Organizing European Labour: Governance, Production, Trade Unions and the Question of Scale

This paper addresses two main debates: the recent geographical literature on trade union strategy and structure, and contemporary accounts of European labour market governance. Geographers have begun to take notice of organized labour just as it has faced a series of unprecedented challenges, which are partly derived from ongoing changes in the organization of production. In interpreting these debates I focus on the process of scaling – the ways in which the politics of labour market governance are constituted in, and are at the same time constitutive of, one geographical scale or another. These issues are explored through two key recent developments: the changing status of the European Trade Union Confederation, and the creation of European Works Councils. The ETUC and EWCs are particularly significant because they pose a challenge to existing arrangements, and potentially enable a re-configuration of the relation between capital and labour at different scales. I conclude that further exploration of European labour geography could re-connect the diversity of forms of organization of production with the scope and potential of trade union strategy; and that thinking in terms of scale is useful because it highlights the significance of both political and relational issues.     

In No One's Shadow: British Politics in the Age of Anne and the Writing of the History of the House of Commons

The publication in 1967 of Geoffrey Holmes's masterpiece, British Politics in the Age of Anne , effectively demolished the interpretation of the 'political structure' of early 18th-century England that had been advanced by the American historian R.R. Walcott as a conscious imitation of Sir Lewis Namier. But to understand the significance of Holmes's work solely in an anti-Namierite context is misleading. For one thing, his book only completed a process of reaction against Walcott's work that was already under way in unpublished theses and scholarly articles (some by Holmes himself). Second, Holmes's approach was not simplistically anti-Namierist, as some (though not all) of Namier's followers recognized. Indeed, he was strongly sympathetic to the biographical approach, while acknowledging its limitations. The significance of Holmes's book to the study of the house of commons 1702–14 (and of the unpublished study of 'the Great Ministry' of 1710–14 to which it had originally been intended as a long introduction), was in fact much broader than the restoration of party divisions as central to political conflict. It was the re-creation of a political world, not merely the delineations of political allegiances, that made British Politics in the Age of Anne such a landmark in writing on this period.     

评《战国秦汉漆器研究》

一洪石女士在其博士论文基础上修改完成的《战国秦汉漆器研究》一书,是近年来战国秦汉考古学研究的一项新成果,应当引起学术界的重视。战国秦汉漆器的研究是一个极有学术价值的课题。在这一时期各种材质的器物中,漆器占据着特殊的地位。以之与商周青     

Pandours,Partisans, and Petite Guerre: The Two Dimensions of Enlightenment Discourse on War

During the Enlightenment period a certain notion of war came to prominence in European thought. This notion, which I here refer to as ‘civilized war’, centred on the idea that European war-making in the eighteenth century was characterised by humanity and honour. This image of European war-making was sustained by a variety of intellectuals and even some military practitioners who reflected not only on the practice of war in Europe in this period, but on the practice of war among supposedly less ‘civilised’ peoples in other parts of the world and in Europe's barbaric past. In these other places, among other peoples, and at other times, warfare was characterised as altogether less ‘civilised’, less ordered, less humane and honourable, and was thus considered more ‘savage’. I will argue in this paper, however, that there were at least two dimensions to the Enlightenment discourse on civilised war: the first dimension stressed the moral qualities of civilised war, its honour and humanity above all; the second dimension emphasised its technical or rational qualities that gave European war-makers a decisive military advantage over non-European war-makers. These two dimensions applied to conventional or symmetrical war between sovereign militaries contending by massed fire power on the field of battle. They were less easily applicable to petite guerre, that is, unconventional, asymmetric or partisan war. Here, the two dimensions of the idea of civilised war were shadowed by persistent anxieties about the status of both dimensions of civilised war.     

Planning in the 1990s: An international agenda

This paper, originally presented to the AESOP‐ACSP joint conference in Oxford in 1991, stresses that both in Europe and in the US, there is a major difference for planning in the switch from boom to recession. During the 1990s a major challenge will be to find new ways of public‐private partnership in financing new urban infrastructure at a time when developer contributions — a major innovation of the 1980s — have dried up. This particularly applies to the European high‐speed train system — one critical element of which will run through the East Thames Corridor, one of Britain's major urban developments in the coming years. In the US, planners are likely to remain more locally focused, less internationally concerned, than in a Europe in which national barriers are rapidly eroding.     

LEVINAS,HISTORY, AND HISTORIOGRAPHY

In this book Anton Froeyman has provided us with a colorful and intriguing account of a Levinasian approach to historical inquiry and historical writing. In my discussion of his book I describe central features of his account and notice how he uses, to develop his view, recent developments in historiography—including the work of figures like Natalie Davis and Carlo Ginzburg, in philosophical thinking about history and historiography, and in various postmodern developments. I sketch central features of Levinas's ethical metaphysics and show that Froeyman's focus on Levinas's interest in our relations with other persons and in particular with their relative differences from us is too narrow. A proper understanding of our infinite responsibility to and for all others, as Levinas portrays it, leads to a broader account than the one Froeyman gives and one that enables us to understand with greater clarity how historiography fits into the Levinasian understanding of our temporal and interpersonal relations with others.     

Electoral salience and the costs of voting at national, sub-national and supra-national elections in the UK: a case study of Brent, UK

This paper considers the impact of distance to polling station upon electoral turnout. Using polling station level data from a London borough, it examines three types of election – parliamentary, European and local elections – over a twenty year period. The UK is notable among western liberal democracies for its relatively large turnout gap – the percentage point difference between turnout at elections for the Westminster parliament compared to that for other institutions, including local councils and the supra-national European parliament. This research considers the hypothesis that in high information, high salience elections for the national parliament the costs of voting associated with travelling to a polling station to vote in person are perceived as either low or insignificant but that in low information, low salience elections, those costs are perceived as higher and may act as a deterrent upon voting. A series of multi-level models consider the relationships between the dependent variable, percentage turnout, and a range of independent variables, including socio-economic characteristics, marginality as well as the spatial context. We show that there is indeed a relationship between distance and voter turnout, and other spatial and contextual variables, which are stronger for the lower salience European and local elections than for the higher salience national elections. Hence we conclude that the local geography of the polling station can have a significant impact on voter turnout and that there should be a more strategic approach to the siting of polling stations.     

Towards a network of regions: The United States of Europe

Starting from the changing role of governments in planning (physical, environmental, economic, etc.), this paper calls attention to the drastic structural changes taking place in the regional scene after the transition towards market orientation and global competitiveness. The main focus is on European developments. In addition to économie forces, two phenomena will be highlighted, namely, the transition towards a network economy and the profound technological changes taking place at the regional and urban level Particular attention will be devoted to European spatial dynamics in a networked society. Various new geographical configurations and maps of Europe will be shown, followed by some exploratory remarks on future trends. The main message of the paper is that transport planning in Europe needs to be integrated with the emerging new economic networks. The paper ends with some policy conclusions.     

RESISTING MODERN TEMPORALITIES: TOWARD A CRITICAL HISTORY OF BREAKS IN TIME

This is an exceptionally sophisticated and wide‐ranging book on historical time, the construction of the past, present, and future, and the problem of periodization. Its major thesis is that temporal divisions of history are produced by social actors, including historians, who break up time from their distinct temporal positions. The book inquires about the theoretical underpinning and historical constitution of temporal breaks: the premises sustaining notions of pastness, presentness, and futurity; the relations constructed by these notions between historiography and other fields of knowledge; the specific articulation of shifting and mutually competing temporalities both within and beyond European history; and the political implications of temporal divisions. Throughout the book the breaking up of time is studied as a fundamental political operation. To engage with temporal breaks, the authors contend, is to engage with the historian's contemporary, to negotiate borders that act upon the present, including the border that safeguards the presumed autonomy of the time of history‐writing. Focusing especially on the temporality of European modernity, the book invites reflection on the politics of time as articulated through categories of historical totalization imposed on modernity's others. But it also suggests that this imposition gave rise to acts of resistance indicating how historical time defies the analytical categories through which social actors seek to organize and control it. This dialectic of imposition and defiance is made evident through the comparative study of temporal concepts that replace one another, compete with one another in certain historical settings without any of them constituting a final historical representation. It is also traced in the continuing significance of suppressed or “failed” temporalities, which are nonetheless still capable of challenging and qualifying our insights into historical time. The book's key contribution lies precisely in the attempt to intensify this challenge by translating the contradictory constitution of modern temporality into a language of self‐critique.     

Karl Marx's theory of history: A defense

A wave of recent publication connected to Hugh Trevor-Roper offers cause to take stock of his life and legacy. He is an awkward subject because his output was so protean, but a compelling one because of his significance for the resurgence of the history of ideas in Britain after 1945. The article argues that the formative period in Trevor-Roper's life was 1945–57, a period curiously neglected hit her to. It was at this time that the pioneered a history of ideas conceived above all as the study of European liberal and humanist tradition. Analysis of the relative importance of contemporary and early modern history in his oeuvre finds that, while the experience of Hitler and the Cold War was formative, it was not decisive. Trevor-Roper was at heart an early modernist who did not abjure specialization. However, he insisted that specialized study must be accompanied by “philosophical” reflection on the working sofa constant human nature present throughout history, a type of reflection best pursued by reading classical historians such as Gibbon and Burckhardt. Yet this imperative in turn fostered purely historical research into the history of historical writing–another branch of the history of ideas.     

Changing industrial production systems and regional development in the New Europe

The continuing expansion and deepening integration of the European Union is redefining the map of threats and opportunities for both companies and regions in Europe. In this paper I analyze the changing geography of the production system in three industries – automobiles, clothing and steel – as a product of the strategies and tactics of companies, states (at EU, national and regional levels) and trades unions, as they seek to shape geographies of production to favour their interests within this changing European political–economic space. It is argued that the end product of this process will be the creation of new and sharper forms of regional uneven development and qualitative differentiation between regions, as well as a renewed widening rather than further narrowing of regional differences in economic performance and well–being.     

Mapping the European Urban Left: The Barcelona Experience

This paper explores the transition in Barcelona's city council's urban policy during 20 years of uninterrupted political control. It focuses particularly on several trends within Pasqual Maragall's period in office (1982–1997) and argues that issues of leadership, extramunicipal policy and electoral rationality are fundamental to understanding the full complexity of this transition. The paper seeks to locate the Barcelona experience in a comparative context and calls for a greater sensitivity to the contemporary political geography of the European urban left.     

On Political Theology: The Hidden Dialogue between C. Schmitt and Ernst H. Kantorowicz in The King's Two Bodies

In recent years, Ernst H. Kantorowicz's work The King's Two Bodies (1957) has been the object of both historical and philosophical research. Kantorowicz decided to subtitle his book ‘A Study in Medieval Political Theology’, but few scholars have actually recognised his work as research in ‘political theology’. The aim of this article, then, is to uncover the sense(s) in which his book might be considered a work of ‘political theology’, especially in the sense coined by Carl Schmitt in 1922. Such a discussion ultimately aims to contribute to the foundation of political-theology research, a subject that has been widespread among European intellectuals in the twentieth century and which continues to be a focus of interest. This article argues that Kantorowicz's book can be interpreted as a practice of—and also an enriching addition to—Schmitt's thesis on political theology, even if it does not mention Schmitt's name. Such a conclusion is only possible by accepting that there was a heated dialogue between Kantorowicz and Schmitt through Erik Peterson's work. The article further discusses its approach with other scholars that, even though they are based on similar hypotheses, make different conclusions.     

The European policy of the Jospin government: A new twist to old French games

This article presents a constructivist-inspired analysis of the Jospin government's European policy, understanding most policy developments during this period as variations on well-established French preferences—rooted in a modified Gaullist paradigm—embedded in French state identity. The variations reflect external political and economic pressures. By June 1997, the potential contradiction between perceptions of European integration as an extension of French state identity and the actual constraints imposed by integration was never greater, due to the reinforced constraints imposed by the operation of the Single European Market (SEM) and Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), in additional to the rise of German unilateralism and the need for European Union (EU) institutional and policy reforms made necessary by the approaching enlargement of the EU eastwards and the increased pressure on the Jospin government to reconceptualise an end-goal to European integration.     

Re/placing Native Science: Indigenous Voices in Contemporary Constructions of Nature

Since the earliest days of the European Enlightenment, Western people have sought to remove themselves from nature and the ‘savage’ non‐European masses. This distancing has relied upon various intellectual techniques and theories. The social construction of nature precipitated by Enlightenment thinking separated culture from nature, culture being defined as civilised European society. This separation has served to displace the Native voice within the colonial construction of Nature. This separation has also served as one thread in the long modern ‘disenchantment’ of Westerners and nature, a ‘disenchantment’ described so adeptly by Adorno and Horkheimer (1973 ). Unfortunately though, this displacement is not only a historical event. The absence of modern Native voices within discussions of nature perpetuates the colonial displacement which blossomed following the Enlightenment. In his book entitled, Native Science, Gregory Cajete describes Native science as ‘a lived and creative relationship with the natural world ... [an] intimate and creative participation [which] heightens awareness of the subtle qualities of a place’ (2000, 20). Perhaps place offers a ‘common ground’ between Western and Indigenous thought; a ‘common ground’ upon which to re/write the meta‐narrative of Enlightenment thought. This paper will seek to aid in the re/placement of modern Native voices within constructions of nature and seek to begin healing the disenchantment caused through the rupture between culture and nature in Western science.     

The European Union in South-East Asia: continuity and change in turbulent times

This article looks at the creation of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) and itsimpact on European Union-South-East Asian relations. It suggests that as withother regions of the world, the EU uses framework agreements to regulatecontact with other international actors. The article argues that the EU's renewed interest in the region, signposted by the Commission's 'Towards a new Asia strategy' and the proposal 'Creating a new dynamic in EU-ASEAN relations', as well as the formation of ASEM, is driven by three principal concerns: a need to meet the challenges of the post-Cold War period by extending structured contact to new interlocutors beyond ASEAN; a need to restate the EU's credentials as a stakeholder in the region, thus legitimizing European political and economic interests alongside those of other global actors such as the United States and Japan; and a new-found interest in defining acceptable economic and human rights standards as a precondition of privileged contact with the EU.
However, while ASEM offers greater connectivity between different activitiesof the EU and may bring a more coordinated approach to the relationship, it is unlikely to lead to a qualitative shift in engagement. For a variety of reasons–notably the lack of geographical proximity, economic asymmetry, and a preoccupation with central and eastern Europe-South-East Asia will remain a marginal area of engagement for the EU. With regard to future developments,structured contact between the EU and South-East Asia will survive not leastbecause of the potential economic importance of the latter and the continuingcompetition in the region from the United States, Japan and China.     

Modern Greek in the European Union: Language,Economy and Culture

Abstract

For those teaching and researching in Modern Greek Studies outside Greece, discussion of the eighties and nineties is characterised by reference to changes in Greek political life, as well as in the Greek educational system and policy making directly connected with Greece's entry into the European Union. Greece became a member of the EU as recently as 1981. PASOK, viewed membership as temporary but these claims were dropped after 1985. In the same period changes introduced into the linguistic system of the Greek language led to discussions of educational and cultural interest. More recently, however, certain developments concerning the role of strong languages in the European Union have brought to the fore issues concerning weak languages, those spoken by less people in the European Union, and their related cultures. This has once again opened the forum of discussion regarding matters of linguistic survival and cultural variety.     

Access to culture in Croatian cultural policy: moving towards explicit policies

In this paper through the analysis of the access to culture issue in the Croatian cultural policy agenda, we illustrate the current cultural policy developments in Croatia in the broader European context. Taking the differentiation between explicit and implicit policies at both macro and micro level we analyse discourses on access to culture in the Croatian cultural policy at the constitutional level, parliamentary political parties’ level, the governmental level and the level of cultural organisations. On the one hand the policies regarding access to culture remain mostly implicit and revolve around traditional models connected to instruments dating back to socialism; while on the other selected cultural organisations develop instruments for fostering it where European projects have an influence. The orientation more towards cultural production issues and less to access to culture and cultural participation issues draws similarities of cultural policy developments in Croatia with the general European cultural policy framework.     

A Personal View on the Samenes historie fram til 1750 by Lars Ivar Hansen and Bjørnar Olsen

Samenes historie fram til 1750 offers a good illustration of the transformation that the scholarly interest in the Sami underwent during the last quarter of the 20th century. An archaeologist and a historian show how cooperation of two different methodologies of studying the past brings new insights, opens new perspectives and helps to view the past in its complexity. The reader is shown that in the quickly changing world the Sami appeared as dynamic as their neighbors and able to adopt new developments and adjust their strategies. The book surely deserves a serious professional debate of the past of the non‐Germanic inhabitants of the Nordic part of Europe. Their history remains generally unknown to European scholars, which is not surprising since it remains rather unknown to most Scandinavian scholars.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 32, Number 2. April 2016

Front and back cover caption, volume 32 issue 2 Front cover NIGERIA'S IGBO JEWS Between images of the Star of David and menorah, Habakkuk Nwafor's front door in Nigeria's capital bears the proud notice, ‘I AM A JEW’. The leader of Abuja's Tikvat Israel Synagogue, Nwafor is an Igbo, a member of Nigeria's third largest ethnic group, numbering over 30 million people. Seated outside his Abuja home, he holds a copy of William Miles's Jews of Nigeria: An Afro‐Judaic odyssey (2013), a book about Nwafor's family and religious community. On its cover is a photograph of his son becoming a bar mitzvah. For at least a decade prior to its publication, Igbo Jews offered their own written religio‐historical narratives, but Miles's was the first book about Igbo Jewry composed by a Western academic. From 2,000 and 5,000 people, most of whom are Igbo, practice Judaism throughout Nigeria, though a much larger number self‐identify as Jews even while practising Christianity. Igbo self‐identification with and as Jews dates back to the 18th century, but concretized during and after the Nigerian civil war (1967–1970), in which at least one million Igbo died in the failed bid for Biafran independence. The civil war and its disastrous consequences initiated a still‐ongoing period of intense questioning among the Igbo concerning their history, present predicaments, and future prospects. Igbo Jewish identity presents a challenge. Igbo Jews consider themselves part of world Jewry, but are not yet integrated with, nor represented in and by, Jewish institutions/associations around the world. Igbo Jewish identity also poses the truth question, as Igbo oral religio‐historical claims are examined and questioned by researchers and scholars using academic lenses. Back cover Lesbos in the frontline An olive branch with one hand outstretched in aid of a fellow human being, as drawn by illustrator Georgie McAusland. In the course of 2015, Skala Sykamnias, a tiny, sleepy fishing village and tourist idyll on the island of Lesbos, Greece, became a gateway to Europe for more than 200,000 refugees. In this issue, Evthymios Papataxiarchis analyzes how the European refugee crisis impacted his fieldwork site. The rescue of refugees involves several theatres of operation, ranging from the frontline centred upon the sea and the beach, to backstage revolving around the reception centres further inland. This attracts a multitude of volunteers, activists and humanitarian organizations from all over the world, becoming a focal point for world media. A swirl of political, ethical, and material elements, both local and transnational, now focuses upon the locality. The massive welcoming of reugees, however, is full of contradictions. With diverse actors enacting what are often dissonant ideals and strategies, what might appear from the outside to be a humanitarian act, is in fact more complex. Humanitarian structures raise several issues, such as local concerns about sovereignty, the authenticity of ‘disinterested’ motives, the nature of ‘solidarity’ and the role of the NGOs. From the local perspective this is a ‘generative moment’: at the centre of huge human and material flows, the local community is falling apart whilst to the incoming it represents freedom. Skala has become a mini theatre of conflicts that echo wider debates on the political future of Europe. In this capacity it captures a decisive moment in 21st‐century European history.