ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN THE NETHERLANDS: PRODUCTIVITY,UTILITY, AND SORTING*

ABSTRACT This paper identifies the impact of cultural diversity on local economies, by explaining spatial disparities in wages and housing prices across Dutch cities using unique individual panel data of homeowners during the period 1999 and 2008. We distinguish between the effects of spatial sorting based on individual heterogeneity, interactions‐based productivity effects, and consumer amenities while controlling for interactions between the labor and housing market. In line with previous literature, we find a positive effect of cultural diversity on average housing prices. After controlling for spatial sorting, the effect of cultural diversity on housing prices is negative. The negative impact of cultural diversity on local housing markets is likely driven by a causal effect between the presence of immigrants and neighborhood quality that outweighs a positive effect of immigrant‐induced diversity in consumption goods.     

Evangelical Church polity and the nuances of white flight: a case study from the Roseland and Englewood neighborhoods in Chicago

Present patterns of residential segregation have been proven to have antecedents in the so-called white flight of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Close scrutiny of this social phenomenon has yielded results that indicate complicated impetuses and call into question sweeping assumptions about white flight. A case study of seven congregations from a denomination called the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC) who left the Englewood and Roseland neighborhoods of Chicago during the juncture in question further reveals the dubious role of religious practices and arrangements in the out-migration of white evangelical Christians. By utilizing church histories, council minutes, and field interviews, it became readily apparent that the departure of the members of these congregations found sanction within the hierarchical apparatus (or lack thereof) of the church. The response of these CRC congregations exemplified how the political structures (congregational polity) and social networks of a particular denomination could allow for an almost seamless process of white flight.     

Under Pressure: A Laboratory Investigation into the Effects of Mechanical Loading on Charred Organic Matter in Archaeological Sites

The present publication investigates what happens to archaeological sites when they are built over. Focus is put on the degradation of charred organic materials by static loading. It is assumed that materials lose archaeological value if their fragments become too small to be recovered, or too distorted to be classified at species level. Several charred ecofacts of a few millimetres in size (wood fragments, hazelnut shells, and seeds) have been selected and subjected to individual particle strength tests. Assemblages of these particles have also been compressed one-dimensionally and scanned at several stages of testing using laboratory based X-ray microtomography. Microscopic damage by splitting or crushing is found to be limited at the macroscopic yield stress. It initiated at stresses less than 80 kPa for the weakest assemblages, and in all cases at stresses below 320 kPa. (80 kPa represents the load of a 6 m high sand embankment on soft soil that has half-settled underneath the groundwater table, while 320 kPa corresponds to stresses applied beneath the pile foundation level of high-rise buildings.) Sand seeded with charred particles has also been tested to illustrate the beneficial effect of embedment of charred particles in sand during static one dimensional loading.     

The Metamorphosis of Woman: Transmission of Knowledge and the Problems of Gender

This study investigates the perceived inequality of male and female education, focusing geographically on the lands of Loire and Rhine and distinguishing between: (a) the way knowledge was acquired; (b) the media in which it was set down; (c) the content of the knowledge; and (d) the way it was transmitted to others. Starting with Guibert of Nogent's characterisation of both his (lay) mother's and his (lay) uncle's religious formation as well as his own training as a cleric and an abbot (c. 1125), developments in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are inventoried and the findings are tested on an example from the late middle ages, Christine de Pizan.     

The Protohistoric ‘Quicklime Burials’ from the Balearic Islands: Cremation or Inhumation

Traditionally, the Balearic so‐called ‘quicklime burials’ of the Iron Age have been considered to be inhumations in quicklime. The general appearance of the bones, however, resembles more closely that of cremated bones. Laboratory tests reveal that the observed features of the bones from these burials, including cracks, thumbnail fractures and warping, cannot be explained by an inhumation in quicklime. The δ ¹³C value, Fourier transform infrared spectra, SF values and the low carbon content of the apatite moreover indicate a thermal manipulation of the bones. The ¹⁴C content is depleted with regard to the accepted archaeological age of the sample, which can best be explained by carbon exchange between bio‐apatite and fossil CO₂ released during the heating of limestone. This implies that the Balearic ‘quicklime burials’ must be interpreted as an elaborate cremation practice in presence of limestone. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.