Prospects for a Distinctly Scottish Planning in a Post-sovereign Age

Debates on the sovereignty of the State and the role of (sub-national) regions have moved on quickly in recent years spurred on by interest in the implications of globalization and (more recently) devolution. Reductionist perspectives on the 'death of State sovereignty' have given way to more balanced understandings that emphasize bottom-up and top-down influences upon State restructuring. Yet the impacts of a changing sovereignty upon policy areas are still largely unknown. This paper seeks to add to these debates and cast some light on potential influences upon and autonomy of the Scottish Parliament vis-à-vis land use planning. The paper argues that despite expectations of policy divergence from academics and practitioners the Scottish Parliament has taken a modest approach to land use planning which mirrors that in the rest of the UK. Yet, the reasons for this are only partly explained by the 'death of the State' theses. Significantly, there is evidence of an expectation of reduced sovereignty which has had an impact upon the anticipation of change. In addition, party political loyalty, ideology, the mechanics of the devolution settlement and the fragmented nature of sovereignty have driven the agenda for planning under the Scottish Parliament all of which point towards a further convergence.     

Soil erosion and flooding on the eastern South Downs, southern England, 1976–2001

The South Downs in southern England have been farmed for 5000 years: the initial loess cover is now a thin, stony remnant as a result of erosion. During the 1980s, field monitoring of erosion events in an area of 36 km² showed that average rates of erosion are low (0.5–5.0 m³ ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹), but that occasional storms result in losses of over 200 m³ ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ on individual fields. On soils that are only 15 cm thick, such rates pose a threat to future farming. Almost all recent erosion has been on fields of winter cereals, which are bare in the wet autumn period. Of greater significance in the short term are the effects of soil-laden runoff (or muddy floods) on urban areas. Flood damage to property has been a regular event since the conversion of this area to winter cereals in the 1970s. Soil conservation measures have been negligible and flood protection has consisted mainly of engineering works and limited land-use change at sites where property damage has occurred. Conversion to grass under the Set Aside, and an Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) scheme, could be an effective soil conservation and flood protection approach. In the longer term, increasing stoniness of soils, the economic incentives for arable farming in marginal areas, and the success of legal proceedings relating to flood damage, will determine the future of erosion on the South Downs. Current farming systems clearly are unsustainable and would become more so under future climates without substantial site-targeted land use change.     

Science in space vs space science: The European utilisation of spacelab∗

Abstract

Spacelab is the conventional name given to a manned laboratory to be carried onboard NASA's Space Shuttle, which was built in Europe under the aegis of the European Space Agency (ESA). This paper deals with the initiatives undertaken in Europe to establish a utilisation programme for Spacelab, in particular for its first flight, planned as a joint ESA/NASA demonstration mission. Two main factors will be discussed, which prevented ESA from establishing a sizeable Spacelab utilisation effort. Firstly, owing to the cost escalation of the Spacelab development programme and to NASA's charging policy for access to the Shuttle system, which did not foressee any preferential treatment to European users, most ESA member states were reluctant to commit funds in support of a long term experimental programme with the new space facility. Secondly, in a situation characterized by strict budgetary constraints, the established European space science community strongly opposed the inclusion of the new research fields opened up by Spacelab (e.g. life and material sciences in micro‐gravity condition) within the framework of ESA's scientific programme.     

The second Prodi government and Italian foreign policy: New and improved or the same wrapped up differently?

This article examines whether Italian foreign policy has undergone significant and substantial changes under the second Prodi government. The first part identifies the variables affecting continuity and change in a country's foreign policy and addresses the question of the conditions under which one can expect changes as a result of a change in government, and the conditions under which continuity is instead more likely. The second part looks at the second Prodi government's foreign policy on a number of topical issues, most of which were also faced by the Berlusconi government, to see to what extent the Prodi government's approach to foreign policy indeed changed from that of its predecessor. The article concludes that the Prodi government did not change Italian foreign policy in any substantial manner; differences existed only in the way the new government occasionally chose to present and justify its policies publicly.     

Archaeological Explorations of Cultural Identity and Rural Economy in the North of Ireland: Goodland,County Antrim

Renewed examination of an enigmatic settlement site perched atop a cliff above Murlough Bay in Goodland Townland, County Antrim, Northern Ireland calls into question long held ideas about Gaelic rural economy on the eve of the Ulster Plantation by reintroducing the complex cultural and political relationships between the north of Ireland and the Scottish isles. Long interpreted as temporary post-medieval booley huts associated with seasonal transhumance, recent re-evaluation of the site suggests instead that Goodland represents a permanent seventeenth-century Highland Scottish village. Although the medieval linkages between the north of Ireland and the Scottish isles have long been acknowledged, twentieth-century sectarianism has subjugated awareness of the Highland (Roman Catholic) Scots focusing upon the legacy of the in-migration of Protestant Lowland Scots during the Ulster Plantation. Material evidence at Goodland re-introduces the Highland Scot to the contested landscape of contemporary Ulster identity, while also facilitating analysis of continuity, change, and cultural complexity in the rural economy of early modern Ireland.     

Planning Under a Scottish Parliament: A Missed Opportunity?

Devolution has naturally led to expectations of legislative and policy divergence. Given its largely unitary nature across the UK such anticipation has also been a characteristic of planning debates. In Wales and Northern Ireland there is evidence of some progress in developing planning to better meet the needs of those areas. In Scotland, however, there have been far more modest achievements to date. Far from charting a new course for planning through legislative and policy change the trajectory for planning in Scotland post-devolution has been very similar to that south of the border. This article explores the changes to planning under the Scottish Parliament and discusses some of the reasons for the apparent lack of ambition and progress.     

A spatial analysis of human fertility in Scotland: Reappraisal and extension

In an earlier study of Scottish fertility (Jones, 1975) it was concluded that a substantial part of the areal variability in county and major city Crude Birth Rates could be attributed to variations in age structure and, to a lesser extent, socio‐economic composition. Because Crude Birth Rate levels are affected by population composition this study seeks to determine the extent to which areal variations in reproduction can be attributed to behavioural rather than structural effects. It is suggested that areal differences in Scottish reproductive behaviour reflect well defined, deeply ingrained and temporally persistent differences within Scottish society.     

Archaeological Excavations of the Medieval Royal Kincardine Landscape,Aberdeenshire, Scotland

KINCARDINE PARK is among the earliest and largest medieval parks in Scotland. It was royally owned and is believed to have served as a hunting park throughout the 13th and 14th centuries. Nearby are the ruins of Kincardine Castle, considered to be associated with the park, and one of the first Scottish stone-built castles. This paper presents the results of excavations conducted in the park landscape, and at the stone-built Scottish castle. New insights are provided on how medieval Scottish parks were constructed and used, and the cultural significance of these monuments is explored.     

Nationalism,party political discourse and Scottish independence: comparing discursive visions of Scotland's constitutional status

This article critically examines the predominant narratives which emanated from party political discourse in relation to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Utilising a methodological approach centring on political discourse analysis (Fairclough and Fairclough 2012), this paper analyses party manifestos and constitutional policy documents produced by the three largest political parties represented in the Scottish Parliament, namely, the pro‐independence Scottish National Party, and two pro‐union parties, Scottish Labour and the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. The emergent discourse of each party is interrogated by drawing upon pertinent theoretical concepts from previous academic analyses of Scottish nationalism, with particular attention given to those which have deployed modernist and ethnosymbolist theoretical approaches when analysing the Scottish context. This facilitates a critical reflection on the contrasting and nuanced narratives of the Scottish nation's past and future espoused by each political party vis‐à‐vis modernist and ethnosymbolist theory, illustrating the ways in which contrasting theorisations of nationalism are empirically tangible within political discourse and are thus not simply theoretical abstractions.     

Multi-sectoral Cluster Modelling: The Evaluation of Scottish Enterprise Cluster Policy

This article describes the ex post cluster evaluation framework being developed by Scottish Enterprise. It focuses primarily on the macro level evaluation and, in particular, on the use of multi-sectoral modelling techniques to identify the effects of cluster policy on key indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP), unemployment and competitiveness. The Scottish Input-Output (I-O) table is a key element in this approach. The strengths and weaknesses of I-O data, both as a basis for this analysis and as a means of identifying important intra-cluster linkages are explored. Further, the article describes methods for visual representation of the linkages identified using such a method.     

Poetic child realism: Scottish film and the construction of childhood

With this essay I suggest a move towards poetic realism in the representation of children in Scottish movies. After a brief discussion of the landscape context of film geographies I turn to the roots of Scottish film realism in British Free Cinema, with specific reference to filmmakers’ use of landscape and place‐characters. I then argue that Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay moves most fully towards the context of poetic child realism. Ramsay frames and foments a quirky poetic realism with non‐professional child actors placed in carefully crafted landscapes to create important moral and social stories that evolve from a series of shocks and an emotive collision of ideas.     

SPACE,PRESSURES AND THE MANAGEMENT OF THE GREEK LANDSCAPE

Landscapes are the result of the interaction of natural and human factors, with many dimensions; they are part of natural and cultural heritage and an important component of the quality of life. Greece has heterogeneous and mixed landscapes issuing from both geomorphology and the impact of complex human systems. Despite the existence of many and early legislative efforts, Greece has a relatively poor history of spatial planning and landscape has been particularly neglected. The adoption of the European Landscape Convention (ELC) in 2010 provides an updated strategic context for integrating landscape in spatial planning. In this article, we seek to contribute to the discussion of landscape policies and the inclusion of the landscape level in the spatial planning national framework. We identify the dominant landscape types by categorizing landscapes at the national scale with reference to the (combined) presence of three different components: geomorphology, land cover and coasts/islands. Then, we investigate the most important processes of change for each type and link these processes with spatial planning policy. The identification of these dynamics sheds light on current and future trajectories of the changes of Greek landscapes, thus providing challenges for its management in the context of the ELC. The case study concerns the regional level; we focus on Attica, Thessaly, Epirus and the Cyclades and identify the principal characteristics according to the proposed landscape typology.     

The beginnings of royal pardon in Scotland

The well attested (and comprehensively studied) animus that informed English attitudes towards the Gaelic-speaking peoples of the British Isles in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries has tended to obscure important developments in the legal landscape of contemporary Scotland. This article argues that soon after 1200, the king of Scots deliberately abandoned as barbaric, obnoxious and unbecoming a Christian prince the practice of mutilating high-status political enemies and ritually defiling their bodily remains. The transformation reflected influences from England and Europe in general, but the argument here is that ultimately the change reflected the maturation of the Scottish ideas about Christian kingship, royal justice and royal mercy.     

Technological change in the Earlier and Middle Stone Age of Kalambo Falls (Zambia)

This paper reviews data on technological change in the manufacture of stone tools from the Earlier Stone Age (ESA) to Middle Stone Age (MSA including Sangoan) deposits at Site A, Kalambo Falls, Zambia. Data on flake and tool morphology, dimensions, and raw material are discussed It is concluded that there is little change, at this site, in the basic techniques of blank production or the attributes of the blanks produced from the ESA to the MSA. The only marked change to occur is the loss of large cutting tools (hand axes, cleavers) and their replacement by heavy-duty forms (core axes, picks). It is hypothesized that this change marks a decline in portability as a factor in the design of large edge tools.

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Résumé Cet article donne un compte rendu des donnés sur la change technologique dans la fabrication des outils lithiques en les dépôts du Earlier Stone Age (ESA) jusqu'a la Middle Stone Age (MSA, qui comprit la Sangoan) au gisement A, Kalambo Falls, Zambia. Des donnés sur la morphologie, les dimensions et les matériaux des éclats et des outils sont examinées. Il est inféré qu'il y a peu de changement, à ce gisement, dans le techniques élémentaires de la fabrication des supports ou dans les attributs des supports taillés du ESA jusqu'a MSA. Le seule change qui se présent ç'est la perte des gros outils pour couper (bifaces, hachereaux) et leur remplacement par des formes plus substantiels (core axes, pics). On fait l'hypothèse que ce changement indique une déclin de portabilité comme facteur dans le dessein des outils avec des grands tranchants.

     

Planning the new industrial nation: Scotland 1931 to 1979

Despite the continuing strength of Unionist politics in Scotland, from the inter-war economic crisis onwards, there slowly emerged distinctive understanding of a Scottish industrial economy. Aided by administrative devolution, and from the 1940s by a UK-wide turn towards economic planning, a project aimed at a planned modernisation of Scottish industry gained increasing traction. This article focuses on the activities of the technocratic elements of the Scottish elite, the civil servants and academic economists who played a key role in conceptualising and quantifying the Scottish economy, and making and applying policy to develop the Scottish industrial nation between the 1930s and 1970s.     

Ambition and temporal sovereignty in recent Scottish cultural policy

ABSTRACT

This paper is a study of the figure of ‘ambition’ in Scottish cultural policy since about 2010. The argument of the paper is established through the development of the concept of ‘temporal sovereignty’. Through ‘ambition’ cultural policy attempts to subject culture and cultural agents to the formation of the Scottish government’s temporal regime, and in particular the relation between creative industries and the effects of economic temporality. The study examines the temporal properties of ‘partnerships’ as a key strategic mechanism in that project. The focus of the study is an analysis of authoritative Scottish cultural policy texts which show that the subject of culture becomes the organisation of temporal sovereignty. The paper explains the conditions for the emergence of the problem of ‘temporal sovereignty’ and discusses its consequences for structures of rule and logics of cultural policy formation. It concludes by indicating the location of culture in a politics of temporalities.     

Acknowledging economic realities. The CMEA policy change vis-à-vis the European Community, 1970–3

In the early 1970s, the economic consequences of European Community (EC) policies forced the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) to devise its trade policy vis-à-vis the outside world. With the implementation of its Common Commercial Policy, the EC was about to change the rules and conduct of its foreign trade. The East–West trade boom that took off in the 1960s had created significant commercial links, and substantial dependencies, across the Iron Curtain. The smaller members of the CMEA began to advocate an opening up towards the EC due to their fears of worsening trade prospects caused by the new EC policies. After reconsideration of its allies' commercial needs, the Soviet leadership was pressured to change its mind in favour of a common approach vis-à-vis the EC. This article follows the debate within the CMEA Executive Committee on the socialist countries' dependency on the Western market and on the advisability of opening up to the global market. It relies on official CMEA documents as well as Soviet and German Democratic Republic (GDR) policy-making documents. This article analyses the process of socialist integration in connection with the simultaneous developments taking place in their Western European counterparts, and thereby fills a gap in the historiography of Europe in the Cold War.     

转型期乡村多功能性及景观重塑

本文以全球化为背景,阐述了基于乡村发展多功能性和景观功能的概念。乡村多功能概念的兴起,为重新审视乡村地域自力发展带来一种机会,而乡村景观多功能可能是塑造乡村地域多功能的潜在动力和机制。构建乡村景观多功能的目的,主要在于保护和改善农村环境,以维持生物多样性之生态功能和作为旅游和特色文化场所的社会－经济功能,以及传承历史之文化功能。对于现阶段转型中的乡村,应该妥善规划和运用并积极重塑景观的多重功能。通过乡村多功能和景观重塑之讨论,可以为乡村地域景观重塑规划实践策略提供一种新视角。     

Reviews of books

The publication in July 1998 of the Government's White Papers on integrated transport marked the most comprehensive review of transport policy for 30 years. In spite of this, the measures brought forward by the Government are timid and are unlikely in their present form to tackle the underlying problems of increasing car dependence. This paper reviews the Government's Scottish document, Travel Choices for Scotland, and highlights key policy debates in which the voices of geographers should be better heard.