When nationalism beats populism: The secessionist movement in Texas

Six members of the Republican Party have presented and supported a House Bill in the Texas House of Representatives proposing a referendum to decide whether Texas should leave the United States. This initiative has been seen as a success by the Texas Nationalist Movement, who has been advocating for Texit for years. Applying frame analysis on an extended corpus of Texas nationalist sympathisers' statements, this article empirically explores the discourse of the Texas Nationalist Movement. The analysis contributes to recent literature on new nationalist movements and shows that Texas nationalism articulates its discourse around a homogeneous and exclusionary national conception based on the need to achieve independence as a solution to the country's problems.     

Measuring Regional Cohesion Effects of Large-scale Transport Infrastructure Investments: An Accessibility Approach

Transport infrastructure is considered one of the main policy instruments to achieve the cohesion goal, although the inclusion of cohesion effects in assessment methodologies is scarce and uneven. Although most cohesion studies are constrained to the analysis of regional disparities in economic indicators, this approach can be broadened to include other regional performance indicators. One of these indicators could be accessibility measures, from the point of view that accessibility, representing a competitive advantage of locations, constitutes a “desirable good” closely related to the welfare of each region. This paper suggests using changes in the spatial distribution of accessibility as a proxy to assess regional cohesion effects of transport infrastructure investments. However, as the conclusions taken depend heavily on the formulation of the accessibility measure, we recommend computing a set of accessibility indicators and analysing their results in a complementary way. The proposed methodology is tested by assessing regional cohesion effects of the large-scale road and rail transport infrastructure investments carried out in Spain in the period 1992–2004. The results obtained show that cohesion has improved for the road mode, while regional disparities have increased for the rail mode. This paper identifies the main factors driving this final cohesion effect and explores the strengths and weaknesses of the different accessibility indicators that were considered. The approach suggested in this paper has the potential to be applied in transport planning processes, and may eventually complement existing strategic assessment methodologies.     

Importing phenomenology: the early editorial life of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

This paper examines the reception of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, a philosophy quarterly which was founded in conjunction with the International Society of Phenomenology and for which Marvin Farber served as editor until his death in 1980. From its founding in 1940, Farber relied on the editorial support of many of Husserl's enthusiastic students who found themselves intellectual exiles, including Husserl's son. Farber's professional and personal interaction with Husserl's ardent followers reveals a dramatic story of former students who were ever vigilant about maintaining the core values of the Master's unique philosophy, and Farber's personal philosophical transformation from a publicist of Husserl's work to a guarded critic intent on avoiding the promotion of sectarianism.     

Resonant Materiality and Violent Remembering: Archaeology,Memory and Bombing

In this paper I outline the commemorative potential of a historical archaeology of aerial bombing. As an affective and challenging archaeology‐from‐below it offers glimpses of individuality and everyday life amidst the violence of warfare, inscribing shattered buildings and material culture as sites of memory. Firstly I examine the tropes and themes that link archaeology, memory studies and the history of bombing, both in popular imaginations and cultural representations. These include ruins, fragments, depth, wounding, and the contrast between bottom‐up and top‐down views of the world. I then develop these themes to highlight the tensions between historical and mnemonic narratives of aerial bombardment, the importance of a human centred approach to the commemoration of warfare, and the roles of oral history and archaeology in these processes. Finally I briefly discuss a case study of bombsite archaeology and suggest a valuable application for this technique in the discourses of memory and bombing in contemporary German society.     

A Property Rights Analysis of Urban Planning in Spain and UK

This study compares urban planning and land management in Spain and the UK. Its purpose is to identify key differences in the legal bases for these activities in the two countries and to comment on the way in which the institutions that deliver them allocate property rights between the state and private organizations and individuals. In particular, we analyse the respective approaches to allocating rights to compensation and betterment value associated with land development, commenting on the efficiency and equity of each system and, in Coasian tradition, the influence the assignment of property rights has on municipal government behaviour.     

Re-placing plainware: Production and distribution of domestic pottery,and the narration of the pre-colonial past in the Peruvian Andes

The location of domestic pottery production is central to archaeological narratives. Yet too often, unfounded assumptions are made about place of production, especially in relation to place(s) of distribution and use. Only rarely is this geography of production and distribution explored in detail and with perspective. Here, we investigate this problem in the context of the Peruvian Andes. We present the results of extensive ethnoarchaeological research on the manufacture of domestic vessels in over thirty villages with potters in Northern Peru. Drawing on the ethnographic concept of technical style, we identify three tendencies on the relationships between toolkits, manufacturing techniques, geographic units, and exchange. From these tendencies we develop two models of domestic pottery production and distribution: the local production model and the non-local production model, which are applied in analysis of archaeological materials. While this distinction is apparently simple, we demonstrate how the explicit or implicit use of each of these models has shaped some of the most important debates and issues in Andean archaeology. In sum, we explain how understandings of the manufacture, exchange, and use of plainware impacts narratives about the pre-colonial past.