Changing spaces: the role of the internet in shaping Deaf geographies

While there is a burgeoning literature on the role of ICT in the creation of new forms of social networks, dubbed on-line communities, much less attention has been paid to the complex set of relationships which are emerging between some off-line communities and the internet, and in particular to some of the new spatialities that are emerging as a result of community-based ICT practices. This paper develops this work by focusing on the example of ‘the Deaf community’. In reflecting on the implications of the communication possibilities offered by the internet for the production of Deaf space we begin by outlining the history of development of the off-line Deaf community in the UK and by reflecting on the concept of ‘community’. The paper then goes on to explore how Deaf people are using the internet to communicate with each other and, in doing so, to reflect upon how the internet is contributing to the re-spatialisation and scaling-up of this community while also having other unanticipated effects on Deaf people's mobilities and the space of the Deaf club.     

Was James Madison Ever for the Bill of Rights?

Abstract

This article revisits the question whether James Madison believed the Bill of Rights improved the Constitution. In particular, it asks whether the evidence supports the argument that Madison was persuaded that bills of rights serve an important educative function in constitutional government. It concludes that the evidence does not support this argument and suggests that Madison did not believe that the Bill of Rights improved the Constitution.     

Spreading of Innovative Technical Traits and Cumulative Technical Evolution: Continuity or Discontinuity?

This paper questions the spreading of techniques considered as advantageous when measured in terms of energetic efficiency. A present-day case study, in which techniques do not spread, is used to highlight a transmission model that can be used to understand the spread of technical systems in terms of demic or cultural processes. The model is then applied to the spread of the potter’s wheel in the second and third millennium bc in the southern and northern Levant. Results show that both demic and cultural processes explain how the potter’s wheel became prevalent in the Levant. The selective forces are discussed by comparing the ceramic production contexts. We conclude that technical evolution is regulated by social mutations, i.e., major discontinuities.     

Towards World Heritage. International Origins of the Preservation Movement 1870–1930

This article examines the negotiations in the years 1945–7 between Soviet and Swedish diplomats over the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who was arrested by the Soviets in Budapest on 17 January 1945. As is clear from both Soviet and Swedish archival records, including the recently de-classified encrypted Soviet diplomatic cables, the nature of the communication about Wallenberg went through a number of shifts, dividing the years 1945–7 into three periods. Despite in-depth reviews of both the Soviet and Swedish Foreign Ministry archives, no instructions from the political leaderships of Sweden and the USSR explaining these shifts have been identified. Why is it that we can distinguish changing patterns of communication despite the absence of corresponding instructions from the leaders of the two states? This article argues that dynamics inherent to the diplomatic dialogue itself go a long way to explain the shifting communication patterns. In order to make the case viable as well as communicable, Soviet and Swedish diplomats, short of authoritative guidance, were bound to ascribe meaning and purpose to the behaviour of ‘the other’ on the basis of analogical reasoning founded on their experiences from parallel matters on the Soviet–Swedish agenda.     

E. H. Carr,Norman Angell,and Reassessing the Realist–Utopian Debate

While the realist argument presented by E. H. Carr in The Twenty Years’ Crisis has received much attention from scholars, recent scholarship has suggested that traditional interpretations of the work and the debate in which it figured have not accurately reflected the inter-war discourse. In this article, the author provides detail to support these claims through an examination of Carr's landmark work in comparison with prominent ‘utopian’ counterparts, primarily Norman Angell but also others such as Leonard Woolf and Arnold Toynbee. The conclusion of this article calls for increased emphasis on the works of internationalist writers of the inter-war period. It also echoes other scholars in calling for renewed focus on early twentieth-century internationalist thought and a critical reappraisal of Carr's landmark work through the prism of his policy recommendations and the critique he received during the original ‘great debate’.     

Deciphering Sedition in Sab

The colliding agendas of abolitionism, feminism, and nationalism that coexist within Avellaneda's Sab (1841) have encumbered a clear ideological interpretation of the novel. If recent scholarship has demonstrated that Sab functions more as a narrative of feminist liberation than slave emancipation, the critical inclination towards the feminist reading—albeit sound—has overshadowed a handful of seemingly anomalous moments in which the title character alludes to slave uprisings. After one of Sab's insurrectionary moments, the narrator even situates the protagonist's remarks, and the white characters' reaction to them, within the context of the prolonged conflicts that comprise the Haitian revolution (1789–1804). The violent language might cause fleeting discomfort or confusion for the white landowners; however, Sab's words do not bring about any disastrous effect. This study will posit that the coalescence of the incendiary speech and the references to the French colony provides Avellaneda with a stratagem that momentarily bolsters Sab's abolitionist capacity while leaving the feminist reading untouched.     

Evaluation of underwater surveying techniques

The paper discusses the application of a number of manual trilateration surveying systems, an acoustic surveying system and a photogrammetric system applied to a rigid test frame. Results and relative merits are compared and discussed.     

The application of microfossils in assessing the provenance of chalk used in the manufacture of Roman mosaics at Silchester

Microfossils recovered from chalk tesserae in mosaics from the Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum, modern Silchester, southern England, are used to suggest a provenance for the source-rock. The microfossils include foraminifera characteristic of late Cretaceous (Campanian) foraminiferal biozone BGS20 (quadrata macrofaunal biozone) and foraminiferal subzone BGS21i (basal mucronata macrofaunal biozone). Calcareous nannofossil assemblages from the same tesserae are poorly preserved, preventing precise age determination, but confirm an age of Santonian to Campanian. As indurated chalk beds of this age are not normally present in the stratigraphically higher chalks of southern England, it is probable that calcretised chalk, formed by secondary calcification beneath Palaeogene rock cover, was used to manufacture the tesserae. This suggestion is supported by a comparative analysis of chalk tesserae from the Norden Roman site in Dorset. Although the provenance of the chalk in some of the Silchester tesserae can be placed only within a broad geographical area of downland in southern England, others may have originated in the Dorchester–Swanage area, some 100 km to the southwest of Silchester, or the Portsdown area of southern Hampshire. None of the tesserae have been constructed from chalk found near Silchester.