RETHINKING THE SOCIAL IMPACTS OF THE ARTS

The paper presents a critical discussion of the current debate over the social impacts of the arts in the UK. It argues that the accepted understanding of the terms of the debate is rooted in a number of assumptions and beliefs that are rarely questioned. The paper goes on to present the interim findings of a three‐year research project, which aims to rethink the social impact of the arts, with a view to determining how these impacts might be better understood. The desirability of a historical approach is articulated, and a classification of the claims made within the Western intellectual tradition for what the arts “do” to people is presented and discussed.     

Institutional Arrangements and the Morphology of Residential Development in the Netherlands,Flanders and North Rhine-Westphalia

Abstract

This article aims to highlight the mechanisms through which institutional arrangements influence the morphology of residential development. By comparing the Netherlands, Flanders and North Rhine-Westphalia, which have quite similar socio-economic and landscape characteristics, it investigates how differences in national institutional environments have contributed to differences in the urban morphology of residential areas. This article fits within a broader institutional “turn” in planning research. While most of these studies focus on how institutions affect the behaviour of actors in the process of planning and development, this article focuses on the physical outcomes of these processes. The institutional analysis of physical outcomes suggests that urban morphology is not only linked to planning systems—the subject of this special issue—but also to housing cultures and property regimes.     

Federation Projects in Central Europe, 1848–1918

This paper deals with the less researched issue of regional federation projects in East-Central Europe from the period 1848 to 1918. Based on exhaustive research, primarily using original sources—works of the intellectuals who designed these projects—the paper examines the reasons why these federation projects were written, their historical-political context, and why these plans had to fail at their time. Similarities and differences of ideas in these projects are also presented. The intention is not to give a simple presentation of a series of historical facts, but to present some early ideas focused on regional integration, which, in turn, could also provide inspiration in the present.     

时空间行为视角下的城市社会融合研究

城市转型背景下的社会极化与社会融合问题是城市地理学研究的重要议题。国内外文献多关注社区尺度上的社会融合特征及其地理环境要素,由此形成了基于居住空间视角的社会融合研究传统。但这一研究视角过于静态和片面,难以在个体移动性不断提高、日常活动空间不断拓展的背景下深刻揭示社会融合的动态过程以及地理环境要素的微观影响机理。本文在对城市社会融合的国内外研究文献进行梳理的基础上,讨论基于居住空间视角的社会融合研究存在的不足,构建时空间行为视角下的城市社会融合研究理论框架。本文提出,从微观层面的个体移动性与时空行为约束的视角,能够基于个体日常活动—移动行为更准确地刻画个体社会交往的动态地理情境,并从居民日常生活的时空约束、公共接触潜力、时空间行为策略等方面来识别地理环境要素影响社会融合的过程与机制。在此基础上,本文展望城市社会融合研究的可能研究议题与方法论发展方向,有助于推进中国城市社会融合研究的多元化和人本化。     

Unsettling Time: Persistence and Memory in Spanish Colonial Peru

In this paper, I explore the politics of memory during the Toledan reforms—a series of ambitious administrative changes legislated in colonial Peru between 1569 and 1581, by viceroy Francisco de Toledo. At the center of Toledo’s project was an initiative to resettle the entire native population of the audiencias of Lima and Charcas into a series of planned towns called reducciones. This movement—reducción—sought to transform Andean indigenous peoples into subjects of the Catholic Church and the Spanish crown through a series of explicitly spatial operations, including regional population nucleation and settlement planning. But the terms of these changes were also temporal: as reducción shaped landscapes and built environments, it also sought to transform indigenous historicity, bringing native peoples into the Era of Christ and carefully regulating the social institutions and practices by which they accounted for their pasts. The Toledan reforms therefore present a clear example of one empire’s attempts to subjugate conquered peoples through mnemonic practices. Yet archaeological research in one corner of the viceroyalty—Peru’s Zaña valley—suggests that the story of how indigenous memories were actually shaped during the course of resettlement and its aftermath was far from straightforward. To understand these transformations, I argue that we must explore not only the short-term dialectic of Spanish designs and their indigenous responses, but also the “afterlives” of reduccion in the 17th and 18th centuries. Over the longer term, reducción achieved staying power through a series of unanticipated pathways, in which landscape change, demography, and indigenous agency all played essential roles. I argue that these developments ultimately resulted in much more complex forms of remembering than those implicit in reducción legislation and that they underscore the importance for archaeological studies of memory of attending both to the materiality of imperial landscapes and long-term processes of subject formation.     

Gypsy‐Travellers and Welfare Professional Discourse: On Individualization and Social Integration

Abstract: This paper examines the subtle ways in which welfare professionals in the UK construct Gypsy culture as subordinate to the dominant Western concept of “civilization”. Qualitative empirical evidence is presented to show how notions of a resistance to processes of individualization and social integration—which draw on conflicting interpretations of childhood and a perceived lack of aspiration among Gypsy‐Travellers—are seen as legitimate grounds for state and social welfare intervention. The paper argues that a strong group orientation and a more marked gendered division of labour are constructed as being at odds with these dominant social processes. It is posited that the “civilizing” project against Gypsy‐Travellers ignores cultural norms and values resulting in the perception that they are undeserving. The paper suggests that theoretical accounts of social processes at a society wide level require revision in order to understand their varying impact on peripheral minorities in specific spaces.     

Dynamic Resistance: Third‐Sector Processes for Transforming Neoliberalization

This paper proposes a holistic framework called dynamic resistance for analysing and animating third‐sector organizations’ contestations of neoliberalization. It argues that the third sector constitutes a rich terrain for transforming neoliberalization processes to promote human flourishing and social justice. Dynamic resistance comprises four elements—rejection, resilience, resourcefulness, and reflexive practice—within a cyclical process which can occur simultaneously at different organizational scales. Four vignettes, drawn from participatory action research, illustrate these processes at Oblong, a grassroots community group in Leeds which now runs a community centre. Despite engagement with neoliberal mechanisms, Oblong provides an example of dynamic resistance in practice, avoiding “mission drift” and prioritizing self‐defined core values of equality, collectivity, empowerment, sustainability, respect and care, and being community led. Dynamic resistance suggests third‐sector organizations’ capacity to construct transformative social empowerment through ever‐changing practices which are proactive and self‐directed as well as responsive.     

JUDICIAL SELECTION: THE SOCIAL SCIENTISTS' VIEW*

This paper is an assessment of the contributions which social scientists have made to the debate on the most appropriate mode for selecting state judges. Specific analyses of the assumptions behind differing normative positions qoverning judicial selection (e.g., accountability versus independence) are discussed. Considerable empirical research has been completed on elective and Missouri Plan systemic. It is suggested however, that more definitive conclusions might be possible through cross-system analysis. The methodological barriers to effective comparisons among the systems are high, but that area of inquiry appears to offer the potential for social scientists to make a significant policy contribution.     

“非正常”的文化标签下“同志”社会空间的生产——以广州市X公园“同志渔场”为例

性少数群体对于城市空间的利用是城市研究中的新兴话题。这类研究主要探讨"非主流"的社会身份如何通过对特定的社会空间的利用,引发空间意义的生产及社会关系的建构。本文以广州市X公园的"同志渔场"为案例,研究男同性恋者对于城市公共空间的利用与体验。研究认为,X公园的"同志渔场"不仅给性少数群体提供了性身份暂时解放的空间,亦是其不断体验自身"非正常"的身份标签的空间。同志的空间实践体现的不是对于主流的社会规范的抵抗。相反,他们的空间实践是明显地处在"非正常"这一身份标签的作用之下的。     

Strategic Essentialism and Vatican Policy

Abstract

Just as women's NGOs around the world use essentialism strategically—calling upon their assigned roles as mothers to create change for their children that they might not feel empowered to create for themselves—the most recent Vatican policy holds on to the remnants of essentialism as a policy for protecting exclusive male access to ordination, and therefore power in the church. Previously, essentialism had protected male superiority in existence, social roles, the family, and the church, but one by one, all of these have been conceded except male superiority in the church. The paper further proposes that the traditional male role, of which the church has been a principal support, has in fact now become detrimental to males.     

Add shamans and stir? A critical review of the shamanism model of forager rock art production

The “shamanism” or “neurpsychological” model proposed by Lewis-Williams and colleagues has had a powerful impact on rock art research, and has significantly added to our knowledge of past foragers lifeways in southern Africa and elsewhere in the world. However, this model is primarily based on the view of shamanism as a universal and unvarying characteristic of foragers over space and time. This paper raises both theoretical and empirical problems with this view. The paper examines the relationship between the specific social roles and practices of shamanism and the overarching cosmological structures on which they are based in both southern Africa and Northern Eurasia. In both cases, the paper argues that many cosmological beliefs are highly persistent and durable, extending into prehistory, while the specific practices and roles of shamans are variable, changing to meet the immediate and local needs of their communities. This suggests that rock art is easier to relate to the overarching cosmological dispositions of the people that produced it and the paper closes by suggesting some theoretical and methodological alternatives recognizing this fact.     

Social meaning in the English lesser gentry house: a West Yorkshire study

This paper analyses the archaeological and documentary evidence from three West Yorkshire houses—Calverley Old Hall, Shibden Hall and Oakwell Hall—to re-evaluate narratives of gentry emulation in 16th- and 17th-century English housebuilding. Gentry houses have long been absorbed into the literature of elite country houses, with homes of the lesser gentry serving primarily as emulative examples of national architectural and social trends. This paper suggests a more nuanced interpretation of these homes as sites of multi-faceted household relationships, where the inhabitants consciously incorporated and resisted elite trends and used space to establish and maintain control.     

School Choice and Educational Stratification

Recent growth in the number of school choice programs across the country has ignited debate on the stratifying effects of these programs. In the context of interdistrict open enrollment, this paper analyzes—both theoretically and empirically—how choice programs affect stratification levels through the mechanisms of (i) the relative characteristics of program participants and nonparticipants and (ii) the schooling choices of different groups of program participants. The theoretical analysis uses Monte Carlo simulation techniques to analyze a hypothetical world where interdistrict choice is available to students in three school districts that are allowed to vary in student composition, the type of students who take advantage of the interdistrict choice program, and schooling choices of students who open enroll. The results of these simulations provide an understanding of the conditions under which an interdistrict open enrollment program leads to increases, decreases, or no changes in stratification levels. The empirical analysis uses data from the universe of students attending Colorado public schools in 2009–10 to examine how the state's interdistrict choice program affects stratification levels. It also analyzes the factors responsible for any increases or decreases in stratification and finds both participation patterns and differences in schooling decisions across groups to play important roles. The paper concludes with a discussion of its implications for research and policy.     

AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL INCLUSION IN BRITAIN

This paper attempts to distinguish the different meanings of “audience development” and “social inclusion” – two areas receiving increasing attention in British cultural policy – by discussing their overlap and close relation to “access”. These policy areas are fraught with inherent contradictions when examined in the light of sociological theories on culture. Consumption skills, the level of which is determined socio‐economically, and the function of culture for distinction suggest problems and paradoxes for audience development and social inclusion. Discussion on representation in culture, which can work to institutionalise inequality, also leads to a call for a “target‐driven” approach to these areas. This would be fundamentally different from the dominant “product‐led” approach that tries to leave the core product intact whilst making changes in presentation. To become truly inclusive is a most formidable challenge for cultural organisations as it inevitably brings them into a wholesale review of their core products.     

El padre transgresor: Crisis familiar y crisis social en el teatro popular bonaerense, 1896–1934

This article analyzes how five exemplary works of Argentine popular theater (1896–1934) construct unconventional readings of a perceived social crisis during Argentina's insertion into the global capitalist market. While dominant discourses focused on women's “errant” sexuality as the source of social demise, these works place the father figure —metaphor for social leadership— at the center of the debate to explore the chain of factors that hinder these fathers from fulfilling their “proper” gender roles, which ultimately causes the so-called social crisis. This focus on the paternal figure allows these plays to posit that social crisis stemmed from a destructive capitalistic logic based on the circulation of money, fraud, competition, and theft rather than from “errant” women. The recovery of these unconventional perspectives contributes to a more complex understanding of discourses on gender in the period, as well as of the relationship between discourses on everyday life and modernization.     

社区人文社会环境对汶川地震移民社会适应的影响——以北川县为例

对汶川地震移民来说,社区人文社会环境直接影响他们的社会适应状况。本文基于调研数据,构建模型来探究社区人文社会环境对移民社会适应的影响。研究表明：社区人文社会环境下的16个单一指标,仅"社区治安"和"干群关系评价"对移民的社会适应状况有显著影响;但16个单一指标集成的4个综合指标-"配套设施"、"邻里关系"、"干群关系"和"观念习俗",却均对地震移民的社会适应状况影响显著,并且除"观念习俗"与移民的社会适应程度呈弱显著的负相关关系外,其他3个综合指标与移民的社会适应程度都呈强显著的正相关关系。     

WHAT I BELIEVE ABOUT WHAT YOU BELIEVE: DISCUSSING SOCIAL THEORY IN SOUTHEASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY

Taken together, the papers published in this volume demonstrate that Southeastern archaeologists are theoretically eclectic, are borrowers and users of theory, are reflexive and collaborative, and are modest and unaggressive when discussing their theoretical inclinations. This paper clarifies the positive and negative outcomes of these characteristics and suggests ways to encourage the benefits while discouraging the drawbacks. I advocate being careful when combining theoretical paradigms, using technology to continue year-round informal communication, being more generous with stakeholder relationships and the methods used to build them, and giving ourselves more credit for the interesting theory building that we do.     

Managerialism,governmentality and the state: a neo-Foucauldian approach to local economic governance

After decades of relative stability, the 1980s and 1990s witnessed a radical restructuring of local–central relations in Britain. This paper draws on neo-Foucauldian writings on ‘governmentality’ to argue that local state restructuring is a product of the ascendancy of neo-liberalism as a distinct political rationality. Material drawn from empirical research on local economic governance in the Scottish Highlands shows how the functioning of a distinct set of managerial ‘technologies’ — embedded in specific practices such as budgetary management, audit and targeting — is instrumental in giving the central state the capacity to shape local institutional practice. At the same time, however, local institutional actors retain some scope to adapt and ‘translate’ central directives to their own particular purposes. Whilst recent neo-Gramscian contributions argue that local governance must be seen as a product of national state restructuring, the neo-Foucauldian emphasis on governmental technologies specifies the precise mechanisms which give central state authorities the reach and capability to monitor and steer the activities of local institutions. In conclusion, the paper suggests that focusing on the reception of governmental technologies within sub-national institutional sites may offer a productive line of inquiry which can expose the internal contradictions and fissures of neo-liberal programmes.