Defining a common ground for research: Psychological anthropology and education

Charles Harrington. Psychological Anthropology and Education: A Delineation of a Field of Inquiry. New York: AMS Press, 1979. xii + 232 pp. Index, annotated bibliography. $15.00.     

Old Turkic Oracle Books

Professor Wilhelm

When I began research on this topic some months ago, I had expected to find many obvious influences of the I Ching on the Turkic works. As you will see, the results were quite different; nonetheless, I hope you will find my short study interesting and enjoyable.     

The spatialisation of the digital games industry: lessons from Ireland

This article draws on the concept of spatialisation to better understand the development of a digital games industry on the periphery of mainland Europe, on the island of Ireland. Positioning digital games within the cultural and creative industries, we explore how global networks of production in this industry get territorialised, negotiated and shaped by local factors. Drawing upon an industry-wide survey in Ireland we found that employment has grown by 400% in the last decade but that this rate of employment growth and its concentration in large urban areas masks significant ruptures and shifts which more detailed spatial, occupational and social analysis reveals: in particular, how the state, multinational game companies, and physical and human capital interact to shape an industry which is strong in middleware, localisation and support but weak in content development. An understanding of global digital games production networks and of occupational patterns in this industry is, we believe, crucial for national and European cultural policies for the digital games industry and for the cultural and creative industries more generally.     

The recollection of times past: Memory and event in Huichol narrative

Huichol cosmology, in general with the intellectual productions of other mesoamerican groups, has been presented as an anarchic hetrogeneity of deities and folk heros whose deeds are executed in an indeterminate and constantly changing landscape.

It is argued that sacred narratives, far from being the productions of caprice, structure the relations between divine personages and events by providing a classificatory matrix which partitions the universe into moral spaces. The value of an event or the significance of a deity is given by its spatial position.

Furthermore this scheme is extended to incorporate pre‐conquest and post‐conquest epochs into the same moral configurations and thereby provide a paradigm on which inter ethnic relations in the area are predicated.

The vectors of this order of orders provide the ligaments on which the structure of events is apprehended and the referents of memory are dependent.     

Christian Democracy without Romance: The Perils of Religious Politics from a Public Choice Perspective

Christian Democracy is often championed as a romantic means of bringing ethical considerations for the common good into the daily life of politics. Public choice theory, on the other hand, reveals that the search for the common good is quixotic amidst divergent policy preferences within a nation. While there may be a handful of values that are accepted by nearly all citizens (e.g., prohibitions on murder), more mundane policy choices will likely promote differences of opinion. Given the often arbitrary nature of voting procedures, the ability of one faction to manipulate the vote choice, and the self-interested behavior of politicians to be re-elected, political parties will inevitably alienate some portion of the citizenry. Attaching Christianity to short-term political outcomes serves to undermine its long-term goal of promoting God's mission. Nonetheless, the Catholic concept of subsidiarity is congruent with many of the findings of public choice theory and offers a way for Christians to engage in public life without tainting themselves in the political partisan arena of political partisanship.     

Agroindustrial Soilscapes in the Caribbean: A Geochemical Perspective from Betty’s Hope,Antigua

ABSTRACT

This research examines the chemical impacts to soils caused by the industrialisation (mechanisation and mass production) of sugar and rum manufacturing in the Caribbean during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Soils and sediments excavated from Betty’s Hope sugar plantation (1674?1944) are chemically characterised by mild acid extraction and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectroscopy. These data are integrated with analyses of soil properties, including colour, texture, pH and organic matter, to examine activity patterns in areas associated with a large multi-use building dating to the period of industrialisation. Quantitative analysis of the data employs zero-order and partial linear correlation, multidimensional scaling, principal components analysis and spatial interpolation using semivariogram modelling and Kriging. The results reveal the locations of activity areas inside the building, which aids in understanding its role in sugar and rum production. The research also reveals evidence for soil contamination by heavy metals (lead and mercury), suggesting that plantation sites from this period may be polluted with industrial wastes. These findings have implications for activity reconstruction in the archaeological past as well as environmental and community health issues today.