“UNABLE TO RESIST”: ON THE “POSSIBILITY” OF “IMPOSSIBILITY” AND CHRISTOPHE BOUTON'S TIME AND FREEDOM

This essay reflects critically on Martin Heidegger's remarks about authenticity and death with the aid of Christophe Bouton's Temps et liberté (2002), translated by Christopher Macann as Time and Freedom (2014). It first raises general questions concerning the possible thematic relationship between human endeavoring (action) and the experiences of finitude and freedom. Heidegger's Being and Time is particularly useful for exploring this relationship, but certain problems emerge when using this text for accessing the essay's themes. To wit: there are good reasons for mistrusting readings of Being and Time as a “practical” guide for grounding action. Against the practical reading, the essay wishes to reclaim the ontological‐existential significance of Heidegger's text. Although Bouton's treatment of Being and Time excludes its ontological dimensions and is entirely practical, even to the point of disregarding certain theoretical risks inherent in this approach, Bouton's study is indispensable for situating Being and Time in a historical‐intellectual context, whereby the experiences of freedom and time are understood within certain metaphysical presuppositions rendering them difficult to establish together on reliable grounds. Following Bouton's lead, the essay shows that the hermeneutic differences between practical and ontological readings of Being and Time can be explored through reflections on what Heidegger might have meant by the term “Möglichkeit” (“possibility”), from which Bouton infers “freedom.” It is alleged that Bouton does not fully consider all of Heidegger's assertions regarding Möglichkeit, most problematically the claim that the human being's most essential “possibility” is its “impossibility,” that is to say, its death.     

A Minimax Method for Finding the k Best “Differentiated” Paths

In real-world applications, the k-shortest-paths between a pair of nodes on a network will often be slight variations of one another. This could be a problem for many path-based models, particularly those on capacitated networks where different routing alternatives are needed that are less likely to encounter the same capacity constraints. This paper develops a method to solve for k differentiated paths that are relatively short and yet relatively different from one another, but not necessarily disjoint. Our method utilizes the sum of a path's distance plus some fraction of its shared distance with each other path. A minimax algorithm is used to select the path whose largest sum of length, plus shared length vis-à-vis each previously selected path, is as small as possible. We present computational results for the Chinese railway system, comparing the paths generated by a standard k-shortest-path algorithm with those from our new model.     

Hunter-gatherer economic complexity and “population pressure”: A cross-cultural analysis

This paper examines the relaionship between “population pressure” and socioeconomic complexity among hunter-gatherers. Population pressure is defined as the ratio between population density and the density of available resources. Socioeconomic complexity is measured by means of several correlated variables: storage-dependence, sedentism, social inequality, and use of a medium of exchange. Correlations between these variables are calculated from an ethnographic sample of 94 hunter-gatherer groups. The correlations between population pressure and socioeconomic complexity are found to be extremely high. Two major types of hunter-gatherers exist which are distinguished by a number of variables and may be termed “simple” and “complex.” Transitional groups between these two types are quite rare. It is also noted that population pressure does not arise in continental climates where famine mortality is common because of high-amplitude changes in productivity from year to year. It is argued that population pressure is a necessary and sufficient condition for and the efficient cause of socioeconomic complexity. The widespread disavowal by archaeologists of population pressure as a possible explanation for the prehistoric development of complex hunter-gatherers has no basis in ethnographic fact.     

EUROPEAN UNION REGIONAL PRODUCTIVITY DYNAMICS: A “DISTRIBUTIONAL” APPROACH*

ABSTRACT Working within the “distributional approach,” this research offers evidence of past and future polarization in aggregate regional labor productivity in EU‐15. This finding is robust to alternative definitions of the spatial units used and does not appear to be the result of regional structural change. Spatial effects are found but are of rather localized nature. Turning to separate sectoral analyses suggests that past and future polarization in labor productivity across European regions may be associated with regional productivity differences in the services sectors.     

“Lachkabinett” und “großes Fest” der Physiker. Walter Grotrians “physikalischer Einakter” zu Max Plancks 80. Geburtstag

“Funhouse” and “Big Celebration” of the Physicists. Walter Grotrian's ?Physical One‐Act Play”? for Max Planck's 80th Birthday. On the occasion of Max Planck's 80th birthday on April 23, 1938, a “big celebration of the physicists” (großes Fest der Physiker) was celebrated at the Harnack‐House in Berlin. The festivities were organized by the German Physical Society. Part of the ceremony was a “Physical One‐act‐play” (Physikalischer Einakter) written by the Potsdam astrophysicist Walter Grotrian. The actors of the humorous play were chief protagonists in the development of quantum theory such as Debye, Sommerfeld and Heisenberg. In this essay we analyze Grotrian's drama against the background of both the festive event and the professional and social setting of the physicists. We argue that below the level of comedy a number of characteristic and normally unexpressed aspects of the epistemic culture of the German physics by the end of the nineteen‐thirties is treated in the play.     

Challenging “Islamic Fundamentalism”

The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder, Bassam Tibi. Comparative Studies in Religion and Society Series #9, Mark Juergensmeyer, editor. Against Islamic Extremism: The Writings of Muhammad Sa^cid al-^cAshmawy. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, editor. Qur'an, Liberation & Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Inter-religious Solidarity Against Oppression, Farid Esack.     

Migration Under Uncertainty: “Try Your Luck” or “Wait and See”

Two types of uncertainty enter into the migration decision. First, current conditions in the destination region may not be observable. Second, the future evolution of conditions in both the origin and destination regions may be unknown. The first type of uncertainty can encourage speculative or “try your luck” migration, whereas uncertainty about the future acts in the opposite direction, deterring relocation. This paper presents a dynamic optimizing model of migration that incorporates both types of uncertainty. The model shows that in equilibrium uncertainty about the future is likely to be more important than uncertainty about present conditions in the decision to relocate.     

THE “INS” AND “OUTS” OF HISTORY: REVISION AS NON‐PLACE

Revision in history is conventionally characterized as a linear sequence of changes over time. Drawing together the contributions of those engaged in historiographical debates that are often associated with the term “revision,” however, we find our attention directed to the spaces rather than the sequences of history. Contributions to historical debates are characterized by the marked use of spatial imagery and spatialized language. These used to suggest both the demarcation of the “space of history” and the erasure of existing historiographies from that space. Bearing these features in mind, the essay argues that traditional, temporally oriented explanations for revision in history, such as Thomas S. Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, miss the mark, and that a more promising line of explanation arises from the combined use of Michel Foucault's idea of “heterotopias” and Marc Augé's idea of “non‐places.” Revision in history is to be found where writers use imagery to move readers away from rival historiographies and to control their movement in the space of history toward their desired vision. Revision is thus associated more with control than with liberation.     

2. CONSTRUCTIONS OF “HOME,”“FRONT,” AND WOMEN'S MILITARY EMPLOYMENT IN FIRST‐WORLD‐WAR BRITAIN: A SPATIAL INTERPRETATION

In First‐World‐War Britain, women's ambition to perform noncombatant duties for the military faced considerable public opposition. Nevertheless, by late 1916 up to 10,000 members of the female volunteer corps were working for the army, laying the foundation for some 90,000 auxiliaries of the official Women's Services, who filled support positions in the armed forces in the second half of the war. This essay focuses on the public debate in which the volunteers overcame their critics to understand how they obtained sufficient popular consent for their martial work. I explain the process in terms of shifting hegemonic understandings of space. As critics' arguments in the debate indicate, the gender attribution of war participation was organized and represented spatially, assigning men to the warlike “front” as warriors and women to the peaceful “home” as civilians. To redefine the meaning of these gendered wartime spaces, women volunteers deployed rival spatial discourses and practices in their campaign for martial employment. The essay explores the progress of these competing definitions through feminist and spatial theories, including gender performativity, discursively constructed and constructive spaces, and heterotopias. I argue that the upheaval caused by the war in gender and spatial norms undermined absolute conceptualizations of space with dichotomous binary areas on which critics drew for their arguments and reinforced more recent, relative spatialities, including the cultural construction of militarized heterotopic sites in between and paralleling both “home” and “front” for soldiers in training or recovery. The volunteers' efforts to gain access to military employment both contributed to and were supported by this shift. Heterotopic sites offered ideal discursive locations for constructing the new gender role of auxiliary soldiering through the performance of martial training and work, and competing spatial definitions provided arguments through which they could justify their activities to both critics and supporters.