Protecting the Environment the Natural Way: Ethical Consumption and Commodity Fetishism

Abstract: One of the ways that conservation and capitalism intersect is in ethical consumption, the shaping of purchasing decisions by an evaluation of the moral attributes of objects on offer. It is increasingly important as a way that people think that they can affect the world around them, including protecting the natural environment. This paper describes commodity fetishism in ethical consumption, and the degree to which this fetishism makes it difficult for ethical consumers to be effective both in their evaluation of objects on offer and in influencing the world around them. It looks at three forms of fetishism in ethical consumption: fetishism of objects, fetishism of the purchase and consumption of objects, fetishism of nature.     

Radon Predictions with Geographical Information System Covariates: From Spatial Sampling to Modeling

Radon (Rn) is a potentially toxic gas in soil which may affect human health. Assessing Rn levels in soil gas usually requires enormous efforts in terms of time and costs, since the sampling protocol is very complex. In most cases, the variable under study is sparsely sampled over the domain and this could affect the reliability of the spatial predictions. For this reason, it is useful to incorporate, into the estimation procedure, some auxiliary variables, correlated with the in soil gas Rn concentrations (primary variable) and more densely available over the domain. On the basis of this latter aspect, it is even better if the covariates are derived from a geographical information system (GIS). In this article, the Rn sampling protocol used during a measurement campaign planned over a risk area is described and the process of deriving GIS covariates considered as secondary information for predicting the primary variable is clarified. Then, multivariate modeling and prediction of the Rn concentrations over the domain of interest are discussed and a comparative study regarding the performance of the prediction procedures is presented. Rn prone areas are also analyzed with respect to urban and school density. All these aspects can clearly support decisions on environmental and human safeguard.     

Geographical Concentration of Manufacturing Industries in China: The Importance of Spatial and Industrial Scales

Using the most recent data from the first economic census in China, a team of China-based and American economic geographers investigates the geographical concentration of manufacturing industries at the provincial and county levels by integrating proxy variables for natural advantages, agglomeration economies, and institutional changes (e.g., decentralization) associated with economic transition. The authors focus their investigation on manufacturing activity as a whole, as well as on manufacturing categories at the two- and three-digit levels of aggregation (the latter representing a finer scale of analysis than used in almost all previous studies). Interesting differences emerge in the locational patterns of industries whose enterprises pursue strategies of globalization vis-à-vis local protectionism. Differences also are apparent in the impacts of agglomeration economies and knowledge spillover at different spatial scales. The findings suggest that both spatial scale and level of industrial aggregation matter when analyzing patterns of industrial agglomeration in China. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: L10, L20, L60, O18. 5 figures, 5 tables, 50 references.     

European Spatial Planning Between Competitiveness and Territorial Cohesion: Shadows of Neo-liberalism

This paper analyses the use of the concept of territorial cohesion in policy documents produced by the European Union. It is an idea celebrated in community documents, such as cohesion reports, the Territorial Agenda of the European Union and the Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion; after more than a decade of political debate, the concept is about to gain a legitimate institutional role, after being included in the Lisbon Treaty, and is among the competences that the EU shares with other member states. At first, territorial cohesion seems to oppose the logics of neo-liberalism by reinscribing welfare problems and policies in spatial terms. However, using the analytical framework of cultural critics, and intending cohesion to be a discourse carried on by a community of European scholars and policymakers, the research will discuss the conceptual relationship between competitiveness and territorial cohesion in European policies and narratives.     

Spatial Inequality Between and Within Urban Areas: The Case of Israeli Cities

Central areas enjoy greater efficiency in the production of goods and services than do outlying areas. Because of the inherent advantages of central areas over outlying areas, disparities among regions do not vanish over time. On the contrary, centripetal forces increase inequalities across space. The phenomena of increased globalization, trade liberalization and treaties among countries not only enable the flow of labour, products (export) and foreign direct investment but also help reduce spatial inequality between countries. These phenomena also induce greater spatial economic concentration within a country. Thus, although disparities among countries decrease, a widening gap is observed between regions within countries and within large urban areas. In the empirical part, we analyse the general patterns of spatial inequality found among 55 localities in Israel with population size over 20,000. Looking at the spatial inequality relationship, both within and between cities in Israel, we show how all economic indicators measured, including inequality, decrease with distance from the core. Localities in the periphery that experience greater equality also experience lower average income, lower education, less self-employment and more unemployment.     

Geographical Patterns and Some Causes of Spatial Econoetic Variations in Perth,Western Australia

The 54 government senior high schools (SHS) in the Perth metropolitan area provide enough points for a spatial analysis in the search for indicators and correlations that may be used in relation to the results of the Australian scaling test (AST) and the tertiary entrance examination (TEE) in Western Australia. Spatial data are shown by maps, and statistical correlation pairings by graphs. The findings emphasize the great importance of socio-economic factors, such as parents' own education and employment, income and housing standard, as influences on the children's educational choices and results. The disadvantaged position of Aborigines in this respect is also stressed. This type of analysis may help in the planning of new school locations and in the choice of subjects to be offered by each school according to the suburb's socio-economic characteristics. From this analysis emerges a strong geographical pattern which separates a western prosperous belt from an underprivileged eastern belt. This separation has a long history and is due to a combination of landscape morphology, soil quality and drainage.     

Materialism and history: Diderot and the Histoire des deux Indes

In the last years of his life, Diderot made a large number of anonymous contributions to Raynal's widely read Histoire des deux Indes. The identification of these passages over the last thirty years has led to a view of Diderot's later political thought as being far more radical than had previously been supposed. But his contributions in general are notable for their pessimism about the situation in France and in Europe generally. In part this was due to his belief in a cyclical view of history, but it was also due to his bringing to his understanding of history the materialist, and resolutely non‐providential, view of nature which he had developed earlier.     

Exploring Relationships Between the Global and Regional Measures of Spatial Autocorrelation

Abstract The objective of this research is to investigate dimensions of geographic variation in spatial dependency contained within large multilevel data sets. We calculate 1990 population density by census block group, county, and state for the 48 coterminous states and the District of Columbia of the United States, calculations of interest to a wide variety of spatial scientists. We explore relations between these levels and their variation across the nation. The empirical findings generated by this work furnish implications concerning the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP), spatial autocorrelation statistics, scale effects, and resolution.     

Building Localized Interactions Between Universities and Cities Through University Spatial Development

Universities are important players in the global development of knowledge economy, alongside being significant contributors to the economic development of their host cities. They are both significant knowledge enterprises and the suppliers of the human and intellectual capital on which the knowledge-based economy depends. What seems under-explored is how deliberative partnerships between universities and city authorities can develop around projects of mutual benefit, especially based on campus development. In this paper, with the help of five case studies (QUT, MIT, Harvard, Twente and Newcastle universities), we investigate how the spatial development of universities can be one of the main meeting points between the city and university and how it can be used for stimulating economic development and managing growth. These cases show that university—city collaborative initiatives focused on the university properties represent a desire to produce creative and competitive new urban spaces, which reinforce the position of the university and the city in global economy. They also show that these developments need to be jointly managed to avoid undesirable impacts on either side.     

Marxist Critiques of the Developmental State and the Fetishism of National Development

The developmental state has been heavily discussed in various disciplines and across diverse political spectrums. However, the statist notion formulated by institutionalists that the developmental state is autonomous from society and therefore effective in achieving “national development” has more often been taken for granted than problematised. The statist notion of the developmental state has also been accepted and reproduced or challenged merely inadequately by Marxist critics. By analysing how and why currently available Marxist assessments of the developmental state fail to challenge statism, this article offers an alternative theory of the developmental state by drawing on both social form critique and world system analysis. It then locates the origins of statism itself in the dynamics of global capitalism, in which the totality of capitalist social relations (understood as global from its inception) are hierarchically and unevenly constituted. From this it extends Marx's critique of commodity fetishism to the question of the international (the relationship between the nation state and world market) and criticises the statist notion of the developmental state from the perspective of a critique of the fetishism of national development.