Why the Movies Chose Hollywood

In the early 1900s Hollywood became acknowledged as the world capital of the commercial movie industry. Several factors clearly explain why film makers came to prefer this district of Los Angeles. Compared to other communities of the period. Hollywood possessed a superior geographic situation, affording film directors an ideal climate and ready access to outstanding scenery, talent and ancillary businesses. Once established, the district rapidly realized incomparable economies of scale. Finally, World War I eliminated European competition and solidified Hollywood's preeminent position.     

Italian-American Yard Shrines

Yard shrines are a fairly common landscape feature for people of Roman Catholic background. This study focuses on the yard shrines of Italian-Americans in Kansas City, Missouri and Archbald, Pennsylvania, and the meaning behind such shrines. The yard shrines may vary in appearance, however, the leading icon is the Blessed Virgin. Data indicate the shrines belong to home owners of southern Italian descent and were erected as a display of faith/and in payment for prayers answered. There is, as well, a strong correlation between the existence of the yard shrines and the adjacency of older family members. Yard shrines may be a fast fading landscape feature.     

Material and cultural consumption in Cuba: new reference groups in the new millennium

Reference groups serve as markers for citizen-consumers to determine tastes and preferences about work and material and cultural consumption. These groups have evolved slowly in socialist Cuba, mostly during the post-Soviet era. This paper examines the symbolism, roles, and meanings of three such groups: the Cuban Diaspora, Cuban Gen-Yers or Millennials (survivors), and entrepreneurs. A combination of these groups is changing values about a new consumption taking hold across the island and offers insight into material and cultural consumption.     

On Ancient Chinese Vases

Abstract

Historic and place-name evidence suggests that a Roman road ran along the south-west flank of the Pennines from North Staffordshire to the Tame valley on the Lancashire–Yorkshire border. Place-names also suggest a series of camps or fort sites along the route. The hypothesis is supported by the context of a find of a coin of Augustus and by the probable remains of a camp rampart on Werneth Low at the entrance to Longdendale. It is proposed that the road was constructed for the pacification of Brigantia and afterwards was of little importance other than as a boundary which gave rise to the ‘lyme’ place-name elements found along the south-west Pennine edge.     

The Potential Relationship Between Archaeological Artifact Exposure and Surface Geomorphic Processes: Northeastern Peloponnese,Greece

Complex interactions between topography, near-surface geology, active tectonics, climate, and human activity shape a landscape, conditioning archaeological deposits and making sediment deposits from surface erosion important archives. There is a potential relationship between the intensity of geomorphic processes and surface artifact distribution. This study assesses the potential relationship between soil erosion by water and the spatial distribution of archaeological surface artifacts in the Inachos River watershed, Greece. The mountainous, semi-arid Mediterranean region is particularly vulnerable to soil loss. Soil erosion is quantified by applying the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation in a GIS framework. Estimates of soil loss vary spatially compared to surface artifact finds of the pedestrian survey of the Western Argolid Regional Project. A statistically significant relationship is identified between surface erosion rates and artifact density. Preferential topography for occupation suggests this is an associative rather than causative relationship. Knowledgeable interpretation of artifact distribution enables accurate reconstruction of human settlement history.     

The “new” social history and the anthropological history of modern Mexico

Tutino, John. From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico: Social Bases of Agrarian Violence 1750–1940. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. xvii + 425 pp. including appendices, bibliography, and index. $42.50 cloth.

Beezley, William H. Judas at the Jockey Club and Other Episodes of Porfirian Mexico. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987. ix + 181 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $19.95 cloth.     

Own-child estimates of U.S. white fertility, 1886–99

Abstract

The collapse of empires is exceedingly difficult to understand. The author examined the distribution of imperial lifetimes using a data set that spans more than three millennia and found that it conforms to a memoryless exponential distribution in which the rate of collapse of an empire is independent of its age. Comparing this distribution to similar lifetime distributions of other complex systems—specifically, biological species and corporate firms—the author explores the reasons behind their lifetime distributions and how this approach can yield insights into empires.     

Campaign Promises,Democratic Governance,and Environmental Policy in the U.S. Congress

One important criterion for assessing the quality of democratic governance is the extent to which the policy process effectively translates citizen preferences into collective choices. Several scholars have observed a discrepancy between citizen preferences for strong environmental protection and weak policies adopted in the United States, indicating that the United States may fall short on this criterion. We examine one possible mechanism contributing to this discrepancy—legislator defection from campaign promises. Our data indicate that legislators in the U.S. Congress routinely defect from their campaign promises in environmental protection, undermining the link between citizen preferences and policy choice. We also find that legislators are much more likely to defect from pro‐environmental campaign promises, which moves government policy toward less stringent environmental programs. Finally, the propensity of legislators to defect from their campaign promises is systematic, with defection affected by partisanship, constituency influence, the influence of the majority party, and the likely consequences of defection for policy choice. These findings contribute empirical evidence relevant to the “mandate theory” perspective on how citizen preferences are translated into collective choices through the policy process. These findings may also complement research in comparative politics concluding that legislatures selected through single member districts adopt less stringent environmental policies than do legislatures chosen via proportional representation in that the mechanism for this effect may go through legislator defection from campaign promises.