WHO BENEFITS FROM KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE HEALTH OF UNDOCUMENTED MEXICANS?

This article discusses the legal context in which health research of undocumented Mexicans takes place. Two lines of inquiry are brought together: the national debate on undocumented immigration and the maturing research on the health of Mexican Americans. Because of the politicized nature of immigration status, “immigration” is ignored as an explanatory variable. Several potential outcomes are examined, such as “ghost” programming and increased public health risks.     

WHAT ATTRACTS KNOWLEDGE WORKERS? THE ROLE OF SPACE AND SOCIAL NETWORKS

The aim of this paper is to identify the determinants of the geographical mobility of skilled individuals, such as inventors, across European regions. Among a large number of variables, we focus on the role of social proximity between inventors’ communities. We use a control function approach to address the endogenous nature of networks, and zero‐inflated negative binomial models to accommodate our estimations to the count nature of the dependent variable and the high number of zeros it contains. Our results highlight the importance of physical proximity, job opportunities, social networks, as well as other relational variables in mediating this phenomenon.     

A FINE BALANCE? GEOGRAPHY AT THE MILLENNIUM

Recognizing that post-modernism (broadly defined) has had a significant impact upon contemporary geographical practice, this essay considers the claims of its proponents and seeks to weigh the implications of the postmodernist impulse for the subject as a whole. On balance, recent engagements with the ideas of a broad spectrum of important philosophers and critical theorists are seen to have broadened, enlivened, and in some respects enhanced human geography. The impress upon physical geography has been much less consequential. Yet many post-modernist claims must be met with circumspection. Embraced tout ensemble, they would seem to blinker understanding, limit practical engagement with the world, and imperil the foundations upon which important geographical work has been (and should continue to be) built. In human as well as physical geography, different scales of inquiry favour (even require) different modes of analysis, and a respectful understanding of different scholarly aims and means is essential if Geography is to remain robust well into the new millen nium. Étant donné que le postmodernisme (au sens large) a beaucoup influé sur les pratiques de la géographie contemporaine, cet essai étudie les affirmations de ses partisans et cherche àévaluer les implications du post-modernisme pour la discipline dans sa totalité. En fin de compte, l'utilisation des idées de toute une gamme de philosophes importants et de théoriciens du post-modernisme peut être perçue comme ayant élargi et à certains égards amélioré la géographie humaine. L'impact du postmodernisme sur la géographie physique a été beaucoup moins important. Et pourtant, on doit envisager avec beaucoup de prudence les prétentions des partisans du postmodernisme. Si l'on accepte toutes ces théories dans leur ensemble, on risque de mettre en cause notre compréhension du monde et de nuire aux fondements mêmes sur lesquels la recherche en géographie a été (et continuera àêtre) construite. En géographie humaine aussi bien qu'en géographie physique, l'échelle des recherches entreprises implique (et même nécessite) l'utilisation de différentes méthodes d'analyse. Une compréhension respectueuse des différents objectifs et méthodes des chercheurs en géographie est essentielle, si nous voulons que la géographie en tant que discipline maintienne sa vigueur au-delà du seuil du nouveau millénaire.     

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS: CANADIAN GEOGRAPHY IN A MULTILINGUAL WORLD: THE IMPLOSION OF RELEVANCE?

Global social, political, and economic change during the past quarter-century has been profound, particularly in major areas with languages different from those usually employed by Canadian geographers. Surveys by the author suggest that senior Canadian geography graduate students, however, are inadequately prepared to assimilate primary world sources of information, including the relevant research literatures (except those published in this country's two official languages), and that few geography departments any longer require competence in more than one language at any level of study. Nevertheless, geographers and their students could benefit in many ways from foreign language expertise. Suggestions are made whereby geography departments could reinforce their existing rigorous training programs with foreign linguistic and area competence.     

THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS? GENOMIC HISTORY AND THE RETURN OF RACE IN THE STUDY OF THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN

This article discusses the impact of genomic history, a subdiscipline that emerged in the study of the ancient Mediterranean in the 2010s. In 2014, scientists first published a method for extracting genetic material, which they christened aDNA (ancient DNA), from ancient human remains in hot climates. After a decade of research, genomic history is now poised to transform our understanding of Mediterranean premodernity, centering migration and conflict as the key mechanisms for cultural change. Despite years of critique, aDNA researchers have failed to seriously examine the bioessentialist assumptions implicit in their work—a failure that has led many to deploy language that is strikingly evocative of pre-World War II racialism. Even worse, some genomic historians continue to make troubling overtures toward the ethnonationalist Right, which has been ascendant across Europe and North America since the 2010s. This article traces the intellectual genealogy of genomic history from World War II to the present, examines recent attempts to answer criticism from the humanities and social sciences, and suggests paths for responsible use of aDNA in historical and prehistorical scholarship.     

CRISIS OF THE FISCAL CRISIS?

Book reviewed in this articles:
A Review of James O'Connor's The Fiscal Crisis of the State and its Urban Implications     

THE HOUSE OF THE JAGUAR: Can it survive?

This narrative discusses the past, present and precarious future of Na Bolom museum in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico – a house museum dedicated to the study, conservation and support of Chiapas' indigenous cultures, communities and their natural environment.     

IS THE MACROSCOPIC CLASSIFICATION OF FLINT USEFUL? A PETROARCHAEOLOGICAL ANALYSIS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF FLINT RAW MATERIALS FROM THE IBERIAN NEOLITHIC MINE OF CASA MONTERO*

Casa Montero is a mining complex located outside Madrid (Spain), dated from the Early Neolithic (c. 5400–5000 cal bc ). An area of some 4 ha has been investigated and some 4000 shafts recorded, of which 324 have been excavated. The characterization of its raw flint materials and the establishment of its diagnostic features are indispensable in the reconstruction of the distribution of the mine's products beyond the immediate site. This work reports the geological study of the mine's Miocene flint layers and their petrological characterization. Archaeological samples from the mine's shafts were classified according to macroscopic features and petrological characteristics.     

A HISTORY OF THE SPECIES?1

By rejecting the old divide between prehistory and history, the group of scholars behind Deep History opens a new window on the problem of the unity and diversity of human experience over the very long run. Their use of kinship metaphors suggests not only a link between modern society and the deep past, but also perhaps a way to imagine the common legacy of the human species. But what emerges from Deep History is hardly a sunny story about the distant origins of social justice and ecological harmony. The other central metaphor of the book—the fractal—uncovers the slow prelude to the Anthropocene. Rather than seeing a sharp break in the Industrial Revolution from an “organic” to a fossil fuel‐burning economy, these scholars stress the history of environmental destruction that has accompanied human expansion. My critical reading presents an alternative understanding of deep history as an arena for a new politics of species. Here a cornucopian understanding of human adaptation clashes with a new pessimism about the climatic fragility of Neolithic civilization.     

MOUSTERIAN MUSICIANSHIP? THE CASE OF THE DIVJE BABE I BONE

Summary.   The reputed Neanderthal 'flute' from the Slovenian site of Divje babe I has stimulated much interest and detailed research since the original publication of its discovery in 1997. In spite of nearly ten years' worth of analysis and discussion its status as an artefact has remained ambiguous; nevertheless it is still frequently cited as a 'flute'. This paper examines the literature and research regarding this object, and finds that much of the ambiguity regarding the object's status derives from the literature itself. It concludes that there is no need to invoke hominin agency in explaining the features of the bone.     

SPATIAL METAPHOR AND THE POLITICS OF EMPOWERMENT: MAPPING A PLACE FOR FEMINISM AND POSTMODERNISM IN GEOGRAPHY?*

Spatial language and constructs are deployed systematically in the writing of many contemporary feminists. Disempowerment is couched in negative spatial terms: as “displacement,” having space denied, or as a negative or non-space. Empowerment, on the other hand, is written as an appropriation of the spatial: creating new spaces, occupying existing spaces, or revalorizing negatively labeled spaces. Furthermore, the map emerges as a common trope in this writing. Rather than transparently communicating the totality of what exists, however, their maps become rhetorical guides to possible worlds. The spatial provides a textual tool with which many contemporary feminists contest existing power relations. Space is viewed as liberating, empowering, and political. Their use of the spatial contrasts with the apolitical (and, not inconsequentially, gendered) conceptualization of space in some postmodern writing. This divergent deployment of spatial textual devices in the writing of some contemporary feminists and that of some postmodernists opens up another window on the knotty nexus of feminist and postmodern thought in geography.