Spatial Autocorrelation Statistics of Areal Prevalence Rates under High Uncertainty in Denominator Data

We propose a new estimator of spatial autocorrelation of areal incidence or prevalence rates in small areas, such as crime and health indicators, for correcting spatially heterogeneous sampling errors in denominator data. The approach is dubbed the heteroscedasticity‐consistent empirical Bayes (HC‐EB) method. As American Community Survey (ACS) data have been released to the public for small census geographies, small‐area estimates now form the demographic landscape of neighborhoods. Meanwhile, there is growing awareness of the diminished statistical validity of global and local Moran’s I when such small‐area estimates are used in denominator data. Using teen birth rates by census tracts in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, we present comparisons of conventional and new HC‐EB estimates of Global and Local Moran’s I statistics created on ACS data, along with estimates on ground truth values from the 2010 decennial census. Results show that the new adjustment method dramatically enhances the statistical validity of global and local spatial autocorrelation statistics.     

flowAMOEBA: Identifying Regions of Anomalous Spatial Interactions

This study aims at developing a data‐driven and bottom‐up spatial statistic method for identifying regions of anomalous spatial interactions (clusters of extremely high‐ or low‐value spatial flows), based on which it creates a spatial flow weights matrix. The method, dubbed flowAMOEBA, upgrades a multidirectional optimum ecotope‐based algorithm (AMOEBA) from areal data to spatial flow data through a proper spatial flow neighborhood definition. The method has the potential to dramatically change the way we study spatial interactions. First, it breaks the convention that spatial interaction data are always collected and modeled between spatial entities of the same granularity, as it delineates the OD region of anomalous spatial interactions, regardless of the size, shape, scale, or administrative level. Second, the method creates an empirical spatial flow weights matrix that can handle network autocorrelation embedded in spatial interaction modeling, thus improving related policy‐making or problem‐solving strategies. flowAMOEBA is tested and demonstrated on a synthetic data set as well as a county‐to‐county migration data set.     

Beyond Ideology: Epistemological Foundations of Vladimir Fock's approach to Quantum Theory

Vladimir Fock was a Soviet theoretical physicist who, from the 1930s, worked to prove that modern physics was compatible with the Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism. In 1957, he went to Copenhagen, and a dispute over the interpretation of quantum mechanics began with Niels Bohr. Fock later claimed that he had found points of convergence with his Danish colleague, most of them concerning issues of wording and recognition of the reality of the world independently of our mind. It led to a specific narrative among historians of physics on Fock and his interpretation of quantum mechanics: The Soviet physicist is often described as a member of the Copenhagen school that contributed to the rapprochement of the Soviet philosophy of physics with the ideas of complementarity in stripping away the positivism in its formulation. Our contribution aims to show that this ideological dimension was only one aspect of reality. Returning to the foundations of Fock's epistemology of physics, we argue that he relied on the principles of antireductionism and scientific realism to develop an interpretation of the theory that sought to overcome Bohr's approach and that the differences between the two men cannot be reduced to mere questions of formulation.     

Populations and Climatic Evolution in North Tropical Africa from the End of the Neolithic to the Dawn of the Modern Era

At the end of the Neolithic Era, during the third millennium BCE, there were fewer humid periods, and the sub-Saharan and Sahelian zones from the Atlantic to Lake Chad assumed their current geographical form. Since then, the climate has continued undergoing major variations. The succession of climatic episodes, humid or dry, is pointed out along with the episodes’ complex interactions. These variations are placed in parallel to cultural phases of evolution in archaeology and history. Climate-related events have always had heavy consequences on the peopling of this vast region, often subject to extreme natural conditions. The relative synchronism between the principal cultural trends from west to east across the Sahel seems to have often been subject to swings in the climate and the resulting environmental changes.     

Characters of ancient Mazdaism

Traditionally, Iranian studies recognize in the oldest‐known Iranian, and Mazdean, text the work of Zarathustra. At the same time, scholars seek, in these difficult and sometimes incomprehensible verses, the doctrine that the Mazdean religious tradition of the Sassanian period attributes to its legendary founder: the passage to monotheism and an eschatology founded on a dualist conception of the world. However, a strict study of the language of the Gâthâ, in the perspective opened up by Helmut Humbach, is not favorable to such an interpretation. The eschatological vocabulary proves illusory and, to a great extent the same is true of the eschatology. As for the Gâthic religious system, it is neither truly monotheistic nor truly polytheistic. To grasp its nature, it is necessary to describe all the nuances and to situate it in an historical perspective.     

The cultural practices of Europeans

Abstract: In recent years, there has been a rapid rise in “atypical”, precarious forms of employment in all European Union states, and the political significance of the issue of “employment in the cultural sector” has increased noticeably. There are several reasons for this. One is the change from a post-industrial economy to a cultural economy and a forced process of economisation of societal welfare-state fields such as health, education and culture. The “marketisation” of culture and the “culturalisation” of the market means that on the one hand “high” culture is becoming increasingly commercial and, on the other, cultural content is increasingly shaping commodity production. These processes run concurrently and are part of a general trend in post-modern society.

The article follows the thesis of a recently published EU study on job potential in the cultural sector [MKW Wirtschaftsforschung GmbH / Österreichische Kulturdokumentation. Internationales Archiv für Kulturanalysen et al., (2001). Exploitation and development of the job potential in the cultural sector in the age of digitalisation (Brussels: European Commission DG Employment and Social Affairs) (summary: http://www.kulturdokumentation.org/eversion/rec_proj/potential.html)] which identifies a new type of employer and/or employee—the “entrepreneurial individual” or “entrepreneurial cultural worker”—who no longer fits into previously typical patterns of full-time professions of the European welfare state system.

The former “cultural worker” has been transitioning into a “cultural entrepreneur” or—as others put it—into a “sole service supplier in the professional cultural field”. According to the historian Heinz Bude's argument, western European societies find themselves in a process of “transformation into flexible, digital capitalism, away from the Keynesian welfare state to a Schumpeterian performance state and a ‘variable geometry of individual incentives’”. What is developing here is the guiding concept of the “entrepreneurial individual”, i.e. individuals who do not follow prescribed standards but who (have to) try out their own combinations and assert themselves on the market and in society. In this context, the creative cultural sector is of broader interest for new labour market concepts and strategies. In addition to the general change, new technology is leading to the emergence of new job profiles in the creative cultural sector so that the image of artists and creators is changing fundamentally. The new creative workforce is meant to be young, multiskilled, flexible, psychologically resilient, independent, single and unattached to a particular location. The article stresses the argument that these new realities of work and labour have to be recognised more extensively in up-to-date labour market strategies and cultural policy concepts. Western societies have to learn to cope better with these new general working and living conditions which affect a continuously increasing number of cultural workers/entrepreneurs—people who have to make their living from micro-entrepreneurialism. The article argues that cultural and employment policies should find innovative ways to accommodate the ambivalent efforts and needs of cultural workers/entrepreneurs (without capital). In conclusion, it will point out that the knowledge-based society has also given birth to historically new forms of employment not yet represented in the traditional canon of the political representation system (political parties, interest groups, etc.). Cultural policy-makers should take this into account in thinking about adequate social security schemes for their clientele, and labour policy-makers should be more aware of the major employment potential of the cultural sector on the one hand and, on the other, of the often precarious working and living conditions currently prevailing in it.     

SOVIET POLICIES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF MOUNTAIN REGIONS (with particular reference to the Caucasus)

Mountain regions represent a substantial part of Soviet territory, a total of 652 million hectares, which is 29.5 percent of the total area, or 21 percent of the usable agricultural area (including livestock range), but only 3.8 percent of the arable land. Soviet policy toward mountain development has varied over time. At first, mountain areas were considered a symbol of backwardness, and were not allocated a role in the Soviet modernization program. In recent decades, attitudes have been changing, but solutions have differed. The author, focusing on the eastern portion of the Greater Caucasus, shows on the basis of the literature and personal observations how the policy in Dagestan and in Azerbaijan, by allocating lowland activities to mountain populations, differs from Georgian policy, which since 1976 has actively sought to foster a revival of mountain economies.