Inventing human science

Inventing Human Science: Eighteenth Century Domains. Edited by Christopher Fox, Roy Porter, and Robert Wokler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) $45.00 and £24.00 cloth, xv + 357 pp.     

Thoughts on new approaches to combining the archaeological and historical records

For decades, archaeologists have looked for an appropriate means to integrate archaeological findings with the textual record. Often, in the past, the written word has been privileged over material remains. In this summary, which draws in part from the individual papers in this special issue, a new, more balanced approach that gives increased weight and greater independence to archaeological data is proposed. A series of implications and suggestions for current theoretical development in archaeology are advanced.     

Violence,Social Differentiation and the Self

The article considers aspects of violence in everyday life among the Tiwi of Melville and Bathurst Islands. It briefly compares the role of violence in bureaucratically and juridically mediated forms with self-help and social regulation in Aboriginal societies, focussing on the expressive or performative aspects of violence in everyday interaction. Myers' discussion of violence among the Pintubi posits a dialectical polarity of relatedness and differentiation, corresponding with the affective poles of compassion and anger. This is compared with Sansom's account of semi-ritualized forms of violence in Aboriginal fringe-camp life, where a point of commonality in Myers' and Sansom's approaches is found: this consists of the attunement of action, of violence, self-violence and destructiveness to the witnessing public. In Tiwi life too, conflict is dynamically shaped by actors' attempts to impinge upon, to seek to arouse and in some cases to manipulate, compassion or concern in the witnessing group as defence or as a form of moral attack. Open, dramatic ‘appealing’ violence, often in the form of a more or less controlled loss of self-control, seeks to parry indirect interpersonal tension and antagonism, to reassert or restore social distance and protect or privilege important relationships from intrusive demands. However, these violent appeals in rhetorical threat, in self-violence, destructiveness or sometimes in dramatic suicidal gestures also invariably indicate extreme personal difficulty displaced into open forms of confrontation. The article proposes that the generative moment of violence for social differentiation be sought in an examination of dynamic interrelationships between individual life-history, inner group processes and their articulation with external social forms.     

THE SHORT-RUN AND LONG-RUN FACTOR-MARKET CONSEQUENCES OF IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES*

ABSTRACT. This paper applies the production-theory approach to assess the impact on domestic wages and employment of immigration to the United States. Inputs are disaggregated between recent immigrants, non-recent immigrants, native workers, and capital. Census cross-sectional data for 1980 and for 123 metropolitan areas are used. Empirical estimates are reported for alternative functional forms with special attention devoted to required curvature conditions which have frequently been violated in previous work. Elasticity estimates are reported for alternative settings, including for the short run where we view domestic factor prices as given and the long run where we treat them as flexible.     

Modeling the Uncertainty of Slope and Aspect Estimates Derived from Spatial Databases

Estimates of slope and aspect are commonly made from digital elevation models (DEMs), and are subject to the uncertainty present in such models. We show that errors in slope and aspect depend on the spatial structure of DEM errors. We propose a general-purpose model of DEM errors in which a spatially auto-regressive random field is added as a disturbance term to elevations. In addition, we propose a general procedure for propagating such errors through GIS operations. In the absence of explicit information on the spatial structure of DEM errors, we demonstrate the potential utility of a worst-case analysis. A series of simulations are used to make general observations about the nature and severity of slope and aspect errors.     

Travel-Time Constraints on Destination-Choice Sets

The importance of travel-time constraints in spatial choice is widely recognized in the literature of geography and related disciplines, but little work has been done toward developing operational models of spatial choice wherein these constraints and their effects are made explicit. The purpose of the paper is to test the accuracy of predictions produced by a destination choice model that does not take explicit account of travel constraints under the assumption that observed choices are made from choice sets delineated by a constraint of maximum travel time. Observed choices are generated by simulation from a new random utility model consistent with the constrained nature of individual choice sets. Results show that the characteristics of constraints are a decisive factor in the accuracy of the unconstrained choice model. Choice probabilities of the constrained reality are predicted with a reasonably good accuracy in some instances, but predictions are less impressive, and even poor, in many others.     

An Angular Version of Spatial Correlations,with Exact Significance Tests

Spatial correlations are replaced by ordinary correlations by projecting the two-dimensional coordinates of a map onto a single axis making angle θ with the horizontal (east-west) axis. This calculation permits the use of exact test statistics. Moreover, the correlations can be plotted in polar coordinate form and the significance of the maximum correlation can be tested. The plot is a useful aid in assessing the reasonableness of the isotropy assumption.