bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Culture in Mexico during the Miracle and Beyond, 1946–1982
Authors: Zolov Eric
Published: May 2016

Mexican national culture in the period from 1946 to 1982 can be understood by recognizing three overlapping transformations. The first was the consolidation of various national archetypes rooted in Mexican revolutionary and prerevolutionary mythologies of national identity and that were disseminated via state-sponsored cultural institutions as well as through global marketing campaigns related primarily to bolstering tourism. A second was the commodification of national popular culture through local cultural industries, namely radio, cinema, the recording industry, and television, and the competitive engagement of these industries with external cultural flows deriving, primarily though not exclusively, from the United States. The third was the invention of new forms of urban response to inflation and the cascading crises of political legitimacy that characterized the decade leading up to economic collapse in 1982. Across the body politic, one discerns a resilience of shared points of cultural reference—sonic, visual, culinary, and otherwise—derived, often in great measure, from governmental policies and discourse. At the same time, and increasingly over the course of this historical period, one finds movements characterized by an irreverent reappropriation of many of those same reference points, carried out by a diverse range of social actors in pursuit of individual and collective strategies of resistance to both state and patriarchal forms of authority. By the early 1980s Mexican national culture had become a rich and playful bricolage made up of iconic markers over which the state experienced a diminishing, though not yet exhausted, capacity to define.
Biography of a Colonial Document
Authors: Sellers-García Sylvia
Published: May 2016

What can we learn about the documents we work with if we incorporate a study of document creation, travel, and storage into the consideration of document content? Some well-known documents, such as the Popol Vuh, have backstories that reveal as much as their content. But even obscure documents, such as a dispute over a road detour in 18th-century Guatemala, can be read productively as objects with life trajectories. Understanding the “life” of this document—the world in which it was made, the tools and knowledge of its making, its travel while being written, its storage in colonial and national archives—sheds new light on its meaning. Similarly, all colonial documents can be interpreted in new ways if their lives are treated as part of the interpretation.
Taste, Smell, and Flavor in Mexico
Authors: Pilcher Jeffrey M.
Published: May 2016

Mexican cuisine is often considered to be a mestizo fusion of indigenous and Spanish foods, but this mixture did not simply happen by accident; it required the labor, imagination, and sensory appreciation of both native and immigrant cooks. In turn, diverse regional and ethnic expressions of domestic cooking, street food, festival dishes, and haute cuisine provided affective foundations for rival attempts to define a Mexican national identity. To understand these processes of historical change, food studies scholars have begun focusing on the embodied sense of taste as an important complement to discursive studies of social construction that formerly predominated in the scholarship. Research from around the world has suggested the rise of sweetness as the predominant sensory experience of the modern dietary transition from peasant cuisines dominated by complex carbohydrates and vegetable proteins to industrial diets based on sugars and fats. This was certainly true of Mexico, but historical sources reveal a far more complicated picture of changing tastes. Although the arrival of sugar cane with the Spanish conquest did begin to shift the sensory balance from pre-Hispanic bitterness (chile peppers, cacao) toward sweetness, the introduction of other new foods brought complementary increases in sourness (lime, tamarind) and savory tastes (from the meat of domesticated animals), as well as new fragrances from spices (cinnamon, clove, pepper). New imagined communities arose with 18th-century creole patriotism among Spaniards born in the Americas and explicitly nationalist ideologies in the 19th century, but these were largely overlaid onto sensory and social understandings that assigned elite status to European flavors. Only in the 20th century did the unique taste of the corn tortilla become identified with the national community, and by that time, industrial production had fundamentally changed the tactile, olfactory, and taste sensations evoked by tortillas.
The Public Sphere and Liberalism in Mexico from the Mid-19th Century to the 1930s
Authors: Piccato Pablo A.
Published: May 2016

Free speech was a greater concern for Mexican politicians, legislators, and intellectuals during the 19th century than electoral democracy. This can be easily verified by looking at the large number of laws, decrees, trials, appeals, and polemics provoked by contradictory efforts to guarantee the right to express reasonable opinions, formulated since the 1812 Cádiz Constitution, and the concern to limit that freedom for the preservation of stability, morality, religion, and honor. Mexican public men spent considerably more energy reading and arguing about written words than counting votes. Yet the historiography of Mexican liberalism has, for the most part, stressed the history of frustrated attempts to expand representation and thus consolidate sovereignty. This article looks at the public sphere as a space for but also of contention. Politics, as was understood by most political agents of the time, took place in that virtual space, and a good part of political conflict revolved around the right to speak on behalf of public opinion. The broader arc to be described here starts with the contentious and romantic decades since the 1857 Constitution consecrated free speech and press juries and moves through the taming of the press using legal reforms and politically motivated prosecutions under Porfirio Díaz, to the consolidation of a new order in which a diverse and prosperous press struck an understanding with the post revolutionary regime to constrain the possibilities of political debate, around 1930.
José Vasconcelos, National Education, and Revolutionary Culture in Mexico
Authors: Beezley William
Published: May 2016

As Mexico’s minister of public education from 1921 to 1924, José Vasconcelos played a prominent role in efforts to create a new national identity expressing the 1910 Revolution’s goals of an inclusive society and equitable nation, opportunities created through education, and shared cultural expressions. Vasconcelos has been widely praised for his educational campaigns, especially in the countryside, among indigenous communities, and for his literacy programs in the city. According to these recent interpretations, his efforts as minister of public education have been both over- and underestimated. Nevertheless, the revolutionary national identity that he helped to foster with his discussion of mestizaje in La Raza Cósmica (The Cosmic Race; 1925) has since been ingrained into everyday life and culture.
Photography and Cinema in 20th-Century Mexico
Authors: Mraz John
Published: May 2016

Photography, film, and other forms of technical imagery were incorporated quickly into Mexican society upon their respective arrivals, joining other visual expressions such as murals and folk art, demonstrating the primacy of the ocular in this culture. Photojournalism began around 1900, and has formed a pillar of Mexican photography, appearing in illustrated magazines and the numerous picture histories that have been produced. A central bifurcation in the photography of Mexico (by both Mexicans and foreigners) has been that of the picturesque and the anti-picturesque. Followers of the former tendency, such as Hugo Brehme, depict Mexicans as a product of nature, an expression of the vestiges left by pre-Columbian civilizations, the colony, and underdevelopment; for them, Mexico is an essence that has been made once and for all time. Those that are opposed to such essentialism, such as Manuel Álvarez Bravo, choose instead to posit that Mexicans are a product of historical experiences.

The Mexican Revolution has been a central figure in both photography and cinema. The revolution was much photographed and filmed when it occurred, and that material has formed the base of many picture histories, often formed with the archive of Agustín Víctor Casasola, as well as with documentary films. Moreover, the revolution has been the subject of feature films. With the institutionalization of the revolution, governments became increasingly conservative, and the celebrity stars of “Golden Age” cinema provided models for citizenship; these films circulated widely throughout the Spanish speaking world. Although the great majority of photojournalists followed the line of the party dictatorship, there were several critical photographers who questioned the government, among them Nacho López, Héctor García, and the Hermanos Mayo.

The Tlaltelolco massacre of 1968 was a watershed, from which was born a different journalism that offered space for the critical imagery of daily life by the New Photojounalists. Moreover, the representation of the massacre in cinema offered sharply contrasting viewpoints. Mexican cineastes have received much recognition in recent years, although they do not appear to be making Mexican films. Television in Mexico is controlled by a duopoly, but some programs have reached an international audience comparable to that of the Golden Age cinema.
Independence: Change and Continuity
Authors: Pimenta João Paulo
Published: May 2016

Stemming from an accelerated and tumultuous process unleashed by European wars in the first decade of the 19th century, Brazil and Portugal split politically in 1822. In a sense, Brazil’s independence reflects a number of peculiar characteristics within the context of the time due, in part, to three centuries of Portuguese colonization and to changes within the colonial system beginning in the second half of the 1700s. In other ways, however, Brazilian independence is linked to external events like the French Revolution, the independence of Haiti, and, above all, the wars of independence in Spanish America. The most profound and lasting consequences of the break with Portugal were the emergence of a Brazilian state and nation that until that point did not exist and that was consolidated over the course of the nineteenth century, as well as the nationalization of certain colonial institutions that were partially maintained. Historiography and national memory would later imbue independence with supreme importance as the foundational moment of the nation such that it has become a recurring theme in historical studies of Brazil.
Immigration and National Identity in Latin America, 1870–1930
Authors: Goebel Michael
Published: May 2016

Although on a lesser scale than the United States, southern South America became a major receiving region during the period of mass transatlantic migration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Even as the white elites of most Latin American countries favored European immigration in the late 19th century, since in their eyes it would “civilize” their countries, it was the temperate areas closely tied into the Atlantic economy as exporters of primary products that received the bulk of European laborers. Previously scarcely populated lands like Argentina, Uruguay, and southern Brazil thus witnessed massive population growth and in some ways turned into societies resembling those of other immigration countries, such as the United States and Canada. This article concentrates on lands where the overwhelming majority of migrants headed, although it also briefly deals with Latin American nations that received significantly fewer newcomers, such as Mexico.

This mass migration lastingly modified identity narratives within Latin America. First, as the majority of Europeans headed to sparsely populated former colonial peripheries that promised economic betterment, migration shifted prevalent notions about the region’s racial composition. The former colonial heartlands of Mexico, Peru, and northeastern Brazil were increasingly regarded as nonwhite, poor, and “backward,” whereas coastal Argentina, São Paulo, and Costa Rica were associated with whiteness, wealth, and “progress.” Second, mass migration was capable of both solidifying and challenging notions of national identity. Rather than crossing over well-established and undisputed boundaries of national identities and territories, migration thus contributed decisively to making them.
Women, Politics, and Media in Uruguay, 1900–1950
Authors: Ehrick Christine
Published: May 2016

In the first half of the 20th century, Uruguay was a relatively educated, democratic, and politically progressive South American country, and women there used old and new media for professional and political ends. Radical, Catholic, and liberal feminist women all utilized print media to promote their views and build support for their respective causes in publications aimed at both female and general audiences. Anarchist feminist María Collazo, for example, edited an important publication, La Batalla, from 1915 to approximately 1927. By the late 1920s, radio was an emerging mass medium, and women activists, journalists, and others sought to make their voices heard, literally and figuratively, on its airwaves. Starting in 1935, those airwaves included Radio Femenina, the first all-woman format radio station in the Western Hemisphere. One of the voices heard on Radio Femenina was Dra. Paulina Luisi, Uruguay’s leading feminist activist, who became a powerful voice of both the Socialist Party and the politics of the Popular Front in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Disney Health Films in Mexico
Authors: Gudiño Cejudo María Rosa
Published: May 2016

In August 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, concerned with Nazi infiltration in the Americas and continental defense, created the Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA) and appointed Nelson Rockefeller coordinator. To strengthen ties between the United States and Latin America, including Mexico, Rockefeller implemented cultural programs that included Health for the Americas and Literacy for the Americas to teach illiterate rural inhabitants to read and write in Spanish, and to inform them about health, prevention, and hygiene. Both programs used educational cinema as their main teaching tool, and the OIAA hired filmmaker Walt Disney to produce the films. The health series included thirteen animated cartoons with an average duration of ten minutes, dubbed in Spanish and Portuguese. The themes were drawn in part from the guidelines set out at the XI Conferencia Sanitaria Panamericana (Eleventh Pan-American Health Organization Conference; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1942) to address health care and sanitation. A group of psychologists, cartoonists, health authorities, teachers, and OIAA representatives carried out surveys and field work in various countries before production and test screening began. In this process, Mexico differed from the other countries involved because of Walt Disney’s connections with Mexican schools. Eulalia Guzmán, representative of the Secretaría de Educación Pública (Secretary of Public Education), led in reviewing the educational films, and Disney attended classes with local teachers to discuss the use of film as a teaching tool. In 1943, through the Programa Cooperativo de Salubridad y Saneamiento (Health and Sanitation Cooperative Program) of the Secretaría de Salubridad y Asistencia (Ministry of Health and Assistance, the films were shown in health campaigns throughout Mexico.
Food Science, Race, and the Nation in Colombia
Authors: Pohl-Valero Stefan
Published: May 2016

At the beginning of the 19th century, Colombian physicians thought of food as an essential factor in shaping human character and corporeality. Framed in a neo-Hippocratic system, health and racial differences were related not only to climate but also to the connection between food qualities and humoral fluids. For example, it was believed that the tendency to eat cold and moist food, as well as greasy substances, was one of the reasons why people in warm regions of Colombia were choleric, phlegmatic, and indolent. By midcentury, it was further argued that each regional type—a local racialized categorization based on geographic determinism—had certain diet habits and physiological characteristics that explained its character (sober, obedient, lazy, industrious, etc.), and that made this type “naturally” suitable for different kinds of work. During this period, the working population’s diet was not perceived to be a social problem requiring regulation, at least not by the government. In the midst of liberal reforms, the political elites were more focused on the economic and genetic integration (“whitening”) of highland Indians, and to a lesser extent blacks, than on producing a supposed “better race” through nourishment.

But by the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, however, a new cultural framework that crossed the boundaries of thermodynamics, political economy, experimental physiology, and eugenics had begun to emerge in Colombia, converging in the social problem of nutrition. Centered on the analogy of the human body as a heat engine that transforms energy, local scientists began to conduct surveys of the eating habits of the “working classes,” analyses of the chemical and caloric composition of their foods, and studies on the metabolic characteristics of different regional populations. The results of these investigations were used to push the government to “restore the energies” of an impoverished population that was consistently thought to be weak and racially inferior, but capable of physiological and hereditable improvement. The cry of conservative elites for political and moral “regeneration” at the turn of the century also had a biological component—the optimization of the human motor. In the 1920s and 1930s, several campaigns and institutions were created for this social engineering, aimed at producing a modern, healthy, and industrious citizen. These campaigns gained special political force after the Liberal Party returned to power in 1930.
Rock Nacional in Argentina during the Dictatorship
Authors: Wilson Timothy , Favoretto Mara
Published: May 2016

In the 20th century Argentina experienced a series of dictatorial regimes of varying intensity, but the last dictatorship stands apart. The Process of National Reorganization or Proceso (1976–1983) was not only the most brutally repressive, “disappearing” 30,000 of its own citizens into concentration camps, but also the most ambitious in terms of ideological mission. Its campaign, officially called “the war against subversion,” was committed to the total eradication of leftist ideas from the political landscape of the country by any means necessary. This radical transformation was to be brought about not only in the torture chamber, but in the media as well. The regime planned an Orwellian redefinition of words: the systematic creation of a national vocabulary that would exclude certain ideas and parties. In order to achieve its overt project of the appropriation of language, the junta maintained obsessive control over the media, instituted strict censorship reinforced by terror, and bombarded the airwaves and newspapers with official communiqués. In the face of this repression, most journalists and writers and many artists could not express dissent of any kind. Yet singers of a new Argentine music genre that came to be known as rock nacional developed codified and oblique metaphorical expression in their lyrics that allowed them to evade censorship and to continue to criticize the military regime with relative impunity. Moreover, many Argentine youths found solace in the music and used it to create communities in which they could meet and express themselves. The regime had sought to deny young Argentines a forum for public speech; however, together artists and listeners created a rock nacional culture that provided community for the isolated and lent a voice to the silenced.
Runaway Slave Colonies in the Atlantic World
Authors: Lockley Tim
Published: May 2016

Communities of runaway slaves, more commonly known as “Maroon communities,” were created throughout the Americas. Enslaved people ran away from their owners all the time, often just for a few days, but some decided never to return to slavery and instead found permanent (or semi-permanent) refuge from the harsh life on the plantations in swamps, jungles, forests, and mountains. Sometimes in very small groups of less than ten people, but more usually in much larger numbers, maroon communities attempted to live independently, free from white interference. White responses to maroon communities varied over time and included military assaults and peace treaties.
Economic Integration in 19th- and 20th-Century Central America
Authors: Téllez Dora María
Published: May 2016

Throughout their history, the countries of Central America have attempted several forms of political and economic integration. After declaring independence in the 19th century, the region lacked its earlier cohesion vis-à-vis Spanish colonial governance. The former provinces aligned themselves in favor of either centralizing regional power in a federal republic or establishing complete political autonomy through the formation of new nation-states. Forces in favor of the latter eventually prevailed.

An attempt at economic integration began in the mid-20th century. It was actively backed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and eventually led to the creation of the Central American Common Market (CACM). Despite favorable economic conditions in the Post-World War II period, a number of complications undermined integration efforts: war, political crises, and interests that ran contrary to those of the United States. Integration was postponed until the end of the 1980s, after the Esquipulas II Accord reestablished peace in the region.

After the countries of Central America signed the Guatemala Protocol in 1993, economic integration was promoted under the banner of free trade. This was done by regional economic groups with the goal of reconnecting the region to global commerce under the most advantageous circumstances possible.
Agricultural Transformations in Sugarcane and Labor in Brazil
Authors: Rogers Thomas D.
Published: May 2016

The Portuguese took sugarcane from their Atlantic island holdings to Brazil in the first decades of the 16th century, using their model of extensive agriculture and coerced labor to turn their new colony into the world’s largest producer of sugar. From the middle of the 17th century through the 20th century, Brazil faced increasing competition from Caribbean producers. With access to abundant land and forest resources, Brazilian producers generally pursued an extensive production model that made sugarcane’s footprint a large one. Compared to competitors elsewhere, Brazilian farmers were often late in adopting innovations (such as manuring in the 18th century, steam power in the 19th, and synthetic fertilizers in the 20th). With coffee’s growth in the center-south of the country during the middle of the 19th century, sugarcane farming shifted gradually away from enslaved African labor. Labor and production methods shifted at the end of the century with slavery’s abolition and the rise of large new mills, called usinas. The model of steam-powered production, both for railroads carrying cane and for mills grinding it, and a work force largely resident on plantations persisted into the mid-20th century. Rural worker unions were legalized in the 1960s, at the same time that sugar production increased as a result of the Cuban Revolution. A large-scale sugarcane ethanol program in the 1970s also brought upheaval, and growth, to the industry.
Mountain and Forest Communities and Their Changing Landscapes in 19th-Century Mexico
Authors: Tortolero Villaseñor Alejandro
Published: May 2016

For several years, some of Mexico’s most influential literary figures associated mountains with the presence of certain characteristics: wildlife, botanic variety, and most importantly, backwards and/or mysterious indigenous communities. Order and civilization, it seemed, for writers like Ignacio Altamirano and Manuel Payno, ceased to exist in mountainscapes. For these writes, mountains constituted social afterthoughts—places lacking history and dynamism, places that did not matter. They were, in Braudelian terms, the margins of civilization and factories that supplied human resources to cities.

Such portrayals were not derived from reality, however. Far from solely being dull or dangerous sites where banditry and romantic indigeneity prevailed, Mexico’s mountains were, between the colonial era and the Porfiriato, the places where dramatic transformations took place. Impresarios’ mastery of Mexico’s natural resources fueled the country’s economic growth during the 19th and 20th centuries. Concomitant with this growth came dramatic alterations of the country’s landscape that left much of Mexico’s environment in disrepair.

Mountains, thus, have histories. They are not landscapes where civilization parts ways with society. Such an argument has relevance in parts of the world like Latin America, where nearly half of the people who reside there live at elevations above sea level, and where only 7 percent reside under an elevation of 1,000 meters above sea level.
Wars of Spanish-American Independence
Authors: Sobrevilla Perea Natalia
Published: May 2016

The wars of Spanish-American independence were a series of military campaigns that took place in the Americas between 1809 and 1825, which resulted in the creation of more than a dozen republics in the territories that had previously been part of the Hispanic monarchy. Triggered in the short term by the Napoleonic invasion of the Spanish peninsula in 1808, there were more deep-seated reasons, however, that led to the collapse of an empire that had existed for three hundred years. Classic historiography has stressed the importance of the Bourbon Reforms that brought to the fore the contradictions within the Hispanic monarchy and gave rise to a sense of proto-nationalism. These interpretations have given much importance to the role of the Enlightenment and the fear brought by possible social revolution. Some authors consider that these wars were the result of the Americans’ long-held contempt for Europeans. These views consider that struggle for liberation had begun much earlier, possibly as far back as the 1780s, inspired by the American and French Revolutions. More recent historiography has highlighted the war that engulfed Spain itself between 1808 and 1814 as the crucial event that led to fighting in the Americas. This event is seen as not just the trigger for the events to unfold, unleashing conflicts that had been simmering for much longer, but what shook to the ground the archaic but surprisingly durable composite Hispanic monarchy.

This article will discuss the main events that caused the wars, the moments each national historiography has identified as the ones linked to the independence of their particular region, as well as the events themselves. It begins by looking at the historical antecedents, including the Bourbon Reforms, the American, French, and Haitian revolutions, and at the Napoleonic invasion of the Spanish peninsula. It then discusses the creation of juntas in the Americas and how the confrontation between different jurisdictions resulted in war. The article discusses who were the people involved in the wars and the main events that took place.
Phonological Inventories
Authors: Moran Steven
Published: May 2016

A phonological inventory is a repertoire of contrastive articulatory or manual gestures shared by a community of users. Whether spoken or signed, all human languages have a phonological inventory. In spoken languages, the phonological inventory is comprised of a set of segments (consonants and vowels) and suprasegmentals (stress and intonation) that are linguistically contrastive, either lexically or grammatically, in a particular language or one of its dialects. Sign languages also have phonological inventories, which include a set of linguistically contrastive signs made from movement, hand shape, and location.

The study of phonological inventories is interesting because they tell us about the distribution, frequency, and diversity of gestures that individuals acquire and produce in the world’s 7,000 or so languages. Their study has also raised important empirical questions about the comparability of linguistic concepts across different languages and modalities, in the use of statistics and sampling in quantitative approaches to comparative linguistics, and in the study of language ontogeny and phylogeny over the course of language evolution. As such, some recent research highlights include the following: quantitative approaches suggest causal relationships between phonological inventory composition and gene-culture and language-environment coevolution; the study of de novo sign languages provides important insights into the emergence of phonology; and comparative animal communication studies suggest evolutionary speech precursors in phonological repertoires of nonhuman primates, and potentially in extinct hominids including Neanderthal.
Frequency Effects in Grammar
Authors: Diessel Holger , Hilpert Martin
Published: May 2016

Until recently, theoretical linguists have paid little attention to the frequency of linguistic elements in grammar and grammatical development. It is a standard assumption of (most) grammatical theories that the study of grammar (or competence) must be separated from the study of language use (or performance). However, this view of language has been called into question by various strands of research that have emphasized the importance of frequency for the analysis of linguistic structure. In this research, linguistic structure is often characterized as an emergent phenomenon shaped by general cognitive processes such as analogy, categorization, and automatization, which are crucially influenced by frequency of occurrence.

There are many different ways in which frequency affects the processing and development of linguistic structure. Historical linguists have shown that frequent strings of linguistic elements are prone to undergo phonetic reduction and coalescence, and that frequent expressions and constructions are more resistant to structure mapping and analogical leveling than infrequent ones. Cognitive linguists have argued that the organization of constituent structure and embedding is based on the language users’ experience with linguistic sequences, and that the productivity of grammatical schemas or rules is determined by the combined effect of frequency and similarity. Child language researchers have demonstrated that frequency of occurrence plays an important role in the segmentation of the speech stream and the acquisition of syntactic categories, and that the statistical properties of the ambient language are much more regular than commonly assumed. And finally, psycholinguists have shown that structural ambiguities in sentence processing can often be resolved by lexical and structural frequencies, and that speakers’ choices between alternative constructions in language production are related to their experience with particular linguistic forms and meanings. Taken together, this research suggests that our knowledge of grammar is grounded in experience.
Polysynthesis: A Diachronic and Typological Perspective
Authors: Fortescue Michael
Published: May 2016

Polysynthesis is informally understood as the packing of a large number of morphemes into single words, as in (1) from Bininj Gun-wok (Evans, in press).

1)

a-ban-yawoyʔ-wargaʔ-maɳe-gaɲ-giɲe-ŋ

1SGSUBJ-3PLOBJ-again-wrong-BEN-meat-cook-PSTPF

'I cooked the wrong meat for them again.'

Its status as a distinct typological category into which some of the world’s languages fall, on a par with isolating, agglutinating, or fusional languages, has been controversial from the start. Nevertheless, researchers working with these languages are seldom in doubt as to their status as distinct from these other morphological types. This has been complicated by the fact that the speakers of such languages are largely limited to hunter-gatherers—or were so in the not too distant past—so the temptation is to link the phenomenon directly to way of life. This proves to be oversimplified, although it is certainly true that languages qualifying as polysynthetic are almost everywhere spoken in peripheral regions and are on the decline in the modern world—few children are learning them today.

Perhaps the most pervasive of the traits that give these languages the impression of a “special” status is that of holophrasis, which can be defined as the (possible) expression of what in less synthetic languages would be whole sentences in single complex (usually verbal) words. It turns out, however, that there is much greater variety among polysynthetic languages than is generally thought: there are few other traits that they all share, although distinct subtypes can in fact be distinguished, notably the affixing as opposed to the incorporating type.

These languages have considerable importance for the investigation of the diachronic complexification of languages in general and of language acquisition by children, as well as for theories of language universals. The sociolinguistic factors behind their development have only recently begun to be studied in depth. All polysynthetic languages today are to some degree endangered (they are dying off at an alarming rate), and many have been poorly studied if at all, which makes their investigation before it is too late a prime goal for linguistics.
Computer-Based Tools for Word and Paradigm Computational Morphology
Authors: Finkel Raphael
Published: May 2016

The Word and Paradigm approach to morphology associates lexemes with tables of surface forms for different morphosyntactic property sets. Researchers express their realizational theories, which show how to derive these surface forms, using formalisms such as Network Morphology and Paradigm Function Morphology. The tables of surface forms also lend themselves to a study of the implicative theories, which infer the realizations in some cells of the inflectional system from the realizations of other cells.

There is an art to building realizational theories. First, the theories should be correct, that is, they should generate the right surface forms. Second, they should be elegant, which is much harder to capture, but includes the desiderata of simplicity and expressiveness. Without software to test a realizational theory, it is easy to sacrifice correctness for elegance. Therefore, software that takes a realizational theory and generates surface forms is an essential part of any theorist’s toolbox.

Discovering implicative rules that connect the cells in an inflectional system is often quite difficult. Some rules are immediately apparent, but others can be subtle. Software that automatically analyzes an entire table of surface forms for many lexemes can help automate the discovery process.

Researchers can use Web-based computerized tools to test their realizational theories and to discover implicative rules.
Lexical Semantics
Authors: Geeraerts Dirk
Published: May 2016

Lexical semantics is the study of word meaning. Descriptively speaking, the main topics studied within lexical semantics involve either the internal semantic structure of words, or the semantic relations that occur within the vocabulary. Within the first set, major phenomena include polysemy (in contrast with vagueness), metonymy, metaphor, and prototypicality. Within the second set, dominant topics include lexical fields, lexical relations, conceptual metaphor and metonymy, and frames. Theoretically speaking, the main theoretical approaches that have succeeded each other in the history of lexical semantics are prestructuralist historical semantics, structuralist semantics, and cognitive semantics. These theoretical frameworks differ as to whether they take a system-oriented rather than a usage-oriented approach to word-meaning research but, at the same time, in the historical development of the discipline, they have each contributed significantly to the descriptive and conceptual apparatus of lexical semantics.
Disaster and Emergency Planning for Preparedness, Response, and Recovery
Authors: Alexander David
Published: May 2016

Emergency and disaster planning involves a coordinated, co-operative process of preparing to match urgent needs with available resources. The phases are research, writing, dissemination, testing, and updating. Hence, an emergency plan needs to be a living document that is periodically adapted to changing circumstances and that provides a guide to the protocols, procedures, and division of responsibilities in emergency response. Emergency planning is an exploratory process that provides generic procedures for managing unforeseen impacts and should use carefully constructed scenarios to anticipate the needs that will be generated by foreseeable hazards when they strike. Plans need to be developed for specific sectors, such as education, health, industry, and commerce. They also need to exist in a nested hierarchy that extends from the local emergency response (the most fundamental level), through the regional tiers of government, to the national and international levels. Failure to plan can be construed as negligence because it would involve failing to anticipate needs that cannot be responded to adequately by improvisation during an emergency.

Plans are needed, not only for responding to the impacts of disaster, but also to maintain business continuity while managing the crisis, and to guide recovery and reconstruction effectively. Dealing with disaster is a social process that requires public support for planning initiatives and participation by a wide variety of responders, technical experts and citizens. It needs to be sustainable in the light of challenges posed by non-renewable resource utilization, climate change, population growth, and imbalances of wealth. Although, at its most basic level, emergency planning is little more than codified common sense, the increasing complexity of modern disasters has required substantial professionalization of the field. This is especially true in light of the increasing role in emergency response of information and communications technology. Disaster planners and coordinators are resource managers, and in the future, they will need to cope with complex and sophisticated transfers of human and material resources. In a globalizing world that is subject to accelerating physical, social, and economic change, the challenge of managing emergencies well depends on effective planning and foresight, and the ability to connect disparate elements of the emergency response into coherent strategies.
Economic and Business Recovery
Authors: Stevenson Joanne R. , Noy Ilan , McDonald Garry , Seville Erica , Vargo John
Published: May 2016

The economics of disasters is a relatively new and emerging branch of economics. Advances made in analysis, including modeling the spatial economic impacts of disasters, is increasing our ability to project disaster outcomes and explore how to reduce their negative impacts. This work is supported by a growing body of case studies on the organizational and economic impacts of disasters, such as Chang’s in-depth analysis of the Port of Kobe’s decline following the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake, and the evolving studies of the workforce trends during the ongoing recovery of Christchurch, New Zealand, following a series of earthquakes in 2010 and 2011.

The typical view of post-disaster economies depicts a pattern of destruction, renewal, and improvement. Evidence shows, however, that this pattern does not occur in all cases. The degree of economic disruption and the time it takes for different economies to recover varies significantly depending on characteristics such as literacy rates, institutional competency, per capita income, and government spending.

If the impacts are large relative to the national economy, a disaster can negatively affect the country or sub-national region’s fiscal position. Similarly, disasters may have significant implications for the national trade balance. If, for example, productive capacity is reduced by disaster damage, exports decrease, the trade balance may weaken, and localized inflation may increase.

Studies of individual, household, industry, and business responses to disasters (i.e., microeconomic analyses) cover a broad range of topics relevant to the choices actors make and their interactions with markets. Both household consumption and labor markets face expansion and contraction in areas affected by disasters, with increased consumption and employment often happening in reconstruction related industries.

Additionally, the ability of businesses to absorb, respond, and recover in the face of disasters varies widely. Characteristics such as size, number of locations, and pre-disaster financial health are positively correlated with successful business recovery. Businesses can minimize productivity disruptions and recapture lost productivity by conserving scarce inputs, utilizing inventories, and rescheduling production.

Assessing the progress of economic recovery and predicting future outcomes are important and complex challenges. Researchers use various methodologies to evaluate the effects of natural disasters at different scales of the economy. Surveys, microeconomic models, econometric models, input-output models, and computable general equilibrium models each offer different insights into the effect of disasters on economies.

The study of disaster economics still faces issues with consistency, comprehensiveness, and comparability. Yet, as the science continues to advance there is a growing cross-disciplinary accumulation of knowledge with real implications for policy and the private sector.
Sinkhole Hazards
Authors: Gutiérrez Francisco
Published: May 2016

Sinkholes or dolines are closed depressions characteristic of terrains underlain by soluble rocks (carbonates and/or evaporites). They may be related to the differential dissolutional lowering of the ground surface (solution sinkholes) or to subsidence induced by subsurface karstification (subsidence sinkholes). Three main subsidence mechanisms may operate individually or in combination: collapse, sagging, and suffosion. Subsidence sinkholes may cause severe damage to human built structures, and the occurrence of catastrophic collapse sinkholes may lead to the loss of human life. Dissolution and subsidence processes involved in the development of subsidence sinkholes are controlled by a wide range of natural and anthropogenic factors. Recent literature reviews reveal that the vast majority of the damaging sinkholes are induced by human activities (e.g., water table decline, water input to the ground). The main steps in sinkhole hazard and risk assessment include: (a) construction of comprehensive sinkhole inventories and detailed sinkhole characterization; (b) development of independently tested sinkhole susceptibility and hazard models, preferably incorporating magnitude and frequency relationships; (c) assessing risk combining hazard and vulnerability data. Sinkhole risk models may be used as the basis to perform cost-benefit analyses that allow the cost-effectiveness of different mitigation strategies to be estimated. Three main concepts may be applied to reduce sinkhole risk: (a) avoiding sinkholes and sinkhole-prone areas (preventive planning); (b) diminishing the activity of dissolution and/or subsidence processes (hazard reduction); (c) incorporating special designs in the structures (vulnerability reduction). Although our capabilities to investigate sinkhole hazards and reduce the associated risks will continue to increase in the near future, the damage related to sinkholes will also increase, largely due to the adverse changes caused by human activities on the karst environments and the ineffective knowledge transfer between scientists, technicians, and decision-makers. This article presents the processes and factors involved in sinkhole development and reviews the main approaches used to assess and manage sinkhole hazards and risks.
Rethinking Conflict over Water
Authors: Moore Scott M.
Published: May 2016

It has long been accepted that non-renewable natural resources like oil and gas are often the subject of conflict between both nation-states and social groups. But since the end of the Cold War, the idea that renewable resources like water and timber might also be a cause of conflict has steadily gained credence. This is particularly true in the case of water: in the early 1990s, a senior World Bank official famously predicted that “the wars of the next century will be fought over water,” while two years ago Indian strategist Brahma Chellaney made a splash in North America by claiming that water would be “Asia’s New Battleground.” But it has not quite turned out that way. The world has, so far, avoided inter-state conflict over water in the 21st century, but it has witnessed many localized conflicts, some involving considerable violence. As population growth, economic development, and climate change place growing strains on the world’s fresh water supplies, the relationship between resource scarcity, institutions, and conflict has become a topic of vocal debate among social and environmental scientists.

The idea that water scarcity leads to conflict is rooted in three common assertions. The first of these arguments is that, around the world, once-plentiful renewable resources like fresh water, timber, and even soils are under increasing pressure, and are therefore likely to stoke conflict among increasing numbers of people who seek to utilize dwindling supplies. A second, and often corollary, argument holds that water’s unique value to human life and well-being—namely that there are no substitutes for water, as there are for most other critical natural resources—makes it uniquely conductive to conflict. Finally, a third presumption behind the water wars hypothesis stems from the fact that many water bodies, and nearly all large river basins, are shared between multiple countries. When an upstream country can harm its downstream neighbor by diverting or controlling flows of water, the argument goes, conflict is likely to ensue.

But each of these assertions depends on making assumptions about how people react to water scarcity, the means they have at their disposal to adapt to it, and the circumstances under which they are apt to cooperate rather than to engage in conflict. Untangling these complex relationships promises a more refined understanding of whether and how water scarcity might lead to conflict in the 21st century—and how cooperation can be encouraged instead.