Less talk more drone: social research with UAVs

There is a growing body of work in geography and sociology on the impact of drones on warfare, surveillance and civil protest. This paper assesses the challenges of using drones for teaching human geography and spatial social sciences. Affordable and expensive drones are now available in the market place; however, there has been next to no reflection on how drones might impact upon the social sciences as a research tool. Yet, unmanned flying vehicles pose some profound possibilities for social and cultural inquiry and aerial data collection.     

More is more: Scaling political ecology within limits to growth

This piece responds to the article Is less more… or is more less? Scaling the political ecology of the future, where Paul Robbins (2019) discusses degrowth and modernism as two competing political imaginaries with regard to the growth-technology-environment nexus. Arguing from the perspective of ecological economics, I engage with the literature on political ecology to discuss the notions of limits to growth, Malthusianism, austerity and scarcity, as well as the role of technology as both environmental problem and solution. The paper exposes key divergences between different traditions in political ecology with regard to technological and economic scale. First, against the argument that limits to growth is a mere social construct, I call attention to research on ecological thresholds and to the perils of epistemic relativisms in a post-truth era. Second, against the idea that limits represent an elitist discourse, I call attention to long-standing traditions in emancipatory politics that defend limits in the name of justice. Third, against the thesis that more is less, I refer to mounting empirical evidence indicating that more is more (growth brings more environmental destruction, not less). I contend that political ecology can have much to gain from engaging with the political utopia of degrowth, but far less so from the technological utopia of modernism, which –I argue– reinforces status quo and offers false solutions to the environmental challenges of our time. Emancipation, I claim, is not about bringing more to more, but about bringing enough to everyone.     

Haiti: Behind Mountains,more mountains

Vera Rubin and Richard P. Schaedel, eds. The Haitian Potential: Research and Resources of Haiti. Center for Education in Latin America, Institute of International Studies. New York: Teachers College Press, 1975. xxiv + 284 pp. Figures, tables, and references. $15.00.     

Work hard, play hard: selling Kelowna, BC, as year-round playground

A keen interest in place making and place selling is widespread in contemporary society. While the bulk of academic research has focused on studying the restructuring of large urban conglomerates, places beyond the exploding metropolis, by comparison, have received little attention, especially when it concerns Canadian landscapes. In an attempt to study the particularities of place making in contemporary smaller, more isolated communities—hinterlands—this work analyses the city of Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada. We argue that historically Kelowna, a small rural community specialising in ranching, forestry and fruit production, since the early 1980s, has been re-imagined and re-designed, on the one hand as an all-year playground and as an innovative frontier for high-tech industries; on the other hand, this post-Fordist reinvention contains a discourse of 'whiteness', one that entices by packaging 'place' in terms of 'sameness' and 'familiarity'. In contrast to large cosmopolitan post-industrial cities, hinterland-type cities are invented, sought and lived as geographies cleared from the 'elements' that make cities 'unsafe'.     

Sustainable regions: Governance,innovation and scale

This article seeks, first, to respond to some of the more pertinent points raised in the 'new regionalism' debate, like how 'regions' are constituted and how the 'regional scale' relates to other scales in what I call the 'multi-level polity' in the European Union. Second, it explores the potential of regional innovation strategies in the context of less favoured regions and argues that they have an important role to play in regional renewal even though their impact to date has been modest. Finally, it suggests that the most limiting aspect of the 'new regionalism' debate is that virtually all contributions tend to confine themselves to an inordinately narrow metric of development and, wittingly or not, this tends to conflate what is instrumentally significant with what is intrinsically significant, a conflation of means and ends     

Popery,politics, and play: visual culture in succession crisis England

This article assesses the place of graphic satire in the burgeoning news culture of late seventeenth-century England. It argues that historians who have used visual sources as typical of party positions in a manner similar to modern political posters underestimate the sophistication of their interventions into politics. Graphic satires did not simply distil already existing ideologies into easily digestible images, but made significant contributions to political culture: through the repetition of key images from the Popish Plot (1678–1682) Whig graphic satire created a narrative which asserted control over the interpretation of events in a bitterly contested news culture. In response, Tory satirists developed sophisticated visual strategies to undermine that narrative, and it is argued that the graphic element of graphic satire – the skilful playfulness with which it parodied, commentated upon, or mocked other elements of news culture – was vital to its unleashing biting political commentary.     

Wishful thinking? Towards a more realistic role for universities in regional innovation policy

ABSTRACT

The past 30 years has seen an escalating interest in the potential role of universities in contributing to their regional economies, reflected in the increasing trend for regional innovation strategies to ascribe a central role for universities, particularly in peripheral, institutionally thin places. The global economic crisis and subsequent austerity measures implemented in many developed economies have put further pressure on universities from national and regional policymakers to become more explicitly involved in contributing to their local economies in order to justify their public funding. This paper will draw on the academic literature to consider how justified this focus is by questioning whether universities are willing or even able to play the roles expected of them in contributing to regional innovation. It will critique an approach to policymaking that often views universities as homogenous actors in the regional innovation system and places an over reliance on imitating success stories from other places without sufficient consideration of the specificities of local conditions. It will argue for a more realistic and nuanced approach to involving universities in regional innovation policy, concluding with key insights for both universities and policymakers.     

City and innovation: Different size,different strategy

The objective of this paper is to assess whether establishments' innovation performance and innovation strategies differ by the size of the city in which they are located. Using the Canadian 1999 Survey of Innovation database (establishment-based), it was found that the rate of innovation is not correlated with city-size, but when the innovation measure takes into account the importance of innovation, then the size of the city does matter. The results show that establishments belonging to smaller cities (with populations of less than 50,000) are less likely to be associated with a world-first innovation than those located in larger cities. Four innovation strategies have been retained—Private Source, R&D, Collaboration and Public Science Base paths—and the results show that the R&D path leads to the greatest increase in the estimated probability to be associated with a world-first innovation, for almost all sectors and all city sizes.     

Space, place and innovation: a distance-based approach

Innovation is increasingly considered a prerequisite for regional development and it is commonly understood that certain regions are more conducive to innovation than others. Regions that do not possess the required institutional and cultural contexts are often encouraged to work on creating them. However, there is increasing evidence that innovation is also a spatial phenomenon: the propensity of establishments to innovate also varies with their location relative to major and minor metropolitan areas, independent of local context. This article investigates whether the geography of innovation is similar for three different types of manufacturing sectors ( high-tech (HT), medium-tech, first and second transformation) and across two different types of innovation (product, process). It is shown that, in Québec, to the extent that geography and innovation are connected, it is principally distance from a metropolitan area that plays a role. Our results lend support to   McCann's (2007)   recent spatial model of innovation and are also compatible with   Duranton and Puga's (2003)   theory of nursery cities. Our results also show that HT innovators behave differently from other manufacturers, with a tendency to internalize their innovation behaviour (perhaps out of necessity or for reasons of secrecy) in more distant locations.     

The 2006 election: more than ever,a Berlusconi-centred campaign

Abstract

The article offers a review of the most salient events of the 2006 electoral campaigns. It argues that with exception of 1994, the recent 2006 electoral campaign has been more focused on Berlusconi than the previous campaigns. As a matter of fact, Berlusconi, trailing in the polls, made all possible efforts to set the campaign agenda. He resorted to a massive overexposure of himself on the television stage and gave rise to a number of ‘media events’ that have dominated the electoral narratives, like the Vicenza speech at the Confindustria conventions and his final announcement of abolishing the municipal tax on homeowners. All that was not enough to gain re-election, but his frantic campaign activity allowed him to re-acquire a clear leadership of the House of Liberties, which had been previously challenged by his own coalition partners. The article analyses also the Berlusconi – Prodi debates, and the reasons why electoral debates promise to become a fixed feature of the Italian politics.     

Imperial boyhood: piracy and the play ethic

Representations of perpetual boyhood came to fascinate the late Victorians, partly because such images could naturalize a new spirit of imperial aggression and new policies of preserving power. This article traces the emergence of this fantasy through a series of stories about the relationship of the boy and the pirate, figures whose opposition in mid-Victorian literature was used to articulate the moral legitimacy of colonialism, but who became doubles rather than antitheses in later novels, such as R.L. Stevenson's "Treasure Island" and Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim." Masculine worth needed no longer to be measured by reference to transcendent, universal laws, but by a morally flexible ethic of competitive play, one that bound together boyishness and piracy in a satisfying game of international adventure.