Capital, State and Space: Contesting the Borderless World

The globalization of economic activities and transnational corporations (TNCs) has led us to think that we are entering a 'borderless' world. Some prophets of globalization argue that it has led to the end of geography. To them, the state has ceased to be an institution capable of exerting influences on the activities of transnational capital, which has also become increasingly 'placeless'. This paper aims to contest the issue of the alleged end-state discourse of a 'borderless' world. It argues that, despite the accelerated processes of globalization, national boundaries still matter in the decision-making and global reach of capital. The notion of a 'borderless' world is more folklore than reality. Based on theoretical and empirical literature in international political economy and business studies, the paper offers a dialectical perspective that examines the changing relationship between capital and the state, and the embedded relationship between capital and space in the organization of the global space-economy. Together, both arguments point to the importance of understanding dynamic transformations of the global economy, before considering its globalization tendencies.     

The Cultural Complexities of Learning and Development in A Post-Modern World

The books under review focus on the role culture plays in studies of childhood socialization, learning, schooling in global contexts, and educational change. Key chapters highlight schooling practices not well known in Western culture. Both books advocate understanding and respecting cultural differences while emphasizing that cultures are dialectally reshaping and reorganizing in response to rapidly changing economic, political, and social forces. The challenge facing societies in the age of global communication is to preserve unique cultural heritages while acknowledging shared human values that may transcend the boundaries of a given world.     

经济视角下的中国世界文化遗产地发展

本文作者参与了受国家文物局委托,由清华大学国家遗产保护研究中心（清华大学建筑学院下属研究机构）承担的“世界文化遗产保护及遗产地经济发展”课题研究（2009年10月至今）。该课题旨在加强世界文化遗产的研究、保护和管理,促进遗产地经济社会的全面、协调和可持续发展。以中国世界文化遗产地大量案例研究和现场调研为基础,依据保护经济学理论,探讨世界遗产地对其依托城镇或地区直接和间接产生影响的主要经济领域、作用模式、遗产地产生的长期效益及其未来发展情况,最终提出有利于遗产地可持续发展的相关政策性建议和措施。     

Contesting scale: A space of the political in a post-disaster context

Disasters create spaces for the political to unfold. This paper contributes to the recurring debates on space and the political in geography by providing a novel empirical focus: following a fire in Lærdal, Norway in 2014, contesting discourses on how emergency services should be spatially organized revealed themselves. A scalar discourse of the local, situated in discourses on periphery and rurality in Norway, emerged to contest a neoliberal discourse promoted by the government. I illustrate the scalar discourse of the local through four identified narratives in Norwegian newspapers that emphasize different aspects of the local. This demonstrates how scalar categories are meshed with everyday vocabulary, and hence are important to study. Although a space of the political was realized following the fire, in the last part of the paper I reflect on why the scalar discourse of the local has not gained recognition as legitimate contestation, as reforms aiming to centralize and/or merge continue to be rolled out in Norway.     

Contesting Commerce: Gibbons v. Ogden, Steam Power, and Social Change

The U.S. Supreme Court case Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) ¹ represents one of the most significant yet least understood cases in the history of American jurisprudence. Most accounts depict the case as a constitutional showdown between former New Jersey Governor Aaron Ogden and his estranged business partner, a Georgian businessman and planter named Thomas Gibbons. Ogden charged Gibbons with operating a steamboat on the Hudson River in violation of the Fulton–Livingston Steamboat monopoly that controlled steam travel in the state of New York. In March 1824, Chief Justice John Marshall ruled for the Supreme Court that Gibbons' federal coasting license trumped a state grant issued to Ogden by the Fulton–Livingston syndicate. ²     

世界历史发展进程中的第二次世界大战

第二次世界大战是资本主义陷入深刻危机的产物,使人类在物质上和精神上蒙受了前所未有的巨大双重劫难。但是,战后形成的社会主义新气象和殖民体系的瓦解,以及在国际关系中形成的各种维护世界和平与安全、促进全球经济发展与合作的新机制,进一步加快了世界历史的发展进程。战后的世界历史进入了一个以和平与发展为时代主题的新阶段。