Rent,Real Estate,and Flood Mitigation in New Orleans East

This paper presents results from a study of environmental harm created in the collision of real estate speculation and the political process that governed extension of the urban frontier of New Orleans into its eastern wetlands. Near term concerns of rent‐seeking real estate capital and the contested politics of urban infrastructure expansion challenged a fragmented state charged with regulatory oversight and protection of investments in land and citizens. The paper engages theoretically the relative inattention of urban political ecology theory to rent as a way to theorize how capital flows through land, and argues for increased attention to the problem of land rent and the multiple scales of political engagement that manage ecological crisis immanent in the metabolism of nature and society under capitalism.     

'Something Happened': The Relevance of the Risk Society for Describing the Siting Process for a Municipal Landfill

This paper investigates reactions to a proposed municipal solid waste facility in Southern Ontario supposed to be a low-level, low probability risk using the risk society framework, developed independently by Beck (1992a, 1992b) and Giddens (1990, 1991). Residents often view risk from environmental hazards as high despite expert assurances that risks are low. The appeal of risk society as a general framework is that it connects quantitative risk assessment (QRA) and the social construction of risk (SCR) to show how individuals and social structures reflexively alter and are altered by conflicts over (actual/potential) technological hazards. The analysis involves 30 in-depth face-to-face interviews with residents in Caledon, Ontario, contextualized by interviews with proponent experts (n=4) from the government organization responsible for conducting the siting process. The risk society framework, although developed primarily to describe the effects of high-consequence global hazards, seems well suited to describing local level, low-consequence hazards. The siting process involved a series of fateful moments which upset people's security in particular ways of life. The proposed landfill and the process itself threatened the very nature of what people valued and expected from their community. However, this study raises a concern that the risk society played out at the local/regional level may exacerbate inequalities in the distribution of risks relative to benefits from technological environmental hazards. This stands in contrast with Beck's (1992a) notion that the risks from hazards are equitably distributed within the risk society.     

Variable Selection in Artefact Compositional Studies

In artefact compositional studies, the selection of variables to use in analysis is unavoidable. Given this ubiquity, surprisingly little attention has been paid to ways in which variables might be selected. After arguing the case for the importance of variable selection, two systematic approaches to making a choice, which have had little or no application in archaeometry, are discussed and illustrated. One, based on the use of principal components, is appropriate if structure in the data is not known. The other, based on the use of classification trees, is applicable when there are known or assumed groups in the data.     

Exploring Romano–British finds assemblages

This paper presents a synthesis of current approaches to the comparison of archaeological assemblages. It draws its data from Roman Britain but the methodology discussed is equally applicable to other periods and places. Different types of assemblages including those of small finds, broken vessels and animal bones are discussed, and the problems relating to quantification are considered. The different sorts of questions that may be asked of data of varying quality are examined, and it is shown that even 'poor quality' data can provide useful insights into past societies. It is argued that to explore the full richness of the data available, multivariate statistics are an invaluable tool and this is illustrated by exploration of two groups of assemblages using Correspondence Analysis. Finally, attitudes within the archaeological community which may prove a barrier to further advances are examined.     

Slipping through the cracks: museums and social inclusion in Australian cultural policy development 2007–2010

This article explores the actions taken by the Australian Government during the period of 2007–2010 in regard to its proposal to develop a new national cultural policy. Despite its stated commitment to the creation of opportunities for the re-articulation of existing publics and the formation of new ones, the newly elected federal government’s social inclusion and productivity policies did not, at any stage, seek to draw a positive or causal association between museums and social change. This was despite the museum sector’s numerous attempts to communicate its value in precisely these terms to government. It was also despite the precedents for this policy initiative that existed internationally, particularly in the UK. This article explores the actions taken by the Australian Government during the period of 2007–2010, the international context within which these occurred, and the reactions generated by the museum and collections sector in response to the events.