Semantic Structure and Perceived Environment

Most data-gathering tasks for eliciting information about the structure of spatial images tend to impose predetermined arbitrary dimensions or categories on the subjects' responses. This paper, in contrast, makes use of an unstructured task (word association) from which measures of semantic similarity between metropolitan areas in California are generated. The interpretation of the areal groupings derived from the analysis of these data by a clustering method reveals the importance of location and size of urban areas in cognitive organization. When the dimensions underlying perceived similarities between places are extracted by a factor analytic model, climatic and environmental dimensions are found to account for more variance in the word-association data than do social dimensions.     

Religion naturelle et scepticisme religieux

In theHistory of scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, Richard H. Popkin presents Edward Herbert of Cherbury’s theory of truth as a heavy and unsuccessful weapon against the religious scepticism of the seventeenth century. This paper claims to show that this heavy conceptual device is not the very heart of the Cherburian response to scepticism but precisely the theoretical foundation of a religious perspectivism which is immediately corrected by a minimal credo which is universal and stable. In doing so, Cherbury fulfills the religious pragmativism’s program of Sextus Empiricus for he does not try to find the truest religion but the best one, the one which allows men to live in peace, in a mutual respect of their beliefs.     

Roller derby's publicness: toward greater recognition of diverse genders and sexualities in the Bible Belt

While scholars have considered the various meanings of roller derby for participants and discussed how roller derby critiques and stabilizes gender and sexuality normativity, their investigation into how a larger public is impacted by roller derby's public performances has received less attention. Here, we begin to address this oversight. Employing both participant and spectator data, we examine facets of publicness in the discursive and material spatial practices associated with roller derby in the US Bible Belt, specifically Oklahoma. While some scholars doubt that there is much social impact from roller derby, we suggest that the specific spatial qualities in roller derby's public performances, in both the sporting and playful senses, contribute to a change in cultural norms – that of greater recognition of diverse genders and sexualities in this region. Such validation increases the social stability of individuals who do not neatly reside within heteronormativity.