Promoting Inclusivity in the Archive: A literature review reassessing tradition through theory and practice

The call for social justice and rise of postmodernism in the second half of the 20th century forced the critical re-evaluation of the traditional archive and its presumed neutral role in the collection and creation of history. Reappraisal of traditional archive theory and practice was forced by heightened critical conscious among the field and its constituents. This literature review examines contemporary methodologies and methods influenced by the postmodern movement and call for social justice in the archive. Affect theory, radical empathy, and queer/ed methodology provide new frameworks for the thinking about the archive space and work towards the creation of a more diverse and inclusive archive. The collection of oral histories and participatory, community archiving practices provide concrete methods for employing the aforementioned theories. This paper purports that these ideas may be better framed within the context of the post-postmodern movement of metamodernism and calls for the continual evaluation of archival theory and practice within this vein

On the Consistent Effect Histories Approach to Quantum Mechanics

A formulation of the consistent histories approach to quantum mechanics in terms of generalized observables (POV measures) and effect operators is provided. The usual notion of `history' is generalized to the notion of `effect history'. The space of effect histories carries the structure of a D-poset. Recent results of J.D. Maitland Wright imply that every decoherence functional defined for ordinary histories can be uniquely extended to a bi-additive decoherence functional on the space of effect histories. Omnes' logical interpretation is generalized to the present context. The result of this work considerably generalizes and simplifies the earlier formulation of the consistent effect histories approach to quantum mechanics communicated in a previous work of this author.Comment: LaTeX 2.09 version replaced by LaTeX2e version, minor change

Historical sociology, international relations and connected histories

This article addresses three recent developments in historical sociology: (1) neo-Weberian historical sociology within International Relations; (2) the 'civilizational analysis' approach utilized by scholars of 'multiple modernities'; and (3) the 'third wave' cultural turn in US historical sociology. These developments are responses to problems identified within earlier forms of historical sociology, but it is suggested each fails to resolve them precisely because each remains contained within the methodological framework of historical sociology as initially conceived. It is argued that their common problem lies in the utilization of 'ideal types' as the basis for sociohistorical analysis. This necessarily has the effect of abstracting a set of particular relations from their wider connections and has the further effect of suggesting sui generis endogenous processes as integral to these relations. In this way, each of the three developments continues the Eurocentrism typical of earlier approaches. The article concludes with a call for 'connected histories' to provide a more adequate methodological and substantive basis for an historical sociology appropriate to calls for a properly global historical sociology

Optimal adult growth of Daphnia in a seasonal environment

1. The cladoceran Daphnia serves as an example of an iteroparous organism, with overlapping generations, that is capable of substantial adult growth. The life history of Daphnia was modelled as the consequence of a series of decisions about allocation of energetic resources to growth and reproduction. 2. We used numerical methods to find resource allocation patterns that maximized fitness of Daphnia in a temporally variable environment. Temporal variation was modelled as alternating active and dormant seasons; length of the active season was uniformly distributed. Fitness was measured by the geometric mean of resting eggs produced at the end of the active season. We examined effects of mean and range of the active season on the optimal life history; we also examined effects of increasing (invertebrate predation), constant (non-selective) and decreasing (fish) size-specific survival rates. For comparison, we found resource allocation patterns that maximized fitness in a constant environment, where fitness was measured by the intrinsic rate of increase r. 3. Life histories optimized for seasonal environments generally showed earlier maturity and greater adult growth than those optimized for constant environments. Adult growth occurred with non-selective predation, and even with fish predation, conditions under which it does not occur in the optimal life histories for constant environments. 4. Greatest size at maturity and adult growth occurred in life histories optimized to invertebrate predation in seasonal environments. Smallest size at maturity and least adult growth occurred in life histories optimized to fish predation. 5. In the optimal life histories, size at maturity generally increased with mean length of the active season. Adult growth reached a maximum for mean seasons of length equal to about one-half to one life span of Daphnia. 6. Increasing the variation in season length decreased adult growth in the optimal life history, but had little effect on size at maturity. 7. We expect that life histories are adapted to the long-term average of season length and its variation. If the animals can detect the type of predator, selection could favour phenotypic variation in resource allocation

No Time Asymmetry from Quantum Mechanics

With CPT-invariant initial conditions that commute with CPT-invariant final conditions, the respective probabilities (when defined) of a set of histories and its CPT reverse are equal, giving a CPT-symmetric universe. This leads me to question whether the asymmetry of the Gell-Mann--Hartle decoherence functional for ordinary quantum mechanics should be interpreted as an asymmetry of {\it time} .Comment: 14 pages, Alberta-Thy-11-9