Inter- and Transdisciplinary Research for Planning Climate Change Adaptation Responses: The Example of Santiago de Chile

Abstract

This article gives insights into an inter- and transdisciplinary research approach designed to enhance the planning of climate change adaptation responses at urban-regional level. What makes interdisciplinary approaches to adaptation action unique is its ability to unravel the complexity of climate change and the interwoven processes it entails. It is the planning aspect here that makes stakeholder involvement crucial. Hence in contemporary climate change research the science-policy interface takes centre stage, generating response capacity and exchanging ‘usable’ information with decision-makers within the framework of a transdisciplinary approach. Climate action plans and climate adaptation strategies, for example, have the potential to unite sectors and levels of decision-making around an integrated planning approach. This article discusses the challenges and constraints of the inter- and transdisciplinary research approach developed for a Metropolitan Region of Santiago de Chile (MRS).     

“This Remarkable Piece of Antiquity”: Epic Conventions in Shelley’s Oedipus Tyrannus; or,Swellfoot the Tyrant

ABSTRACT

Shelley’s Swellfoot the Tyrant has recently begun to gain the concerted attention of critics, who have noted the play’s signature blend of low and high, of ephemeral, late Regency politics with the classic genres of Sophoclean tragedy, Aristophanic comedy, and mock epic. But Austin Warren’s famous and widely accepted definition of mock epic as “not mockery of the epic but elegantly affectionate homage, offered by a writer who finds [the serious epic] irrelevant to his age” does not describe Shelley’s earnest goal of immediate political reform in authoring Swellfoot. Instead, the play evinces Shelley’s unique, conscious reconfiguration of four conventions characteristic of the high, classical epic: the “prosperous breeze”; the epic simile; katabasis or descent into the underworld; and divine intervention. I argue that Shelley’s comic adaptation of these epic conventions reflects his serious aim of helping effect reform through Swellfoot and embodies his absorption of the concept of Shakespeare’s history plays as an experimental hybrid of dramatic forms with epic subjects, gained during his earlier reading of A. W. Schlegel’s Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. Though the immediate suppression of Swellfoot prevented its relevance in its own historical moment, it comprises a singular hybrid of Aristophanic satire and Sophoclean tragedy with high epic conventions, while ironically also identifying Shelley as a proponent of the French neoclassical theory of the epic’s consciously didactic purpose propounded by Le Bossu.     

Marina Carr’s Hecuba: agency,anger and correcting Euripides

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on Marina Carr’s 2015 adaptation of Hecuba for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Hecuba sees Carr return to a fascination with Greek tragedy, difficult female characters and reimagining foundational myths. Of all Euripides’ plays Hecuba has rarely been popular, yet the themes Carr prises open – of violence, desire, gendered experience and the politics of perspective – are acutely topical. Indeed, Hecuba seemed to anticipate the frustrations that erupted on 28 October 2015 in response to the Abbey Theatre’s “Waking the Nation” programme. Drawing on twentieth and twenty-first century debates around the politics of tragic form, Roland Barthes theorising of myth, and the tradition of Greek adaptation in modern Irish drama, this paper examines how Hecuba reorients its sources. It goes on to assess the outcomes of these reorientations in order to problematise the critical predisposition to find an inevitably progressive poetics/politics in her engagement with tragic myths.     

Pope,Province, and Power

The Nidaros province, founded in 1152–1153 with Nidaros/Trondheim in Norway as its metropolitan see, was a wide-spanning unit encompassing the episcopal sees in Norway, Iceland, Greenland, The Faeroes, Orkney, and The Isle of Man. This article discusses a period in the history of the province which has attracted little scholarly attention to date. The point of departure is the archbishop’s apparent disappearance from the Icelandic scene in the 1240s, and the author addresses the question of ecclesiastical integration by examining the Nidaros metropolitan’s authority in the mid-13th century. The subject is approached from three perspectives: the archbishop’s relationship with the pope; the struggle for power between the archbishop and the Norwegian king; and the archbishop’s executive authority within his province, exemplified by the Icelandic Church. The article reveals that in the mid-13th century the archbishop was facing several challenges to his authority. The analysis also provides compelling insights into the dynamics at work within the wider context of the high medieval Church.     

Sectoral Resilience: Conceptualizing Industry-Specific Spatial Patterns of Interactive Crisis Adjustment

While the regional resilience approach stresses major place-specific factors of adaptability to economic crises, industry-sector-specific mechanisms of shock response, which often cross-regional boundaries, still require conceptualization relating to aspects of resilience. This paper proposes the concept of sectoral resilience, which acknowledges that the actors who constitute the value chains and production systems of an industry sector, when struck by a major global crisis, collectively and interactively form a sector-specific pattern of response and adaptation. As these actors often strategically use assets at different locations, industry-specific spatial patterns of adaptation emerge that affect various regions in differing ways. After defining the suggested concept and related terminology, its geographical logics are outlined. Then major conceptual pillars of sectoral resilience are depicted, relating to six major, partly interdependent process fields. For each of them, mechanisms of shock adaptation of an industry sector and major factors of inter-sectoral distinctions of resilience patterns are pointed out, briefly illustrated by the examples of the automotive and mechanical engineering sectors. The approach helps us better understand industry-specific features of crisis adaptation and intersections of regional and corporate logics of resilience.     

THE BUSINESS OF WELFARE

A common narrative in welfare state research is that Sweden exemplifies a specific model of welfare, ‘the Swedish model’, or ‘the Social democratic welfare regime’. From this perspective the emerging welfare state left little room for private initiatives – the stage was set for the development of an encompassing welfare state in the 1950s. In this article I argue that this, virtually hegemonic, perspective has hindered an analysis of how private insurance co-existed and thrived within the emerging Swedish welfare state. As an alternative approach to ‘modelling’ – the concept of welfare-formation is developed to analyse mutually sustaining practices of welfare. I show how the insurance business and its protagonists influenced the settings of public pension schemes in a way that underpinned their own interests. A close cooperation with the state apparatus was fundamental for creating a trustworthy insurance market and legitimizing the business claim of fulfilling a social mission. The business adaptability in the shifting landscape of social policy also influenced perceptions of security and welfare in general. Commercial ideals became an essential dimension of the welfare state. By exploring this marginalized history – the business of welfare – the study deepens our understanding of modern welfare societies.     

ABDULLAH BIN ABDUL KADIR MUNSYI: A MAN OF BANANAS AND THORNS

Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir Munsyi is best known for his memoirs, labelled by some his autobiography, the Hikayat Abdullah. The missionary, Alfred North, encouraged him to write his life story, a first in Malay, and it has been assumed that Abdullah, working in a new genre, was relatively faithful to the conventions of the genre; that at the very least, he was attempting to produce a tolerably straightforward account of his life and times. Both his admirers and detractors, though seemingly at odds, saw Abdullah's work as a mouthpiece for British values. It did not occur to scholars that Abdullah might possess his own agenda, and that his working in a foreign genre did not necessarily produce what those scholars assumed it did. This has produced a blinkered understanding of what Abdullah was about. His supreme aim was to enhance his own image and stature. Production of ‘historical’ facts was sometimes a secondary concern. ‘Fiction’ and ‘nonfiction’ were not yet established conventions in his literary milieu. He worked under major constraints, for his livelihood depended on not alienating patrons and future patrons, yet he devised ways to air views critical of the powerful. Here he was much more concerned with Islamic issues than ethnic ones.     

Farm,family, and myself: farm women dealing with family break-up

Despite the rising divorce rate among farm families in Norway, surprisingly little research has examined these break-ups. Drawing on interviews with farm women whose marital or cohabiting relationships broke down, we explore the contradictions between individualization and the moral responsibility embedded in the patriarchal discourse of the family farm. We ask whether farm family dissolution represents a break with patriarchal ideology and practice, and thus threatens the survival of the family farm. A key finding is the struggle to balance establishing new lives for themselves with meeting their felt obligations to the farm. None of the women exercised their full legal rights if they worried that it might destroy the farm business. By ensuring the survival of the farm and the well-being of their children, the women's handling of divorce conforms to cultural conventions and protects the family farm.     

族裔创业、市场竞争与双向影响——纽约唐人街巴士业发展历程探析

论文以纽约唐人街巴士业的发展历程为例,从族裔创业、市场竞争的角度,探讨了由来自中国大陆的新移民所创立的唐人街巴士业,与美国灰狗巴士业的竞争与相互影响。研究显示,唐人街巴士经历了行业发展与调整,保持较好的发展势头,而灰狗巴士依旧保持着行业的领先优势,占据较大的市场份额。外来移民的母国文化及其生活经验有助于他们在异域创业,参与移入国的市场竞争可以促进他们对移居地社会的适应,在一定程度上推动移居地社会的改变。同时。美国本土巴士企业及整个行业,也因为唐人街巴士的竞争而发生转变。跨国移民与移居地社会,通过商业竞争、双向影响而实现优势互补,推动了移民与移居地社会的共同发展。     

Commercializing science: nineteenth- and twentieth-century academic scientists as consultants,patentees, and entrepreneurs

Abstract

The collection of essays introduced in this article contributes to the debate on the commercialization of academic science by shifting the focus from institutional developments meant to foster university technology transfer to the actions of individual scientists. Instead of searching for the origins of the ‘entrepreneurial university,’ this special issue examines the personal involvement of academic physicists, engineers, photographic scientists, and molecular biologists in three types of commercial activity: consulting, patenting, and full-blown business entrepreneurship. The authors investigate how this diverse group of teachers and researchers perceived their institutional and professional environments, their career prospects, the commercial value of their knowledge and reputation, and their ability to exploit these assets. By documenting academic scientists’ response to market opportunities, the articles suggest that, already in the decades around 1900, commercial work was widespread and, in some cases, integral to academics’ teaching and research activity.     

The Nordic Shrimp Industry: state entrepreneurship,intellectual and industrial structures,c. 1895–1950

This paper focuses on the emergence in the 20th century of a fishing industry based on northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland. Development in these countries exhibited noteworthy common features that are examined and compared in this paper, which emphasizes the intellectual, political and industrial conditions that facilitated the expansion of the fishing fleets and processing industries. The diffusion of knowledge and technology was a necessary condition for the industry's establishment, both at a national and an inter-Nordic level. Central to these transfers of knowledge was the interaction between scientists and fisheries experts and fishermen and industrialists.     

Commerce and trade in Viking Age Norway. Exchange of products or organized transactions?

In this paper the difficulties of distinguishing between commerce in the sense of exchange of products (i.e. more locally organized trade between neighbours/districts) and trade carried out as the main occupation for certain people, are discussed. These are questions very closely connected with the urbanization process of Norway. With the material from Kaupang (Skiringssal) as a point of departure, the author discusses two ways of finding out what type of trade was carried out in Viking Age Norway: A) One may look for the same combination of names found at Kaupang in other places. These seem to reveal ‘town‐making’ features. B) Ask whether any of the still existing medieval towns in Norway have had a pre‐urban stage. At the end of the paper the author discusses the possibilities of tracing different commodities which were traded over the different ports or market‐places.     

Charred remains of grains and seeds from the medieval high-status farm site of Reykholt in western Iceland

Abstract

Iceland was settled, primarily by peoples from Norway and the northern British Isles, in the 9th and 10th centuries. The first settlers brought with them from their homelands an agricultural system based on animal husbandry, of which cereal cultivation was an element and also with inputs from fishing, hunting and gathering of wild plants. There are strong indications that barley was cultivated during the first centuries in some parts of the country and that cultivation was at least attempted in other areas. However, Iceland is near the climatic limits of the barley-growing zone, and it is open to discussion how reliable a food source locally grown barley would have been. This paper discusses a seed assemblage of cultivated barley and archetypical weeds of cereal crops dated to between the 10th and 12th centuries AD obtained during archaeological excavations at the high status farm of Reykholt in western Iceland.     

Policy and creative strategies: Hong Kong CEPA films in the China market

Abstract

This article examines the creative strategies of Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) films in engagements with the China market under the framework of CEPA introduced in 2004. One of the aims of CEPA for the film sector is to boost co-production between Hong Kong and the mainland. In the past 10 years, CEPA has dramatically changed Hong Kong cinema’s relationship with China in that major film directors have moved to produce CEPA films to tap into the rapidly growing mainland market. This shift has been considered as part of HKSAR’s overall mainlandization and subsequent disappearance of a distinct local identity. This article revisits this view by presenting two case studies to see if indeed Hong Kong CEPA pictures are devoid of Hong Kong elements. The case studies analyze textual elements of two CEPA blockbuster films, The Mermaid (dir. Stephen Chow, 2016) and The Taking of Tiger Mountain 3D (dir. Tsui Hark, 2014). Citing the intertextual allusions to the directors’ old works seen in these two films, the authors argue that the market advantage granted by the CEPA scheme in effect allowed Hong Kong filmmakers to revive and extend signature creative strategies of Hong Kong cinema, despite censorship constraints.     

Reassembling the household for Icelandic archaeology: a contribution to comparative political economy

SUMMARY: Between the 11th and 19th centuries, household archaeology in Iceland comprises rural, dispersed farmsteads notable for their boundedness and stability, suggesting productive and reproductive autonomy. Insights from Actor-Network Theory and entanglement theory help ‘disassemble’ this assumption by shifting our focus first to the agencies, flows and dependences that comprise a political economy without assuming the household’s relations of production a priori. Architecture, settlement patterns, landscape and midden accumulations from the Langholt region in Skagafjörður, North Iceland, along with historical data illustrate that households in Iceland are actually marked by social dissolution, alienation and instability through dramatic political-economic dis- and re-assembling which in turn produces the stability in the material manifestation of the household. These data caution against a simple relationship between the household and archaeological farmstead, and suggest that measures of dependency and instability are critical to a comparative method for unravelling entanglements between capitalist and non-capitalist political economies.     

Frozen ground in the sub‐arctic region and its biological significance

Abstract

Climate change is increasingly discussed in apocalyptic terms, a spectre-invoking crisis discourse that simultaneously legitimises society-wide action, while de-politicising this very political issue. This paper examines the depoliticisation of climate change adaptation in Kenya, a country which has been recently praised as a developing country with a progressive adaptation policy. Using examples from fieldwork in Kenya, it focusses on Kenya's recently adopted National Climate Change Response Strategy (NCCRS), and argues that Kenya's adaptation discourse is driven by particular imaginaries, specifically: adaptation as a ‘universal apocalypse’, and adaptation as a technical-economic problem. These function as deliberate anti-political strategies, aimed at obscuring the highly charged realities of adaptation. For Kenya's current political elite adaptation is predominantly a matter of reducing the perceived risks to economic growth, and enhancing opportunities to gain revenue from international funding sources. This is achieved through a discursive construction of a particular vision of adaptation, and against a backdrop of a capitalist strategy for growth. The paper concludes that a critical and political interpretation of the NCCRS and similar adaptation strategies is necessary to keep equity and justice at the centre of the climate debate, and to dispel the myth of adaptation policy making as a rational and disinterested process.     

Sharing What Can Be Sold: Women Haus Maket Vendors in Port Moresby's Settlements

Dominant narratives of the economy, as well as policy discourses in Papua New Guinea (PNG), tend to separate the ‘formal’ from the ‘informal’ economy. Concurrently, there is a development policy emphasis on women's economic empowerment. In urban areas this has meant a policy focus on larger market places as sites where women need support for economic engagement. Within these policy discourses, one activity in urban areas usually relegated to the ‘informal’ economy is small home‐based market stalls, referred to in this paper as haus maket. Located at homes or on nearby roads, haus maket are prolific and available to the public, and as such provide a similar function to public market places as spaces to make money. This paper considers these public yet intimate spaces as sites where vendors, usually women, embody and lead contestations between money and moral value spheres. At a time when the policy emphasis is on the formal economy and larger market places in PNG, why do such small market places persist? The first aim of this paper is to establish the role of haus maket as a site where spheres of value intersect. Rather than being ‘informal’ and peripheral, I seek to foreground its centrality to the economy but also as a site where economic and social moral values conflate. The second aim of the paper is to examine the role of sharing as a form of transaction in its own right distinct from exchange as a transaction between two actors. Haus maket stalls are sites of sharing and of moral action and value where forms of value in the settlement are shaped and negotiated.     

A multi-stakeholder examination of destination image: Nanluoguxiang heritage street,Beijing, China

ABSTRACT

Perceived destination image is rarely examined through the gaze of stakeholders other than visitors, in particular residents and tourism business operators. This hinders the comprehensive understanding of destination image and limits its practical implications for destination marketing and management. Therefore, this study proposes a multi-stakeholder approach to image evaluation to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the destination image and better inform destination planning and management. Taking Nanluoguxiang hutong tourism site in Beijing as an example, the image perceptions of residents, on-site business operators, and domestic and international tourists are compared. Questionnaire surveys with both types of tourists and semi-structured interviews with residents and business operators are the main research methods. Major between group differences are identified in the evaluation of the authenticity of this Beijing hutong area, its representation of traditional Beijing culture and whether or not it is a place in which to relax. Results demonstrate that visitors, residents and business operators share similar cognitive images of Nanluoguxiang as a traditional historical street and a special business street with Beijing character. However, the historical and cultural values of Nanluoguxiang are undervalued. Moreover, distinct differences exist between the actual motivations for visiting held by domestic and international tourists and their motivations as perceived by residents and business operators. Suggestions are made to better meet the expectations and desires of all stakeholder groups through the provision of participatory programmes and activities to enrich the visitor experience of hutongs and the hutong lifestyle while maintaining a boundary between tourists and residents’ personal space to reduce unnecessary interruptions to residents’ daily life.     

Digital bricolage: Infrastructuring lower carbon digital space via Nordic datacentre development

Access to electric power and land are now key locational issues for the datacentre sector and most Nordic countries are pitching for their business. We use a comparative case analysis to illustrate several interrelated themes in Norway and Iceland, as both develop their datacentre sectors, but to date in differing ways. In both, digitalisation and datacentres are supported financially through equity holdings and securitisation issued via bespoke investment firms. For datacentres, this finance backs commoditised packages consisting of land with pre-approved planning permission; access to low-cost, reliable, renewable power; and a range of built infrastructure and computing options. Seeking to benefit from the development of monetised, dependent, regional Information Technology ecosystems, states assist with regulatory adjustments and municipalities with supportive land use zoning. Given the deeply entrained and multifaceted nature of the sector, we use our cases to highlight relationships between datacentre financing, spatial planning and infrastructure development in the two countries and also the ways in which the sector may take differing development trajectories. Overall, we build on the developing literature that is revealing the material realities of ‘the cloud’.