Alexander the Great,the Dahlia,and the Tortoise

Some of the problems of establishing the cause of the death of Alexander the Great are like the attempts to find causes other than hysteria for Anna O.’s symptoms. The more general problem of using plausibility as a criterion of the truth of such reconstructions are illustrated by the arguments embedded in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia.     

The Thrill of the Line,the String,and the Frond,or why the Abelam are a non-cloth culture

With few exceptions, weaving was traditionally unknown in Oceania. Yet soft, pliable bark cloth — often richly decorated — was produced, and used like textiles, especially in Polynesia. This cloth was artistically draped around objects and people and in turn ritually removed. These cloth cultures are based on a system of aesthetic values radically different from those of inland groups especially in New Guinea. This article demonstrates that within Oceania there are two different cultural traditions with opposing aesthetic fundamental values. Taking as an example the Abelam (East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea) whose aesthetics is based on the principle of ‘visual open-work’, the fundamental aesthetic values of a non-cloth culture and the gender specific attributes associated with them are analyzed.     

Phenetics,cladistics, and the search for the Alaskan ancestors of the Paleoindians: a reassessment of relationships among the Clovis,Nenana, and Denali archaeological complexes

Clovis, Nenana, and Denali are the earliest well-documented archaeological complexes in the New World. Clovis has been found at sites throughout the lower 48 states of the USA and in parts of Canada but not in Alaska, whereas Nenana and Denali have been found in Alaska but not elsewhere in North America. In 1991, Goebel and colleagues reported phenetic analyses of tool types from Clovis, Nenana, and Denali. They found that Nenana clustered more closely with Clovis than with Denali, and concluded from this that Nenana was likely ancestral to Clovis. Goebel et al.'s study has been cited frequently since it was published, and their conclusions have been widely accepted. Here we explain why analyses of the type performed by Goebel et al. are problematic and also demonstrate empirically that their results are dependent on the algorithm and distance measure used. We then reanalyze their dataset with a technique from biology called cladistics. Cladistics has replaced phenetics as the method of choice for reconstructing evolutionary relationships in biology, because it is more objective. The results of this analysis differ from those obtained by Goebel and colleagues. The results strongly suggest that Denali and Clovis are in fact more closely related to each other than either is to Nenana.     

Island Archaeology,Model Systems,the Anthropocene,and How the Past Informs the Future

The use of islands as ‘model systems’ has become particularly relevant for examining a host of important issues in archaeology and other disciplines. As papers in this special issue of the Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology demonstrate, islands can serve as critical and ideal analytical platforms for observing human populations in the past and their evolutionary histories within complex and insular human ecodynamics. In this paper we address the issue of how islands are also important models for future sustainability and as corollaries for the survival of humans generally. In a sense, island cultures and ecosystems can be seen as microcosms of the issues we have faced as humans, and provide important insights for understanding the fate of our species, particularly as it pertains to the exploration and colonization of new worlds.     

Law,Courts, and the Judicial Process

Abstract

In I Am Charlotte Simmons, Tom Wolfe explores how precarious the pursuit of happiness is in our liberal society, which provides insufficient moral support for individuals to resist following popular opinion in their pursuit of happiness. For Wolfe, the first step of the pursuit of happiness requires the courage to resist popular opinion and to seek an answer to what happiness is for oneself. As Wolfe shows, our universities are neglecting their task to prepare individuals with a liberal education to guide them on how to live as politically and morally free beings who are responsible for pursuing happiness. Despite appearing to be proud and independent, Charlotte Simmons's education fails to provide her with the moral courage to resist peer pressure. At her university, she adopts scientific viewpoints that undermine political and moral liberty and teach her that her superior intelligence and education are tools of domination. Charlotte puts them in service of gaining popularity. Instead of bringing her happiness, her pursuit of popularity leads to discontentment. Since liberalism provides incomplete moral guidance, Wolfe turns to ancient thinkers to find support for the courage to use political liberty to think about what happiness is and how it is to be pursued. In contrast to Charlotte, Jojo, a star basketball player, turns toward the pursuit of a liberal education to live as a free being and to seek happiness.     

Net migration,unemployment, and the business cycle

"An empirical test of the effects of exogenous shocks upon a region's population size is conducted in the framework of an equilibrium locational model. The model emphasizes the separation of endogenous from exogenous factors, a point omitted in most empirical studies of aggregate migration. Exogenous changes are manifested in the local relative cost of living and the local relative unemployment rate. Hypotheses are tested using a national sample of youth, in addition to census, data [for the United States]. Surprisingly, a simple measure of the size of shock to a regional economy has the greatest explanatory power compared to more sophisticated measures based on prior business cycles."     

Memory, Distortion, and History in the Museum

Museums are conventionally viewed as institutions dedicated to the conservation of valued objects and the education of the public. Recently, controversies have arisen regarding the representation of history in museums. National museums in America and Germany considered here, such as the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the German Historical Museum, have become sites of contention where national histories and personal memories are often at odds. Contemporary art installations in museums which take historical consciousness as their theme similarly raise contentious issues about public knowledge of and personal interest in the past. When members of publics find that their memories of the past or their expectations for museum experiences are not being met, a kind of "distortion" occurs. The "distortion" related to memory and history in the museum is not so much of facts or interpretations, but rather a distortion from the lack of congruity between personal experience and expectation, on the one hand, and the institutional representation of the past on the other. This essay explores the possibilities for a redefined relationship between personal memory and history that is experienced in contemporary museums.     

Capitalism, cities, and the production of symbolic forms

A striking characteristic of contemporary capitalism is the increasing importance (in terms of growth, employment, revenue, etc.) of sectors whose outputs are imbued with significant cultural or symbolic content. Sectors of these sorts are predominantly, though not exclusively, located in large cities. I describe how these cities function as creative fields generating streams of both cultural and technological innovations. Post-Fordist cities are shown to be especially fertile terrains of commodified cultural production. A number of these cities have become major centres of image-producing industries such as film, music recording, or fashion clothing, and this phenomenon is also often associated with profound transformations of their physical landscapes. I argue that the economic foundations of these trends reside, in part, in the structural characteristics of image-producing industries, marked as they frequently are by modularized, network structures of production and a strong proclivity to geographic agglomeration. At the same time, the main centres of the contemporary cultural economy are caught up in insistent processes of globalization. I suggest that after an initial phase of product standardization and concentrated development in only a few major centres, the cultural economy of capitalism now appears to be entering a new phase marked by increasingly high levels of product differentiation and polycentric production sites. I also submit that the contemporary cultural economy of capitalism constitutes a historical shift beyond consumer society as such.     

Milton,the passions,and the knowing body

ABSTRACT

This paper challenges the notion that Galenic humouralism stripped the early modern body of agency and argues that some accounts of early modern materialism were connected to epistemology. It evidences how Milton’s passions are inscribed with the shocking language of agency and moral responsibility to overturn the assumption of “passive”, unconscious passions. It explores two pictures of passions in connection with knowledge: passions as obstacles to knowledge, and passions as sources as knowledge. Both images recast the material body as a knowing agent, but do so with complications. Agency-ridden passions complicate a straightforward notion of agency, and seem to leave early moderns with the option of blaming their passions instead of themselves for deception. Frequent references to internal passions in political discourses also suggests an unsettling degree of comfort with subjectivity in making knowledge-statements, but it is a version of subjectivity that seems far more public than private.     

Devolution,Constitutional Development,and the Russian North

A prominent American Sovietologist examines a range of issues surrounding the involuntary migration of Russian populations from the non-Russian republics of the former USSR. Among the questions addressed are possible magnitudes of in-migration into Russia (with special attention paid to conditions in one of the major source regions, Central Asia), attitudes in Russia regarding appropriate policy with respect to treatment of co-nationals in the near abroad and whether their return to Russia would have a positive or negative impact, and conditions in areas of Russia that presently are absorbing the greatest numbers of migrants. The assertion that Russian policy should seek aggressively to prevent the out-migration of Russian populations in the near abroad is assessed critically. 1 table, 1 figure, 10 references.     

Self-Citation in Archaeology: Age, Gender, Prestige, and the Self

Citation analyses in archaeology have detected prestige tactics, shifts in research agendas, and patterns of gender differentiation. This paper focuses on self-citation in archaeology and systematically analyzes the factors that affect rates of self-citation. Self-citation rates in archaeology are significantly higher than in socio-cultural anthropology but are average for a social science with interdisciplinary ties to the physical sciences. Self-citation correlates weakly with the gender of the citing author and the geographic and thematic focus of research, but correlates strongly with the age of the author. Additional analyses reveal partial evidence for the use of self-citation as a prestige tactic. The paper concludes with a discussion of citations to writers close to the author (mentors, friends).     

Popular Economies In,Against, and Through the Platform

Behind the conjunctural growth of popular economies in Brazilian cities lies a set of entangled disputes over urban density with important political consequences. While popular economic agents are repressed by local governments, informal work hired through digital platforms grows exponentially and engenders new precarious forms of assembling labour relations in, and extracting value from, global South cities. The contrasts and indirect relations between digital platforms and popular economic agents are important in understanding the growth of platforms, which hinges on accessing low-wage workers whose attempts to make an independent living are otherwise prohibited. This dynamic has resulted in the political mobilisation of popular economy agents and their alliances with urban social movements. Through this paper, I examine how their networking and particular disputes for a right to the city hold potential for the emergence of other economies.     

Language,tradition, and the self in the generation of meaning

An analysis of Mark Bevir's account of the role of language and tradition on the one hand, and the individual on the other in the generation of ideas, and proposal of an alternative account It endorses Bevir's project of finding a middle way between individualism and collectivism, but finds that Bevir exaggerates the role of the individual. It argues that human selves always remains dependent on language even to articulate their own intentions to themselves. Whilst they have a capacity to create new linguistic expressions, this is always limited to the exploration of possibilities already latent in the language. However, no one is a mere recipient and conduit of a given language: everyone hands it on transformed by their unique appropriation of it. The antifoundationalist analyses of Wittgenstein, Newman Collingwood, and Neurath are invoked to argue that this state of affairs also applies to the individual's relation to the beliefs and values inherited traditionally: there is no possibility of a wholesale rejection of what is received; no individual can reject all received traditions, and erect an entire belief structure from scratch, but can only modify it on a piecemeal basis, so that received tradition always remains constitutive of the individual mind. It is also argued that human self-consciousness is always socially formed, and no person ever completely integrated, and stabilized. No one is ever therefore in a state of complete self-possession. One therefore must reject Bevir's claim that the historian of ideas must initially presume that individuals are sincere, conscious and rational in their expressed beliefs: ‘sincere’ self-consciousness is an ideal never fully achieved, and beliefs as to what constitutes ‘rationality’ are so varied that specific presumptions cannot be made.     

Religion,Greed, and the Insanity of War

Abstract

This article quantifies only a brief encounter with the violent intersection of religion, business, and war. It surveys war in the modern world by including the following topics: the effects of war such as environmental degradation; psychological costs, including post-traumatic stress syndrome and chronic fatigue syndrome; violence against females; children at war; costs of war; causes of war and globalization. It wonders if there is such a thing as a killer-instinct that needs an antidote. Several religions from East and West, violent and non-violent, are discussed against the backdrop of war noting the presence of warrior gods and sacrifice. Finally the economic and pseudo-creative benefits of war are summarized. Selvidge poses a final question to readers, "How can we change the direction of a world gone mad?"     

Preliminary Analysis of the Hull of the Roman Ship from Grado, Gorizia, Italy

The hull of the Roman wreck at Grado has been partially preserved under the cargo of amphoras. The right side presents a rare evidence of a section of the waterway. The ship has been assembled by mortise-and-tenon technique following a shell-first conception. All the frames, except one, are of pine while planking is either of pine and elm. Some strakes, of larix , are a repair made by patch-tenons; a wale shows an other kind of repair. Various signs left by the shipwright are on the hull. In the stern area, a box of wooden elements had to protect a 'hydraulic system'.
© 2006 The Authors     

A Portrait of Hunger,the Social Safety Net,and the Working Poor

In a study at the largest northeastern Iowa food pantry between 2004 and 2006, we found that neither working nor accessing government benefits has a meaningful impact on lessening the odds that a person will need long‐term food assistance. In other words, the working poor are at greater risk for making recurrent visits to the food pantry than those who do not work. Pantry clients who work are more likely to have sacrificed food to pay for other life necessities. Moreover, government benefits do not seem to provide an adequate food safety net. As a result, nonprofits are experiencing increased pressure to fill the gap. If we wish to maintain the government responsibility to alleviate hunger in our country, benefits for eligible citizens must be increased or food assistance nonprofits need more government support. Otherwise we should face the fact that as an undeclared public policy, our society tolerates hunger.     

Composition,Similarity, and the Measurement of Economic Homogeneity*

Abstract. The concept of economic homogeneity in regional science is based on two very different notions: composition and similarity. In the case of the states of the US, measures of homogeneity based on these different notions are negatively correlated with each other, suggesting that the results of studies that use measures of economic homogeneity are likely to be sensitive to the conceptual basis of the specific measure. In order to overcome this problem, a portfolio‐theoretic measure of economic homogeneity with some attractive properties is presented. It is naturally decomposable into two components reflecting each of these notions and easy to construct using widely available data. Using this measure, patterns of homogeneity for the states of the US are illustrated and discussed, and hypotheses about the relationship between homogeneity and economic instability are tested.     

The Religious,the Secular,and the Natural Sciences: Nietzsche and the Death of God

When, in The Gay Science, Nietzsche poses the question of how the natural sciences are possible, he insists that they depend not on a principle that is natural but on the will to truth, the will not to deceive even oneself, with which, he holds, “we stand on moral ground.” Yet, that the natural sciences stand on ground that is moral also means, for Nietzsche, that their origin is to be located in “a faith that is thousands of years old,” a faith that, in the Genealogy of Morals, he develops as presupposing what he calls the ascetic ideals of Judaism and Christianity. Further, in holding that the natural sciences have their origin in principles that are biblical, Nietzsche goes on to indicate that, like the natural sciences, his own critical position, unconditionally honest atheism, is, in forbidding itself “the lie involved in belief in God,” not opposed to, but is rather an expression of, Judaism and Christianity's ascetic ideals. In addressing the interrelationships among the religious, the secular, and the natural sciences in light of Nietzsche, I argue that the natural sciences have their origin in principles that are not natural but that are no less religious than secular.     

President Obama,the Bible,and Political Rhetoric

Abstract

How has President Obama made use of the Bible in his political rhetoric, especially as it relates to public policy debates? This article addresses Obama's religious origins, his work as a community organizer in Chicago, his coming to Christian faith under the leadership of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the development of his understanding regarding the relationship between faith and politics. In particular President Obama has emphasized the notion that we are all our brothers' and sisters' keepers. He also stresses the present generation of black Americans as "the Joshua Generation." The article considers President Obama's hermeneutics, as well as the important context of the black church for his own use of Scripture. The lenses of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr are also addressed as they relate to Obama's use of Scripture in political rhetoric.     

Islands,the Anthropocene,and Decolonisation

The Anthropocene is deployed as incontrovertible fact, yet its foundations merit strong critique to challenge how particular voices and locations are absented, silenced, or enrolled in the fallacies that attend this epochal framework. Other placed, grounded, and scale-sensitive explanations exist for present and future state scenarios, including on islands—often the focus of apocalyptic thinking. Dealing with historical and contemporary struggles to decolonise is more powerful than engaging with a reified framework that is part of ongoing colonial-imperial excesses, uneven development, and racial capitalism. This work considers how four of us, as instigating authors, worked with five others, as collaborating authors, to understand academic works, activism, and artistic expressions of island life and concerns. Our aim was to learn about how and why their efforts to prioritise decolonisation is at the heart of what is needed to shore up island peoples’ futures.