The causes and consequences of Beslan: A commentary on Gerard Toal's placing blame: Making sense of Beslan

Gerard Toal has written a very important work placing the terrorist attack in Beslan into a geopolitical context. Toal's analysis emphasizes two themes, the need to place Beslan in a political context and the parallels between the Russian government's reaction to the attack and the Bush administration's reaction to the September 11 attacks. In this response, I seek to make these two themes more explicit and also to focus on one area that is somewhat neglected in Toal's analysis: namely, the factors that made the terrorist attack in Beslan possible. In doing so, I turn away from focusing exclusively on geopolitics by bringing in some of the socio-economic and ideological factors that made the North Caucasus ripe for the explosion of terrorist attacks that occurred in the first half of this decade. I also show how changes in government policies eventually brought about the decline of large-scale terrorist attacks in the region. In doing so, I hope to make the point that any analysis of a spectacular terrorist attack such as Beslan has to take into account not just geopolitics, but also the socio-economic conditions that made it possible and the government policies that allowed it to happen.     

Making sense of remembrance

In recent years the annual cycle of war remembrance in Britain has been punctuated by major anniversaries and the inauguration of new war memorials. This paper explores whether time and forgetfulness are gradually eroding the power of twentieth century war memorials as traces of memory in the everyday landscape. It finds that at least some war memorials are retaining their significance and even evolving new significance as time passes. The paper considers how the sensuous and spectacular nature of war remembrance has contributed to this process and draws attention to the centrality of sight, sound and touch to remembrance activities. Case studies are then used to explore how war memorials in specific localities provide a locus for making sense of remembrance in the twenty‐first century.     

Beslan and the study of violence

“Placing blame: Making sense of Beslan” by Gerard Toal (in this issue) is an insightful analysis of the terrorist attack on Beslan's School Number 1, demonstrating how the various actors involved in, and affected by, the attack made sense of it. Toal documents that many of the frames used to justify or interpret the attack employ “indiscriminate blaming.” This commentary raises three points. First, it places the lecture within the recent trend of disaggregating the study of civil war and ethnic conflict. Second, it comments on the lecture's assumption that there is a causal link between indiscriminate blaming and violence. Third, it inquires about the sources of indiscriminate blaming.     

The cultural dimension in comparative research: Making sense of development control in France

There is a tendency amongst planners to think of planning systems as phenomena with an independent existence that may be directly compared. Such a view lingers even where the concept of end‐state planning has long been abandoned, and where it is understood that the context for plan‐making and development control is an important factor in comparing systems of different countries. This paper will argue that systems of plans and development control procedures are essentially creatures of the cultures which give rise to them. They are to be understood as expressions of underlying beliefs about the way that decisions ought to be taken for the administration of a country. This paper presents three cases drawn from the author's own experience of research in France as indicative of the approach. The first, a development control case of the extension to a heavy goods vehicle depot, looks at the cultural factors that affected the way the application was determined. The second, concerning the formal development control agreements between state and commune in rural France, hinges on the understanding of the concept of a plan. The third, a consultation procedure in Lyon, is dependent for its explanation on the status of the participants in the procedure. Such an approach implies a mature understanding of the way in which a country works, not merely of its planning system. It implies an ability to communicate in the language of the country being studied. The paper concludes by suggesting that comparative research has important benefits for the understanding of planning in the home country, because of the way in which, if properly done, it questions the assumptions that are made about the nature and purpose of planning.     

Making sense out of cents: compositional variations in European coins as a control model for archaeometallurgy

Archaeometallurgy frequently seeks to correlate between the temporal and spatial distribution of ancient metal objects and their chemical composition. In this study, we examined whether and to what extent local or temporal deviations in the content of modern artifacts can be identified as a proxy for archaeological material that is typically less controlled and therefore more difficult to cluster. For this purpose, Euro coins of 10, 20 and 50 cents from Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Belgium, which are made of copper (Cu) with 5% aluminum (Al), 5% zinc (Zn) and 1% tin (Sn), were analyzed using a simple XRF analyzer. The mass ratios Sn/Cu and Zn/Cu were measured with a relative precision c.a. of 5%. The mean content of the coins from each country was then determined for 20–39 of them. The difference of the mass ratio Sn/Cu observed – from 0.0101 to 0.0111. One coin from Luxemburg shows differences in various areas of its surface of up to a factor of 1.5. Thus, the results of this small pilot research show that even in modern metal artifacts we can detect differences in metal content, which can be correlated to their production and utilization places. Therefore, this study can serve as a model for evaluating compositional variations noted in archaeometallurgical studies where the standard deviations are greater and the differences can be linked more readily to spatial and temporal differences.     

‘The enemy is at the gate’:1 Russia after Beslan

This article examines the changes that have taken place in Russian domestic and foreign policy after the Beslan hostage crisis of early September 2004. The terrorist attack has had two immediate effects in Moscow: it shook new convictions about the apparent consolidation of Russia and it reinforced old beliefs in the need to strengthen the Russian state. In order to analyse recent changes, the article discusses the policy framework put in place during Putin's first term to strengthen the state and to build a more favourable external environment. Putin's response since the Beslan attack is founded on the premise that the only effective response to the terrorist threat is to reinforce the 'organism' of the state to withstand further attacks and to manage their consequences. The article examines the limits of the policy framework in place since 2000, where a circular logic is at work, in which terrorist attacks produce greater efforts by the government to strengthen the state but with measures that do little to prevent further attack, which, in turn, stimulate a further securitization of policy. The terrorist attack at Beslan has accelerated this logic, which sits uneasily with Putin's twin vision since 2000 of domestic modernization to revitalize the country and external engagement to create a predictable external setting.     

Allocating blame: dissecting the Coalition's failures in Iraq

A number of books by former Coalition officials are now emerging that provide detailed insights into aspects of US and UK policy-making before and during the occupation of Iraq. Two of these books lay the blame for the failure to stabilize rapidly the country and to ensure a peaceful process of political transition squarely on the shoulders of the Bush administration, the Department of Defense and the Coalition Provisional Authority. Many of the criticisms of prewar and occupation policy-making and implementation are valued, if not new. The real benefit of these accounts is that they provide snapshots of fragments of the Iraq story; they do not, however, provide the broader picture that is required to understand the current situation in Iraq. Furthermore, they fail to provide useful advice as to how the situation can now be improved.     

The Urbanization of the Sanitation Crisis: Placing Waste in the City

Sanitation systems are the most vital provisions in a city. Today, however, the global sanitation crisis is urbanizing, and growing numbers of city residents live with the struggle and consequences of not having safe, reliable facilities. While there is a large and vibrant literature on sanitation and cities, we have yet to account for the specifically urban nature of the deepening sanitation crisis in the global South. This article sets out a framework for understanding the dimensions of the urban sanitation crisis through a relational approach comprising five areas: people, life, things, spaces and distributions. Drawing on literature and research on urban sanitation in the global South, the author argues that if research, policy and practice is to better understand and respond to challenges of urban sanitation poverty, an expansive conception of its specifically urban dimensions is crucial.     

Placing social interaction: An integrative approach to analyzing past built environments

A growing recognition of the vital role that built space plays in social reproduction has created a need for analytical methods and interpretive frameworks with which to investigate this relationship in archaeological datasets. I address this by developing an integrative approach that emphasizes the role of the built environment as the context for interactions through which social structures are created, transformed and reproduced. This approach uses access analysis to examine how buildings structure patterns of movement and encounter that allow social actors to engage in or avoid particular forms of interaction. With its focus on the topological properties of built space, however, access analysis does not take adequate account of a building’s symbolic aspects, especially architectural characteristics and furnishings that social actors mobilize in the creation of meaningful contexts for interaction. I therefore integrate access analysis with an examination of how built environments encode meanings and nonverbally communicate them to inhabitants and visitors, potentially influencing their actions and interactions. The integrative approach allows determination of probable contexts for various types of social interactions during which social identities could be displayed, negotiated and reified. I conclude by demonstrating the potential of this approach with an analysis of the monumental Ashlar Building from the Late Bronze Age (c. 1650–1100 BC) site of Enkomi, Cyprus.     

Beyond Food: Placing Animals in the Framework of Social Change in Post-Roman England

Zooarchaeological evidence is combined with anthropological, artistic and historical sources to investigate the role of human-animal interactions during periods of social change in post-Roman England. Data from nearly 500 assemblages covering 1500 years in southern England provide a unique basis to investigate the use of non-livestock animals in diverse areas from cosmology to commodities, companions to status. Results showcase the potential for integrated studies to provide insights into the changing perceptions of animals from creatures that play a role in the afterlife, to those that are earthbound and soulless, to express status and power, to reveal a demand for spectacle and education and to reflect contrasting functions of economy alongside an increasing sentimentality for pets.     

Placing the View from Nowhere: Historical and Sociological Problems in the Location of Science

Over the past two decades broadly geographical sensibilities have become prominent in the academic study of science. An account is given of tensions in science studies between transcendentalist conceptions of truth and emerging localist perspectives on the making, meaning and evaluation of scientific knowledge. The efficient spread of scientific knowledge is not a phenomenon that argues against the applicability of geographical sensibilities towards science but actually calls for an even more vigorous project in the geography of knowledge.     

把当代社会史提上研究日程

改革开放新时期以来,史学研究繁荣和发展的标志之一是社会史研究的复兴和高潮迭起。然而,迄今为止,全国还没有一部权威性的当代社会史或包括当代社会史在内的中国社会通史问世。无论从中国通史的一个断代史(中华人民共和国史)的角度审视,还是从中国正在经历并将长期经历的一个社会形态史(社会主义史)的角度审视,当代社会史都是一个亟待填补的空白。中华人民共和国史研究者要以学习和贯彻中共十六届六中全会精神为契机,加大力度研究与中国特色社会主义事业四位一体总体布局中社会建设相对应的当代社会史,把当代社会史提上研究日程,为构建社会主义和谐社会提供历史依据和理论支撑。     

Editorial: Making an Impact

We promised in our last editorial (Puga and Wrigley, 2004) toreturn with news of the Journal's performance in the ISI citation‘impact factor’ rankings. That is to say, to givereaders the opportunity to gauge how the Journal is beginningto fare in the ‘market place for ideas’. June 2005saw the release of the ISI 2004 Journal Citation Reports (JCR)—thefirst year Journal of Economic Geography appears in the JCR.The result (Table 1) is remarkable. On the basis of citation‘impact factor’, Journal of Economic Geography entersthe rankings as No. 1     

Structuralism and common sense

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. ¹

We have changed, by insensible degrees, our philosophy of economic life, our notions of what is reasonable and what is tolerable; and we have done this without changing our technique or our copybook maxims. Hence our tears and troubles. ²