Estonian family farms in transition: a study of intangible assets and gender issues in generational succession

This paper, based on interviews, highlights intangible assets in the intergenerational transfer of farms in two Estonian municipalities from a long-term and gender perspective. The study stretches from the interwar period in the twentieth century up to the present. It has been shown that emotional bonds to the land are generally strong in Estonia. This paper aims to highlight how such bonds and feelings may influence decisions on generational succession. The results of the study indicate that family farming and land transfer have had a significant and persistent role in Estonian society, even during the Soviet period under its collectivised system of agriculture. Transfers of intangible assets were important during Soviet rule, for example, the transfer of knowledge about the pre-Soviet property and the value and importance of the farmhouse. Today, family farming is gradually declining in importance, but older traditions of farm and farmhouse transfer can still be found, such as early decisions on who is to be the successor. This is evident among active farmers but also among former farmers with strong emotional bonds to the land. Traditional gender roles tend towards men’s knowledge still generally being more highly valued in the decision about who is to be the successor to the family land.     

政府空间治理与地方产业发展响应——以重庆市电子信息产业为例

政府空间治理对地方发展具有深刻影响。西方学界在解释国家治理时有三个重要学说:非马克思主义理论、马克思主义理论和福柯学说,但并不能完全解释我国的政府治理结构。中国治理结构包含中央政府和地方政府等多个层次,各层次的行为能力和权力空间有所不同。改革开放以来,中央政府允许地方政府通过调节财税杠杆、土地、劳动力等要素进行地方治理模式创新。同时,地方政府积极争取成为由中央政府批准的特殊经济区,对本地制度环境进行改革和创新,以促进地方产业发展。本文以重庆市为例,结合6次深入调研,探讨政府如何通过财税、土地等多项改革,提升空间治理能力,创造差异化治理环境,以带动地方产业发展的积极响应。     

Consequences of Designating the Recent Past: Korreweg-district,Groningen, The Netherlands

The article focuses on the meaning of heritage, especially on its connection to time, space and people, and is concerned with signification, representation and identity at a national scale. Key questions are how the image of Estonianness creates national heritage out of diverse legacies and how these messages fit the local circumstances. This is examined in the case of Paldiski, a small town on the Pakri Peninsula west of the Estonian capital Tallinn. The area encompasses all that is considered non‐Estonian, but nevertheless reflects the history and geography of the country and thus is used for critical examination of current heritage creation and preservation.     

Europeanization and De-Europeanization of Estonian Regional Policy

Abstract

Over the last two decades, the role of the EU can be considered highly important in advancing institutional reforms and overall development in Estonia. The article focuses on Estonian regional policy (RP) and analyses whether it has gone through Europeanization (i.e. convergence with EU regulations and values, or followed its own development path). The institutional cycle model of territorial governance is used for establishing the analytical framework. The research was largely carried out as a second-person action research and used interviews over the period of 1990–2011. The article concludes that Estonian RP shows considerable dynamics as public and political support to RP, administrative structures and policy tools have changed. Europeanization of Estonian RP was most visible in 1994–1998, when an institutional framework was created, in parallel with intensive learning from the West. Overall, in 1999–2004 the application of EU cohesion policy tools took place with significant convergence. After joining the EU in 2004, national RP programmes were reduced, the institutional framework was frozen and a selective application of EU rules and the use of EU cohesion policy measures for achieving some personal political agendas started, driving Estonian RP away from common European values.     

Land Ownership Risk and Urban Development

Under certainty, unlimited duration of private ownership of land provides landowners with efficient development incentives. However, in cases of ownership risk arising from title mistakes, fraud, boundary encroachment, or adverse possession, the statute of limitations sets a limit on how long agents have to establish or defend an ownership claim. This paper demonstrates that such restrictions speed the pace of land development and systematically affect the development density according to site location in the urban land market. It also offers an explanation of why land owners prefer a time limit on the ability to defend their ownership. It shows that the value–maximizing statute varies across sites in the spatial market.     

Landscapes of political memories: War legacies and land negotiations in Laos

Wars and their aftermaths frequently transform land use and ownership, reshaping ‘post-conflict’ landscapes through new boundaries, population movements, land reforms and conditions of access. Within a global context of controversial land concessions and farmland acquisitions, we bring to light the continued salience of historical memories of war in the ways land conflicts are being negotiated in Laos. Considering circumstances at different scales—from bilateral government relations to village-level claims—we find that political capital linked to memories of wartime affiliations have crucial spatial and place-based connections, and that they affect the ways investors, government officials and villagers negotiate over land concessions. Ethnographic evidence, spatial analysis and a survey of expatriate development workers engaged with land issues in Laos suggest that such ‘political memories’ are an important but often overlooked factor in shaping an uneven concessions landscape. We discuss implications for foreign development organizations that tend to privilege technical and legal aspects of land management over such political dimensions.     

新时期中国农村土地综合整治逻辑体系框架

在问题剖析和内涵辨析的基础上,从5个方面构建了农村土地综合整治逻辑体系框架。研究认为,新时期农村土地综合整治在指导理念上应以"理-工-管"等多学科交叉融合的基本理念为指导;在目标定位上应形成包含"现实目标、基本目标、中级目标、战略目标"的层次化目标体系;在宏观战略上应明确今后一段时期内综合整治的战略重点与方向;在统筹安排整治项目方面可按照"战略区-类型区-潜力区-项目区"的空间层次逻辑思路,从国家、区域、亚区、项目4个层级构建综合整治项目空间层级体系;在功能作用方面,可通过土地整治、空间重构、要素整合与机制创新来推进乡村转型发展和城乡一体化进程。     

基于GIS的盐城城市内部空间结构演变分析

根据1984、1997、2003、2006年4个时相数据,运用GIS的空间分析方法,对盐城城市工业、居住、公共服务用地的空间分异特征进行分析,并利用多种景观格局指数,分析了三种功能用地的完整性、集聚性和异质性特征。结果表明:1984-2006年盐城城市内部空间结构演变过程可划分为集聚、分散、再集聚三个阶段,同时演变中存在"工业围城"、城市中心区的工业和居住用地比重偏大等问题。     

行政边界区域土地利用与空间发展模式研究——以长株潭结合部为例

以长株潭结合部暮云镇为例,主要采用2004与2010年土地利用数据,从动态变化与多维综合视角,对行政边界区域土地利用与空间发展的特征、机制及问题进行系统分析,在此基础上归纳理论模式。研究表明:①暮云镇土地利用结构由农村型向城镇型快速转变,城镇用地比重年均约增加2个百分点,其中居住、教育科研、交通和工业等用地增加显著;②受主体功能定位、过境通道建设、周边城市辐射差异和规划管理制度变迁等因素影响,暮云镇空间格局与扩张模式快速演变,芙蓉大道沿线新增城镇用地占全镇82.78%,北、中、南区域开发强度分别上升20.95%、7.96%和1.58%,城镇用地平均图斑面积增长2.04倍。③研究区土地利用与空间发展存在诸多阶段性和结构性问题,应加强综合路网建设、公共设施用地供给、建设用地优化布局与集约利用以及生态环境保护。     

MINDING THE BUSINESS OF THE SUPREME COURT: SOME THOUGHTS ON THE EFFECTS OF THE JUDGES' BILL OF 1925*

Twice at least in the Court's first too centuries it has found itself inundated with litigation that has outstripped its abilities to process it. Congress has from time to time had to make adjustments in the Supreme Court's jurisdiction so that the court could cope with its caseload. These “reforms” are potentially quite, important., yet few scholars have studied the effects, intended and unintended, of them. This paper reviews and criticize the scholarship on the effects of one especially interesting reform, the Judges' Bill of 1925, Along the way I offer a number of suggestions ore offered on how social scientists might in the future go about studying the effects of judical-reform.     

广东省制造业空间格局演化及其影响因素研究

本文基于二位数制造业数据,探究了2000-2014 年广东省制造业空间格局的演化及影响因素。研究表明,广东省制造业以2005 年为拐点,总体呈现先集聚后分散的特征,但行业差异明显。技术密集型产业在珠三角地区保持高集聚的趋势,资本密集型及劳动密集型产业则以不同的扩散速度趋于分散。空间计量回归结果表明,劳动力成本上升及运输成本下降并非广东制造业空间格局演化的主要原因,市场潜力及产业内联系所带来的正外部性抵消了土地等成本提升所带来的负效应。而且,各种影响因素在不同行业的作用不同：市场潜力显著影响劳动密集型产业,资本密集型产业的空间集聚受政府行为影响较大,产业联系则促进技术密集型产业的集聚。     

Land,Life and Labour: Indo‐Fijian Claims to Citizenship in a Changing Fiji

Since the coup of May 2000 an estimated 24,000 Indo‐Fijians have left Fiji, the majority of them moving to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. Those who remain in Fiji have faced increasing marginalisation as the government of Prime Minister Qarase has proposed significant reforms to both the administration of land and Constitutional arrangements of political representation. The situation has been further compounded through Qarase's recently proposed ‘Unity Bill’, which would grant amnesty to some of those responsible for the 2000 coup. These reforms are all part of an effort to ensure the ‘paramountcy’ of indigenous Fijians as well as to limit Indo‐Fijian participation in Fijian national politics. In this paper, I employ Greenhouse's concept of ‘empirical citizenship’ to analyse Indo‐Fijian responses to their political marginalisation in Fiji. After considering how national identities and sentiments of belonging are expressed in Indo‐Fijian discourse through the symbolic inter‐connection of the land and the Indo‐Fijian body, I argue that even if Indo‐Fijians are openly willing to recognize indigenous Fijian supremacy in national politics and the project of nation‐making, assertions of their right to live and labour on Fijian land constitute claims to ‘citizenship’ that are highly contestable in Fiji's current political climate.     

From Simplicity to Complexity: The Changing Geography of Land Vulnerability to Degradation in Italy

Although territorial disparities in land quality are commonly observed in Mediterranean‐type ecosystems, how different geographical gradients impact the changing distribution of land vulnerable to degradation over time and space is poorly investigated in southern Europe. The present study assesses the spatial distribution of vulnerable land according to a composite index that describes the degree of land vulnerability to degradation in Italy along eight gradients during two time periods (1960–1990 and 1990–2010), representing distinct socio‐economic and environmental conditions. While the degree of land vulnerability increased at similar paces from 1960 to 1990 and from 1990 to 2010, the spatial distribution of vulnerable land changed considerably. From 1960 to 1990, the area of vulnerable lands increased in coastal areas, lowlands, and areas with moderately high population density, mainly owing to the increased climate aridity. By contrast, peri‐urban areas experienced, especially in northern Italy, the highest vulnerability from 1990 to 2010 owing to increased human pressure on land generating, e.g. land‐use changes. Results indicate that the importance of the gradients shaping the distribution of vulnerable land in Italy is reflected in the (changing) role of climate, vegetation cover, and human pressure as factors predisposing land to degradation. Finally, policy implications of the changing geography of vulnerable land in the Mediterranean region are discussed.     

Writing post-Soviet Estonia on to the world map

In recent literature, many conventional geopolitical theories have been pushed aside as nationalistic visions, self-deceiving myths or simple expressions of capricious human will. Many scholars have related geopolitics merely to great power politics or attempts at legitimating aggression in the world arena, but they forget that also small states can draw inspiration from geographical and historical facts in their socio-spatial construction efforts. This argument emphasizes the basic aim of every state to delimit its territory and separate “ours” from “the others”. The demarcation of boundaries is fundamental to the spatial organization of people and social groups.This article attempts to shed light on what the Estonian nation and state means for those living within its borders and on the frontier. Using critical geopolitical discourse we attempt to map this picture, although in many respects it remains a difficult one because of the number of different visions and their conflicting nature. The contours of land and their meanings as well as Estonia's relative geographical location all remain fragile and easily contested. However, the model of a Western-oriented ethnic state with a divided society seems to be most in use in boundary-producing practices of post-Soviet Estonia.     

ETHNIC SEGREGATION DURING PUBLIC AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS: A STUDY USING MOBILE PHONE DATA

This paper contains an analysis of ethnic differences in activity locations during public and national holidays. Holidays relate to identity, and the celebration of holidays can be a very important part of acculturation processes and are therefore relevant to ethnic integration policies. We study the out‐of‐home nonemployment activity locations of 12,500 respondents in Estonia, using mobile phone positioning data. The results show that during holidays, ethnic segregation, measured using an index of dissimilarity, is significantly higher than it is on regular days, especially outside the capital city. The type of holiday, such as whether it is a national or international holiday, has a particular effect on people's spatial behaviour. On Estonian public holidays, Estonians are more likely to leave Tallinn than Russian speakers. There are 77 per cent more Estonians and 33 per cent more Russian speakers outside the capital than on non‐holidays. The paper depicts different temporal layers of segregation, which also indicates different integration potential in leisure spaces under various time frames.     

Neoliberalisation from the Ground Up: Insurgent Capital,Regional Struggle,and the Assetisation of Land

In this paper we argue that “assetisation” has been a central axis through which both neoliberalisation and financialisation have encroached in the post‐Fordist era. We focus on the mobilisation of land as a financial asset in northwest England's former industrial heartlands, offering an account of how property developer the Peel Group came to dominate the land and port infrastructure of the region through aggressive debt‐led expansion and, in particular, a hostile takeover of the Manchester Ship Canal for its land‐bank. In doing so, we illustrate how the capture of resources, especially land, by private corporations has shaped both substance and process of neoliberalisation from the ground up. By focusing on transformative struggles over land we contribute to research agendas attempting to understand the systemically dispossessive nature of assetisation, its relationship to fictitious capital formation, and the way such neoliberalising transformations are produced through grounded and situated socio‐spatial struggles.     

基于最优插值函数优选的小城镇商业用地地价空间结构分析——以西安市蓝田县城区为例

根据在西安市蓝田县城区调查的商业用地地价资料,利用ArcGis软件,从8种常用的插值方法中,以估计值与观察值的标准差最小为原则,筛选出适合于商业用地建立GRID数据的最优插值函数为克里金指数半变差函数模型,并利用该模型建立了商业用地的地价面,在此基础上对商业用地的地价空间结构进行了分析。结果表明:小城镇商业用地地价的变化呈同心圆结构,即城市中心区地价最高,向外逐渐降低。商业用地地价与道路两侧的商店密度性、临街道路的类型以及文化娱乐设施的分布密度正相关,相关系数分别为0.946、0.693和0.659;而与金融保险机构的个数以及土地所有权的性质相关性不强。     

Land in Kwara'ae and development in Solomon Islands

This paper documents land tenure and the effects of economic development in Kwara'ae on the island of Malaita. It uses local histories to confirm the essential flexibility of a system of cognatic inheritance, based on social and economic values which contradict the more exclusive unilineal emphasis preferred and promoted by government land and development policy in Solomon Islands. In considering the resulting problem of land disputes, the paper questions the value of reforms which undermine the tradition of communal control of natural resources.     

河南省人口分布与乡镇可达性空间耦合特征

人口作为区域发展的内在因素,交通可达性提高将有利于促进人口或劳动力要素的自由流动和优化配置。在考虑土地利用及地形因素的基础上,采用包含乡村道的交通网络数据集,应用改进的成本距离计算方法,分析河南省乡镇可达性及其分布特征;通过乡镇可达性与人口密度的空间叠加,揭示人口分布与可达性的空间耦合特征。结果表明：①各乡镇可达性总体呈现明显的圈层分布,可达性值由内向外逐渐降低;时段越短,内部差异越大,交通指向越明显。②乡镇可达性与人口密度在各时间圈呈现正相关关系,可达性与人口分布集聚产生作用的最大时间距离为1.5h。③人口与交通可达性的空间耦合呈现较明显的半环状分布,社会经济指向性明显。④交通可达性对人口变化的影响具有时间阶段性和区域差异性。