Union Army veterans,all grown up

This article overviews the research opportunities made possible by a National Institute on Aging-funded program project, Early Indicators, Intergenerational Processes, and Aging. Data collection began almost three decades ago on 40,000 soldiers from the Union Army in the U.S. Civil War. The sample contains extensive demographic, economic, and medical data from childhood to death. In recent years, a large sample of African-American soldiers and an oversampling of soldiers from major U.S. cities have been added. Hundreds of historical maps containing public health data have been geocoded to place soldiers and their family members in a geospatial context. With newly granted funding, thousands of veterans will be linked to the demographic information available from the census and vital records of their children.     

Drinking the Fruits of Revolution: Common Land Privatisation and the Expansion of Viticulture in Languedoc,c.1789–1820

This article demonstrates the links between Revolutionary privatisation of village common land and an expansion of viticulture in the department of Gard, southern France. The Jacobin decree of 10 June 1793 authorised the partition of common land, but it was two laws that were passed in reaction to this decree that finally moved considerable amounts of common land into the private domain. Under the law of 9 Ventôse XII and the Royal Ordinance of 23 June 1819 much communal land was privatised in the Gard, through either sale or lease. Most of this land took the form of Mediterranean garrigue hillsides, which were ideal for viticulture. Specific evidence from the implementation of these laws shows that a significant amount of this newly privatised land was planted with grape vines. This scenario makes sense as viticulture and the wine market remained buoyant throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic decades.

Résumé:?Cet article démontre les liens entre la privatisation des communaux sous la révolution et l'expansion de la viticulture dans le département du Gard. Les décrets du 10 juin 1793 autorisaient les répartitions des communaux mais ce sont les deux lois suivantes qui finalisèrent cette redistribution des terres. Sous la loi du 9 Ventôse XII et l'ordonnance royale du 23 juin 1819 les communaux du Gard furent privatisés ou loués. Ces terres, principalement des collines de garrigue, étaient propre à la viticulture et furent plantées participant à la production nationale de cette période.     

Cultural identity and political responsibility

Abstract

The Cultural Industries Quarter (CIQ) in Sheffield was set up in 1981 as a local government initiative. At the time this was regarded as an extraordinary, either brave or foolish, use of public money. This paper argues that the development of the CIQ over 20 years has been adversely affected by early decisions made before cultural quarters were commonplace. Left-wing politics focusing on job creation and a climate of reliance of public funding encouraged the CIQ to develop according to a particularly narrow model of cultural regeneration. Later, a lack of leadership among the public funders discouraged diversification from this model, while elsewhere cultural quarters embraced a broader mix of social and economic activity, leaving the Sheffield experiment as something of a dinosaur. The paper seeks to analyse what mistakes were made, their effects, and what now can be done to update and enliven the Sheffield Quarter.     

Homeland Heroes: Migrants and Soldiers in the Neoliberal Era

This paper examines the dynamic relationship between neoliberalism and nationalism through the counterintuitive comparison of journeys travelled by US citizens as they enlist in the military and by unauthorized Central Americans as they migrate to the United States. We argue that, however different the context and content of their decisions and their lives, Central American migrants and US soldiers are both connected within a larger political economy. We complicate the idea of migrants and soldiers as purely rational economic actors, but we also reject the idea, imputed onto migrants and soldiers by neoliberal states, that they are naturally nationalistic actors. Migrants and soldiers embody a neoliberal subjectivity produced through processes of violence, capital accumulation and militarization. Yet, as we examine throughout this paper, their construction as homeland heroes within the national imaginary masks the ways their labor and their mobility serve the institutionalization of neoliberal statecraft.     

Committee Influence Over Controversial Policy: The Reproductive Policy Case

Debates about legislative committee power have been fueled with empirical examples depending too much on distributive policies. I argue that answers to questions about the nature of committee influence can be enhanced by focusing on nondistributive policies that evoke broad national attention. For years scholars have not systematically tested committee influence over nondistributive policy because they have asserted that these policies are designed by the parent chamber or party. By using a methodology that traces the origin of legislation and identifies key policy activists, I demonstrate that committee influence over nondistributive controversial policy is more pronounced than others have maintained