Spatial-Temporal Spread of the AIDS Epidemic, 1982–1990: A Correlogram Analysis of Four Regions of the United States

We applied correlogram analysis to county-level AIDS data of four regions—the Northeast (Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania), California, Florida, and Louisiana—for the period 1982–1990 to characterize the spatial-temporal spread of the AIDS epidemic. Correlograms computed from yearly incidence rates differ substantially among these four regions, revealing regional differences in the spatial patterns and intensity of AIDS spread. A general trend of increasing spread to rural America, however, can still be detected. Contagious spread was predominant in the Northeast throughout the nine-year period, whereas California was dominated by hierarchical spread through time. The spatial-temporal changes of AIDS incidence patterns were most drastic in Florida, where the correlograms show hierarchical spread in the early years and then contagious spread in the later years. As a representative region for most other states in the United States, Louisiana has low spatial autocorrelation and no definite spatial pattern of spread. Grouping data into three-year periods for states with low yearly incidence rates such as Louisiana should help identify the dominant trends for these states. The correlogram results could provide useful insights into the specification of spatial models for AIDS forecasting.     

SPATIAL BARRIERS AND INFORMATION PROCESSING IN HOUSING MARKETS: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECTS OF THE CONNECTICUT RIVER ON HOUSING RETURNS

ABSTRACT. Relative to financial securities markets, information is a scarce commodity in real estate markets. If information diffuses quickly in real estate markets, then we can infer that telecommunications play an important role. On the other hand, spatial barriers such as rivers can slow down the assimilation of relevant information if face-to-face contacts are an important source of information. We examine whether and how the Connecticut River (along with bridges) alters the nature and strength of spatial diffusion of information on housing returns. We report strong evidence that the Connecticut River slows down the spatial diffusion of information and that its effects are consistent with face-to-face contact, as opposed to telecommunications.     

Migrant mothers,left-behind fathers: the negotiation of gender subjectivities in Indonesia and the Philippines

The distinct feminization of labour migration in Southeast Asia – particularly in the migration of breadwinning mothers as domestic and care workers in gender-segmented global labour markets – has altered care arrangements, gender roles and practices, as well as family relationships within the household significantly. Such changes were experienced by both the migrating women and other left-behind members of the family, particularly ‘substitute’ carers such as left-behind husbands. During the women’s absence from the home, householding strategies have to be reformulated when migrant women-as-mothers rewrite their roles (but often not their identities) through labour migration as productive workers who contribute to the well-being of their children via financial remittances and ‘long-distance mothering’, while left-behind fathers and/or other family members step up to assume some of the tasks vacated by the mother. Using both quantitative and qualitative interview material with returned migrants and left-behind household members in source communities in Indonesia and the Philippines experiencing considerable pressures from labour migration, this article explores how carework is redistributed in the migrant mother’s absence, and the ensuing implications on the gender roles of remaining family members, specifically left-behind fathers. It further examines how affected members of the household negotiate and respond to any changing gender ideologies brought about by the mother’s migration over time.     

Negotiating Green Space with Landed Interests: The Urban Political Ecology of Greenway in the Pearl River Delta,China

Land‐centred urbanisation has precipitated shortage of green space in Chinese cities. However, in the Pearl River Delta, an ambitious greenway system has recently managed to flourish. It is intriguing to ask how this has become possible. Informed by the perspective of urban political ecology, this paper finds that the greenway project in the Pearl River Delta represents a set of politically realistic endeavours to alleviate urban green space shortage by adapting to, rather than challenging, powerful landed interests. Three interlocking dimensions about land—municipal land quota, rural land use claims, and real estate development—have influenced why, where and how greenways have been created. Based on these findings, we argue that research on China's politics of urban sustainability necessarily needs to understand the country's land politics.     

Indonesian domestic workers and the (un)making of transnational livelihoods and provisional futures

Doreen Massey (2005. For Space. London: Sage.) argued that space and time should not be reduced to a bounded locality of the ‘here and now’ and instead proposed re-imagining ‘space as simultaneity of stories-so-far’. We build on her argument to suggest that an appreciation of migrant aspirations and future trajectories require us to go beyond simultaneous ‘stories-so-far’ but also consider ‘stories-to-come’ which may build upon, divert from, or even unmake the ‘stories-so-far’. We apply these ideas to our study (based on a questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews) of the transnational journeys traced by Indonesian domestic workers employed in Singaporean middle-class homes. We argue that socially and culturally specific notions of risk can work to propel and sustain migration into retrogressive occupations like domestic work, as well as disrupt dominant narratives around migrants as strategic actors, necessarily in control of their trajectories and driven by their migration plans. The calculus of risk-taking and aspiration on which transnational livelihoods are predicated is one that takes into account both situatedness in and connectedness across different places (in short simultaneous ‘stories-so-far’). At the same time, future ‘stories-to-come’ may entail both subtle shifts and constant (re)negotiations that propel individual life stories unto different pathways.     

Variability in cementum deposition in springbok from the South African Cape

Over the past two decades, cementum increment analysis has played an important role in determining the season of death of ungulates at archaeological sites in many parts of the world, but its potential to address questions of seasonality in South African prehistory has remained largely unexplored. The ability to determine the seasonality of hunting practices would prove an important asset to understanding the foraging strategies and mobility patterns of Middle and Later Stone Age people in this region. A sample of springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis) of known date-of-death was collected from the South African Cape, a region across which three different rainfall regimes are represented. This study documents a very general correspondence between rainfall patterns and cementum development in springbok but also a level of variability that exceeds that observed by studies in other regions. In two sub-samples in which the sex of all individuals is known, cementum deposition among females is more strongly correlated with season of death than it is among males. This difference may reflect the social organization of springbok. The findings for springbok highlight the complexity of applying cementum increment analysis to archaeological studies not only on the Cape but also in regions of similar climatic variability.