Dam type and topological position govern ice-marginal lake area change in Alaska and NW Canada between 1984 and 2019

Ice-marginal lakes impact glacier mass balance, water resources, and ecosystem dynamics, and can produce catastrophic glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) via sudden drainage. Multitemporal inventories of ice-marginal lakes are a critical first step in understanding the drivers of historic change, predicting future lake evolution, and assessing GLOF hazards. Here, we use Landsat-era satellite imagery and supervised classification to semi-automatically delineate lake outlines for four ~5 year time periods between 1984 and 2019 in Alaska and northwest Canada. Overall, ice-marginal lakes in the region have grown in total number (+176 lakes, 36 % increase) and area (+467 km2, 57 % increase) between the time periods of 1984–1988 and 2016–2019. However, changes in lake numbers and area were notably unsteady and nonuniform. We demonstrate that lake area changes are connected to dam type (moraine, bedrock, ice, or supraglacial) and topological position (proglacial, detached, unconnected, ice, or supraglacial), with important differences in lake behavior between the sub-groups. In strong contrast to all other dam types, ice-dammed lakes decreased in number (−9, 13 % decrease) and area (−56 km2, 43 % decrease), while moraine-dammed lakes increased (+59, 28 % and +468 km2, 85 % for number and area, respectively), a faster rate than the average when considering all dam types together. Proglacial lakes experienced the largest area changes and rate of change out of any topological position throughout the period of study. By tracking individual lakes through time and categorizing lakes by dam type, subregion, and topological position, we are able to parse trends that would otherwise be aliased if these characteristics were not considered. This work highlights the importance of such lake characterization when performing ice-marginal lake inventories, and provides insight into the physical processes driving recent ice-marginal lake evolution.

Broken Worlds: Towards an Archaeology of the Shatter Zone

In recent years, archaeological studies of long-term change and transformation in the human past have often been dominated by the discussion of dichotomous processes of ‘collapse’ and ‘resilience’. These discussions are frequently framed in relatively narrow terms dictated by specialist interests that place an emphasis on the role of single ‘trigger’ factors as motors for historic change. In order to address this issue, in this article I propose that the study of the ‘shatter zone’—a term with origins in physical geography and geopolitics that has been more recently harnessed in anthropological research—has the potential to facilitate multi-scalar, interdisciplinary analyses of the ways in which major historical changes unfold across both space and time, at local, regional, and inter-regional levels. This article unpacks the concept of the shatter zone and aligns this with existing archaeological frameworks for the study of long-term adaptive change. I then situate these arguments within the context of recent studies of colonial interaction and conflict in the Eastern Woodlands of North America during the sixteenth to eighteenth century. The study demonstrates how a more regulated approach to the shatter zone has the potential to yield new insights on the ways in which populations mitigate and react to instability and change while also facilitating comparative studies of these processes on a broader, global scale.

From Onlookers to Participants: How the Role of Social Scientists Has Changed in India’s Development in the Last 70 Years

Prior to the mid-1970, India’s non-economic social scientists had no role in policy, planning or implementation of resettlement, though their skills were relevant for the purpose and anthropologists had the requisite expertise. But anthropologists remained only distant onlookers of the terrible things that were happening in the name of development. In 1974 a historic change took place in the World Bank. This was the appointment of anthropologists and sociologists as regular staff. Thereafter, social concerns began receiving increasing attention in the Bank. This also resulted in a sudden demand for anthropologists and sociologists to prepare projects for Bank financing. India then also began involving anthropologists and sociologists in preparing projects involving social issues. From mere onlookers, they then became active participants in development activities.

Pragmatism

Explaining changes in practices of sovereignty and the origins of new practices depends on a foregrounding of processes and relations in understanding the social world. This chapter develops a processual-relational approach to social analysis and contrasts it to the substantialism that dominates much international relations theory and that inherently limits analyses of novelty and change. The aim is to replace the conceptualization of actors, norms, and institutions as substantive things with an understanding of these entities as emerging through ongoing transactions and relations—an approach that also emphasizes the unavoidable intersubjectivity, and therefore normativity, of all action. This provides a foundation for the subsequent development of the key pragmatist concepts of habit, disruption, and deliberative innovation. Together, these concepts provide a general account of change in normative orientations and the emergence of novelty and help explain the historic change in the practices of sovereignty. I accompany this theoretical framework with a brief overview of the empirics.

The Great Academic Dictionary of the Russian Language as a Reflection of Economic Change: Semantic Dynamics of Words with the Root Torg-

The article deals with the dynamics of a fragment of the Russian linguistic worldview projected onto the experience of academic lexicography. Based on the data extracted from the three editions of the Great Academic Dictionary of the Russian Language (also referred to as the Dictionary), which serves as a reflection of the 80-yearlong history of the Soviet and Russian society, the sociocultural dynamics of a conceptual view of economy and trade is uncovered through its lexical, semantic and lexicographic realization. The aim of the research is to analyze the semantic dynamics of the words with root torg- [trade] based on the Dictionary data. This includes the study of the lexicographic interpretation of these words as well as the justification of new lexicographic solutions. The key attention is paid to a number of polysemantic words: torg, torgovat’, torgovat’sya, torgovlya, torgovyy. In the course of the research, the method of componential semantic analysis is applied together with the comparison of the entries from different editions of the Dictionary and with the selection of text illustrations by means of linguistic corpora. Two aspects of the semantic dynamics of the words with root torg- are discussed: 1) reflection of lexicographic principles adopted by the authors of the Dictionary and 2) lexical and semantic objectivation of the Russian linguistic worldview. The first aspect is represented by the trend of semantic differentiation typical of the Dictionary and manifested in both enlargement and specification of the word semantic structure. Syncretic meanings that can be seen in the first edition are later splintered into separate meanings or even shades of meaning (torgash, torgashestvo, torgovat’). The sociocultural dynamics is presented by a number of linguistic trends. The first trend is generating new collocations, and the adjective torgovyy shows here the highest productivity. Adjacent to it stands the active formation of compound words beginning with torgovo-. The second (controversial) trend is obsolescence of words and meanings: notions of the Soviet economy are going out of use (torg as a ‘trade institution’). The third trend is actualization of obsolete words and meanings, which is often only illusive. In the Soviet period, many notions of economy were considered inadmissible or typical of the Czarist era, hence, these words were defined as obsolete ones. However, the historic change of the early 1990s showed that this part of vocabulary was always commonly used, even in the Soviet texts that could not serve as a source of illustrations due to censorship. Thus, the considered aspects of the semantic dynamics of the words with the root torg- demonstrate the general way of conceptualizing the economic sphere by the Russians. It is mainly reflected in the social revaluation of the market relations, trade, and entrepreneurship. The lexical and semantic objectivation of this revaluation requires shrewd lexicographic solutions.

Queer Parents and Fatherhood Movements, 1970–2010

The twelfth chapter discusses the transformations of the nuclear family ideal, of its gendered and heteronormative patterns in the wake of the women’s movement and the LGBT movement. At its center stand a lesbian couple and their daughters in San Francisco, supported by the gay fathers who also take responsibility in the family. The author interviewed both couples. The chapter presents their life and the politics of queer families, gay marriage, and the so-called gayby boom in relation to the powerful recent discourse on the “crisis” of the family and to the fatherhood movement, its different and often revisionist subgroups and their politics. At the same time, the chapter presents a queer family as the embodiment of a slow but persistent transformation of the hegemonic nuclear family model that has come about since the 1970s. They represent a historic change toward a greater recognition of patchwork families in general and of many different kinds of living arrangements, particularly in metropolitan centers. Yet the chapter also shows how the current politics of gay marriage and queer families oscillates between a total disintegration of the nuclear family on the one side and the reassertion of its values of love and mutual responsibility on the other side.

Retirement Day

The chapter is set at Fort Myer, Virginia, on September 30, 1997, the day General John Shalikashvili retired from the US military. The chapter overviews the retirement ceremony from Shalikashvili’s perspective as he reviews the honor guard with President William J. Clinton and Secretary of Defense William Cohen and thinks back to that night when he first laid eyes on US soldiers in Pappenheim and the role that luck has played in his attaining the American dream. The chapter also thumbnails his accomplishments as chairman: (1) confronting historic change, especially by realizing Partnership for Peace and NATO expansion, (2) was more supportive of non-traditional military missions (military operations other than war, MOOTW), (3) prepared the US military for the challenges of the twenty-first century, particularly by downsizing the military yet upgrading their capability and readiness, including by emphasizing joint education, joint planning, and joint training, and (4) rebalanced civil-military relations. The chapter ends with Shalikashvili’s closing remarks, emphasizing his love for soldiers and their families.

The Religious Life of the Industrial Working Class in the Czech Lands?

The article focuses on the role of religion among working-class inhabitants of two industrial towns in the Czech lands, Ostrava and Kladno, during the first half of twentieth century. It analyses the enormous conversion movement, the position of new actors of religious life, and the religious behavior of workers. Looking at the history of the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, the study understands religion as one of the constituent factors of society and its historic change. Traditional, new, and nonconformist religious actors appear as active agents in the private and public life of industrial towns. They mobilized workers, young people, and women, and they produced the major arena in which social, cultural, and church history come together.

Political Dimensions of Weaker Sections Welfare in Local Self Government in India: A Study

Soon after independence, the main thrust of Indian Government centered on meeting the basic needs of India’s population which include food, clothing and shelter. With this perspective, the national policy makers looked at various measures to alleviate the rural poor. The process of self governance and planning by empowering the people through Panchayati Raj system although started nearly five decades earlier, but 73rd and 74th amendments in the Constitution of India brought an historic change in the process of decentralisation towards the grass root level and participation of people both in the formulation as well as implementation of the plans. The paper explores how the Constitution 73rd Amendment Act (1992), provided certainty, continuity and strength to the PRI’s for the welfare of the weaker sections through Decentralization. Uniform three-tier level of the village, block and district levels, direct elections to all seats and at all levels, indirect elections to chairpersons at intermediate and apex levels. Reservation on rotational basis for SC’s ST’s in proportion to their population, both for membership as well as Chairpersonships of the PRI’s. Not less than one third of the seats and offices reserved for women. The present paper intends to discuss the political participation of weaker sections in panchayat raj institutions in Karnataka in general and in Afjalpur taluk of Gulbarga District in particular as a case study. Finally the paper discusses about the political participation of weaker sections and sought their opinion of their involvement in the process of political, economic development and social justice, with the transfer of the list of Eleventh and the Twelfth Schedule of the Constitution to the rural and urban elected local bodies, and the process of welfare activities for weaker sections through the Panchayat Raj Institutions has been discussed.