Land acquisition induced conflicts in suburban China: a procedural perspective

Protests and opposition to land acquisition from displaced peasants for fair compensation occur on a daily basis in China and have become the most prominent social problem in rural parts of the country. Employing a procedural perspective on conflict, this paper aims to uncover the complexities and tensions that are triggered in the process by drawing on a case of a land confiscation in Jining City, a medium‐size city in Shandong Province, China. Our research shows that conflicts exist at various scales: both between the local governments and rural households and between the village officials and villagers. The paper argues that ambiguity in de jure and de facto land acquisition procedures has resulted in both an escalation of conflict and increasing inequality in the outcomes and benefits of the process. We discuss and conclude that the differences between de jure and de facto procedures in the process of land acquisition are a significant institutional barrier in the resolution of conflict in this important issue for rural China.     

论英美在承认新中国问题上的分歧与协调

英美在是否承认新中国问题上的立场明显不同:英国主张尽早承认,尽管其决策取向经历了一个从事实承认到法律承认的递进过程;美国则始终坚持反对过早承认和主张有条件承认,具有不承认的实质性内容,并注定了不承认的结局。1949年1～5月,英美分歧凸显;1949年7月至1950年初,英美就承认问题不断磋商,但整个协商过程表明双方各执己见,最终各行其是,英国于1950年1月6日正式承认新中国,而早在1950年初美国在近期内承认新中国的可能性已不存在。     

Full Spectrum Archaeology

Full spectrum archaeology (FSA) is an aspiration stemming from the convergence of archaeology’s fundamental principles with international heritage policies and community preferences. FSA encompasses study and stewardship of the full range of heritage resources in accord with the full range of associated values and through the application of treatments selected from the full range of appropriate options. Late modern states, including British Columbia, Canada, nominally embrace de jure heritage policies consonant with international standards yet also resist de facto heritage management practice grounded in professional ethics and local values and preferences. In response, inheritor communities and their allies in archaeology are demonstrating the benefits of FSA and reclaiming control over cultural heritage. Archaeology and heritage management driven by altruistic articulation of communal, educational, scientific and other values further expose shortcomings and vulnerabilities of late modern states as well as public goods in and from FSA.     

Towards the Geographies of the 2001 UK Census of Population

A single geographical base has traditionally been created for each census of population in the United Kingdom, aimed primarily at organizing the enumeration task. The subsequent use of this enumeration geography for diverse purposes has been problematic but unavoidable. This paper examines how new digital spatial data and GIS technology are making possible the creation of separate geographies of the 2001 Census for data collection, validation, output, specification and use. The paper explores the implications of these changes for the development of a national spatial data infrastructure and for geographical research involving the census more generally.     

The quest for a census of the British Empire c.1840–1940

Regular population censuses are an integral part of the oversight functions of the modern state. Whereas the United Kingdom instituted a decennial enumeration in 1801, it was not extended to the overseas Empire. The administration of the British Empire was decentralised and early nineteenth-century census taking was subject to local initiatives. However, from the 1840s successive Colonial Secretaries considered a unified imperial census necessary to fulfil their oversight functions and demanded the taking of censuses by colonial governments to coincide with that in the United Kingdom. Initial responses were mixed, but with each decade the coverage improved, although no agreement was reached on the questions posed and the classification systems employed. These remained severe drawbacks to the creation of a comprehensive imperial view. Only in 1906 was an official volume entitled Report on the Census of the British Empire published. The experience gained in its preparation, collating the diverse colonial reports prompted the undertaking of a fully coordinated enumeration in 1911. The First World War intervened and prevented publication. Although subsequent attempts were made to revive the concept, little was achieved. The combination of the pursuit of local interests, accentuated by greater political independence, and the lack of adequate resources at the General Register Office in London to coordinate and analyse the results ensured that the quest for a unified census was finally abandoned with the onset of the Second World War.     

The Nigerian Civil War and the ‘Italian’ Oil Workers

The Nigeria-Biafra War, 1967–1970, had significant international dimensions. On 7 May 1969, eleven employees of the Italian-run AGIP oil company were killed at Kwale while eighteen others were held prisoner by Biafran soldiers. The death penalty given to the surviving oil workers by the Biafran government had a damaging effect on Biafra’s international image and temporarily weakened European sympathy for Biafra. Unofficial sources later accused Biafrans of collecting a ransom in exchange for the release of the oil workers. Using previously underutilised archival materials in Britain, Canada and the USA, this paper argues that Biafra rather attempted to use the foreign workers to secure de facto recognition, a move that ended in a fiasco.     

AGGREGATION ERROR EFFECTS ON THE DISCRETE-SPACE p-MEDIAN MODEL: THE CASE OF EDMONTON, CANADA

The spatial analysis literature recognizes three sources of aggregation error, termed Source A, Source B, and Source C, which affect models relying on distance measurements between populations and facilities. We consider these effects with respect to aggregating from census enumeration areas to census tracts, on a popular location model. We identify a further source of aggregation error, which we dub Source D error, arising from the representation of facility sites by discrete points. Source D effects are of the same magnitude as Source A and B combined, much greater than Source C effects. Source D error is further significant, because, unlike Source A and B error, it can be eliminated only by disaggregating .
La littérature sur Vanalyse spatiale reconnaît trois sources d'erreur d'agrégation appelées erreurs de source A, B, et C. Ces erreurs influencent les modèles qui reposent sur des mesures de distance entre des populations et des installations. On considère les effets d'agrégation des secteurs de dénombrement en secteurs de recensement sur un modèle de localisation courant. On identifie une quatrième source d'erreur d'agrégation appelée erreur de source D. Cette erreur découle de la représentation des sites des installations par des points discrets. Ses effets sont du même ordre de grandeur que ceux des sources A et B combinées et beaucoup plus grands que les effets de source G. L'erreur de source D est d'autant plus significative à cause du fait que, contrairement aux erreurs de source A et B, elle ne peut être éliminée que par la désagrégation .     

Policing the near abroad: Russian foreign policy in the South Caucasus

This article tries to understand Russia's policies towards the South Caucasus and answer the question of whether there is a tension between Russia's interests and policies. An attempt is made to identify Russia's strategic interests in the region and the crucial factors that shape Russian policies. Based on the assumption that today's Russia gives de facto support to the secessionist regimes in Georgia, the author attempts to explain what the Kremlin's motives are in supporting the secessionist regimes. The author investigates whether Russian support for the separatist regimes in the South Caucasus is a reaction to the foreign policy orientation of the parent states or a part of Russia's security political interests. On the one hand, supporting instability in the South Caucasus cannot be a part of the Kremlin's strategic interests, because that can pose a threat to the North Caucasus. On the other hand, however, Russian policies are not designed to achieve long-term stability in the South Caucasus, and controlled instability seems to suit the Kremlin. Why Russia vies for coercive hegemony and supports secessionism are the central questions of this article.     

Separatism redux: Crimea,Transnistria, and Eurasia's de facto states (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This article compares recent events in Crimea to Transnistria, another de facto, separatist state located in eastern Moldova. The article asks what Crimea and Transnistria, along with Eurasia's other unrecognized states, can tell us about statehood, sovereignty, and a ‘people’ in the 21st century. Though Eurasia's de facto states can be seen as entities that emerged with the backing of the Russian state, their continued existence reflects a wider uncertainty that emerged with the demise of the Soviet Union. More broadly, these de facto states problematize many of the fundamental terms of political existence.     

Economic Geography at the 1960 International Geographical Congress

The author compares the scope of economic-geography papers at the Rio de Janeiro and Stockholm congresses, discusses William William-Olsson's book on Stockholm, and analyzes a number of congress papers with an economic-geographic content.     

Delineating the nation: South African censuses 1865–2007

The census plays a significant role in delineating the nation in statistical terms. The decisions as to whom to enumerate, what questions are to be asked and how the results are presented all modify the view of the population offered to contemporary observers and to posterity. Although census officials tend to be conservative in retaining a large body of questions in similar form from one enumeration to the next in order to promote inter-census comparisons, those concerned with identity have tended to shift with the political evolution of the state and nation. Nowhere has this been more in evidence than in South Africa where the state and nation have been redefined several times since the commencement of modern scientific censuses in 1865. Administrations run by the British Empire, Boer republics, Union of South Africa, apartheid republic, African ‘bantustans’ and now democratic republic have each brought their own concepts to national identification and the framing of the questions of national identity in the census. As a result the set of nearly forty censuses present an often contradictory and complex image of the South African population, ranging from comprehensive inclusive censuses to narrowly restrictive enumerations of a single ethnic group. There was thus little of the continuity in census taking between the colonial and post-colonial states noted elsewhere. South African censuses therefore offer an insight into how the nation was viewed at the time the census was undertaken.     

British Imperialism and the Political Economy of Malayan Independence

The article focuses on Britain’s relationship with Malaya shortly before and after its independence from the British Empire. The article looks at the negotiations concerning the financial settlement prior to independence. Britain sought to keep Malaya within the sterling area at all costs, even after de jure convertibility had been achieved, due to its high dollar earning capacity, which remained important due to persistent trade deficits with the US from the end of the Second World War. The article argues that this settlement, while seemingly very generous for an independent Malaya, was still very much intended to maintain Britain’s role within the global economy, to ensure sterling’s status as an international currency and to support conditions for British economic growth.     

Carving out the nation with the enemy's kin: double strategy of boundary‐making in Transnistria and Abkhazia

The 1992–1993 civil wars in Moldova and in Georgia ended with a de facto separation of Transnistria and Abkhazia, respectively. These de facto states are both inhabited by the kin to the ‘enemy’ across the administrative border: Moldovans and Georgians/Mingrelians. How do the de facto authorities foster a collective identity in support of their claim for legitimacy and statehood? Engaging with Wimmer's taxonomy of boundary‐making, this article argues that nation‐building involves not only expansion but also, simultaneously, contraction. Transnistria constructs a higher‐level identity category and co‐opts and contracts the Moldovan category, separating it into ‘our’ and Bessarabian Moldovans in order to incorporate the former into the Transnistrian people. In Abkhazia, the nation‐building project establishes the Abkhazs as the titular nation allowing, however, for the construction of an Abkhazian people that would include minorities, with Gal/i Georgians said to be Mingrelians, distinct from Georgians. These cases show that elites combine different ethnic boundary‐making strategies in order to implement their favoured identity project and to legitimize the claimed statehood.     

Peopling the past

The author discusses the importance of studying past populations in order to more fully understand the present. The focus is on regional patterns of population growth and internal migration and their impact on urban social structure in nineteenth-century Great Britain. Aspects considered include patterns of movement, occupation and mobility, the labor and housing markets, dimensions of community, residential mobility, individual experience, and education and social change.     

MEASURES OF INCOME INEQUALITY AND SOCIAL POLARIZATION IN CANADIAN METROPOLITAN AREAS

Rising inequality and polarization of employment earnings have been clearly documented in Canada and most other developed economies in the 1990s. Following a critical discussion of the use of the Cini coefficient as a measure of inequality in geography, the level of inequality and social polarization of household incomes at the census tract level is assessed for Canada's 22 largest Census Metropolitan Areas. The distribution of household income among metropolitan census tracts is generally becoming more unequal. In addition, the proportion of households in middle-income census tracts is declining in most metropolitan centres, lending further support to arguments that Canada's middle class is in decline .
L'augmentation des intégalité et la polarisation des revenus d'emploi a été clairement documentee au Canada et dans la plupart des autres pays industrialises durant les annees 90. Á la suite d'une discussion critique sur l'utilisation du coefficient Gini comme mesure d'inégalite en geographie, on evalue le niveau d'inegalitéet la polarisation sociale des revenus menagers au niveau du secteur de recensement pour les 22 plus grandes regions metropolitaines de recensement au Canada. La distribution du revenu des menages parmi les secteurs de recensement metropolitains devient en général plus idgale. De plus, le fait que la proportion des menages parmi les secteurs de recensement d revenus moyens est d la baisse dans la plupart des regions métropolitaines soutient l'idee que la classe moyenne est en diminution.     

Modeling social interaction: Marital miscegenation in colonial Spanish America

Abstract

In this article, the author constructs new life tables for the white population of the United States in each decade between 1790 and 1900. Drawing from several recent studies, he suggests best estimates of life expectancy at age 20 for each decade. These estimates are fitted to new standards derived from the 1900–1902 rural and 1900–1902 overall death registration area life tables using a two-parameter logit model with fixed slope. The resulting decennial life tables more accurately represent sex- and age-specific mortality rates while capturing known mortality trends.