Long-Term Settlement History and the Emergence of Towns in the Zuni Area

2004 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 432-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith W. Kintigh ◽  
Donna M. Glowacki ◽  
Deborah L. Huntley

From a regional perspective, the late thirteenth-century aggregation of village populations into large towns in the northern Southwest appears to be a brief and dramatic episode of social reorganization. That it is apparent across such a range of cultural and ecological circumstances suggests that a regional perspective will be needed to understand why it occurred. However, if we are to understand how it occurred—the social processes involved in the aggregation of populations into large towns—a high resolution, long-term view of the settlement history of particular localities provides a necessary complement to the regional view. We present a detailed examination of the development of one town in the American Southwest, the large, prehistoric Zuni town of Heshot uła. Without the long-term demographic reconstruction made possible by a fine-grained seriation and full-coverage survey, we would have seen this key transition as much more rapid and much less closely tied to the local situation than it now appears to be. Although this pueblo was built about A.D. 1275, we argue that its appearance was, at once, the culmination of demographic processes operating over at least 150 years, and the outcome of two more rapid, qualitative organizational transformations separated by a century.

Author(s):  
Michael Moehler

This book develops a novel multilevel social contract theory that, in contrast to existing theories in the liberal tradition, does not merely assume a restricted form of reasonable moral pluralism, but is tailored to the conditions of deeply morally pluralistic societies that may be populated by liberal moral agents, nonliberal moral agents, and, according to the traditional understanding of morality, nonmoral agents alike. To develop this theory, the book draws on the history of the social contract tradition, especially the work of Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Rawls, and Gauthier, as well as on the work of some of the critics of this tradition, such as Sen and Gaus. The two-level contractarian theory holds that morality in its best contractarian version for the conditions of deeply morally pluralistic societies entails Humean, Hobbesian, and Kantian moral features. The theory defines the minimal behavioral restrictions that are necessary to ensure, compared to violent conflict resolution, mutually beneficial peaceful long-term cooperation in deeply morally pluralistic societies. The theory minimizes the problem of compliance by maximally respecting the interests of all members of society. Despite its ideal nature, the theory is, in principle, applicable to the real world and, for the conditions described, most promising for securing mutually beneficial peaceful long-term cooperation in a world in which a fully just society, due to moral diversity, is unattainable. If Rawls’ intention was to carry the traditional social contract argument to a higher level of abstraction, then the two-level contractarian theory brings it back down to earth.


Author(s):  
DIANE E. DAVIS

What constitutes modern Mexico? Is there a clear distinction between the historic and modern Mexico City? And if there are, does this distinctions hold up throughout the twentieth century, when what is apparent is a mix of legacies coexisting overtime? This chapter discusses the semiotics of history and modernity. It discusses the struggle of the Mexico City to find its own image including its struggle to preserve historic buildings amidst the differing political alliances that either promote change or preserve the past. However, past is not a single entity, hence if the preservation of the rich history of Mexico is pursued, the question arises as to what periods of history represented in the city are to be favoured in its future development. In this chapter, the focus is on the paradoxes of the Torre Bicentenario and on the pressures to preserve Mexico’s past, the ways they have been juxtaposed against the plans for its future and how the balance of these views has shifted over time. It determines the key actors and the institutions who have embraced history as opposed to progress, identifies the set of forces that dominated in the city’s twentieth-century history, and assesses the long-term implications of the shifting balance for the social, spatial and built environmental character of the city. The chapter ends with a discussion on the current role played by the cultural and historical authorities in determining the fate of the city.


Author(s):  
Christopher Hamlin

There are many precedents for long-term research in the history of science. Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program’s current identity reflects significant change—intended and accidental, both consensual and conflictual—from research concerns that were prevalent in the 1980s. LTER program has pioneered modes of research organization and professional norms that are increasingly prominent in many areas of research and that belong to a significant transformation in the social relations of scientific research. The essays in this volume explore the impact of the LTER program, a generation after its founding, on both the practice of ecological science and the careers of scientists. The authors have applied the agenda of long- term scrutiny to their own careers as LTER researchers. They have recognized the LTER program as distinct, even perhaps unique, both in the ways that it creates knowledge and in the ways that it shapes careers. They have reflected on how they have taught (and were taught) in LTER settings, on how they interact with one another and with the public, and on how research in the LTER program has affected them “as persons.” A rationale for this volume is LTER’s distinctiveness. In many of the chapters, and in other general treatments of the LTER program, beginning with Callahan (1984), one finds a tone of defensiveness. Sometimes the concerns are explicit: authors (e.g., Stafford, Knapp, Lugo, Morris; Chapters 5, 22, 25, 33, respectively) bemoan colleagues who dismiss LTER as mere monitoring instead of serious science or who resent LTER’s independent funding stream. But more broadly, there is concern that various groups, ranging from other bioscientists to the public at large, may not appreciate the importance of long-term, site-specific environmental research. Accordingly, my hope here is to put LTER into several broader contexts. I do so in three ways. First, to mainstream LTER within the history of science, I show that the LTER program is not a new and odd way of doing science but rather exemplifies research agendas that have been recognized at least since the seventeenth century in the biosciences and beyond.


2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 806-817
Author(s):  
Doris van der Smissen ◽  
Margaret A Steenbakker ◽  
Martin J M Hoondert ◽  
Menno M van Zaanen

Abstract Although music is an important part of cremation rituals, there is hardly any research regarding music and cremations. This lack of research has inspired the authors to conduct a long-term research project, focusing on musical and linguistic aspects of music played during cremations. This article presents the analysis of a playlist consisting of twenty-five sets of music, each consisting of three tracks, used in a crematorium in the south of The Netherlands from 1986 onward. The main objective is to identify the differences and similarities of the twenty-five sets of musical tracks regarding content and musical properties. Consequently, we aim to provide insight in the history of (music played during) cremation rituals in The Netherlands. To analyze the musical properties of the sets, the authors use both a qualitative approach (close reading and musical analysis) and a computational analysis approach. The article demonstrates that a combination of a close reading and musical analysis and a computational analysis is necessary to explain the differences in properties of the sets. The presented multi-method approach may allow for comparisons against musical preferences in the context of current cremations, which makes it possible to trace the development of music and cremation rituals.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 333-357
Author(s):  
Manuela Caballero ◽  
Artemio Baigorri

This work poses difficulties in the use of the generation concept as a social research instrument, due to its complex and multidimensional nature. A complexity by which is not a concept widely used in a current Sociology that focuses more on the mathematisation. But some social processes cannot be reduced to algorithms. For the theoretical review we have used contributions from Sociology, Philosophy and History, because it is of a transversal disciplinary nature, and we have applied it to the identification of Spanish generations in the 20th century. Inspired by Ortega’s theses and Strauss and Howe empirical development implemented for American society, the resulting model presents six generations with different collective identities that reflect the social changes in the history of Spain during the last century. A model that, after being tested in sectorial investigations, may constitute a useful new tool for the analysis of social change.


Slavic Review ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 558-565
Author(s):  
William G. Wagner

A forum on Boris Mironov's Russian and English editions of The Social History of Imperial Russia, 1700-1917 (2000) offers the comments of four scholars on different aspects of Mironov's work. David L. Ransel introduces the forum with a consideration of whether Russian and western historical scholarship has been or should be converging, and he reviews the Russian-language response to Mironov's book. William G. Wagner discusses Mironov's key conclusions: that the imperial period was marked by the development of a more individualistic personality, the democratic nuclear family, civil society, and a state order based on the rule of law. He questions, however, the validity of the modernization paradigm as an adequate tool for analyzing these developments. Willard Sunderland comments on the use of the concept of empire in Mironov's book, calling attention to the assertion that imperial Russia was a “normal” European state and that it was not a “true colonial state.” The focus of the book, he argues, remains Russian society within the space of the empire, not the society of the empire as a whole. Steven L. Hoch considers Mironov's chapter on demographic processes, criticizing the use of demographic theory and its application to problems such as fertility and mortality. He also argues that Mironov accepts too uncritically the utility of the statistical data at hand. Boris Mironov responds to Wagnar, Sunderland, and Hoch in turn.


1984 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juris Dreifelds

For most North Americans demography is an esoteric subject more often tied to marketing than to social and political changes. In Latvia, as in most of Eastern Europe and the USSR, demography has long been placed on the forefront of public attention. This wave of attention in the case of Latvia is not a fad of short duration which will be readily displaced by other popular topics. On the contrary, demography has had, is having and will have a tremendous impact on a very broad range of policies and on the long term survival of the Latvian nation. Thus, in order to understand the social and ethnic tensions, the labour squeeze, and the welfare burden of Latvia, it is necessary to understand the multifaceted demographic processes: the real matrix of the political and social environment. This paper reviews the pivotal demographic role of the First and Second World Wars and analyzes population size, sex balance, age structure, urban-rural residence, nuptiality, birth and death rates, migration patterns and ethnic balance.


1995 ◽  
Vol 40 (S3) ◽  
pp. 51-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernhard Ebbinghaus

Prophecies of doom for both working-class party and labor unions have gained popularity in the Western industrial democracies over the last two decades. The “old” Siamese twins, working-class party and labor unions, have a century-long history of their combined struggle to achieve political and industrial citizenship rights for the working class. Both forms of interest representation are seen as facing new challenges if not a crisis due to internal and external changes of both long-term and recent nature. However, despite these prophecies political parties and union movemehts have been differently affected and have responded in dissimilar ways across Western Europe. The Siamese twins, party and unions, as social institutions, their embeddedness in the social structure, and their linkages, were molded at an earlier time with long-term consequences. Hence, we cannot grasp today's political unionism, party-union relations and organized labor's capacity for change, if we do not understand the social and political conditions under which the organization of labor interests became institutionalized. An understanding of the origins and causes of union diversity helps us to view the variations in union responses to current challenges.


Author(s):  
D Zhukov ◽  
◽  
V. Kanishchev ◽  
S. Lyamin

The article is devoted to the heuristic possibilities of fractal simulation and cluster analysis in historical research. The authors presented examples of the application of these research tools to the study of historical demographic processes (XIX–XX centuries), to the history of the frontier (XVII – XIX centuries). The authors concluded that the mentioned toolkit is an effective means of typing objects.


Author(s):  
Felicitas Becker

In parallel with mosques, centres of Quranic education, known locally as madrasa, sprang up in the countryside between c.1920 and 1960. They were small, poor, and often transient; their one defining feature was the presence of a mwalimu, a teacher. Comparison of the parallel development of madrasa and mission schools makes clear that the main reason for this divergence was not resistance to Christian elements in the missionaries' syllabus, but to the perceived interference of mission teachers with the authority of students' families and with local religious practices. By contrast, madrasa tolerated these practices and were more closely integrated into the social networks of parents. The spread of madrasa and of mission schools involves three subtle long-term processes. Topics covered include educational practice and the status of knowledge, madrasa and mission schools, unyago, colonial politics and local networks, schools and madrasa as local institutions, madrasa as sites of encounter with Muslim knowledge, imagining Muslim scholarship, and performance and orality in Muslim education. In general, the history of madrasa emphasizes an indirect association between education and social control – the complex status of knowledge.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document