Improbable Art: The Creative Economy and Sustainable Cluster Development in a Hong Kong Industrial District

A noted Singapore-based cultural geographer and specialist on Asia analyzes the emergence and functioning of a unique artistic cluster in Hong Kong's Fotan light industrial district. The objective of the research is to understand how artistic work in the cluster, despite some challenges, has thus far proven sustainable in cultural, social, and economic terms. The findings of this case study permit further clarification of several dimensions of an emerging theory of cultural/creative clusters, which should be considered as distinct from business and industrial clusters. Selective comparisons between the Fotan cluster and the Moganshan Lu cluster in Shanghai demonstrate that cultural/creative clusters do not face uniform challenges in striking a balance between economic and cultural sustainability.     

Power to the people: when culture works as a social catalyst in urban regeneration processes (and when it does not)

This article focuses upon the relationship between culture, urban regeneration schemes, and their impact on socio-cognitive assets – namely, social and human capital. It examines three major urban regeneration projects in the districts of Saint Michel (Montreal, Canada), Auburn (Sydney, Australia) and Bicocca (Milan, Italy), where culture has been invoked as a main transformational driver at the economic and socio-environmental levels, but with different approaches and results. Through comparative analysis, we develop a more general reflection on the social impact of culture-led urban transformation processes, questioning the actual role of cultural initiatives – particularly those related to the creation of new cultural facilities and the programming of big cultural flagship events – and participation as a means to improve the local social milieu. We find that a key role for social efficacy is played by projects’ capacity to elicit the commitment of residents through inclusive cultural participation, as opposed to instrumental top-down initiatives mainly addressing city and neighbourhood branding and real estate marketing purposes.     

Barcelona as imagined community: Pasqual Maragall's spaces of engagement

This paper looks at how cities can function in much the same way as nations in the construction of political projects. Taking Pasqual Maragall's mobilization of Barcelona during his period as mayor of the city (1982–97) as an example, it explores how locally dependent politicians attempt to exploit 'spaces of engagement' (Cox 1998) to escape from the territorial and scalar limitations which city councils have to operate within. It argues that mayors can embody cities, and explores how Maragall located himself within a set of performatively, discursively and institutionally constructed visions of Barcelona embedded in wider economic, political and cultural spaces.     

社会资本影响区域经济增长的机理:基于"织网"模型的分析

社会资本对区域经济增长的影响是通过对区内企业、产业集群及区域整体等三个不同主体的影响发挥作用的。在企业由传统成长模式向网络化成长模式转变,产业集群由聚集经济向创新网络转变,区域由空闻结构向网络社会转变的过程中,社会网络及内含资源起着决定性作用。社会资本对三者的作用体现空间上的层次递进特征,即依循企业、集群、区域三个不同主体网络化递进发展的“织网模型”,依次由“发散状企业网络”向“经纬状集群网络”再向“多构面区域网络”发展的织网过程。社会资本及社会网络对企业的作用是摄取关键资源、信息等;对产业集群的影响是建立学习与创新机制、成本节约机制、形成合作竞争氛围;而对区域的积极意义是保持区域良好的信任文化。     

Talking about regional resilience: evidence from two formerly rural Spanish regions

ABSTRACT

This research analyses the contrasting socio-economic performances of two neighbouring territories, which, while sharing similar starting points, have, for various reasons, diverged in terms of their dynamics and ultimately reached different economic resilience levels. Regional production structure, socio-economic assets, social capital endowment and leadership strength, together with institutional and governance quality are factors that may underlie their current differences. The results of the research confirm the hypothesis that these factors are indeed the key to their different resilience levels.     

边界与想象社区的建构:以广州归侨聚居区为例

城市化进程中,逐渐式微的归侨聚居区呈现被符号化的特点,其物质和文化形态的改变在一定程度上强化了“侨文化”的地方再想象,并加剧了边界随之发生的新变化。本文主要采用叙事研究方法,以广州华侨新村为例,尝试探讨在城市化进程中归侨聚居区边界的演变及其对想象的社区的影响,由此进一步解析归侨聚居区符号化的过程与动因。研究发现：①1954年至今,新村归侨共同体维系纽带经历了从国家利益到对幸福生活的向往,再到集体记忆的嬗变,折射出社会环境、空间形态以及邻里关系的变化与归侨的自我认同感、群体认同感之间的耦合关系;②华侨新村不仅是曾经表征爱国主义的物质载体,在资本与权力的支配下归侨聚居区被片面截取并赋予了其它阶层想象的意义和元素。     

Towards a Language of ‘Europe’: History,Rhetoric, Community

From Herder to Benedict Anderson, language and nation have been at the centre of ideas about (imagined) community. This hypothesis, however, poses a problem for analysing ideas about Europe. How can we understand “Europe” as a concept or form of identity when language and nationality are considered the foundation of imagined communities and loyalties? This article addresses this difficulty. It uses J. G. A. Pocock’s definition of “sub-languages” to suggest that one can investigate the rhetorical strategies, images and vocabularies with which texts articulate ideas about Europe. These sub-languages evoke imagined communities, most obviously when texts name and identify particular groups of people as “Europeans.” But by using images and rhetorics about Europe, these texts also appeal to a readership that comprehends—even if it does not fully accept—certain assumptions about the continent. In this way, texts evoke an imagined community of readers who purportedly share a similar way of understanding Europe, or who can perhaps be persuaded to think about it in similar terms. These processes are historically particular, and so the article concludes with concrete examples. It focuses on how early-nineteenth-century philhellenes evoked a European imagined community to solicit support for the Greek Revolution (1821–32).     

Foreclosure Risk and Community Health: Does Social Capital Have a Protective Effect?

This study draws upon the social determinants of health framework to model and test the extent to which a community’s social capital is health protective in the face of a substantial economic shock, namely the recent foreclosure crisis. U.S. county–level data are used to analyze potential moderating effects of social capital on health given a community’s foreclosure risk. We rely upon established social capital measures for U.S counties and merge them with county level foreclosure risk scores constructed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). While theorists suggest that social capital’s effect on health and other outcomes may be durable over time there have been few empirical tests of this. We interact established social capital indicators measured at two points in time with foreclosure risk to predict overall self-reported health. Our results provide strong support suggesting that high levels of social capital are health protective. Communities with high levels of social capital that are facing high foreclosure risks report significantly better aggregate health outcomes than comparable communities facing the same level of foreclosure risk, but lower levels of social capital.     

社会资本理论对开拓农村市场的启示

社会资本是建立在人们之间的关系网络基础上的情感、信任与规范等,它能够通过推动人们之间的行动来提高共同体的工作效率。本文运用社会资本理论,分析企业应该怎样利用社会资本来开拓农村市场。农村市场有不同于城市市场的特点不能把城市中的营销手段简单地移植到农村市场。企业开拓农村市场要做到:与农村社团建立好关系;企业文化要与农村文化融合起来;与农村的联系要制度化。     

Politics of the ‘creative industries’ discourse and its variants

The existing academic debate on creative industries can be summarised as ‘Trojan horse or Rorschach blot’: creative industries working as a neoliberal discourse or producing different effects depending on local context. Arguing that these are two sides of the same coin, this article looks closely at the discourse’s depoliticising and encompassing forces and their interplay on the discourse’s intersection to the broader new economy narrative. The article’s focus is South Korean variants of creative industries discourse. First, the country’s ‘content industries’ discourse served as a Trojan horse for the depoliticising narrative of knowledge economy while boosting the cultural sector discursively and financially. Second, ‘creative economy’ has very recently emerged as the current conservative government’s master economic narrative. This discourse allows the government’s neoliberal economic policies to be further justified while making cultural policy unable to persuasively claim that creativity belongs in the culture’s domain.     

Re-examining a modern classic: does Putnam's Making Democracy Work suffer from spuriousness?

What makes democratic institutions work efficiently? Robert Putnam argued in Making Democracy Work that a mixture of political participation and immersion in associative and social networks in the community, conceptualised as ‘civic community’ or ‘social capital’, is the explanation. Ever since its publication, many questions have arisen about the validity of Putnam's theory. Among the most relevant concerns stands the influence of the Italian Communist Party on Putnam's empirical tests. This paper aims to fill the gap left in the literature by testing Putnam's hypothesis against the political party in the regional government and the PCI's electoral support. Supporting Putnam, this paper finds that variations in the quality of democratic governments in Italy's regions are a function of civic community even after adjusting for the presence of the Italian Communist Party.