The ‘voices’ of children: de‐centring empowering research relations

This paper examines some problematic methodological and ethical issues associated with in‐depth qualitative research with children. The discussion has wider resonance for qualitative studies of young people in ‘rural’ contexts. Particular ethical issues arise when researching with children, which are underpinned by children's relative powerlessness in society. With this in mind, the paper considers substantive strategies to promote ‘empowering research relations’, drawing upon an empirical study with children in primary school spaces. Re‐theorisations of identities and power as fractured, dynamic and contextual, suggest that research is comprised of specific moments or ‘research performances’. It is argued that developing empowering research relations involves negotiating such performances in ways that contest, or transform, dominant societal relations between children and adults. In this paper, I consider some of the specific, embodied performances involved in my research, to expose some of the complexities of power relations and negotiations within space. Bringing to light particular moments emphasises that power relations between children and adults are not reducible to the powerless and the powerful. It is also demonstrated that research performances are influenced and constrained by expectations placed upon adult and child practices in society and institutional spaces, and by researchers' own unconscious reproduction of dominant identities.     

Two visions of Indigenous economic development and cultural survival: The ‘real economy’ and the ‘hybrid economy’

Noel Pearson and Jon Altman are two of the central intellectual figures in the contemporary debate on how to address the poverty and disadvantage of Indigenous Australians living in remote regions. This article compares their visions for Indigenous economic development. Pearson advocates greater integration of Indigenous people into what he calls the ‘real economy’, but Altman has produced an alternative approach to Indigenous development – the ‘hybrid economy’ approach – which he suggests is more in keeping with the aspirations of many Aboriginal people to maintain a degree of autonomy from non-Indigenous Australians and to continue living close to ancestral lands. This article argues that both men should be understood as advocates for Indigenous self-determination, but different ways of conceptualising Indigenous autonomy and cultural survival has led them to contrasting policy positions.

在如何解决边远地区澳大利亚原住民的贫困及弱势问题的当代辩论中,诺埃尔·皮尔森和章·沃特曼是两位核心思想者。本文比较了这两个人对于原住民经济发展的愿景。皮尔森主张原住民更多地融入他所谓的实际经济,而沃特曼的思路却不一样,他是一种杂糅思路,认为应该依从许多原住民的愿望,在一定程度上独立于澳大利亚非原住民,继续生活在祖先的土地上。本文认为,两人都是原住民自觉的提倡者,只是他们思考原住民的自治及文化生存的思路有所不同,从而导致了矛盾的政策立场。     

Going green: Sustainable development as a model of socio‐economic development in European post‐communist countries

The aim of the article is to present a conception of eco‐development as a model for the shaping of a broadly understood lifeworld. It seems to be especially promising in the new social reality of the post‐Communist states, where the lifeworlds have deteriorated badly, both at each spatial level as well as in its biophysical, psycho‐social and technical‐production aspects. First, an interaction model of a lifeworld is presented, followed by a conception of eco‐development with its basic, i.e. social, economic and technological, determinants. The article closes with a list of arguments for eco‐development as both an effective and humanist conception of socio‐economic development in its spatial dimension.     

The socio-ecological fix by multi-scalar states: The development of ‘Greenways of Paradise’ in Chengdu

This paper examines the recent green turn in China by investigating a large-scale urban greenway project. Using the perspective of the socio-ecological fix, we demonstrate that multi-scalar states strive to upgrade environmental quality. Specifically, the local state seizes the opportunity for ‘ecological civilisation’ envisioned by the central state to carry out green infrastructure development. We reveal complex motivations to incorporate ecological changes into entrepreneurial urban governance instead of encroaching greenspace for economic growth. Our state-centred analysis reveals that such an environmental strategy, the making of Chinese green urbanism, is promoted like a political mission, despite its operation by the development corporation. We argue that, while the socio-ecological fix facilitates capital accumulation, its deployment must be understood through state politics and actors.     

Changing Approaches to Urban Planning in an ‘Entrepreneurial City’: The Case of Dublin

The paper reviews the manner in which urban planning in Dublin has changed in response to central government urban renewal initiatives and an increasing ethos of entrepreneurialism within the local authority of Dublin Corporation. The paper outlines the marginalization of local planning functions and the undermining of planning powers through the establishment of special purpose renewal agencies. Dublin Corporation planners have consequently sought refuge in integrated micro-area planning, marking a shift in philosophy regarding the appropriate role for planning in the context of entrepreneurial governance. The paper provides an empirical account of the relationship between changing approaches to urban renewal and the evolution of local planning practice, noting the challenges and opportunities for urban planning created by altered governance structures and approaches.     

The Demographics of Dystopia: The Muslim City in Asia’s Future

This essay argues that UN projected population growth will not only lead to more Muslims in Asia’s cities in a purely numerical sense, but also to more Muslim cities in a proportional and cultural sense through the continuation of existing trajectories of ‘de-cosmopolitanization’. Urban life will be deeply affected by this increasing shift from cities that are not merely majority Muslim, but are also increasingly Muslim in moral, social or political terms. Inevitably such changes will affect the lives of urban citizens, none more so than women. The essay then asks whether population growth will allow these cities to maintain their ‘globalizing’ trajectory of increasing interconnection. Having framed its analysis around the ‘hard’ outcomes of demographic change, the analysis then turns to ‘soft’ outcomes by tackling the question of the likely contours of the increasingly divergent versions of Islam produced by the competitive religious economies of the modern Asian city.     

The limits to localization in declining industrial regions? Trans‐National corporations and economic development in Sedgefield borough

’Localization’ has been a recurrent theme in recent debates concerning the regeneration of declining industrial regions. ‘This paper explores the extent and nature of this ‘localization’ in relation to economic renewal and reports on a study of firms and business support organizations undertaken for Sedgefield Borough Council in north‐east England. The findings suggest that, first, production localization is of a limited extent and specific nature. In particular, the nature of localization remains highly dependent upon the decision‐making power concentrated in the hands of a few trans‐national firms. Their continual reorganizations have the capacity dramatically to reshape the fortunes of the local economy and to render local action relatively powerless. Second, the localized approaches to business support that are evident run the risk of reinforcing problems of duplication and fragmentation owing to their relatively narrow focus. In addition, prospects for local economic development remain critically dependent on wider policy and institutional agendas, especially at the regional and national levels.     

‘The Garrison Mentality’ versus ‘La Survivance’: English‐French relations in lower Canada, 1791–1838

Legacies of Fear: Law and Politics in Quebec in the Era of the French Revolution by F. Murray Greenwood. Toronto: University of Toronto Press for The Osgoode Society, 1993. Pp.xvi + 359. £26.00 (hardback); £13.00 (paperback). ISBN 0–8020–0534–8; 0–8020–6974–6.

The Christie Seigneuries: Estate Management and Settlement in the Upper Richelieu Valley, 1760–1854 by Françoise Noel. Montreal and Kingston: McGill‐Queen's University Press, 1992. Pp.xiv + 221. £29.95 (hardback). ISBN 0–7735–0876–7.

The Patriots and the People: The Rebellion of 183 7 in Rural Lower Canada by Allan Greer. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993. Pp.xiv + 385. £32.00 (hardback); £12.50 (paperback). ISBN 0–8020–2792‐X; 0–8020–6930–4.     

The development of the longbow in late medieval England and ‘technological determinism’

Traditional understandings of the development of the medieval English longbow and its role in the fourteenth-century ‘infantry revolution’ have recently been challenged by historians. This article responds to the revisionists, arguing based on archaeological, iconographic and textual evidence that the proper longbow was a weapon of extraordinary power, and was qualitatively different from – and more effective than – the shorter self-bows that were the norm in England (and western Europe generally) before the fourteenth century. It is further argued that acknowledging the importance of the weapon as a necessary element of any credible explanation of English military successes in the era of the Hundred Years War does not constitute ‘technological determinism’.     

The ‘superman’ solution: ‘Super soldiers’ and ‘superheroes’ in the United States military

Current US military research focused on the development of pharmacological ‘super soldiers’ – soldiers enhanced through a variety of pharmaceuticals and biomedical technologies to perform far beyond what unenhanced soldiers can do – draws from and often mimics popular or pop-cultural conceptions of the superhero. These biomedical and pharmacological interventions pose profound ethical problems and possibilities that are solved – in part – by imagining the new US super soldier as a superhero. Drugging soldiers to enhance their ability to fight and survive is a frightening proposition, and one that makes people uncomfortable; the solution is to imagine them as superheroes – as positive representations of the enhanced soldier on the side of good, somehow contained and controllable and fundamentally safe and unfrightening.     

An economic analysis of a National Theatre: The case of the ‘Abbey’

Abstract: This article asks how a regional community is culturally constructed as a policy subject in the centre/periphery relation of Finnish cultural policy. The focus is on the options the cultural recognitions analysed from the cultural policy documents of central government and the provincial administration of North Karelia provide for different political interests. It is stated here that the democratisation of cultural policy can be open for and a vehicle of the interests the prevailing spatial dominance attempts to get within the population of peripheries. North Karelia has for centuries been a geographic and economic periphery without inner cultural distinctions. Yet it is regarded as a culturally rich and specific area. The analysis shows that the regional community has continuously been used as a partisan identity for maintaining and reinforcing the spatial integration of national projects. Public cultural image would provide a symbolic compensation for the economically underprivileged. Furthermore, the strong cultural identity of North Karelia has constantly been taken by the regional establishment as an instrument to fight the “opponents of common regional interests” in political conflicts. Thus the principles of democracy have not always meant the capability or attitude to notice cultural polyphony within the region abreast of cultural political decision-making.