CONCEPTUAL PROBLEMS IN NEO-MARXIST INDUSTRIAL GEOGRAPHY. A CRITIQUE OF THEMES FROM SCOTT AND STORPER'S: PRODUCTION, WORK, TERRITORY

The publication of Scott and Storper's Production, Work, Territory symbolizes the intellectual maturation of the new industrial geography. But problems of relating human action to structural necessity and local events to global processes continue to plague the discourse. This paper critically examines these related themes in the work of Scott and Storper, and Lipietz, pointing to the uneasy relation between structural inevitability and contingent spatial outcomes, and offers an alternative reading of structuralism as a contribution to the ongoing debate.     

ARCHAEOMETRIC INVESTIGATIONS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOFIA,BULGARIA

The paper presents a brief overview and history of archaeometric research using instrumental neutron activation analysis at the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Sofia. The archaeometric projects are listed and some of the results obtained in the investigations of glass, pottery and metals are described.     

A QUESTION OF IDENTITY: A REVIEW OF RECENT WORK ON BLACKS IN CANADA

In 2010 the US declared the Lake Erie water snake a recovered species, but in Canada the snake is still considered to be an endangered species. After explaining the legal similarities between the Ontario Endangered Species Act and the American Endangered Species Act, this article examines a case study with landowner interviews from one US island and one Canadian island. It is concluded that landowner attitudes toward conservation and private property are very similar. Thus, it is argued that bureaucratic differences, particularly institutional capacity and implementation styles, enabled the US but not Canada to recover the snake. The article concludes with a discussion of the need for better communication between the two countries for the purposes of biodiversity conservation.     

A COMPARATIVE-GEOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS OF THE STRUCTURE OF URBAN TRANSPORT NETWORKS IN MOSCOW AND LENINGRAD

A graph-analytic technique is used to compare the public transport networks in Moscow and Leningrad. The technique makes it possible to identify gaps in the public transport systems of the two cities and to suggest remedial measures. In general, the public transport system of Leningrad is found to be better integrated than that of Moscow. The transport network of Moscow is more heavily dissected than that of Leningrad, lacks enough lateral connections between outlying city areas (as opposed to linkages between outlying areas and the city center), and generally lags in providing electric ground transportation (street cars and trolley buses) to newly developed residential areas.     

INSTRUMENTAL NEUTRON ACTIVATION BASED PROVENANCE STUDIES AT THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM,WITH A CASE STUDY ON MYCENAEAN POTTERY FROM CYPRUS

A neutron activation programme aimed at archaeological provenance research operated at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem between the years 1974 and 1997. The history and accomplishments of that laboratory are presented. Endeavours to preserve unpublished results are described. Results on Cypriote pottery are presented.     

THE ORIGINS OF RACISM: A CRITIQUE OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

This essay has two objectives. First, it seeks to engage critically with contemporary scholarship on the origins of racism through the lens of an older debate centered around the history of ideas. Specifically, it argues that Quentin Skinner's influential critique of the history of ideas can help identify the pitfalls of our current fascination with the origins of racism—most particularly when such origins are traced back to antiquity and the European pre- and early modern periods. In pursuing its second objective, the essay turns from histories cataloguing ancient, medieval, and early modern racisms to objections leveled, in these same literatures, against scholarship defending the modernity of race. The defense of a premodern origin to race is, I argue, not just a historical argument but a contemporary politics embedded in a narrative of continuity that insists on the relevance of the medieval past to the racial configurations of our current moment. Rather than demonstrating continuity and sameness, this essay seeks to draw attention to alternative modes of historicizing that are more attentive to the alterity of the past.     

DEPROVINCIALIZING THE STUDY OF EUROPEAN IDEAS: A CRITIQUE

Though the fourteen contributors to this volume bring varied perspectives on method, most striking is their common engagement with contextualist approaches. While some of the essays advocate a temporally and spatially extended, renewed history of ideas with debts to Arthur Lovejoy, and are critical of excessive contextualization, several either defend contextualism, or the culture concept, or offer a more robust materialist foundation for the history of thought and culture. This review focuses on the logic and metaphors used to criticize contextual methods and highlights problems with both the new history of ideas and the new materialist gestures.     

1. THE MEANINGS OF NOSTALGIA: GENEALOGY AND CRITIQUE

Nostalgia has become a new master narrative both in public discourse and academic research, serving as an explanation for trends in fields as different as popular culture, fashion, technology, and politics. This essay criticizes the wide‐ranging use of the term. It argues that nostalgia often does not adequately describe the diverse uses of the past to which it is applied. It does this by historicizing the nostalgia discourse with particular emphasis on the 1970s, when dictionaries first noted a semantic shift from homesickness to a sentimental yearning for the past, and intellectuals discussed a widespread, pathological “nostalgia wave.” After the introduction, the second section looks at the changing meanings of nostalgia, the third examines how the “nostalgia wave” was seen to manifest itself and who was thought to be afflicted by it, and the fourth discusses contemporary explanations. Building on this, the final section critically examines the nostalgia discourse before evaluating its continuing influence.     

A NEW STUDY OF THE CURSUS COMPLEX AT DORCHESTER ON THAMES

Summary. This paper reviews some recent developments in the study of non-utilitarian monuments in relation to a new analysis of a group of earthworks at Dorchester on Thames, Oxfordshire, excavated between 1946 and 1981. It traces the changing character of these different sites in the light of a series of radiocarbon dates, and argues that analysis at this broad chronological and geographical scale is likely to be more informative than piecemeal investigation of individual 'types'of monument.