[PHOTO] Dufferin station, looking north across the tracks

Bands of colour define this view.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Dan Hirschman at A (Budding) Sociologist's Commonplace Book distinguishes between the economic measurements GDP and GDP.


• James Bow mourns the death, via cutbacks and falling passengers, of Ontario's Northlands railway.


• Centauri Dreams considers the question, inspired by evidence that Alpha Centauri is significantly older than Sol, and speculation that habitable planets are likely to be considerably older than Earth, of where the aliens are.


• Daniel Drezner is somewhat surprised that he is optimistic about the spread of liberal-democratic ideals worldwide, at least relative to others in a recent issue of The National Interest.


• Geocurrents' Asya Pereltsvaig considers the similar Russian-based contact pidgins in Siberia and along Russia's Arctic coast as the product not of contact with a single language area but rather as consequence of a mindset of how to talk to non-Russians.


• Marginal Revolution notes a New York Times article noting the culture shock experienced by trained professionals migrating to Germany from southern Europe.


• Registan notes that the International Labour Organization's demand to inspect Uzbekistan's cotton plantations to verify that forced and child labour is not used there, likely to be rejected because (among other things) Uzbekistan does use forced and child labour, is likely to lead to worsened relations with the United States.
  
• I'm late on this one, but Slap Upside the Head notes the retraction of the only credible study on ex-gays by the paper's author.


• Towleroad notes the hysterical anger of Islamic clerics and the usual in Iran at the rumour--not the reality--of a gay pride parade in neighbouring Azerbaijan.

[LINK] "Why the Gender Pay Gap Doesn’t Matter"

This post at Crasstalk makes the provocative argument that the continuing gap in pay between men and women in the United States (and almost developed countries, I'm willing to bet) doesn't necessarily speak solely, or primarily, about the continuing issues of women in moving towards full equality. Things may be very bad for the majority of men, too.

Hanna Rosin’s controversial article for The Atlantic, “The End of Men,” struck a nerve in 2010. After all, if men are losing out to women, why are our corporate boardrooms and government institutions still dominated by men? Rosin’s answer is that the period of male dominance in management and leadership may be coming to an end. We’re on the cusp of changes that will topple the old Man Men paradigm.

Rosin’s argument centered around the fact that male-centric jobs (manufacturing, construction) are seriously threatening the role men have long held in the home and in communities, but she also combines an analysis of our economic recession with a sort of evolutionary argument about how males evolution hasn’t kept up with society at large.

Dr. Roy Baumeister, a psychology professor from Florida State University and author of “Is There Anything Good About Men?” has explored how male behaviors affect socities. In a speech to the American Psychological Assocation in 2007 he argued that the dominance of a few powerful men at the top of the food chain says nothing about the overall socio-economic wellness of men in our culture.

Thoughts?

[LINK] "The 1940 census and the old neighborhood"

Over at The Power and the Money, Noel Maurer performs some pretty nice local history in three parts (1, 2, 3), using results from the 1940 census to see just who lived in his childhood neighbourhood of New York City's East Harlem, and how.

414 East 115th Street then, like now, had five families in it. The first listed is the Squittieri clan. Dominick and Geneviene had been born in Italy in 1888 and 1890 respectively. Dominick ran a grocery store and worked a 60-hour week to earn $1300 per year — $20,800 in 2011 dollars. They rented for $35 a month, or $561 in 2011 dollars. Dominick was listed as having had two years of schooling; his wife had never been to school at all. They lived with their ten children: Carmine, 24; Alphonse, 23; James, 22; Helen, 20; Yolanda, 18; John, 17; Mary, 16; Domenick Jr., 15; Louise, 12; and Gilda, 10.

You can see the lingering effect of the Depression in the statistics. Carmine worked as a painter (a 48-hour work week) for $1190 a year — $19,100 in 2011 dollars. Alphonse was not in the labor force. It isn’t completely clear why: there is a squiggle that is probably an “H,” meaning he was doing “housework.” It could, however, be a “U,” which would indicate “unable,” meaning a disability. He was not a student. His sister, Helen, was also out of the labor force and clearly listed as doing “housework.”

James, Yolanda, and John were unemployed and looking for work. The enumerator put “new worker” as their profession. All three had been unemployed for over a year. Carmine, Alphonse, James, Helen and Yolanda had all dropped out of school in the eighth grade; John had finished one year of high school before dropping out. The four youngest children were all in school.

Of course, it was a different time. I do not know what happened to the Squittieri family, but I bet you they went on to economic success — something that a Mexican-American family with the same statistics today will probably not achieve. But I don’t know: in 2022, it might be possible to try to track them down in the 1950 census.

Amply illustrated, this genealogy of place is a must-read.

[LINK] Far Outliers on the Two Spains

Far Outliers' Joel has recently posted two excerpts from the recent Imperial Spain: 1469-1716, implicitly contrasting the nature of the two polities--the Kingdom of Castile and the Kingdom of Aragon--that united to form Spain. Aragon was Mediterranean, mercantile, constitutional; Castile was none of these things.

First, a representative paragraph on Castile.

The Reconquista was not one but many things. It was at once a crusade against the infidel, a succession of military expeditions in search of plunder, and a popular migration. All these three aspects of the Reconquista stamped themselves forcefully on the forms o Castilian life. In a holy war against Islam, the priests naturally enjoyed a privileged position. It was their task to arouse and sustain the fervour of the populace – to impress upon them their divinely appointed mission to free the country of the Moors. As a result, the Church possessed an especially powerful hold over the medieval Castile; and the particular brand of militant Christianity which it propagated was enshrined in the three Military Orders of Calatrava, Alcántara, and Santiago – three great creations of the twelfth century, combining at once military and religious ideals. But while the crusading ideal gave Castilian warriors their sense of participating in a holy mission as soldiers of the Faith, it could not eliminate the more mundane instincts which had inspired the earliest expeditions against the Arabs, and which were prompted by the thirst for booty. In those first campaigns, the Castilian noble confirmed to his own entire satisfaction that true wealth consisted essentially of booty and land. Moreover, his highest admiration came to be reserved for the military virtues of courage and honour. In this way was established the concept of the perfect hidalgo, as a man who lived for war, who could do the impossible through sheer physical courage and a constant effort of the will, who conducted his relations with others according to a strictly regulated code of honour, and who reserved his respect for the man who had won riches by force of arms rather than by the sweat of manual labour. This ideal of hidalguía was essentially aristocratic, but circumstances conspired to diffuse it throughout Castilian society, for the very character of the Reconquista as a southwards migration in the wake of the conquering armies encouraged a popular contempt for sedentary life and fixed wealth, and thus imbued the populace with ideals similar to those of the aristocracy.

Next, one on Aragon.

It was typical of the medieval Catalans that their pride in their constitutional achievements should naturally prompt them to export their institutional forms to any territories they acquired. Both Sardinia (its conquest begun in 1323) and Sicily (which had offered the Crown to Peter III of Aragon in 1282) possessed their own parliaments, which borrowed extensively from the Catalan-Aragonese model. Consequently, the medieval empire of the Crown of Aragon was far from being an authoritarian empire, ruled with an iron hand from Barcelona. On the contrary, it was a loose federation of territories, each with its own laws and institutions, and each voting independently the subsidies requested by its king. In this confederation of semi-autonomous provinces, monarchical authority was represented by a figure who was to play a vital part in the life of the future Spanish Empire. This figure was the viceroy, who had made his first appearance in the Catalan Duchy of Athens in the fourteenth century, when the duke appointed as his representative a vicarius generalis or viceregens. The viceroyalty – an office which was often, but not invariably, limited to tenures of three years – proved to be a brilliant solution to one of the most difficult problems created by the Catalan-Aragonese constitutional system: the problem of royal absenteeism. Since each part of the federation survived as an independent unit, and the King could only be present in one of these units at a given time, he would appoint in Majorca or Sardinia or Sicily a personal substitute or alter ego, who as viceroy would at once carry out his orders and preside over the country's government. In this way the territories of the federation were loosely held together, and their contacts with the ruling house of Aragon preserved.

The contrast may exaggerate the differences between the two polities, but difference there actually was. Arguably modern Catalonian nationalism is one of the more notable consequences of the difference.

[LINK] "Alberta politics and the language of consensus"

Julie Sedivy's analysis at Language Log of the language used in the recent Alberta provincial election, talking about the ways in which Albertan identity was used by the Wildrose Party to exclude the Progressive Conservatives and the incumbent premier Alison Redford from being properly Albertan, is fascinating.

The central narrative of the Wildrose Party was this: The PC Party had once been the natural governing party of Alberta, representing its core values of conservatism and individualism. But their long years in power had caused them to become arrogant and lose their political/moral compass, abandoning the principles of fiscal restraint, an unfettered market, and individual liberties. The Wildrose Party offered a chance to sweep out the cobwebs and realign Alberta leadership with the true spirit of Alberta.

The Wildrose's efforts to stake a claim to the historical ideology of the PC Party were matched with an all-out campaign to appropriate the language of consensus for itself. There's a long tradition in Alberta politics in which successful parties have hitched their wagons to an Albertan identity that is typically portrayed as cohesive, unique within Canada, and often in opposition to the rest of the country. Political language in Alberta is shot through with references to "Alberta values". And it was clearly the goal of the Wildrose Party to become linked in the minds of voters with these self-evident "Alberta values".

[. . .]

What was striking was the sheer frequency with which the Wildrose campaign bandied about the words Alberta and Albertans, as in "What Albertans want…" or "We're putting Albertans first." This occurred far more often than in any of the other parties' campaigns. In fact, the further left you moved on the political spectrum, the less often the words seemed to appear. Where, for instance, the Wildrose's Danielle Smith might talk about policies that would benefit Albertans and Alberta families, the leader of the left-wing New Democrats was more likely to talk about "ordinary folks" and "regular families". This suggests the words were being used not in their denotational sense (that is, for the purpose of referring to people who live in Alberta) so much as in their connotational sense (for the purpose of setting off the usual mental vibrations that are triggered upon hearing the word Alberta).

Most interesting is Redivy's prediction, based on a class experiment, that the adjectival qualities associated with being stereotypically "Albertan"--"'self-reliant, conservative, cowboys, hard-working, maverick, entrepreneurial, oilpatch' and so on"--may soon stop being relevant. Is Albertan exceptionalism thus doomed?

[BRIEF NOTE] On Canada's charter city in Honduras

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/economy-lab/daily-mix/how-charter-cities-could-lift-the-global-economy/article2414535/
Marginal Revolution's Alex Tabarrok let me know that friendly if distant Canadian-Honduran relations have just become more intense: Canada is now exercising something like sovereignty over a community in Honduras, as economist Paul Romer and Honduras politician Octavio Sanchez wrote in The Globe and Mail.

Many people from around the world would like access to the security and opportunity that Canadian governance makes possible. According to Gallup, the number of adults worldwide who would move permanently to Canada if given the chance is about 45 million. Although Canada can’t accommodate everyone who’d like to move here, it can help to bring stronger governance to many new places that could accept millions of new residents. The RED in Honduras is the place to start.

[. . .]

Canadians are increasingly aware of the limits of traditional aid but remain committed to the principle that supporting international development is not only in Canada’s national interest but is the right thing to do. Recent trade agreements with Peru, Colombia, Panama and Honduras demonstrate that Latin America remains high on Canada’s development agenda.

The RED offers a new way to think about development assistance, one that, like trade, relies on mutually beneficial exchange rather than charity. It’s an effort to build on the success of existing special zones based around the export-processing maquila industry. These zones have expanded employment in areas such as garments and textiles, with substantial investment from Canadian firms such as Gildan, but they haven’t brought the improved legal protections needed to attract higher-skilled jobs. By setting up the rule of law, the RED can open up new opportunities for Canadian firms to expand manufacturing operations and invest in urban infrastructure.

By participating in RED governance, Canada can make the new city a more attractive place for would-be residents and investors. It can help immediately by appointing a representative to a commission that has the power to ensure that RED leadership remains transparent and accountable. It also can assist by training police officers.

The courts in the RED will be independent from those in the rest of Honduras. The Mauritian Supreme Court has agreed in principle to serve as a court of final appeal for the RED, but Canada can play a strong complementary role. Because the RED can appoint judges from foreign jurisdictions, Canadian justices could hear RED cases from Canada and help train local jurists.

Oversight, policing and jurisprudence are just a few of the ways in which Canada can help. Effective public involvement will also be required in education, health care, environmental management and tax administration. Such co-operation can be based on a fee-for-service arrangement in which the RED pays Canada using gains in the value of the land in the new reform zone.

Wikipedia's Spanish-language Región especial de desarrollo, "special development region", goes into more detail, translated into English below.

"Special development region" is the official name of an administrative division urban Honduras (colloquially called model city) subject to the national government and provided a high level of autonomy with a separate political and judicial system, and under an economic system theory based on free market capitalism. [The project involves the creation of several cities in these regions with the hope of attracting investment and creating jobs in those areas. Each region has its representative special executive or governor and will have its own laws (or constitutional status), people must voluntarily enter into this system. The Law of Special Development Regions articulates the relationship between the constitutional status of each region special and the sovereignty of Honduras.

These special areas are the application of so-called charter cities or towns have as a reference model and the experience of China's special administrative regions (mainly the case of Hong Kong and how it served as a model city as special economic zones Shenzhen) and other countries of East Asia and Southeast Asia such as South Korea and Singapore.

The constitutional provisions that establish special development regions were raised in late 2010 and early 2011 during the government of President Porfirio Lobo, who gave official backing to economic development proposals of American economist Paul Romer who promotes the benefits of creating charter cities or towns in territories uninhabited model, with clear and stable rules (legal certainty) and open doors to capital and immigration.

I don't know what to think of this. It's the first time I've heard anything about Canada's involvement in this concept anywhere. The Canadian government hasn't replied, so far as I've heard, but this might be the sort of idea the Conservative government would go for.

People, what say you?