Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt: criticisms on the development of a German messianic

A discussion of the influence of Martin Buber is not easily limited to the philosophical anthropology he espoused. Nor is the political thinking of Hannah Arendt easily removed from criticism of the philosophies (and -phers) that informed her. Both Buber and Arendt attacked the beastly shoulders of a misapplied messianism as it emerged in modern Germany. Hegel, Heidegger, Marx and to some degree Nietzsche would affect this misplacement, and Arendt and Buber for their part would enter into a shared critique that is often neglected, despite promising attempts in a comparative direction made by Ellis, Engel and Riker. In this essay, I make the case that the contributions of Buber and Arendt – their shared assessments of the viability of the public realm, the need for common responsibility and the recurrent decision to engage with otherness in practical terms – point to an innovative critique of the forcible abstraction of a more traditional messianic made by German views of history. In the midst of the crises identified as correlates of a misapplied messianic, the hope as Buber and Arendt see it lies in the capacity for reflective and courageous identification and education between human individuals as they live towards one another.     

Requiem for the Net Migrant

Despite recent research that has demonstrated the clear superiority of a multiregional perspective in measuring and projecting the dynamics of internal migration flows, many scholars continue to adopt the uniregional perspective that is forced to focus on net migrants, a nonexistent category of individuals. Net migration models are misspecified because the rates that they use confound changing migration propensities with changing population stocks. Moreover, they obscure regularities in age profiles of migration and thereby further misspecify the spatial dynamics generating observed settlement patterns. Thus, the use of the net migration rate as the dependent variable in explanatory models of migration can produce a misspecification of the fundamental relationships that are the subject of inquiry. This paper considers deficiencies of the net migration concept and illustrates them with numerical examples.     

Book reviews

AN AUSTRALIAN IN INDIA. By the Rt. Hon. R. G. Casey. 1947. (London: Hollis and Carter, p. 120.)

Arnold J. Toynbee: A STUDY OF HISTORY. Abridgment of Volumes I‐VI by D. C. Somervell, 1946. (Oxford University Press, pp. 617).

AUSTRALIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EVOLUTION OF PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT. By T. P. Fry, 1947. (University of Queensland Papers; Faculty of Law, Volume I, No. 1, pp. 21).

EDUCATION IN FASCIST ITALY. By L. Minio‐Paluello. 1946. (Oxford University Press, pp. xiv and 236).

THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION IN DEPENDENT TERRITORIES. (Journal of Negro Education. The Yearbook Number XV. Published for The Bureau of Educational Research, Howard University, by The Howard University Press, Howard University, ‘Washington 1, D.C.) 1946. pp. 263–578.

COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION BY EUROPEAN POWERS. A series of papers read at King's College, London, 14th November to 12th December, 1946; by Jose de Almada, Robert Godding, Lord Hailey, A. M. Joekes, and H. Laurentie, 1947. (Royal Institute of International Affairs, pp. xiii +96).

THE LOST WAR: A Japanese Reporter's Inside Story. By Masuo Kato. 1946. (New York: Knopf, pp. 264).

THE FOREIGN POLICY OF SOVIET RUSSIA: Volume I. 1929–36. By Max Beloff. 1947. (Oxford University Press, pp. xii +261 and map).     

Pursuing Shared Civic Purposes amidst Division and Diversity in Modern America

The severe political polarization that besets contemporary America cannot be successfully diminished unless Americans advance narratives of common identity, stories of peoplehood, in which most can see their aspirations and values expressed. America as an ongoing democratic project is one such narrative. Still better is the story told by the antislavery constitutionalists, including Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, who saw America as dedicated to securing basic rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, for all people, of all colors, everywhere.     

Logboats from Bohemia and Moravia,Czech Republic

More than 40 logboats are known from the Czech Republic, and at least 20 are preserved in repositories or regional museums (seven in Moravia, 13 in Bohemia). Two further vessels remain in situ. Many logboats are known from neighbouring countries, but until recently vessels from the Czech Republic have not attracted the same research interest. Only five Czech vessels (two from Bohemia and three from Moravia) have been dated by absolute methods. Several more have been assigned tentative dates on the basis of context or close similarity to other dated vessels. This article presents a summary of current evidence. © 2009 The Author     

A regional examination of surgery and fracture treatment in Iron Age and Roman Britain

The study macroscopically examined 270 sexed adults and 190 subadult individuals for evidence of ante mortem fractures and surgical practice in Dorset, during the Iron Age (5th century BC to 1st century AD) and Romano‐British period (1st century to the end of the 4th century AD), in order to understand medical treatment in both periods and determine the extent to which these practices changed post conquest (43 AD). As treatment during these periods is not well understood, a conservative approach to fracture analysis was employed, which attempted to minimise the influence of fracture type and location on results by excluding bones in which fracture deformities may only be corrected by surgery. The study also excluded fractures resulting from bone mineralisation diseases or neoplasms. Skeletal evidence for surgical treatment was identified using funerary, taphonomic and osteological criterion to determine when the surgery took place, and to establish that changes were not caused by post mortem activity. The analysis of fracture treatment demonstrated that in both periods, adult fractures were well set with few secondary changes; a result also influenced by the stable nature of the fracture types. No evidence for sex‐differences in treatment was observed. Evidence for surgery was identified in two Romano‐British individuals: an unsuccessful limb amputation, and an embryotomy procedure that was most likely carried out in an attempt to save the mother. This regional assessment of medical treatment has shown that in both periods, highly skilled practitioners were able to successfully treat a range of fractures and by doing so, minimised the patient's risk of impairment. The study also supplements the very limited archaeological evidence for medical practice and surgery in Iron Age and Roman Britain, and suggests that post conquest, surgical knowledge rapidly increased in association with wider socio‐cultural developments in education, pharmacology and sanitation. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cesium magnetometer surveys at a Pithouse Site near Silver City,New Mexico

The La Gila Encantada Site is located on an isolated ridge top north of Silver City, New Mexico in an area defined culturally as the Mimbres Mogollon region. The 180 m × 80 m (14400 m²) sized site was originally recorded as a dense scatter of ceramics, lithics, and ground stone along with a number of surface depressions that appear to represent pithouses. Cesium magnetometer surveys were conducted to identify hearths, pithouse boundaries, and activity areas outside of pithouses in support of archaeological investigations, and to test this instrument's ability to image these features. This paper presents a characterization of the magnetic signature of a pithouse as a magnetic high in the center caused by the central hearth, low magnetic variability along the floor of the house, and then increased magnetic variability at the pithouse boundary. This characterization was successfully confirmed for three pithouses using cesium magnetometery and archaeological excavation.     

ENCOUNTERING INDIGENEITY: RE-IMAGINING AND DECOLONIZING GEOGRAPHY

ABSTRACT. In an era of postcolonialism and postcolonization, Indigenous struggles continue. Within 'settler societies' issues of dispossession—particularly of lands—remain largely unresolved. As part of the discipline of geography's active movement away from its colonizing project, this introduction to this special edition of Geografiska Annaler B seeks to (re)focus a disciplinary lens, and (re)open a dialogue—and potential research trajectory - about 'indigenous geographies'. As the papers in this special issue demonstrate, new cultural geographies have begun a process of re-engagement with issues of indigeniety through careful, sensitive, inclusive, representative and emancipatory research projects.