Do Perceptions Match Reality? Comparing Latinos’ Perceived Views of State Immigration Policy Environments with Enacted Policies

This paper explores assumptions made and measurement approaches in the nuanced pathway between enacted state immigration policies and the outcomes they affect in Latino immigrant communities. Scholars across a variety of fields have found that contemporary state immigrant policymaking is associated with outcomes in immigrant communities including political engagement, mental and physical health, access to education, and labor opportunities. In this paper, we explore questions of how state immigration policies produce these and other outcomes. Much of this literature relies on the assumption that members of the immigrant communities are aware of the state policies being enacted, yet few quantitative studies of the effects of state immigration policy contain measures of both policy and of perception. We seek to determine the extent to which Latino immigrants are aware of state immigrant policymaking to help determine whether state immigration policies are a valid approach to measure perceptions of the immigration policy environment in Latino immigrant communities. Additionally, we explore alternative measures of immigration policy. Our findings are particularly relevant to policymakers and immigration scholars as the contemporary political environment has helped to fuel anti‐immigrant sentiments and rhetoric contributing to Latinos’ perceptions of the state immigrant policy environment.     

Walter Moyle's Machiavellianism,declared and otherwise,in An Essay upon the Constitution of the Roman Government

Walter Moyle's work, An Essay upon the Constitution of the Roman Government, is much more Machiavellian than it initially announces itself to be. Informed by James Harrington's and Niccolò Machiavelli's earlier commentaries on Rome, Moyle readily embraces that on which both of his predecessors agree—the desirability of a republic that seeks armed increase. Harrington, though, explicitly disagrees with Machiavelli's embrace of a tumultuous republic that seeks a return to its beginning through fostering fear. In contrast to Machiavelli, Harrington looks to economic and institutional arrangements that will render a republic so serene and stable that he claims immortality for it. Although initially Moyle forthrightly endorses Harrington's analysis, he ultimately relies on the harshest teachings of Machiavelli to maintain a republic, a reliance which finds him endorsing the distinctively Machiavellian directives to suspect, accuse, and punish its leaders in such a way as to return the republic to its beginnings. These teachings make Moyle's work a vessel for the transmission of a stern, aggressive republicanism. Even in this eventual enthusiastic embrace of Machiavelli's teachings, however, Moyle still displays some hesitation in citing him as the sole source for them as his attributions couple the Florentine's name inaccurately with other, more reputable republicans.     

Core and Periphery in the Evolving Russian Economy: Integration or Isolation of the Far East?

An American social scientist explores the relations between core and periphery in the post-Soviet economy, using the Russian Far East as a case study. His analysis draws on Western and Russian conceptual literature on economic peripheries, as well as on the Russian periodical press and recent interviews with officials in the Far East (conducted during research in Primorskiy Kray in January-February 1996). A concluding section outlines policy options for regional development, either in concert with Moscow or through an independent course of action. 52 references. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O10, P2, R58.     

Gift-giving and books in the letters of St Boniface and Lul

The Anglo-Saxon missionary and archbishop St Boniface (d.754) and Lul, his protégé and successor in the see of Mainz (d.768), left behind a rich collection of letters that has become an invaluable source in our understanding of Boniface's mission. This article examines the letters in order to elucidate the customs of gift-giving that existed between those who were involved in the mission, whether directly or as external supporters. It begins with a brief overview of anthropological models of gift-giving, followed by a discussion of the portrayal of gift-giving in Anglo-Saxon literature. Two features of the letters of Boniface and Lul are then examined — the giving of gifts and the giving of books — and a crucial distinction between them revealed. Although particular customs of gift-giving between the missionaries and their supporters were well established, and indeed bore some resemblance to ‘secular’ gift-giving customs depicted in Anglo-Saxon poetry, books, while exchanged frequently, were consistently excluded from the ritualised structures of gift-giving. A dual explanation for this phenomenon is proposed: first, that books were of greater practical importance to the mission than other forms of gifts; second, that their status as sacred texts rendered them unsuitable for inclusion within rituals that depended upon the giver emphatically belittling the material worth of their own gift.     

Soil chemical identification of ten thousand years of prehistoric human activity areas at the Munsungun Lake Thoroughfare,Maine

Soils on a Palaeo-Indian to historic sequence in one Maine locale are analysed for chemical enrichment. To guide excavation of four discrete sites up to 4000 m², samples are collected in grid patterns and analysed for pH, Mg, P and Ca. Concentrations of Mg point to probable hearths to define some centres of human activity on each site. These correlate well with anomalies determined independently by magnetometric survey. Excavation of anomalies provides evidence of hearths, culturally diagnostic artifacts, but also features resulting from tree-throw and drainage variation. The P and Ca results develop definition and delimitation of activity areas thus refining directions for further excavation. Since P and Ca concentrations result from substantial or sustained human occupation, they show promise for preexcavation differentiation of habitation sites from limited and specialized activity sites such as lithic chipping stations. Soil chemical analysis provides both a synchronic and diachronic preview of site perimeters, size and activity areas. The consistent site definition at the Munsungun Lake thoroughfare is useful for explaining patterns as well as locating them.