Archaeologist as anthropologist: Much ado about something after all?

It has been said that “archaeology is anthropology or it is nothing.” And so archaeologists have become conversant in and contributors to cultural theory. Other archaeologists have undertaken ethnoarchaeological studies on material culture when ethnographers have not supplied the data needed. Yet archaeologists might undertake more traditional participant-observation fieldwork to help nuance the cultural questions we ask and to render our tales of the past more convincing, in particular, when we purport to speak of the sensuous and meaningful experience of the “prehistoric other.” This article discusses the venturing of one archaeologist in Madagascar tracking aspects of the classic problem of state origins across archaeology, oral history, ethnoarchaeology, and ethnography. This process of joining objective analysis to lived experience is perhaps the most proper task of anthropology, the one that distinguishes it from other social science…     

Beyond NIMBY

Using survey data, this study tests competing hypotheses about the nature of opposition to a hazardous waste incinerator. Using a multivariate model, we challenge some of the basic assumptions of the Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) label typically used to characterize opposition. We find little evidence for components of the NIMBY label such as concern about property values and aesthetics, but find instead that opposition is related primarily to trust in government, fear of health consequences, and other ideological or demographic factors. We conclude with a discussion urging facility proponents to gain a better understanding of the nature of opposition and of the complexities of public opinion.     

Repetition and Variability in Urban Travel

Most travel models and theories assume the existence of habitual behavior, yet few empirical studies have examined the question of how much repetition or variability characterizes daily travel. We first review the arguments for expecting both repetition and variability in urban travel-activity patterns and then conduct an empirical analysis of repetition and variability in travel over a five-week period. The results show that, whereas many behaviors that make up the daily pattern are highly repetitious (they occur with high frequency over the 35 days), the similarity between daily travel patterns on different days in an individual's longitudinal record is quite low. Even the day that is the most typical of the individual's travel is a poor indicator of that person's overall travel pattern. Moreover, we found that each person generates several archetypical daily patterns over 35 days, and this finding has important implications for data collection and modeling in studies of urban travel.     

HIGHER EDUCATION LEADERSHIP IN STATE LEGISLATURES

The distribution of higher education leadership in state legislatures is examined. It is based on questionnaire and interview information from 285 legislators who exercise influence on education policy in the fifty states, and one-third of whom give special attention to issues of higher education. These higher education leaders differ from education leaders generally in terms of their experience, their location within the legislature, and their effort and relationships. What explains higher education leadership as much as anything else, however, is the nature of the environment in which legislators find themselves. In focusing on eleven states, where higher education is of considerable salience, it is possible to discern how environment combines with other factors to produce such leadership.