Social Agglomeration Forces and the City

The presence of “agglomeration forces” in production markets is widely accepted and has been recently quantified in the economics literature. Social scientists have done little theoretical work, however, and even less quantitative work, on how the logic of agglomeration might also apply to social groups and the gains that people derive from their social interactions. This paper attempts to bridge this gap by modeling and measuring the benefits in terms of social prestige that arose from the spatial concentration of socialites in Manhattan in the 1920s. I formulate a model of location-based social status determination that illustrates why these benefits might make spatial concentration desirable for members of the social elite. To test the model, I draw on the 1920 and 1924 volumes of the New York Social Register, federal income tax data for New York City residents in the 1920s, and United States Federal Census records to compile a novel dataset containing demographic information, club affiliations, occupations, incomes and addresses of over 700 socially prominent men living in Manhattan in the early 1920s. Treating club memberships as a proxy for social prominence, I exploit an instrumental variable approach, using expected changes in family size as an instrument for neighborhood choice, to measure the relationship between an individual’s residence relative to others in the group and his social status. My results suggest that there are strong, statistically significant benefits in terms of social status that come with living in closer proximity to others in one’s social group; in the context of my 1924 Manhattan data, a move of just a few blocks from 12 West 44th Street to 421 Park Avenue would, on average and all else equal, result in a 54.3% increase in club memberships for the mean individual in my dataset

Philosophy, Psychology and History:The Making of a Suicidal Terrorist

Philip Pomper is a leading scholar of 19th and 20th century Russia. His latest work is a study of Alexander (`Sasha\u27) Ulyanov, who was executed for his role as one of the leaders of a failed assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander III in 1887. His motivation in becoming a terrorist is examined in the light of the evidence presented by Pomper and account is also taken of previous studies such as those by Thomas Masaryk. It is contended that the culture of nihilism and the concomitant worship of science were more important than anything in Ulyanov\u27s family background in explaining his radicalization. The transition from theory to practice is explained by focusing on the psychological impact of the concept of the nihilist `new man\u27 on the young student Alexander. Attention is also given to the significance of what has often been dismissed as a minor episode in the history of terrorism, one which would have faded from view but for the later fame of Ulyanov\u27s younger brother, Vladimir Ilyich, who entered the mainstream of history as Lenin

From Trier to Eternity : The Life and Legacy of Karl Marx

This article reviews the recently published biography of Karl Marx by Jonathan Sperber, Curator’s Professor of History at the University of Missouri. It notes how, in making full use of the documentary material assembled by the MEGA project, Sperber is able to set Marx in his historical context and better explain the course that he charted, particularly in the revolutionary years of 1848–49. It suggests, however, that there is a cost to this, since Sperber’s detailed and sensitive grasp of the times is not always balanced by similar quality of insight into the nature of the man himself, especially in key areas like the source of his atheism and the significance of his relationships with the women in his life. Considerable use is therefore made of the work of other writers, most notably Thomas Masaryk, in an attempt to discern the deeper significance of some of the evidence that Sperber has assembled. The problem of accounting for the anger that permeated Marx’s thinking and writing is addressed, and a picture drawn of an individual who found it exceptionally difficult to come to terms with any form of restraint on his behaviour or thought. The significance of the turbid nature of his thought for the twentieth century is explored and an attempt made to assess the degree of his responsibility for the impact that Marxism had on countries such as Russia and China after his death

Redrawing Boundaries:The ‘Bloodlands’ as Fact or Artefact?

Timothy Snyder is a leading light among scholars engaged in the study of 20th century central and eastern European history. His latest book attempts to convince the reader of the usefulness and aptness of the coinage‘Bloodlands’ as a way of identifying and describing a discrete historical phenomenon, the campaigns of mass murder waged by Hitler and Stalin in a swathe of the continent running between central Poland and Western Russia in the period 1933-45. This central claim is examined and found wanting in terms of an inner consistency in relationship to the unities of time, place and action. It is argued, however, that the book still contains much of real value, as for example in its discussion of Stalinist anti-semitism and the disappearance of the Holocaust from Soviet accounts of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ after 1945. The failure to establish an overarching framework is, then, a significant flaw, but not sufficiently damaging to wound the endeavor fatally

Wading into Manasarovar Lake:Tibet as Balm for the West’s Self-Doubt

This article reviews four recently published or republished works that bear on changing Western perceptions of Tibet over the past two centuries. It acknowledges that Tom Neuhaus’ study provides the clearest framework for categorising, if not explaining, the shifting images produced both by those who travelled to the country and those who observed it from afar; and it accepts his contention that there was a significant change in European attitudes to Tibetthat owed much to the damage to the continent’s conception of itself and itsvalues wrought by the First World War. But the argument is made that otherevents must be considered in any diagnosis of the growth of Western selfdisgust,and that the problem also has an important American dimension. Theconclusion reached is that the West’s mythmaking with regard to Tibet iscertainly revealing, but that it is chiefly symptomatic of a crisis of selfconfidenceand identity that will not overcome by a search for esoteric wisdombeyond its borders.Paul G. Hackett. 2012. Theos Barnard, the White Lama: Tibet, Yoga, andAmerican Religious Life. New York, Columbia University Press. Pp. xxii,494. ISBN 978 0 231 15886 2 (hardback).Arthur Henry Savage Landor. 2011. In the Forbidden Land, Volumes I and II:An Account of a Journey in Tibet, Capture by Tibetan Authorities, Imprisonment,Torture, and Ultimate Release. Oxford, Benediction Classics. Pp. 499.No ISBN: reprint of original publication of 1898 (hardback).Tom Neuhaus. 2012. Tibet in the Western Imagination. Basingstoke, England,Palgrave Macmillan. Pp. ix, 264. ISBN 978 0 230 29970 2 (hardback).Colin Thubron. 2012. To a Mountain in Tibet. New York, Harper Perennial.Pp. 227. ISBN 978 0 06 176827 9 (paperback)