Services in Russia: past,present, and future

In spite of ambitious modernization plans of the government, structural change in Russia is not proceeding in the direction of highly developed economies. Part of the lag in the tertiarization process can be explained by the fact that, as during the Soviet period, the role of services in the economy is still ignored, particularly regarding innovation. This paper aims to contribute to the analysis of the evolution of services in Russia since the mid-1990s and its future prospects by compiling data from the World Bank, the International Labor Organization, Rosstat, and the World Input–Output Database. Two complementary and novel perspectives are adopted: a production system perspective and a spatial perspective. Regarding services in the Russian production system, comparison of interindustry linkages reveals that, in addition to traditional relevant activities like wholesale/retail trade and transport and communications, business services are acquiring great importance as production process inputs. Concerning the spatial perspective, we observe a greater presence of non-market services in less densely populated federal districts, while strategic service activities are highly concentrated in the most dynamic ones. Analysis of major Russian cities confirmed the trend of business services concentrating in densely populated and highly innovative cities. In brief, services, and in particular business services, can be a means to boost innovation and growth in Russia, but more attention from political leaders is necessary for these activities. The modernization process should abandon its current “high-technology industry myopia” and take into consideration the innovative, and especially, the knowledge-diffuser role, that services can exert.     

Regional development and institutions in Hungary: past,present and future development

The author investigates what the transition from planned to market economy implies for regional development in Hungary. The focus is the role of institutional change to economic development of the regions. After 1989, new regional and local institutions were created, supported by the Poland and Hungary Action for Researching the Economy programme. The old three‐level regional administration was redefined, but resources are few and competences unclear. The new institutions’ ‘bottom‐up’ approach and their business‐orientation seem to match the conditions of the prosperous west, while they meet considerable difficulties in the depressed east. Alternatively, coordinated government action and cooperation between enterprises and administrators may represent a key to development.     

Archaeological,Historical, and Ethnographic Approaches to the Study of Sewn Boats: past,present, and future

Sewn‐plank vessels have been a pervasive form of ship construction since antiquity. This paper provides an introductory overview of the current state of the field of sewn‐plank studies, with a particular focus on the Indian Ocean. It describes the basic function of sewn‐plank techniques, and then discusses textual references and historical approaches to the topic. The relevant archaeological evidence is reviewed, and prior ethnographic work relating to the topic is outlined. It summarizes numerous experimental sewn‐plank reconstructions that have been undertaken and concludes with a discussion of the current directions of the field and suggestions for the future.     

Reimagining political economy as a foundation for archaeologies of the past,present and future

SUMMARY: This paper examines some of the philosophical and epistemological issues surrounding current theories of political economy. By focusing on the historicism that postcolonial theorists have employed to critique the writings of Karl Marx and the lack of focus on the environment on the part of many political theorists, this paper argues for a political economy that accommodates the role of the disenfranchised and the environment as part of an archaeology of the future.     

Investigation of past archaeological landscapes using remote sensing and GIS: a multi-method case study from Mount Ida,Crete

Spatial analysis in geoarchaeological applications can be improved by implementing a wider set of geoecological parameters, in order to provide more precise results. The aim of the paper is to show how geoscientific ground-truth and techniques can be adopted for detailed archaeological studies using a comprehensive set of environmental variables that might have influenced ancient settlement patterns. The project focuses on spatial patterns of archaeological sites as well as Bronze Age communication paths in Central Crete by applying a multi-method approach (surveying, remote sensing, DEM analysis, least-cost analysis, candidate site detection, predictive modelling, etc.). In contrast to conventional archaeological GIS applications this enhanced strategy offers promising prospects regarding landscape and settlement modelling.     

Ocean and grove: holiness,leisure, and contested landscapes at Ocean Grove,New Jersey

In 1869, leading members of the Wesleyan holiness movement established Ocean Grove, an oceanfront camp meeting resort in Monmouth County, New Jersey that would become one of the most popular religious resorts in the United States. Scholarship on Ocean Grove treats the resort as a significant example of the spatial preferences and town planning efforts of the holiness movement. Tracing conflicts between leisure and worship, and between the romanticization of nature versus the sacralization of city life, suggests the landscape of the resort emerged as a mediation of these conflicts and provides further evidence for the sacralization of nature as a necessary component in the planning of Methodist and holiness communities in the late nineteenth century.     

State Power,Civic Participation and the Urban Frontier: The Politics of the Commons in Karachi

Abstract: A martial state's neoliberal policies opened the nation's frontiers to new forms of globalization. This article investigates the political process that undergirded the military and global capital's sequestration of common land in Karachi and the concomitant contestation by a key civil society organization. Using Foucault's conception of sovereignty and government as an assemblage of authority and strategies of rationalization, this paper analyses the role of state and non‐state actors and changing power configurations in a conflict that surrounded the enclosure of a common and its transformation into a securitized zone of consumption in Karachi's Civil Lines. The conflict highlights the nature of the politics of space and citizenship in Pakistan's primary metropolis.     

Archaeo-Ethnography, Auto-Archaeology: Introducing Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past

After significant research effort and publications over the course of a decade, a new generation of writings and research into archaeologies of the contemporary past is beginning to emerge, with a social and political awareness that appears more acute and more focused than before. Perhaps it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that this new generation of contemporary archaeologies can contribute in some small way to addressing specific problems and challenges that face contemporary and future society. In this introduction we begin to touch on this possibility, and introduce the papers and authors that explore it in further depth.     

Participation and Passive Revolution: The Reproduction of Neoliberal Water Governance Mechanisms in Durban,South Africa

Abstract: This article demonstrates that Gramsci's concept of passive revolution can be utilised to help unearth some of the contradictions of participatory development within neoliberal governance systems in the global South. I argue that some approaches to “participation” within neoliberal governance systems can, in part, be understood as moments within a protracted process of passive revolution. The argument is traced through eThekwini municipality's Community Participation Programme and the related extension of Free Basic Water (FBW). This article contributes to existing scholarship by demonstrating how a Gramscian analysis is indispensable to understanding the way in which state–civil society relations are conceived in participatory development strategies and the implications this might have for radical social change. I argue that a Gramscian approach compels us to reconsider current understandings of state–civil society relations so that we might overcome the impasse of passive revolution and move towards a more progressive form of politics.     

Rooting diaspora, reviving nation: Zionist landscapes of Palestine–Israel

This paper explores the politics of landscape and nature within the process of nation-building. In it I examine how landscapes can operate in multiple, intersecting ways in the service of an ideological discourse and how the politics of nature, specifically trees, can contribute to the shaping of a new national space and subjectivity. Focusing on the multiple renditions of Palestine promulgated by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) , I discuss how landscapes can entangle diaspora and homeland, aesthetics and embodiment, antiquity and modernity, with both conceptual and material consequences. Drawing on histories of the JNF and on a selection of historic newspaper articles and children's literature, I explore the circulation of aesthetic renderings of Palestine and the performance of embodied landscapes during the children's tree-planting holiday, Tu B'Shvat. I argue that the centrality of trees to the JNF, and the imagery of roots, renewal, family and innocence that they conjure, legitimised Zionist colonisation and naturalised the Israeli nation state and body politic. I also demonstrate how JNF landscapes and afforestation work assisted in the demarcation of Israeli nation-space and therefore in the material dispossession of the Palestinians.     

Foraging,Farming, and Social Complexity in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Southern Levant: A Review and Synthesis

The transition from foraging to farming of the Neolithic periods is one of, if not, the most important cultural processes in recent human prehistory. Integrating previously published archaeological materials with archaeological research conducted since 1980, the first half of this essay synthesizes our current understanding of archaeological data for the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period (ca. 11,700–ca. 8400 B.P.) of the southern Levant, generally defined as including southern Syria and Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Autonomous Authority, Jordan, and the Sinai peninsula of Egypt. The second half of the essay explores how these data inform archaeologists about the processes by which social differentiation emerged, the nature of regional and interregional connections, and the mechanisms and processes by which the transition from foraging to food production first occurred in the Neolithic.