A Market Road to Sustainable Agriculture? Ecological Agriculture,Green Food and Organic Agriculture in China

To the extent that free markets show little concern for the existence of externalities, they are unlikely to produce optimum outcomes with regard to the protection and enhancement of the natural environment. Accordingly, the increasing emphasis on markets to deliver development in China under Deng Xiaoping and his successors has the capacity to threaten the long‐term environmental sustainability of that development. While there are good reasons to remain sceptical about the ability of market mechanisms to promote sustainable rural development in many respects, market reforms in China and the opening of the country to the outside world have nevertheless provided opportunities for farmers to engage in ecologically sensitive agriculture in the form of ‘green’ food and organic farming. Given that these forms of agriculture reduce farmers’ use of chemicals compared to conventional farming — chemicals which are costly to produce and environmentally degrading to use — they contribute to ensuring a more environmentally sustainable future for Chinese farming, post‐WTO entry, whilst providing opportunities for farmers to enrich themselves at the same time: a ‘win–win’ state of affairs. This will remain the case, however, only so long as the state is prepared to create and reinforce appropriate institutional arrangements.     

A Feminist Generation in Iran?

Numerous observers have noted that a feminist generation of educated young women appears to be emerging in Iran, despite the anti-feminist discourse of the Iranian government. Evidence from three surveys conducted in 2000–2003 confirms and complicates these observations. Educated young women are significantly more likely to espouse feminist attitudes of various sorts than other Iranians, including educated young men. In addition, educated young women are significantly more likely to work outside the home, marry later, give birth later, have fewer children, and have more egalitarian marriages than other Iranian women. However, surprising proportions of older Iranians also espouse feminist attitudes, and a majority of respondents in one nationally representative sample of urban Iranians identify themselves as proponents of women's rights.     

Chile's Export Diversification since 1960: A Free Market Miracle or Mirage?

Conventional wisdom has proclaimed Chile's recent economic development a ‘free market miracle’. In an examination of Chile's export diversification experience, this article departs from that view. By analysing the dynamics underlying the emergence of the salmon, fruit, forestry and wine sectors in Chile's export basket since the 1960s, the study sheds light on the crucial role of industrial policy in the process of capability accumulation that shapes new industries. The article undertakes a qualitative historical analysis of the scope and nature of policy interventions in each of the four sectors and conducts a quantitative policy evaluation using the difference‐in‐difference method. It finds that public institutions are essential in overcoming market failures inhibiting the emergence of new industries. Specifically, it shows that the government has a key role to play as a catalyst of human capital accumulation, as a venture capitalist, in trade promotion, and in ensuring ‘national’ sector reputation through a strong regulatory and quality control role. By elaborating on the dynamic process of structural transformation and capability accumulation, this article contributes to theoretical debates on the role of vertical policies in the emergence of new competitive sectors, and debates relating to static versus dynamic approaches to comparative advantage.     

A revolution in military geopolitics?

This paper looks into the recent discussions within the US military community of a coming or current ‘revolution in military affairs’ (RMA) which is said to imply fundamental changes in military geopolitical imaginations and practices (military geopolitics). In a first step, an account of the rhetorical and the conceptual part of the discourse of the RMA is conducted. In a second step, the proclaimed RMA is situated within a wider cumulative technological and organizational development in warfare after the Second World War. In a third step, special attention is given to geopolitical incongruities or contradictions apparent within the discourse of the RMA, and between the rhetorical part of the RMA and more conventional geopolitical practices and imaginations. In a conclusion, the promise of an actor–network approach in further investigations of contemporary techno-geopolitical discourses and practices is spoken for.     

Commemoration in Australia: A memory orgy?

Australia's commemorations of the First World War have thus far been massive at both the government and local levels, reflecting and affirming the dominance of the memory of war and the ANZAC ‘legend’ in the national political culture. The commemorations in 2014–15 triggered some debate about the commodification of the memory of war and the possibility of commemoration fatigue, but the centenary of the key commemorative event, the landing at Gallipoli on 25 April, attracted large crowds and blanket media attention. Whether Australians of culturally diverse backgrounds engaged with these centenary commemorations, and how strongly they identify with the ANZAC legend as the dominant narrative of Australian nationalism, however, remains unclear.

澳大利亚对一战的纪念迄今在政府和地方层面都大张旗鼓,反映并肯定了在国家政治文化中战争记忆以及澳洲军团传说的岿然不移。2014-15年的纪念活动引发了关于战争记忆被商品化以及纪念疲劳症的辩论,虽然一些关键事件如4-25的加里波利登陆的百年纪念日吸引了大众以及媒体的关注。不过文化背景各色各样的澳大利亚人士是否都参与了这些百年庆典,他们在多大程度上将澳洲军团的传说当做澳大利亚民族主义的主流叙事,这些都不清楚。     

Can the Free Market Work without Virtue?

Abstract

Libertarianism has become one of the most influential movements of the last twenty years. Its political effects can be seen as the driving force behind many in the ranks of the Republican-controlled Congress. This article is a presentation and critical examination of the founding principles of Libertarianism. It argues that much is valid in free-market ideas, especially at the microeconomic level. However, Libertarianism overstates the case for rational actors, understates the necessity for government action to maintain security, misunderstands the complexity of human behavior, neglects the need to foster civil associations, and ignores the natural proclivity of people to be virtuous independent of self-interest.     

A secular shift in Carolingian history writing?

This article explores a series of Carolingian historians, writing in the early ninth century, who marginalized the role of God’s agency, in sharp contrast to the pattern established by the Annales Regni Francorum. Where this has been noted before, largely in relation to Einhard’s Vita Karoli, it has been explained either as a clash between lay and monastic ideals or as a by-product of the classical renewal at the Carolingian court. Examining this process across multiple texts suggests, however, that these historians can be understood as self-consciously ‘secularizing’ in response to contemporary crises.     

Bigamy: A Male Crime in Medieval Europe?

Crime is often gendered. This article argues that the crime of bigamy was a male crime in the fifteenth‐ and sixteenth‐century Catholic world. Courts prosecuted male bigamists far more often and more harshly than female offenders. However, drawing in particular on records from the fifteenth‐century bishop's court of Troyes, I argue that women also committed bigamy. Judicial and social gender biases identified only male bigamy as fully criminal behaviour.
The reasons for this gender difference lie in the different roles of spouses as prescribed in Christian law, theology and culture. For a man to commit bigamy fundamentally violated his responsibilities as a husband. Female bigamy, by contrast, was to an extent tolerated as a lesser evil. Better a woman have two living husbands, one present and one absent, than no husband at all.     

A Mastered Past? Prussia in Postwar German Memory

This article compares the recent ‘Prussia Year 2001’events marking the 300th anniversary of the founding of thePrussian state with the famous ‘Prussia Wave’ ofthe late 1970s and early 1980s in order to evaluate the evolvingstatus of Prussia in postwar German memory. It asserts thatGermans have largely abandoned their formerly polarized viewsof Prussia and have increasingly arrived at a more balancedview of its historical legacy. In developing a more normalizedview of the Prussian past, Germans have demonstrated that difficulthistorical legacies may, to some degree, in fact, be ‘mastered’.At the same time, the article shows how the seemingly successfulconfrontation with the Prussian past remains burdened by theenduring effort to confront the legacy of the Third Reich.     

Ottawa's Byward Market: a festive bone of contention?

This paper considers recent developments in the revitalization of the Byward Market, with reference to applicable concepts of the 'tourist-historic city' and the 'convivial city. The central objective is to assess its convergence, in specific detail, with the festival marketplace model. Convergence on most dimensions is demonstrated, but shown to be limited by alternative management philosophies and the fractured complexity of a 'real world' setting. The Market's growing real-world centrality is shown to give rise to a range of stakeholder contest beyond a festival marketplace, as specifically defined. It is suggested that this will prove more generally true of evolved traditional markets.     

A Correlation Between Radiation and Health Problems in Belarus'?

An international authority on the effects of the Chernobyl' nuclear power station accident surveys the emerging controversy over the severity of its impact upon the health of the population of Belarus', the republic most seriously affected by the radiation release. A broad spectrum of assessments is analyzed, ranging from those which are inclined to attribute negligible health impacts to the disaster to those citing dramatic increases in the incidence of thyroid cancer among children in the most severely impacted oblasts as a possible precursor of significant long-term health risks to the population at large. 1 map, 1 table, 17 references.     

A new phoenix? Large plants regeneration policies in Italy

The fall of employment in manufacturing that the world's most advanced economies have been experiencing in the past 40 years has triggered a number of policies, undertaken in several countries. In this paper, we evaluate the effectiveness of a place-based policy, carried out in Italy, aimed at both generating private investments and increasing employment in areas affected by deep industrial decline. By means of an instrumental variable identification strategy, we show that the program has been largely unsuccessful.     

Abducted Wives: A Hellenistic Narrative in Judges 21?

the author suggests the possibility that Judges 13-16, 17-21, and 2 Samuel 21-23 may have been added to the Deuteronomistic History in the late Persian or Hellenistic period, for this literature shows continuity with Greek literature. In particular, the author traces the similarities between the biblical account of the “Abduction at Shiloh” in Judges 21 with the account of the “Rape of the Sabine Women” found in Livy and Plutarch. Though the biblical author lived before these classical authors, the biblical author may have known an earlier version of the tale, as demonstrated by at least twelve plot similarities between the narratives.     

Kurangara in Queensland?: A Critique of Duncan-Kemp's Account

A particular historical travelling religious complex in northern Western Australia, usually known as Kurangara, has been the subject of anthropological attention since the late 1930s. Overlooked in all the literature is a similar account assigned to 1912–1918, in the distant Channel Country of southwest Queensland. This is in Alice Duncan-Kemp's last book, published in 1968. My examination shows that a good deal of Duncan-Kemp's account repeated parts of a 1954 popular magazine about Kurangara in the Pilbara. In other respects Duncan-Kemp may have drawn on her own childhood experiences, but in the absence of corroboration her account has to be considered unreliable.