Approaching selfhood

Often overlooked is the fact that postmodern theory brought to the fore a crisis in the humanities. The implied universalism of the current “iconic turn” in postmodern thinking is a blow to the traditional sciences grouped around national literatures and cultures. In the 1980's, postmodern practitioners in the United States began to assault the discursive practices of the mainstream under the banner of cultural studies. The current crisis in the humanities surfaced in the emancipation of the various studies from their traditional fields in the humanities. The German Studies practiced today in the United States for instance, has no counterpart in Germany's traditional departments of Deutsche Philologie. Whereas the icon in the United States has become an object of investigation for the various studies, it has not yet displaced the littera in Germany's literary sciences. However in the 1990's, the historical sciences in Germany responded to the challenge of the various studies by directing their attention not to cultural studies, but to cultural history, with its well-defined set of methodologies. But what kind of cultural history is it? Is it built on 19th century German foundations, or is it grafted to current North American notions of post-industrial culture? In this paper I show that the supposed opposition between cultural studies and cultural history is artificial. Through a close reading of Hayden White's extremist questioning of historical practice in Metahistory (1973), I demonstrate that there is no opposition between the icon and the littera in this recent radical critique of mainstream humanistic science. The vehement German reaction to his North American assault on European Kultur is based on a misunderstanding of White's premises. Rather than being constructed on a hodgepodge of postmodern approaches, I show that White's postmodern history is in fact conventionally grounded in 19th century Nietzschean thinking.     

FRUSTRATED SEXUALITY IN ROBERT KROETSCH'S THE STUDHORSE MAN

Robert Kroetsch's The Studhorse Man is not simply the “passionate and comic celebration of fertility–in man and beast” that the paperback cover promises. In fact, generative impulses are regularly misdirected or thwarted, and the course of true sex never does run smooth. From the beginning of the book (saved and seduced by Polly Cockburn) to the end (saved and seduced by Marie Eshpeter), Hazard Lepage, the studhorse man, is a man more laid against than laying, a man whose entanglements are more often an ordeal than an adventure. And even though the thirteen year engagement to the voluptuous Martha Proudfoot comes, finally, to its long-fantasied conclusion, that climax begins with Hazard “on ice”–ostensibly dead–and ends with Demeter, the “professionally” insane narrator of the novel, prompted to action, an action that entails Hazard's actual death. Furthermore, the studhorse man mismanages the affairs of his studhorse almost as pervasively as he mismanages his own. The only local practitioner of his trade, he still cannot find “one farm with a mare that wanted covering.” The very survival of the Lepage horse is at stake. Yet Hazard's attempts to achieve his chief objective are comically inept. For example, at one point, dickering for a necessary mare, Hazard mistakenly trades away his stallion. Yet Demeter, eighteen, inept, and certifiably insane, easily supplies Poseidon with suitable mares, and the oafish Eugene Utter sees how many more can be provided. But even here Hazard is thwarted. Poseidon becomes the “busiest creature in Alberta” not to produce more Lepage horses but to turn every available mare into a PMU (Pregnant Mare's Urine) producing machine.     

On the occurrence of the scimitar-toothed cat, Homotherium latidens (Carnivora; Felidae), at Kents Cavern,England

Teeth of Homotherium latidens recovered from late Pleistocene sediments, Kents Cavern, England have long been the source of controversy. H. latidens is conspicuously absent from other late Pleistocene cave deposits in Britain, and is widely thought to have been extirpated from the region during the isotope stage 10 glacial period. Here we present high spatial resolution analyses of fluorine and uranium uptake profiles in teeth of three species from the same cave. The H. latidens tooth is clearly distinguished from the unambiguously provenanced Late Pleistocene hyaena and Middle Pleistocene cave bear teeth. These results are consistent with the theory that the H. latidens teeth originated at an exogenous location, were probably transported to Kents Cavern as Palaeolithic trade goods, and were buried in Kents Cavern in Palaeolithic times.     

Site exploitation territories and topography: Two case studies from palaeolithic spain

Several methods of relating on-site and off-site data for developing and testing hypotheses about man-environment relationships and prehistoric subsistence economies have been devised since the original proposal for site-catchment analysis in 1970. We review the principles involved in these methods, and emphasize the importance of distinguishing clearly between Site Catchments (SCs) and Site Exploitation Territories (SETs). We propose that the distorting effects of variable topography have crucial importance in understanding the tactical reasons for using particular sites in regional exploitation strategies and demonstrate a simple technique for calculating this distortion. Two case studies from the Upper Palaeolithic of Spain show the potential of the technique. One focuses on the relationships between site clusters, the other explores the relationships between sites within site clusters.     

北京城市保障性住房居民的就医可达性研究——基于GIS网络分析方法

本文以北京市为例,采用GIS 网络分析方法,分析具有中低收入群体特征、居住在保障性住房居民通过公共交通和私家车方式,到达各类医疗设施的就医可达性。分析结果显示：从出行方式来看,采取私家车出行的就医可达性高于公共交通。从就医可达性的医院等级来看,三级医院的可达性明显低于社区医院。从就医可达性的空间分布来看,位于城市中心、北部和东部地区的保障性住房居民,其可达性相对较好;位于城市高速路沿线的保障性住房汽车出行可达性较高、但公共交通可达性相对较差。从就医可达性的时间上看,建设年代偏后的保障性住房就医可达性差。通过这些分析发现,居住在保障性住房、选择公共交通的保障性住房居民的就医出行更加不方便。     

The legacy of past urban waste disposal on local soils

Many attributes of present day soils can only be explained by reference to land management in the historic past. This is particularly well expressed in the plaggen soils which occur extensively on the north European plain. These deepened soils owe their dominant characteristics to the application from the 12th century of turf materials, often impregnated with dung. Similar deepening of soils can result from the disposal of urban waste. This paper discusses the results of soil research focused on a small Scottish town (Nairn). A soil survey revealed topsoils of over 1 m overlying fluvioglacial sands and gravels; such deepening is explained by the use of town waste on the burgh's arable lands from at least the 17th century up until the mid-19th century when an integrated sewerage system was installed. Micromorphological study of this deepened topsoil revealed the presence of many small black carbonaceous particles. Oxygen:carbon ratios were calculated from microprobe results as a means of confirming the carbonaceous nature of these particles. Soil phosphorus was primarily concentrated on the perimeter of these particles. The high quality of present day soils on the edge of the town is explained by the disposal of waste material, which included much carbonised material. This paper is the first to highlight the importance and potential of examining the gradation in soils from urban to rural contexts.     

Historic landscape management: a validation of quantitative soil thin-section analyses

The archaeological interpretation of past land management practices can be greatly enhanced through examination of soil thin sections. Features relating to manuring practice are among those key to interpreting agricultural practices. The sources and the processes leading to the distribution of these manure materials may further improve knowledge of the past landscape utilisation. The use of quantitative analyses to examine soil thin sections opens the possibility of considering these relationships between manured areas in greater detail and to extract more subtle spatial and temporal changes in past management. In this study the validation of this methodology has been tested with quantitative image analysis methods used to examine manure inputs to a well-documented historical landscape of Papa Stour, Shetland, where intensive manuring has been practised until the 1960s. By using both historic and ethnographic evidence to validate the image analysis protocol, differences in spatial and temporal distribution are examined for the practices of manuring with both fuel residues and with turf. The validation of the hypotheses expected from ethnographic and historical data that quantitative soils-based evidence allows the definition of variations in manuring strategies and provides a more secure basis from which to interpret manuring management strategies in archaeological landscapes.     

The Assessment of Land Resources: Achievements and New Challenges

It is surprising that despite all the pleas and policies regarding the development of sustainable land use systems, there is still considerable ignorance regarding the nature and significance of land resources. This paper traces the development and achievements of land evaluation during the 20th century, with particular reference to soils. The most active period was between 1950 and around 1980 with the development of soil and land capability surveys, methodological advances initiated with the FAO Framework for Land Evaluation, and regional land resource assessments. Thus there were considerable achievements in land evaluation by the early 1980s, and subsequently there have been important advances in the subject through the application of GIS, spatial analysis, modelling and fuzzy set algebra. Since the late 1990s there has been a phenomenal rise in interest in soil quality assessment. Considerable debate has focussed on definition, and methods of assessment and monitoring. The latter part of this paper discusses the major challenges to the development and application of land evaluation. The inadequacy of much soil survey data in terms of variables, quality, spatial coverage and scale is emphasised. Also, there is a continuing need to highlight the centrality of land resource issues in any attempt to develop sustainable land use systems.