Convict ancestry: a neglected aspect of Australian identity

Abstract Claiming descent from convicts who were sent to Australia during the early period of British settlement is more than just about blood ties, it is also an aspect of national identity for many Australians. Analyses of nationally representative survey data show that younger, left‐leaning, working class Australians are most likely to identify as convict descendants, while older, high income, educated, city dwellers are least likely to identify. Our findings also suggest that the ‘hated stain’ of convict ancestry is senescent, and will diminish with intergenerational replacement. Yet claims to convict descent remain divided along status lines. Interest in convicts and claims of convict heritage may comprise an element of ‘popular taste’, but as a consequence of this popularity, ‘convict chic’ is rejected by educated elites. Embraced by ‘middle Australia’, but shunned by cosmopolitan elites, convict ancestry is a neglected aspect of Australian identity. Whether claims of convict ancestry are ‘real’ or ‘imaginary’, the power of foundation myths to provide shared memories is evident in the salience of convict connections in Australia.     

Forest transition theory and the reforesting of Scotland

During the 20th century, the forest area in Scotland expanded threefold, after many centuries of decline. Similar trends of forest expansion following deforestation have operated in many other developed countries. The passage from net deforestation to net reforestation is defined as the forest transition, and over the last few years a body of theory relating to its drivers has evolved. The case of Scotland is considered in order to contribute to this growing body of theory.     

Kant and the magnitude of sensation: a neglected prologue to modern psychophysics

Quantitative relations between the sensations and the stimuli that produce them are the domain of psychophysics, a branch of natural science not yet known at the time of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). But Kant's philosophical doctrines of perception imply that sensations can be quantified. Accordingly, he proposed not only to consider the magnitude of both sensations and stimuli but also to work out an appropriate mathematics that would relate these magnitudes to each other. This part of Kant's work received almost no attention up to the present time although it contains some essential elements of modern psychophysics.     

Roses in January: a neglected dimension in Gregory of Tour's historiae

Gregory of Tours was a sixth-century bishop who wrote Ten books of histories, our only detailed source of information for that period in Gaul. A great deal of attention has been paid to his vivid portrayal of Merovingian society and politics. Apart from his often obscure Latin, the strictly chronological composition and the absence of clear co-ordinating statements give his work the appearance of a jumbled, if lively, mosaic. The following study is an attempt to follow one strand through the many-coloured texture of the Histories, that of extraordinary natural events and the context in which Gregory places them, since this seemed to reveal an up to now not so apparent dimension of his thinking about time and, history: his concept of contemporaneity.     

Nomads of the Desert West: A shifting continuum in prehistory

The Desert West, a term first employed by Jesse D. Jennings to describe the geographic region where Desert culture evolved, is used to frame a discussion of adaptive diversity that focuses on the time period 1250 to 750 B.P. Variable pathways into and out of sedentism are explored and subsistence intensification, exchange, ideology, and warfare are discussed in relation to an adaptive mosaic of nomads and agriculturalists. I argue that a conjoint prehistory of the Great Basin and the Southwest is both possible and desirable and is needed to illuminate general social processes and major episodes of culture change affecting groups in the Desert West.     

Roses in January: a neglected dimension in Gregory of Tour's historiae

Gregory of Tours was a sixth-century bishop who wrote Ten books of histories, our only detailed source of information for that period in Gaul. A great deal of attention has been paid to his vivid portrayal of Merovingian society and politics. Apart from his often obscure Latin, the strictly chronological composition and the absence of clear co-ordinating statements give his work the appearance of a jumbled, if lively, mosaic. The following study is an attempt to follow one strand through the many-coloured texture of the Histories, that of extraordinary natural events and the context in which Gregory places them, since this seemed to reveal an up to now not so apparent dimension of his thinking about time and, history: his concept of contemporaneity.     

Demographic Modeling of the Geography of Migration and Population: A Multiregional Perspective

This article focuses on the development and evolution of migration and population redistribution modeling within the spatial context of multiregional demography. It begins in 1965, when the state-of-the-art consisted largely of ideas and techniques imported from other disciplines (regression analysis, gravity models, Markov chains, and matrix cohort-survival population projection models) and then continues on to tell the story of multiregional demography, its evolution and emergence as a fully developed paradigm for studying the spatial dynamics of migration and population redistribution and, more recently, its approach for estimating the necessary migration input measures from inadequate data.     

A sense of proportion: An aspect of the theology of the chronicler 1

Abstract

The Chronicler's emphasis on certain theological teachings rather than others is better explained in terms of the rhetorical situation of the writer and the historical audience, and of their theological/ideological questions, rather than by assuming a dogmatic writer who was inconsistent or incoherent at times, or alternatively, one who grudgingly admitted here and there that reality did not follow the prescribed path.

In fact, the Chronicler consistently set the lessons that the historical audience may have learned from some, or even many, of the individual accounts in the book in theological/ideological perspective by qualifying them with the message conveyed by other accounts. The Chronicler, thus, shaped within the text, and communicated to the audience, a sense of proportion that is integral to the thought and teachings conveyed by the Book of Chronicles as a whole. This sense of proportion conveyed an image of God's ways in a manner consistent with a less than predictable world; moreover, it allowed for a variety of potential interpretations of (socially accepted) historical events, and of the actual experiences of the audience for which this book was written.     

从统计数据看当代加拿大华侨华人的人口特征

论文利用最新加拿大官方权威统计资料,即2011年加拿大全国家庭调查和加拿大统计局相关统计数据为依据,对当代加拿大华侨华人群体的人口特征进行系统梳理,进而剖析了该群体的人口特征演进以及加拿大华侨华人社会的结构变迁。研究发现,加拿大华侨华人群体在社会地位、经济条件、文化适应等方面虽取得长足进步,但其社会融入过程中所遭受的结构性障碍,就其本质而言,与早期加拿大华侨华人的经历并无显著差异,而取决于加拿大本国利益需求的"旋转门式"的移民政策是造成这种情况的深层原因。     

Toward a theory of the ethnic group: Pitfalls and challenges

E. K. Francis. Interethnic Relations: An Essay in Sociological Theory. New York: Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Inc., 1976. xx + 432 pp. Bibliography and index. $22.50.     

French jurisdictional supremacy in Gascony: one aspect of the ducal government's response

As a result of the 1259 treaty of Paris, the king of England resumed a feudal relationship with the French monarch, thus holding his duchy of Gascony as a fief. This meant that Capetian officials could exercise their master's jurisdictional authority in the duchy, in part because of the supreme appellate powers of the royal court, the Parlement of Paris. This they did with enthusiasm and skill, causing considerable disruption to English power in the duchy. Accepting the challenge, ducal officials devised a number of tactics to thwart the exercise of French jurisdiction in Gascony. These methods were altogether illegal or even criminal in nature, but the officials felt they were necessitated by the critical threat of Capetian authority to Plantagenet control of Gascony. Unfortunately, such tactics did little to alleviate their jurisdictional problems. Ducal authorities failed to create any consistent and systematic program for ending permanently Gascon judicial appeals to the French court, and they were hamstrung both theoretically and physically in the haphazard efforts they did make. Far from halting the advancement of Capetian jurisdictional authority in the duchy, the unlawful methods merely underscored the precarious nature of the English position there.     

On the Linkage Between the Demographic Processes and Economy of a Region: (with particular reference to Pskov Oblast)

A low rate of natural increase, deriving from a disrupted age-sex structure, and net out-migration combine to account for a steady depopulation of Pskov Oblast. The introduction of industries providing additional male employment is recommended in the two principal cities—Pskov and Velikiye Luki—to correct the present predominance of women in industrial towns. Several measures (modernization of the countryside, promotion of truck-produce farming around the major urban centers) are suggested to keep more young people in rural areas and thus correct the lop-sided age structure there. Economic decision-making is viewed as a key factor in improving the demographic situation of a region.     

Aberglasney: the theory,history and archaeology of a post-medieval landscape

Abstract

Printed and documentary sources, archaeological excavation, dendrochronology and geophysical survey are employed to investigate the history of Aberglasney, a small country house near Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire (SN 5815 2213). Traditions about its garden layout, parapet walkway, a gatehouse and a yew ‘tunnel’ are examined. Circa 1600, Bishop Anthony Rudd (1549–1614) probably built a ‘cwrt’ enclosure aligned north-south. The gatehouse belonged to this or a later house. In 1770 or later, the Dyer family rebuilt the house, probably redesigned and rewalled the entire estate layout, when an earlier farm building was converted into the parapet walkway and stock pens, in an area later known as the ‘cloistered court’. In Victorian times this feature, originally a farmyard, became a pleasure garden, part of a typical Georgian-Victorian complex including a kitchen garden, glasshouses, orchards and fishpond. A yew grove was established, most likely c. 1805, when the Philipps family began planting in a Picturesque style. Abandoned c. 1950, house and garden became dilapidated. The site is now the object of a radical development programme, involving inter alia the stabilization of all buildings fabric, and imposing 16th-/17th-century style formal gardens over the 18th-/19th-century kitchen garden and orchard.