Mixed Messages: The Heterogeneity of Historical Discourse

If, as many historians and theorists now believe, narrative is the formproper to historical explanation, this raises the problem of the terms in which such narratives areto be evaluated. Without a clear account of evaluation, the status of historical knowledge (both initself and in all those social, political, and other contexts in which appeal to historical explanationis made) remains obscure. Beginning with the view, found in Hayden White and others, thathistorical narrative constitutes a meaning not reducible to the factual content it engages, thisessay argues that such meaning can arise only through a synthesis of cognitive and normativediscourses. Narrative combines "heterogeneous" language games in such a waythat neither appeal to "truth content" nor to "justice" suffices todecide the question of which of two competing historical explanations is, as a whole, superior.Examining in critical detail the opposed positions on this issue articulated by two recenttheorists—Frank Ankersmit ("narrative idealism") and David Carr("narrative realism")—the paper concludes that the debate between thosewho hold that historical narratives should be judged in essentially cognitive terms and those whohold that they should be judged in essentially political terms cannot be resolved and that aphilosophical view of historical narrative that is neither realist nor idealist needs to be developed.     

Intervening Opportunities, Competing Searchers, and the Intrametropolitan Flow of Male Youth Labor

This paper analyzes the determinants of the journey-to-work commuting patterns for male teenage workers within a single local labor market: the Oakland Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area. Controlling for the intervening opportunities and the intervening labor supply between a given origin and destination reduces the estimated negative effect of distance on the interzonal flow of labor by nearly 90 percent. Nonetheless, physical distance has a significant and substantial negative effect on intrametropolitan youth labor flows. Despite the high correlation between intervening opportunities and intervening competing workers, both spatial variables have sizable, and independent, effects on labor flows.     

Placing the View from Nowhere: Historical and Sociological Problems in the Location of Science

Over the past two decades broadly geographical sensibilities have become prominent in the academic study of science. An account is given of tensions in science studies between transcendentalist conceptions of truth and emerging localist perspectives on the making, meaning and evaluation of scientific knowledge. The efficient spread of scientific knowledge is not a phenomenon that argues against the applicability of geographical sensibilities towards science but actually calls for an even more vigorous project in the geography of knowledge.     

The White House and Congress on Child Care and Family Leave Policy: From Carter to Clinton

Over the last two decades four presidents produced a variety of family policy initiatives with mixed results. Carter issued his nine-point plan on the family and convened the first White House Conference on Families in American history. Reagan created the White House Working Group on the Family and issued Executive Order 12606, which established family impact statements. George Bush continued many of Reagan's policies and pushed family values to near the top of the political agenda by 1992, and Bill Clinton set forth his eight-point plan on the family and moved quickly to reverse many of the policies of the Reagan-Bush era. Discussed is the role of the White House and Congress in shaping two family policy initiatives in particular: The Child Care and Development Block Grant of 1990 and the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993.     

Palaeolithic archaeology and the evolution of mind

This paper reviews recent archaeological studies concerning the evolution of mind. It is structured around four themes: language, intelligence, symbolism, and social learning. It includes reference to recent work in other disciplines that is either having, or likely to have, considerable impact on archaeological thought. The evolution of mind is a highly contentious subject, plagued by problems of definition and lacking an explicit methodology. This paper argues that the two most positive trends of recent work have been greater attempts at interdisciplinary studies and the integration of the study of cognition with that of hominid lifestyles.     

Geoarchaeological investigations at the Topper and Big Pine Tree sites,Allendale County,South Carolina

The Topper and Big Pine Tree sites are located along the central Savannah River in South Carolina. Both sites contain significant Clovis horizons and the Topper site is reported to contain a pre-Clovis assemblage characterized by a smashed core and microlithic industry. The stratigraphic position of the early assemblage at Topper is indeed below Clovis and radiocarbon and luminescence ages support its pre-Clovis age. However, the human origin of the proposed artifacts has not been conclusively proven. The late Quaternary stratigraphic sequence developed for this segment of the Savannah River provides support for a regional pattern of river metamorphosis over the last 50,000 years in southeastern U.S. streams.     

Napoleon and Hitler

This essay discusses the question: is Napoleon Bonaparte in any significant sense the predecessor of Adolf Hitler? Is this simile a good heuristic device for bringing out hidden qualities or dimensions which we would not otherwise perceive in Napoleon? Or, at the end of the day, was Hannah Arendt right in explicitly repudiating the notion that Napoleon was comparable to Hitler? And the essay concludes that for a host of reasons—structure, politics, ideology, personality, posterity—she is correct. It argues that the simile should be withdrawn from serious conversation.