDS was only partially securitized at best and both the political consensus and strength of evidence were overestimated. It argues for greater nuance in our understanding of the link between HIV/AIDS and security, and the effects of its securitization, suggesting that neither is straightforward, and both are subject to case sensitivities.     

But will they fight and will they die?

Behind the international political planning and rhetoric of future alliances and force design lie the very practical questions about who will volunteer for armed forces in the liberal democracies and whether or not they will display the expected traditional virtues. We know so little about the motivation of present servicemen and women, let alone of those we expect to join in the future. Military identity, however, has hitherto reflected national identity, which has assisted with unit cohesion, particularly among those who take the greatest personal risks. The author of this article assumes that within a generation there is a strong likelihood of mixed-nationality and multi-identity armed forces down to and within the smallest 'unit' of military power, the ten-man infantry section. There is another danger: these 'specialists' may develop the characteristics of mercenaries or militarists with extreme tendencies. The possibility of escalation from humanitarian intervention to intense military conflict is always present, even if the mission is one that starts off as benign. The credibility of military action and future effectiveness of force structures currently being planned are by no means assured. Missions that in theory should succeed may in practice fail spectacularly.     

Gender and poverty: what we know,don’t know,and need to know for Agenda 2030

Drawing on historical debates on gender, poverty, and the ‘feminisation of poverty’, this paper reflects on current evidence, methods and analysis of gendered poverty. It focuses on initiatives by UN Women, including the Progress of the World’s Women 2015–16. Our analysis of the data compiled by UN Women raises questions about what might account for the over-representation of women among the poor in official accounts of poverty, and how this is plausibly changing (or not) over time. The paper highlights that analysis of what is measured and how needs to be understood in relation to who is the focus of measurement. The lack of available data which is fit for purpose questions the extent to which gender poverty differences are ‘real’ or statistical. There is a continued reliance on comparing female with male headed households, and we argue the move by UN Women to adopt the notion of Female Only Households reflects available data driving conceptual understandings of women’s poverty, rather than conceptual advances driving the search for better data. Wider UN processes highlight that while sensitivity to differences among women and their subjectivities are paramount in understanding the multiple processes accounting for gender bias in poverty burdens, they are still accorded little priority. To monitor advances in Agenda 2030 will require more and better statistics. Our review suggests that we are still far from having a set of tools able to adequately measure and monitor gendered poverty.     

Frustrated,reconciled or divided? The Australian labor party and federalism

The Australian Labor Party has always been, and remains, a complex entity which encompasses both centralist/national and decentralist/federal interests and values. The common interpretation that the party has been historically ‘frustrated’ by federalism but is now ‘reconciled’ with it thus exaggerates both the frustration and the reconciliation.     

Some comments on ethnohistory and archaeology: Have we attained (are we even approaching) A truly conjunctive approach?

Robert M. Carmack. The Quiche Maya of Utatlan. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press. 1980, 400pp. $27.50.

John W. Fox. Quiche Conquest: Centralism and Regionalism in Highland Guatemalan State Development. Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press. 1978, xii, 322pp. $15.00.     

Changing views in Canadian geomorphology: are we seeing the landscape for the processes?

Geomorphology in Canada, as elsewhere, has evolved into an essentially bipartite discipline focusing either on ‘process’ or broader ‘historical’ (Quaternary) landscape interpretation. A growing emphasis on process‐oriented research that relies increasingly on instrumentation and computational technologies has occurred. Critics of such research note limited applicability for landscape evolution, fashionability of methods and limited societal relevance. Indeed, some say we are not seeing the landscape for the processes. This article discusses the changing nature of geomorphology since the Quantitative Revolution of the 1950s including new advances, recent trends and challenges. Publication trends and recent advances suggest that the discipline is very healthy (following a slump in the early 1990s) and continues to evolve, which may reflect increasing research infrastructure and/or funding opportunities and new publications spotlighting Canadian research. Unfortunately, fundamental (less applied) research is threatened by funding program shifts, changing institutional pressures and a decline in research capacity from retirement attrition, and student recruitment challenges. Three research priorities are recommended: (1) continued fundamental research, (2) more integrated modelling to link micro scale processes to macro scale landform behaviour and (3) improvements in profiling our discipline amongst students and related professionals.     

Have we failed our neighbour?

In April 2006, rioting broke out in Honiara, Solomon Islands, following the parliamentary election of Snyder Rini. Occurring almost three years after the commencement of the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), the riots sparked intense deliberations about the nature of Australia's engagement with Solomon Islands and the success, or otherwise, of RAMSI. Within the context of discussions about state-building in Melanesia, this article seeks to outline challenges to the success of RAMSI. Ultimately, we argue that successful state-building in Melanesia is highly dependent upon awareness of local conditions, rather than simply the application of international best practice. Moreover, we suggest that unless the current approach is modified to accommodate local circumstances—including social and political structures and locally defined needs and desires—the existing growth of anti-RAMSI sentiment will continue to escalate. In conclusion, we offer policy-relevant suggestions aimed at assisting mission stakeholders to improve RAMSI's viability and impact.     

From universal history to globalism: What are and for what purposes do we study European ideas?

Globalism is probably the most frequently used term describing our current age. Found in many contexts, it is often a vague concept referring to a host of different figurations of post-industrial society. European expansion, the growth of the global economy, mass immigration and the planetary expansion of international relations are merely some of the phenomena associated with globalism. Yet globalism taken in its most neutral form of global history is not merely a trendy catch-all phrase for the challenges of our age but has its origins in the efforts of the enlightenment—to rewrite the theological universal histories of the Middle Ages. There is a close relationship between the historiography of universal history and the current ideology of globalism. By juxtaposing the two main strands of universal history (the universal history of mankind vs. the cyclical history of individual peoples) to the problem of European identity, I show that the theoretical problems which caused the demise of universal history continue to plague globalism. Such an analysis of the ideological foundations of globalism is central not only to the current debate on the (re-) construction of European history, but also in the discussion on what constitutes European ideas.     

All that we are – heritage inside out and upside down

Abstract

This article explores how the axis between heritage on the ‘inside’ and heritage on the ‘outside’ is imagined and produced, theoretically, politically and institutionally. It asks which outsider narratives are privileged and which are contained, and what the management of these boundaries inadvertently tells us about the politics and anxieties of the ‘inside’. It offers reasons for the pervasiveness of the border despite various initiatives to invite the outside in.