A stochastic sub-national population projection methodology with an application to the Waikato region of New Zealand

In this paper we use a stochastic population projection methodology at the sub-national level as an alternative to the conventional deterministic cohort-component method. We briefly evaluate the accuracy of previous deterministic projections and find that there is a tendency for these to be conservative: under-projecting fast growing populations and over-projecting slow growing ones. We generate probabilistic population projections for five demographically distinct administrative areas within the Waikato region of New Zealand, namely Hamilton City, Franklin District, Thames-Coromandel District, Otorohanga District and South Waikato District. Although spatial interaction between the areas is not taken into account in the current version of the methodology, a consistent set of cross-regional assumptions is used. The results are compared to official sub-national deterministic projections. The accuracy of sub-national population projections is in New Zealand strongly affected by the instability of migration as a component of population change. Unlike the standard cohort-component methodology, in which net migration levels are projected, the key parameters of our stochastic methodology are age-gender-area specific net migration rates. The projected range of rates of population growth is wider for smaller regions and/or regions more strongly affected by net migration. Generally, the identified and modelled uncertainty makes the traditional ‘mid range’ scenario of sub-national population projections of limited use for policy analysis or planning beyond a relatively short projection horizon. Directions for further development of a stochastic sub-national projection methodology are suggested

'Genealogical misfortunes': Achille Mbembe's (re-)writing of postcolonial Africa

In his latest work, Sortir de la grande nuit, the Cameroonian social theorist, Achille Mbembe nuances his description of the ontological status of the postcolonial African subject, which he had theorized extensively in his best-known text, On the Postcolony, and at the same time exploits the conceptual resources of a number of Jean-Luc Nancy’s lexical innovations. This recent text is also a reprise of an earlier autobiographical essay, and the gesture of this ‘reinscription’ is critical to our understanding of Mbembe’s status as a contemporary ‘postcolonial thinker’, and the way in which he positions himself within a certain intellectual genealogy of postcolonial theory. Within this trajectory, I argue that we can read fruitfully his relationship to three influential figures: Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy and Ruben Um Nyobè

Local and Global Properties of the World

The essence of the method of physics is inseparably connected with the problem of interplay between local and global properties of the universe. In the present paper we discuss this interplay as it is present in three major departments of contemporary physics: general relativity, quantum mechanics and some attempts at quantizing gravity (especially geometrodynamics and its recent successors in the form of various pregeometry conceptions). It turns out that all big interpretative issues involved in this problem point towards the necessity of changing from the standard space-time geometry to some radically new, most probably non-local, generalization. We argue that the recent noncommutative geometry offers attractive possibilities, and gives us a conceptual insight into its algebraic foundations. Noncommutative spaces are, in general, non-local, and their applications to physics, known at present, seem very promising. One would expect that beneath the Planck threshold there reigns a ``noncommutative pregeometry'', and only when crossing this threshold the usual space-time geometry emerges.Comment: 43 pages, latex, no figures, changes: authors and abstract added to the body of pape

End-user informed demographic projections for Hamilton up to 2041

This report provides a set of projections of the population of Hamilton City and the larger Hamilton Zone. The projections have been calculated by means of the cohort component model. The projections can be considered alongside official Statistics New Zealand projections, but differ from the latter in terms of assumptions made about net migration. These assumptions constitute a number of scenarios that were informed by the Hamilton City Council and local consultations. These scenarios are linked to the potential impact of a number of economic development activities. The report also contains projections of the number of households, the labour force and two ethnic groups: Māori and New Zealand Europeans. In addition, a dwellings-based methodology is used to produce small area (Census Area Unit) projections. Across the scenarios, Hamilton City’s projected population growth over the next two decades ranges from 13.8 percent to 36.0 percent. This is between 1.5 to 12.2 percentage points higher than the corresponding projected national growth