Trance and psychopathology

Vincent Crapanzano and Vivian Garrison, eds. Case Studies in Spirit Possession. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1977. xvi + 457pp. Figures, tables, notes, references, and index.     

The Muslim Settlement of Late Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine: Comparison with Jewish Settlement Patterns

In the late Ottoman and Mandatory periods, Palestine's rural landscape underwent a great transformation. This study examines how the Muslim population expanded beyond its traditional inhabitation in the highlands and settled the fluid inventory of marginal lands in the coastal plains and unpopulated valleys of Palestine. In settling these marginal landscapes their settlement dovetailed with Jewish settlement patterns. While most studies have emphasized the competitive aspect of this process, examining Zionist and Arab national claims, this research points to a different aspect of this new settlement—mainly how much the Jewish and Muslim settlement patterns mirrored one another and how they were part of similar physical processes and complemented one another. Relying on censuses, aerial photographs, and period maps, as well as other archival sources, this is the first systematic research to examine the full extent of new Muslim settlements in Palestine in the late Ottoman and Mandatory periods, and to draw parallels between this phenomenon and the settlement endeavors of the Zionists.     

Soft Transport Policies and Ground‐Level Ozone: An Evaluation of the “Clear the Air Challenge” in Salt Lake City

In recent years, communities have begun to implement both “soft” and mandatory policies designed to address worsening air quality. Voluntary or soft transportation policies have included air quality alert systems that encourage people not to drive on days when the air quality index is above a specified threshold and public education/action campaigns that focus on reducing automobile related travel. In this article, we evaluate the effectiveness of one such soft policy, the Clear the Air Challenge (CAC), in reducing ground‐level ozone during the Wasatch Front's summer ozone season. Using daily ozone data and color‐coded daily air quality designations from 2006 through 2012, we estimate a range of nonequivalent control group models. In only one of the models does the CAC generate a statistically significant but small reduction in ground‐level ozone. Future research should assess the full range of costs and benefits to the public associated with such soft transport policies.     

GLOBAL INTELLECTUAL HISTORY BEYOND HEGEL AND MARX

Recent years have seen the growing prominence of “global history” as a subject of research, especially in North America and Europe. However, there is no consensus on what the contours of the subject are, or what the appropriate research methods for it might be. Further, there are quite a few skeptics among historians with regard to this trend. The appearance of a volume on the subfield of “global intellectual history” is an occasion to reflect on all these issues, especially when the volume in question suggests that “the future of intellectual history as a discipline lies in this direction.” This review essay, while appreciative of the effort to lay out the contours of the field, as well as to point to possible future directions for research and reflection, is nevertheless somewhat critical of the actual execution of the project. It is found to be lacking in chronological depth, and also highly uneven in quality, as well as excessively centered on a few “great thinkers” such as Hegel and Marx. A greater attention to the centuries between 1500 and 1800, when a polycentric global regime of knowledge (however tenuous it proved) was established, would have been particularly helpful. Most important, there is the question of whether a history claiming to be “global,” as distinct from “universal,” should not pay closer attention to questions of space and geography.     

Integrating Technical Analysis With Deliberation in Regional Watershed Management Planning: Applying the National Research Council Approach

This paper suggests that applications of watershed management planning would benefit from a theoretical consideration of the policymaking process. A conceptual schema from the field of risk analysis proposes that policymaking be conceived of as a combination of two types of activities: analysis and deliberation. We argue that these concepts are relevant to watershed management planning and we illustrate how a process successfully might integrate both kinds of activities into an iterative, participatory process that is informed competently with relevant knowledge and that promotes learning.