HOW FAST IS THE POPULATION AGEING IN CHINA?

Using adjusted 2000 population census data, this paper conducts projections of China's population up to 2050. Three fertility and four mortality scenarios yield 12 sets of results. Even though fertility is below replacement, China's population will continue growing for many years. One of the notable trends is the rapid ageing of the population. By the end of 2050, one-fifth to one-third of China's population will be aged 65 and over. The demographic dividend is expected to continue in next 10 to 20 years depending on future fertility which, in turn, is determined by changes in China's one-child policy. The Chinese government should be aware of all possible situations of population change, and particularly population ageing in the first half of the century, and be well prepared for all possible challenges that may arise.     

THE TURNAROUND OF THE TURNAROUND? RURAL POPULATION CHANGE IN CANADA, 1976 TO 1986

This article represents an extension of an earlier paper on the rural population turnaround in Canada. It provides an updated analysis of rural growth rates for(1) two periods, 1976–81 and 1981–86, (2) provincially based regions, and (3) area types based on proximity to urban centres. Unlike the earlier study, it also provides a comprehensive comparison of rural-versus-urban rates of population change in a regional and area type framework and introduces relevant material on rates of natural increase and patterns of net migration. The two shorter time periods, less influenced by definitional problems in the census data, and the interpretation of rural trends against a backdrop of rural-versus-urban growth rates, allow for a more thorough investigation. The analysis reveals that in the period 1976–81, any rural population turnaround was at most a Quebec-specific phenomenon in Canada, while for the period 1981–86, an urban - or more specifically metropolitan - dominated growth scenario is dearly evident. This article is concluded by a discussion of research design issues, particularly as they relate to the identification of the relative contributions of the urban and rural sectors to population growth. Le présent article constitue le prolongement d'une pré-cédente étude concernant les mutations affectant la population rurale au Canada. II propose une mise à jour des taux de croissance rurale durant deux periodes: de 1976 à 1981 et de 1981 à 1986 par provinces et autres types de lieux situés a proximité des centres urbains. Contrairement a la precédente recherche, cet article fournit également une comparaison détaillée des taux de changement de la population rurale-versus-urbaine, dans un cadre à la fois régional et local. II présente aussi un matériel tout à fait pertinent en ce qui concerne les taux d'accroissement naturel et les modèles de migrations nettes. A partir des deux périodes les plus courtes, moins influencées par les problèmes de définition des données du recencement, l'interprétation des courants ruraux, avec en toile de fond, les taux de croissance rurale-versus-urbaine offre une recherche plus approfondie du phénoméne. L'analyse met I'accent sur le fait que, durant la période allant de 1976 à 1981, toute mutation de la population rurale était tout au plus au Canada un pheno-mène spécifiquement québécois, tandis que pour la période allant de 1981 à 1986, un scénario à dominante urbaine, plus spécifiquement métropolitaine, est claire-ment mis an évidence. En conclusion, cet article discute les résultats des modèles de recherche, plus particulière-ment lorsqu'ils sont en relation avec I'identification des contributions relatives des secteurs tant ruraux qu'urbains à la croissance de la population.     

NATIONAL AND REGIONAL POPULATION TRENDS IN THE USSR, 1979–89: PRELIMINARY RESULTS FROM THE 1989 CENSUS

This article investigates national, macroregional, and economic regional population trends in the USSR during the 1979–89 intercensal period based on preliminary results from the 1989 census. The national total population growth rate during 1979–89 was roughly similar to that of 1970–79. However, the urban growth and urbanization processes slowed, while the rate of rural population change increased due chiefly to reduced rural-urban migration. Regional variations in rates of total, urban, and rural population change generally resembled those of 1970–79. Central Asia continued to exhibit the most rapid overall growth, although Siberia experienced a resurgence.     

WHY DO RENTERS STAY IN OR LEAVE CERTAIN NEIGHBORHOODS? THE ROLE OF NEIGHBORHOOD CHARACTERISTICS,HOUSING TENURE TRANSITIONS,AND RACE

Given significant variation in population turnover and stability across neighborhoods, this study examines why renters stay in or leave certain neighborhoods. It is the first to analyze how neighborhood characteristics influence renters’ decisions to move within the neighborhood as well as how these decisions are interrelated with their housing tenure transitions and race. Results demonstrate that homeownership rates have a significant, positive association with the probability that renters stay and/or purchase homes in the current neighborhood. Both the tenure composition of the housing stock and higher neighborhood satisfaction appear to be central in understanding this association. Results also suggest that nonblack renters are more likely to leave neighborhoods that experience growth in the percentage of the black population, while blacks are more likely to stay and purchase homes within such neighborhoods.     

INSTRUMENTS OF CONVERSION? THE ROLE OF MEGALITHS IN THE MESOLITHIC/NEOLITHIC TRANSITION IN NORTHWEST EUROPE1

This paper discusses the general conditions which have given rise to megalithic construction techniques, and the specific circumstances under which megalithism became important in Neolithic Europe. It argues that the great elaboration of megalithic constructions in western and northern Europe must be related to the survival there of Mesolithic populations, and that monumentality was an essential element of the cultural rhetoric whereby these indigenous groups were converted to a Neolithic way of life.     

HOW WELL DID PAST UN POPULATION PROJECTIONS ANTICIPATE DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS IN SIX SOUTH-EAST ASIAN COUNTRIES?

This paper analyses the accuracy of the United Nations’ population projections since the late 1950s for six South-east Asian countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. The study uses available projected and estimated age-structured data as well as published assumptions on fertility and mortality trends. A decomposition of the total projection errors into base errors (wrong estimates of demographic conditions at the beginning of projection interval) and change errors (wrong assumptions about the trends) shows that the base errors have generally been decreasing over time presumably as a consequence of improving demographic monitoring systems. The change errors, however, do not seem to decline over time. This seems to be due to a number of country-specific cultural and political factors whose effect was not anticipated as well as to a lack of good theories with predictive power. These findings suggest the need to give more explicit attention to the treatment of uncertainty in future population projections.     

HISTORIOGRAPHY: A FIELD IN SEARCH OF A HISTORIAN?

Richard Kirkendall's collection of essays, The Organization of American Historians and the Writing and Teaching of American History, examines the history of the Organization of American Historians (OAH) from its founding to the present, using that history to illuminate how the writing of American history has changed over the last hundred years. The book provides coverage of all the major dimensions of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association's (MVHA) and the OAH's activities, ranging from the work of its scholarly publications, the Mississippi Historical Valley Review and the Journal of American History, to its role in promoting the teaching of American history. Overall, the essays in the volume tell a story of the organization's progress toward greater inclusion and democracy, falling prey to a Whig interpretation of historiography. In doing so, the book is part of a larger tendency in the way that historians have approached historiography, which in turn reflects their ambivalence about their relationship to the historical process. Thus, even as the very enterprise of historiography is premised on the recognition of how historians are themselves the products of the historical process, historians have revealed the limits to that recognition in their approach to the subject. This essay shows how deeply rooted this duality has been in the study of American historiography and illuminates some of its sources by placing Kirkendall's book in the context of how the MVHA and the OAH have treated historiography over the course of the organization's history.     

IS THE GENDER DIVISION OF LABOUR CHANGING IN JAPAN?

The paper examines potential changes in housework and employment among married couples in Japan. The data are from national surveys in 1994 and 2000 of persons aged 20–49. Wives’ housework hours decreased and the proportion of husbands doing any housework increased. A majority of wives are employed, many work full-time and husbands work long hours and many return home late in the evening. While wives do less housework if they are employed, husbands’ housework does not respond to their wives’ employment. Large gender differences persist, with wives’ employment associated with family constraints. In general, changes were the same across categories of the population, though three of five significant interactions with time involved wives’ education. A positive relationship between wives’ education and any housework by husbands becomes stronger over time. The results suggest gender inequality in housework may decrease in the future, with potential relevance to future marriage and fertility.     

HOW DO BUILDINGS MEAN? SOME ISSUES OF INTERPRETATION IN THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE1

2 Juan Pablo Bonta, Architecture and Its Interpretation: A Study of Expressive Systems in Architecture (London: Lund Humphries, 1979), 232.
—Juan Pablo Bonta

3 Quoted in Andrew Ballantyne, “The Pillar and the Fire,” in What is Architecture?, ed. Andrew Ballantyne (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 7.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein

     

IRONIC CORRELATIONS AND SCEPTICISM IN THE JOY STATEMENTS OF QOHELETH?

This is the second instalment of a two part study examining scepticism and ironic correlations in the joy statements of Qoheleth. In this article, the concept of irony is examined in relationship to Gattungen and scepticism in order to discern irony's literary effect. It provides a historical overview of the concept of irony in philosophical context - as well as looking at the role of context in interpreting irony - and whether or not irony is compatible with scepticism. The essential elements and definition of irony are then provided followed by a critical assessment of the above. The article then moves on to examine possible ironic interpretations of the joy statements illuminated by some ironic commentaries of Qoheleth. The article then runs the joy statements through a series of possible ironic Gattungen in order to interpret them followed by a critical assessment. Finally, the article draws some conclusions regarding ironic correlations and scepticism in the joy statements of Qoheleth.     

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.     

THE LOGIC OF GEOGRAPHICAL STUDY OF THE INTERACTIONS WITHIN THE POPULATION–ECONOMY–ENVIRONMENT SYSTEM

Block and matrix models are used to identify the complex system of interactions between man (and human activity) and the natural environment, to trace the chains of linkages (both forward and reverse) between them, and to define a logical sequence for investigating the geographical aspects of those interactions. The concepts “impact” and “consequence” are distinguished, and the relativity of meanings of these two notions is demonstrated. An approach to the classification of human impacts in terms of their effect on environmental components is suggested. The authors stress the need for investigating the chain reactions that may be triggered by outside influences both in the natural environment and in human activity. Some approaches to an evaluation of impacts and consequences are proposed, and the “subject” and “object” of such evaluations are distinguished.     

EXCEPTIONAL HISTORY? THE ORIGINS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE UNITED STATES1

This essay examines how and why historiography—defined to mean the study of the history of historical writing—first emerged as a legitimate subject of historical inquiry in the United States during the period from 1890 to the 1930s by focusing on the practice of historiography by three of the most influential American historiographers whose work spans this period: J. Franklin Jameson, John Spencer Bassett, and Harry Elmer Barnes. Whereas the development of historiography as a field of study signified a recognition that historians and historical writing are themselves products of the historical process, American historiographers in this period at the same time used historiography to further a scientific ideal of objectivity that was premised on the belief in the ability of historians to separate themselves from that process. Modern scholars (notably, Peter Novick) have attributed to scientific historians like Jameson and Bassett a simplistic and naive positivism; but the ability of these historiographers to recognize the subjective character of historical writing and yet affirm a belief in objectivity reveals that their understanding of historical truth was more complex than modern scholars have acknowledged. In turn, by questioning the belief that the historical profession was originally founded on a naïve faith in the ideal of objective truth, I demonstrate that New Historians like Barnes were more similar to their predecessors, the scientific historians, than they (or later scholars) acknowledged. Thus, rather than portraying the shift from scientific history to the New History as a linear trajectory of development from objectivity to a more relativist viewpoint, I argue that New Historians like Barnes at once expressed a greater recognition than his scientific predecessors of how historical writing was the product of its context, while still insisting on his commitment to an ideal of objectivity that divorced the historian from that context.     

ALL IN?

This review treats Mark Greif's remarkable inquiry into what he calls the crisis of man and man‐talk: the invocation to inquire into humanity that Greif traces out through various genres of writing (philosophy, journalism, literature, and literary criticism) through a succession of decades (1930s–1960s) within an exclusively North American US context. As seems suitable for this journal, the review focuses primarily on Greif's own standpoint and methods. In its first half, it identifies and ultimately questions Greif's decidedly anti‐hermeneutic stance. Greif cordons off his own discourse from those he treats, picking an approach that prevents his making their questions his own, despite the fact that many of his chosen texts raise issues pertaining to how history, especially intellectual history, is to be conducted. In the review's second half, two key instances are surveyed: Greif's discussions of Hannah Arendt and of Ralph Ellison.     

6. WHAT'S IN A CONCEPT? THE KINETIC EMPIRE OF THE COMANCHES

This essay revisits the main themes and arguments put forward in The Comanche Empire: indigenous agency; spatial reorientation in the writing of colonial histories; the composition of the Comanche empire and its impact on the history of North America. It also responds to a number of specific issues raised by the roundtable participants: differences and similarities between indigenous and Euro‐colonial power regimes; balancing of culture‐specific frameworks with broad‐gauge political economic analysis; linkages between indigenous agency and indigenous sovereignty in colonial encounters; the question of periodization in writing Native American and colonial histories. Finally, the essay points to new ways of understanding, conceptualizing, and comparing nonterritorial nomadic empires by introducing the concept of “kinetic empire,” which refers to a flexible imperial organization that revolves around a set of mobile activities and relies on selective nodal control of key resources.     

ABA-SAGA'S ACTIVITIES DURING THE REIGN OF ?ULGI IN THE UR Ⅲ DYNASTY

Aba-saga(Ab-ba-sa_6-ga) was a significant official in the Puzri?-Dagan organization during the Third Dynasty of Ur. Although his main administrative practices date to the reign of Amar-Suen, Aba-saga is also attested in texts dating to the reign of ?ulgi. As his father Nasa's auxiliary, Aba-saga played an important role in the Puzri?-Dagan organization during ?ulgi's second half of regnal years.