Analysis of the Story of an Hour——From the Perspective of Feminism

The Story of an Hour is a short story written by Kate Chopin on April 19,1894,and originally published in Vogue on December 6,1894.By describing series of emotions that Louise Mallard endures after hearing of the death of her husband,it reveals the heroine——Mallard's pursuit of freedom and enlightenment of feminist thought.The Story of an Hour successfully created a female image of desiring for freedom,longing for a new life even at the expense of life in a patriarchal society.     

Criteria for Determining an Engineering—Geographic Boundary of the North of the USSR

Reductions of the cost increments of northern development depend to a large extent on the manufacture of machines and equipment with northern specifications designed for operation under low temperatures. Existing definitions of the northern regions of the USSR are not suitable for this purpose. An engineering-geographic regionalization of the USSR is therefore proposed, defining the area of application of specially designed northern machines on the basis of a harshness scale that relates climatic harshness to its effect on machines. The key threshold values on this harshness scale are 4.6, above which ordinary structural steel loses strength and is subject to harshness-related ruptures; 5.3, above which ordinary structural steel becomes brittle and is affected by a fifty-fold increase of ruptures; and 7.9, above which ordinary steel can no longer perform.     

A diamond in the rough?: an examination of the issues surrounding the development of the Northwest Territories

Over a period of approximately five decades, the federal government of Canada has transformed the predominantly nomadic hunting and gathering society of the Northwest Territories (NWT) to one which is based largely on wage and/or transfer income, and life in permanent communities. Several decades of planning for regional development and the expenditure of large sums of public monies have failed to give rise to a viable economic system in the region. This paper argues that the inefficacy of these past policy approaches stems at least partly from a failure to recognize explicitly the interrelationship between the economy of the region, its constitutional status and that of its Native population.
Au cours d'une période d'approximativement cinq décennies, le gouvernement fédéral du Canada a transformé la société principalement nomade de chasseurs et cueilleurs des Territoires du Nord ouest en une société d'une part basée sur le revenu salarié et/ou de transfert et d'autre part composée de communautées établies de façon permanente. Plusieurs décennies de planification en vue d'un développement régional ainsi que des dépenses importantes des deniers public n'ont pas réussi à mettre en place un système économique viable dans la région. Le présent article défend la thèse que l'inefficacité de ces anciennes politiques provient en partie à l'incapacitéà reconnaître explicitement les interrelations entre l'économie de la région, son statut constitutionel et sa population autochtone.     

Arm’s-length funding of the arts as an expression of laissez-faire

While questions continue to be raised over the continuation, nature and mechanisms of arms’-length funding for the arts, its theoretical foundations within a wider social and economic context remain under-explored. This article argues that the principle on which the arm’s-length relationship is constructed is defined by the concept of laissez-faire. It is this that sets rules for how the public and private spheres interact within a liberal and individualistic society. By this argument, providing public subsidy to the arts is a compensating act integral to the operation of a free-market economy and ensures the autonomy of individual artists, even while producing public benefits.     

Population change in an urban system — the examples of the republic of Ireland and Scotland

State of the Scottish Environment 1991. By T.C.D. Dargie and D.J. Briggs, 296 × 210 mm, 73 pp, Scottish Wildlife and Countryside Link, Perth, 1992, pbk, ISBN 0–9518582–0–3, £5.00.

Ice Age Earth. By Alastair G. Dawson, 233 × 155 mm, xx + 293 pp, Routledge, London and New York, 1991, pbk, ISBN 0–415–01567–7, £17.99.

Fundamentals of Weather and Climate. By Robin McIlveen, 246 × 190 mm, 497 pp, Chapman and Hall, London, 1992, pbk, ISBN 0–442–31476–0, £19.95.

Environmental Hazards: Assessing Risk and Reducing Disaster. By Keith Smith, 233 × 155 mm, xx + 324 pp, Routledge, London and New York, 1991, pbk, ISBN 0–415–01217, £16.99.

Global Shift: the Internationalization of Economic Activity (Second edition). By Peter Dicken, 244 × 172 mm, xv + 492 pp, Paul Chapman, London, 1992, pbk, ISBN 1–85396–142–6, £15.95.

Geographic Information Systems: Developments and Applications. Edited by L. Worrall, 238 × 155 mm, 244pp, London, Belhaven, 1991, hbk, ISBN 1–85293–1620, £45.00.

Grieve on Geddes. By Robert Grieve, 208 × 148 mm, iv + 53 pp, Sir Patrick Geddes Memorial Trust, Edinburgh, 1992, pbk, no ISBN, £5.00.

The Changing Scottish Landscape 1500–1800. By Ian and Kathleen Whyte, 233 × 155 mm, 251 pp, Routledge, London, 1991, hbk, ISBN 0–415–02992–9, £40.00.     

Multilateralism and the Shaping of an ‘Active Foreign Policy’: Sweden during the preparatory phase of the CSCE

This article deals with the early reactions of Swedish decision-makers and diplomats on the idea and preparations for the convocation of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), mainly during the years 1969–1971. On the basis of recently declassified diplomatic sources from the archive of the Swedish Foreign Ministry, the study outlines the role of Swedish diplomacy in the preparatory phase of the security conference as part of the wider context of European neutrality during détente. It is the very first contribution to the historiography of the Helsinki process based on Swedish archival material, and suggests that the picture of Sweden's widely mentioned active foreign policy at that time should be further scrutinized. It also sheds new light on the paradox between Swedish involvement in European and global politics.     

‘Diogenes in search of an honest man’: the genesis of the industrial inch,the first global standard of length

This paper discusses the evolution of the metrology of interchangeable manufacture, and the genesis in the 1930s of the industrial inch, the first global standard of length. I argue that standardization of industrial products during the nineteenth century was a major factor in the change from the proprietary metrologies of earlier interchangeable manufacture to public metrologies based on national length standards. This evolution is placed in the context of the different cultures and techniques of American and British mechanical engineering. Internationalization of manufacturing in the early twentieth century then provided impetus for agreement on a single global industrial standard of length. In exploring these developments, I emphasize the importance of the needs of user groups in the construction of effective standards, and the related subjugation of metrological purity to pragmatism and practicality.     

Having an impact? Academics,the music industries and the problem of knowledge

This article reflects upon recent interest in knowledge transfer from higher education to the creative industries, using the UK music industries as a case study. It suggests that traditional academic values of impartiality and concern with research methodology can come in to conflict with instrumentalist agendas that see research as valuable only insofar as it fits with pre‐existing worldviews and policy ends. In this setting, knowledge resistance is often more significant than knowledge transfer and may be expected to frustrate any attempts to have an ‘impact’.     

The Origins of the Concept of ‘Palaeolithic Art’: Theoretical Roots of an Idea

This paper explores the origin and theoretical roots of the concept of ‘Palaeolithic art’ in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (1895–1906). It identifies three main sources for this concept: the Western category of ‘art’, the idea of evolution and the notion of primitive. This article shows how the traditional conception of ‘Palaeolithic art’ is a particular case of the wider idea of ‘primitive art’, a category that was born as an attempt to harmonise the notion of ‘primitive society’ and the nineteenth-century bourgeois concept of ‘art’. Additionally, I discuss this traditional conception as the source of a number of ideas that have persisted in our way of interpreting Palaeolithic images until recently, including the understanding of prehistoric images through the lens of the modern notion of ‘art’, their interpretation in symbolic-religious terms and their formal definition based on the idea of naturalism.     

Does the Structure of an Urban System Affect Income Disparities?

In this paper I analyze the impact of basic training and specialized training on the distribution of skill, income disparity, social welfare, and on the structure of a decentralized specialized city system. This is done in a spatial general-equilibrium model of a closed economy producing a single consumption good. The economy is populated with a continuum of unskilled labor with potential heterogeneous ability. The only consumption good can be produced by specialized technology or by general technology. Specialized technology requires specialized training that enables each worker to transform his potential ability into productivity. General technology requires basic training that enables all workers, independent of their potential ability, to produce the good at a constant marginal product. In this framework I show that such an equilibrium exists uniquely and is efficient. Then I characterize the conditions that lead to a different distribution of skills, a different system of cities, and generate income disparity endogenously. Thus, the paper presents a link among income disparities, social welfare, and the structure of an urban system that is new to this literature.     

The arts as an instrument? Notes on the controversy surrounding the value of art

In the last decade of the twentieth century a shift occurred in the way western governments defended their cultural policies. New, instrumental arguments were put forward. This collided with the way the arts had learned to see themselves in the twentieth century: autonomous, with a value of their own. This article elaborates this confrontation of the arts and policy in two ways. First, it is shown that the distinction between an instrumental and an intrinsic value of the arts originates in a misperception of recent history. It was the political constellation of the Cold War that made governments in the second half of the twentieth century support the arts to be free and independent. Next, an attempt is made to anchor the value of art in a unique kind of instrumentality. With the help of philosophers and historians of culture, it is argued that the arts should be considered instruments of experience.     

Creating an Imperial Frontier: Archaeology of the Formation of Rome’s Danube Borderland

For investigating the formation of frontier zones, study of changes in small communities that constituted the majority of earlier populations provides a different perspective from a focus on major centers. A network model applied to settlement and cemetery sites on Romes Danube River frontier in Bavaria, Germany, shows that many communities, through participation in regional and long-distance circulation systems, played significant roles in creating the dynamic and culturally heterogeneous character of that landscape. This approach offers a model applicable to analysis of the formation and functioning of frontier regions in all cultural contexts.