Framing theory: towards a critical imagination in heritage studies

Heritage theory has developed piecemeal over the last 30?years, with little progress made in fully understanding the way the subject can or should be theorised. This paper identifies some of the main sources of theory in heritage, as well as the approaches and perspectives that have been formulated as a result. These are framed on the basis of their disciplinary origins and can be viewed as theories in, theories of and theories for heritage. As frames through which heritage can currently be examined they are still employed in relative isolation from each other and we suggest, therefore, a way by which they might be considered as complementary, rather than competing approaches in order to provide impetus for the development of a critical imagination in heritage studies.     

The morphogenesis of state highway networks in the United States

Despite the dominance of automobiles in the 20th century transport patterns of the U.S., the modern highway network actually emerged as a result of popular social and economic goals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These goals were based on improving rural mobility and living conditions, and were completely unrelated to automobile traffic. The desire to improve rural roads stimulated the creation of highway networks at new spatial scales, with consistent patterns among most states. These networks were later greatly expanded in size and adapted to carry motorized traffic between major cities, with the result that their patterns have been substantially altered from their original form.     

Explanation And Thought Experiments In History

Although interest in them is clearly growing, most professional historians do not accept thought experiments as appropriate tools. Advocates of the deliberate use of thought experiments in history argue that without counterfactuals, causal attributions in history do not make sense. Whereas such arguments play upon the meaning of causation in history, this article focuses on the reasoning processes by which historians arrive at causal explanations. First, we discuss the roles thought experiments play in arriving at explanations of both facts and contrasts. Then, we pinpoint the functions thought experiments fulfill in arriving at weighted explanations of contrasts.     

Conceptions of Space and Crime in the Punitive Neoliberal City

The entrenchment of neoliberalism in the United States has coincided with an unprecedented expansion of punishment practices that intensify social divisions rooted in class and race. We explore the political culture of this hyperpunitiveness through a discussion of two popularized explanations for urban crime: broken windows and situational crime prevention. These popular criminological theories help legitimate the deepening of social and spatial divisions. They also rest their precepts upon the foundation of a particular geographic imagination. We use this paper to reveal and critique the core assumptions about space upon which each of these theories critically relies. We suggest that each theory understands society–space interactions too simplistically to provide comprehensive insight into the dynamics of landscape construction and interpretation. We argue further that the logics and practices of broken windows and situational crime prevention possess significant elective affinities with social dynamics characteristic of neoliberalism. For these reasons, these popularized criminologies both reflect and reinforce the processes through which neoliberalism exacerbates social differences.     

Evidence of surgery in Ancient India: trepanation at Burzahom (Kashmir) over 4000 years ago

The article describes a neolithic skeleton with multiple‐trepanated skull found in Kashmir, the archaeological circumstances of the find, the dating, the background, the skeletal evidence, the details of the trepanation and possible affiliations of the Indus civilization. It speculates briefly about possible medical grounds for the surgery. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.