Migration and regional inequality: changing characteristics of China’s economic inequality

Scholars studying economic inequality in China have maintained that regional inequality and economic divergence across provinces have steadily increased over the past 30 years. New studies have shown that this trend is a statistical aberration; calculations show that instead of quickly and sharply rising, regional inequality has actually decreased, and most recently, remained stable. Our study suggests that China’s unique migratory regime is crucial to understanding these findings. We conduct a counterfactual simulation to demonstrate how migration and remittances have mitigated income inequality across provinces in order to show that without these processes, we would have seen more of a rise in interprovincial income inequality. We conclude by arguing that inequality in China is still increasing, but it is changing and becoming less place-based. As regional inequality decreases, there are signs that point to the increasing importance of interpersonal inequality.     

Empire,Colonial Enterprise,and Speculation: Cape Breton’s Coal Boom of the 1860s

ABSTRACT

During the 1860s Cape Breton Island’s Sydney coalfield, at the northeastern tip of Nova Scotia, experienced dramatic economic expansion. Historical interpretation of this understudied coal boom has emphasised the transition towards a liberal era of competition and growing dependence upon American capital and markets. This article presents a revised interpretation, and reflects a renewed engagement with empire in the writing of the history of Canadian capitalism. Drawing upon the work of James Belich and John Darwin, it locates this coal boom in an evolving and expanding ‘Angloworld’ and ‘British world-system,’ and demonstrates how the Sydney coalfield was shaped by the social and economic configurations that developed in the region under the British Empire. During this period, established colonial elites captured coal property and sought to integrate Cape Breton coal into the Atlantic economy in which their region had historically operated. They treated coal as a new commodity to trade and profit from, but coal mining required the mobilisation of credit and infrastructure expenditures that exceeded what was typically required to participate in the region’s traditional staples trades. Large fixed investments engendered economic and political commitments that spurred growth even under highly volatile circumstances, as promotion and speculation drove growth from the supply side and attracted London capital. Overcapacity, ruinous competition, and social crisis eventually resulted, as the Atlantic economy that gave rise to the boom fell apart. This episode reveals the operation of colonial networks and an ‘empire effect’ that produced a distinctive pattern of development on the Sydney coalfield whose legacy would be lasting.     

Anarchy and Public Discourse: Emerson,Lincoln and the “Mobocratic Spirit” of the 1830s

Abstract

In January 1838, Emerson and Lincoln each gave a lecture on the public violence that reached a crisis with the killing of Elijah Lovejoy. For both men, mobbing represented instabilities in the process of democratization that had structural implications for public discourse. In his Lyceum Address, Lincoln argues that if mobbing became conventionalized it could legitimize an extralegal politics of force and coercion. To counterbalance the pressure he saw mobbing place on civil society, Lincoln asserts the importance of developing a culture of reverence for standards of civility in the public sphere. For Emerson, in his lecture “Heroism,” mobbing marked irrational but intentional efforts to suppress dissenting speech and thought. Especially through attacks on political reformers and other individualists, public violence distorted civil discourse and enforced both conformity and silence. For both Lincoln and Emerson, the experience of mob action challenging civil society in the 1830s marked the proximity of civil to uncivil discourse and influenced their responses to proslavery rhetoric in the 1850s. Though they reacted differently, each articulates the risks of allowing the threatened violence of proslavery rhetoric to co-opt the political structure so that civil discourse acted as a façade legitimizing mob rule.     

‘The True Love of the People and the Motherland’: The concept of socialist patriotism,socialist nation and anti-nationalism in Hungary in the 1960s and 1970s

In the late 1950s, the concept of socialist patriotism in Hungary was reformulated as a basic political concept in the ideology and propaganda of state socialism. The definite appropriation of Leninist contraposition of socialist patriotism and bourgeois nationalism became paramount in the second half of the 1950s because of the nationalist sentiments of the 1956 revolution. I trace the history of the concept of socialist patriotism in the 1960s and 1970s in socialist Hungary. During this period, socialist patriotism served as a slightly undetermined, yet didactic counter-concept to set against ‘bourgeois nationalism’ which was characterised as a xenophobic sense of nation. From the late 1960s, the doctrine of socialist patriotism confronted a new ideological enemy: supra-nationalism or cosmopolitanism. In the mid-1970s, a new ideological equilibrium was elaborated in Hungary between socialist patriotism and proletarian internationalism, which served the economic and political integration of the Eastern bloc countries. In this sense, socialist patriotism was meant to express a link with socialist political order, its achievements and its institutions, in contrast to the ethnic character and revanchist tendencies of nationalism.     

Drawing,Etching, and Experiment in Christopher Wren’s Figure of the Brain

Abstract

Christopher Wren’s figure of the brain ‘viewed from below’ in Thomas Willis’s Cerebri anatome (1664) set a precedent, not only for subsequent images of the brain, but for scientific illustration. The image is the visual proof of a Baconian experiment conducted by the Oxford dissection team, in which dye was pumped into the carotid arteries of animal and human specimens in order to imitate the natural flow of blood, thereby applying William Harvey’s theory of circulation to the brain. Usually described as engravings, Wren’s images are in fact etchings (produced by the acid process), significant because etching for book illustration was then in its infancy in England. In addition to considering Wren as an experimental etcher, this article frames our understanding of Wren’s contributions to Willis’s project in terms of his virtuosic talents as amateur draughtsman, natural historian, anatomist, and his use of optical and draughting instruments.     

Milton’s Euripides and the superior rationality of the heathen

ABSTRACT

If arguments have always been made either that Milton maintains the primacy of the Bible over classical literature, or that he often presents classical sentiments as congruent with the biblical, one claim that has rarely been made is that Milton is willing to assert the truth of classical literature over that of the Bible. This article argues that there are moments in the canon that show him capable of doing precisely this, with particular reference to the invocation of his favourite Greek dramatist, Euripides. The article considers Milton’s reading and interpretation of Euripides in his early poetry and prose, before examining more closely the citation of Euripides in two of the prose works which bear heavily on the question of how politically and religiously radical Milton was: The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and De Doctrina Christiana. The turn to Euripidean authority over the biblical reveals Milton’s willingness to subject Scripture to the test of pagan wisdom, if he judges that wisdom to have superior claims to rationality. This willingness derives from the development of his ethical thought in the 1630s and early 1640s, and from his understanding of classical, patristic and contemporary authorities, including John Selden.     

Into the arms of dolls: Japan’s declining fertility rates,the 1990s financial crisis and the (maternal) comforts of the posthuman

Abstract

Japan’s 1990s financial crisis proved psychically traumatic for many men, their trauma exacerbated by decades of falling fertility rates and related sociospatial attenuation. The crisis disrupted a range of heteronormative practices that had stabilized post-war gendered identities, especially marriage and stay-at-home motherhood. Some men consequently began seeking comfort in the company of youthful-looking, large-format, hyper-feminized commodity-dolls of which there are two psychical kinds: ‘infantile’ dolls used largely by precariously positioned young men for comfort and play; and expensive ‘Oedipal’ silicone sex dolls associated with Japanese salarymen whose jobs had become less secure. Both have worked emotionally for two reasons: dolls are evocative of the maternal – the basis of intersubjective (be) longing/Eros; and the dolls are owned, ownership allowing pleasure and control more securely to intertwine. Following the oil crisis and the de-industrialization that followed, men in racially and economically privileged terrain across the US and Europe turned to similar kinds of commodity dolls for comfort, if for differently sexed and racialized reasons. Japanese men’s doll markets therefore speak to certain particular and general conditions of masculinity and geopolitical economic trauma.     

‘Between my Brow and the Stars ...’: Linkages Between the Categories of Subject,Space, and Time in Jan Zahradníček’s Verse of the Second Half of the 1930s

The study enquires how the functional relationship between the broader framework of Czech poet Jan Zahradní?ek’s vision of the world and the narrower, governing principle shaped by his declared adoption of a fixed, ideologically unambiguous (confessional) model for viewing life and the world is realized. The present author’s deliberation is based on an analysis of the categories of lyrical subject, space and time as rendered artistically in two collections of verse by Jan Zahradní?ek: ?íznivé léto (Thirsty Summer, 1935) and Pozdravení slunci (A Salute to the Sun, 1937). It is found that, rather than speaking of the mutually contingent effect of these two planes of reality, it would be better to think in terms of a colliding of fragments, each of which represents a part of its own reality — poetic truth and truth sprung from an ideology. The literary text becomes a specific locus that makes this intersection possible, and it expresses an entirely new form of reality. Motivated on the one hand by the experience of creative freedom and on the other by having voluntarily accepted certain external ideological considerations which perforce refine poetic freedom, or poetic output, with regard to the appreciation of its meaning, thereby giving it added force and depth, the poet fashions — with various degrees of success — the sundry fragments of this and that layer of reality into a two-way correlation that is reinforced by the dominant effect of the aesthetic function. He thus creates a specific, imaginary whole that opens man up to the world and adumbrates for the reader the idea of unity in diversity. However, at the same time he does not veil the sense of disillusionment that lies at the root of all modern poetry, arising from the notion that neither life, nor the world can be integrated into some ideal, harmonious form.     

Between ideology and pragmatism: the ČSSR,the GDR and West European companies in the 1970s and 1980s

The article deals with Czechoslovakia's and East Germany's relations with West European enterprises and private businessmen in the 1970s and 1980s, and explores more specifically their licensing agreements and credit policy. The author shows their importance for technological modernisation and the realisation of so-called consumer socialism in both countries. It focuses on the political and business elites of both countries, and devotes special attention to the question of the ideological versus technocratic approach of the politicians and company directors as well as their impact on economic planning.     

Busman’s stomach and the embodiment of modernity

This paper examines the relationship between the gastric illness, ‘busman’s stomach’ and the Coronation bus strike of May 1937 in which 27,000 London busworkers walked out for better working conditions and a seven-and-half-hour day. It explores the way in which new patterns of somatisation, gastroenterological techniques, psychological theories and competing understandings of time worked together to create new political institutions and new forms of political action in inter-war Britain.     

Paving the way for new regional industrial paths: actors and modes of change in Scania’s games industry

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarly work has enhanced our understanding of how new path development activities are enabled or constrained by ‘regional environments’, made up of pre-existing industrial structures, knowledge organizations, support structures and institutional configurations. This paper moves beyond overly static views on regional environments. We develop a dynamic perspective by analysing conceptually and empirically how a constraining environment can be transformed into one that enables the development of new growth paths. The paper offers a typology of various modes of change, including layering, adaptation and novel application that are used by key actors to ‘manipulate’ the regional support structures to facilitate new regional industrial path development. The conceptual framework is applied to a case study of the digital games industry in the region of Scania, southern Sweden. Our findings suggest that the creation of a more enabling environment for the growth of the digital games industry has been the outcome of multi-scalar processes and combinations of various modes of change employed by a few key individuals operating in the newly emerging path.     

Pilote ‘hebdomadaire’ and the Teenager Bande Dessinée of the 1950s and 1960s

Launched in 1959, Pilote magazine was an original bande dessinée publication. Unlike most other magazines read predominantly by children, Pilote's unique collaboration with Radio Luxembourg facilitated its recruitment of ‘teenager’ readers captivated by the transistor craze that had rejuvenated radio by the end of the decade. The magazine also sought to endear itself to parents and the increasingly powerful educationalist lobby by adopting a sober pedagogical profile both in strips and accompanying textual content. Pilote thus sourced a new category of BD reader in the school-going teenager and, as the 1960s progressed, the volatile tastes and radicalisation of this category of reader necessitated a near ceaseless revision of the magazine's content to enable it to maintain market share. This article concerns itself with Pilote's struggle to align itself with dissident youth discourse of the 1950s and 1960s and analyses the socio-cultural impetus for thematic departures in bande dessinée it published.     

The Role of Engineer-in-Chief and the Introduction of Foreign Hydraulic Dredging Technology and River Conservancy into China, 1890s–1930s

This paper discusses studies of the development of river conservancy in modern China, and the role of engineers-in-chief in river improvement planning on rivers such as the Hai-ho (Haihe) and the Whangpoo (Huangpu). It discusses the introduction of foreign hydraulic dredging technology and management into two major Chinese ports. It then analyses the process by which two agencies of the Chinese government absorbed and adjusted this technology to suit local circumstances in the treaty ports of Tianjin and Shanghai beginning in the 1890s. Without prior experience in river conservancy, the conservancy boards adopted a range of foreign technologies. This allowed them to develop into major institutions that facilitated increasing trade flows between China and the rest of the world. Of particular significance in this process of technological change was the role of the expatriate engineers-in-chief who were employed as chief executive officers of both agencies. They were responsible for establishing the operations of the agencies, accommodating an increasing range of responsibilities such as financial and human resource management, and training Chinese engineers and managers for senior positions until they were ready to replace the expatriate engineers-in-chief after the 1930s.