Race, Protest, and Public Space: Contextualizing Lefebvre in the U.S. City

Since the early 1990s, Henri Lefebvre's theory of the social production of space has become widely used by Anglophone academics to understand contemporary urban processes in the Western world. This article argues that care must be taken in transporting Lefbevre's theoretical framework from one context to another. When applied in places like U.S. cities, it must be contextualized in relation to significant sociospatial processes, especially race. It is also argued that when the racialized geographies of U.S. cities are taken into account, Lefebvre's work—with its focus on the role representation plays in the production of space—aids our understanding of contemporary urban processes. The article develops this argument through an engagement with the racialized public spaces in and around downtown Lexington, Kentucky. The killing of an African-American teenager by a White police officer and the ensuing violence and commentary, especially two editorial cartoons, provide the opportunity to contextualize Lefebvre's theory. Furthermore, the case allows us to understand the role racialized representations of space play into the construction of urban geographies. The paper concludes by emphasizing the role of the body in Lefebvre's understanding of space and suggests that his twin notions of "the right to the city" and "the right to difference" hold out hope for the grassroots development of antiracist urban public spaces.     

1944年《美国对外石油政策》报告探析

1944年4月11日美国国务院公布了《美国对外石油政策》报告。该报告将石油利益确定为美国国家安全利益的核心,其主要内容是:在中东地区推行"门户开放"政策,将大西洋宪章的"机会均等"原则运用于战后美国对外石油资源的争夺中;提出了美国对外石油供应的"半球"石油政策,即"东半球"的石油主要由中东地区供应,"西半球"的石油由美洲地区供应。美国对外石油政策的目标是攫取和控制中东地区的石油资源,保护美国国内的石油资源储备。考察《美国对外石油政策》报告的主要内容及其形成的过程,揭示美国战后对外石油政策的本质,有益于全面认识美国构建战后石油安全战略的全貌。     

1950年美国媒体对马克南入藏事件的报道剖析

20世纪40年代,以美国国务院驻中国迪化领事馆副领事身份为掩护的中情局间谍马克南在中国新疆从事秘密谍报活动,并于新中国成立前夕率一行五人队伍自中国新疆秘密入藏。但《纽约时报》等美国媒体却矢口否认马克南的间谍身份,并指责"中国的宣传机器在制造美国特务案例"。美国媒体对马克南入藏事件的报道是历史真实与谎言的混合体,其报道内容的缺失,直接影响了美国民众对事实真相的全面了解和客观判断,对今日美国人"西藏观"的形成产生了消极的影响。     

Agency Evolution, New Institutionalism, and 'Hybrid' Policy Domains: Lessons from the 'Greening' of the U.S. Military

Neoinstitutionalists applying the logic of rational choice institutionalism have leavened our understanding of public agency design and evolution in the domestic and national security policy domains. This paper seeks to advance theory building in empirically grounded ways by assessing the explanatory power of an important theoretical perspective (rational choice institutionalism), in an understudied "hybrid" policy domain where domestic and national security aims interact (domestic environmental policy and national security policy), and in an organizational type (the U.S. military) that has drawn scant attention from students of bureaucracy in political science, public administration, or public management. Analysis of three major efforts to green the U.S. military suggests that the patterns of politics accompanying agency evolution involving hybrid policy domains differ from domestic and national security domains in ways that limit the generalizability of rational choice institutionalism.     

U.S. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT POLICY – THE URBAN-RURAL DIMENSION

Economic development in the U.S. context from the federal level is reviewed with emphasis on the urban-rural dimension. “Economic development” is theoretically discussed and defined. Appropriate intervention into free market processes is examined as to justifications and unit of analysis. U.S. economic development policy history is reviewed in its broader form of subsidy and risk reallocation under several conceptual schemes to show constituencies, complexity, urban-rural emphasis, and biases toward industrialization. A series of sociopolitical scenarios are introduced to explain these patterns. The relationship between economic policy and federalism is explored. A conception of “rural development” is developed and reconceptualization of development along a systemic perspective is urged.     

Rethinking Land Struggle in the Postindustrial City

The racial and cultural politics of land and property are central to urban struggle, but have received relatively little attention in geography. This paper analyzes land struggles in Detroit where over 100,000 parcels of land are classified as “vacant”. Since 2010, planners and government officials have been developing controversial plans to ruralize Detroit's “vacant” neighborhoods as part of a program of fiscal austerity, reigniting old questions of racialized dispossession, sovereignty, and struggles for liberation. This paper analyzes these contentious politics by examining disputes over a white businessman's proposal to build the world's largest urban forest in the center of a Black majority city. I focus on how residents, urban farmers, and community activists resisted the project by making counterclaims to vacant land as an urban commons. They argued that the land is inhabited not empty and that it belonged to those who labored upon and suffered for it. Combining community‐based ethnography with insights from critical property theory, critical race studies, and postcolonial theory, I argue that land struggles in Detroit are more than distributional conflicts over resources. They are inextricable from debates over notions of race, property, and citizenship that undergird modern liberal democracies and ongoing struggles for decolonization.     

THE POLICY PROCESS AND ORGANIZATIONAL FORM

In this paper the transactions cost approach (TCA) is used to define organizations and to predict their forms under certain conditions. Next, Aaron Wildavsky's approach is used to define the policy process and to predict its form in particular organizations. Two assertions follow: namely, that the most efficient organizational form may be predicted from knowledge of underlying transactions costs, and that the form of the policy process in an organization can be predicted from knowledge of the organization's form (regardless of whether it is the most efficient form). Recent natural gas policy in the U.S.A. is used to illustrate these propositions, and several conclusions are offered about 1) the potential applicability of the TCA to the public sector and to the policy process and 2) about the potential applicability of Wildavsky's version of the policy process to differing organizational forms.     

When Does Government Listen to the Public? Voluntary Associations and Dynamic Agenda Representation in the United States

The aim of the article is to examine how the population size of voluntary associations affects the process through which the public's issue priorities are translated into policy priorities. We conduct a time series analysis of political attention in executive and legislative agendas at the U.S. federal level in the period 1971–2001, covering all issues addressed by the U.S. government. We show that the number of voluntary associations in a policy area has a positive conditioning effect on the link between public priorities and attention for the president's State of the Union Address. However, our results do not find a positive effect for voluntary associations at later stages of the policy cycle, which experience a higher degree of institutional friction. The findings underline the importance of distinguishing between different stages of policymaking when considering the impact of voluntary associations on dynamic agenda responsiveness.     

国家空间分异与国家空间视角的中国城市研究思路初探

中国城市研究的主流理论视角一直忽视国家的内部空间分异,国家空间理论的发展为从理论上重新审视国家的空间分异提供了的可能。在此基础上,介绍了国家空间视角的内涵及其在海外地理学研究中的发展与应用,分析了中国城市内部的国家空间组织的独特性及国家空间重构实践的丰富性,指出这种理论视角在中国城市研究中具有显著的应用可能性和必要性,并基于中国城市的政治经济背景提出了中国化的国家空间概念与分析框架。在此基础上,探讨了基于国家空间视角的重要城市研究议题及其可能面临的挑战与局限性。     

Urbanisation,crisis and urban policy in Greece

Urbanization trends in Greece since the 1950s are reviewed, with particular reference to the problems that arose in the 1970s. The authors examine the two major attempts at state intervention in urban planning during this period. They conclude with an overview of possible policy interventions that could resolve some of the problems related to urbanization.     

Shirking and Ideology: Defense in the Senate

A repeated finding in political science is the influence of a representative's so-called ideology on roll call voting in the U.S. House and Senate. Many of these studies attempt explicitly to separate the impact on roll call voting of "personal" ideology from that of constituency ideological preferences. In these studies, personal ideology is viewed as a form of shirking in which members pursue their own policy preferences rather than those of their constituents. This paper shows, at least for the case of defense in the Senate in the 1980s, that the evidence is sufficient to reject the claim that shirking represents the consumption of personal ideological policy preferences. Instead, the apparent impact of shirking on defense voting was an instrumental, reelection-oriented response to President Reagan's ability to muster popular support for his defense build up, and thus cannot be regarded as shirking at all.     

Hygienisation,Gentrification, and Urban Displacement in Brazil

This article engages recent debates over gentrification and urban displacement in the global South. While researchers increasingly suggest that gentrification is becoming widespread in “Southern” cities, others argue that such analyses overlook important differences in empirical context and privilege EuroAmerican theoretical frameworks. To respond to this debate, in this article, we outline the concept of higienização (hygienisation), arguing that it captures important contextual factors missed by gentrification. Hygienisation is a Brazilian term that describes a particular form of urban displacement, and is directly informed by legacies of colonialism, racial and class stigma, informality, and state violence. Our objective is to show how “Southern” concepts like hygienisation help urban researchers gain better insight into processes of urban displacement, while also responding to recent calls to decentre and provincialise urban theory.     

澳美马努斯基地使用之争--兼析战后初期的澳美关系

二战后,澳、美在如何使用马努斯基地问题上出现较大分歧并最终导致合作计划的流产,其中原因是多方面的。澳大利亚自主意识的增强、对战后美国对外战略的判断失位以及在英美之间奉行平衡政策;美国大国意识的膨胀、传统孤立主义的影响以及其对欧洲事态的关注等是造成这种结局的主要原因。澳美防务合作虽然因此而搁浅,但澳方发展与美双边关系尤其是防务合作的决心则愈加坚定。     

Está listo (Are you ready)? Gender,race and land registration in the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve

Geographers and political ecologists are paying increased attention to the ways in which conservation policies disrupt indigenous customary tenure arrangements. However, much less attention is given to the particular ways protected area management shapes natural resource access for indigenous women. With this in mind, this article examines how a recently proposed state land project in Honduras, Catastro y Regularización, requires that Miskito residents individuate collective family lands in the interests of ‘sustainable development’ and ‘biodiversity protection’. In the debates that followed the project's announcement, Miskito women feared that such measures would erase their customary access to family lands. As the state's project seeks to re-order Reserve land, intra-Miskito struggles intensified among villagers. Such struggles are not only gendered but are shaped by longstanding processes of racialization in Honduras and the Mosquitia region. Drawing upon ethnographic research, I argue that Miskito women's subjectivity and rights to customary family holdings are informed by their ability to make ‘patriarchal bargains’ with Miskito men inside the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve. Such findings suggest that scholars and policy makers continue to reflect on the ways global conservation and sustainable development practices may undermine indigenous customary tenure securities, whether intentionally or not.     

20世纪40-50年代美国对中国西藏政策的历史演变

The U.S. policy toward Tibet has always changed in accordance with the U.S. international strategy and the U.S. foreign policy toward China. Before the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, the U.S. admitted Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. During the Cold War, due to its anti-communism strategy, the U.S. began to consider recognizing the independence claim of Tibetan separatists, especially after 1959, when the Dalai Lama was exiled abroad. However, the U.S. government has not openly admitted Tibet is an independent country, because, in the light of the historical development of Tibet within China, claims of independence cannot be substantiated and therefore Tibetan separatism cannot win the recognition or support of the majority of countries in the world.     

The U.S. Intervention in Guatemala: The Documentary Record

U.S. Department of State . Foreign Relations of the United States , 1952 – 1954 : Guatemala . Washington, DC : U.S. Government Printing Office , 2003 . 461 pp. $ (hardcover).     

“This neighbourhood deserves an espresso bar too”: Neoliberalism,Racialization, and Urban Policy

In the Dutch and more broadly European context, urban policymaking has generally been studied through the conceptual lens of neoliberalism. While important, I argue that this neoliberal lens does not fully account for the design and impact of urban policies currently transforming cities like Amsterdam. Following Mustafa Dikeç's (2007, Badlands of the Republic: Space, Politics, and Urban Policy) understanding of urban policy as place‐making practices that normalize particular distributions of people, authorities and spaces, I propose to focus on underlying visions of the normal and the good city that shape urban policymaking. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic research on Amsterdam's “notorious” Diamantbuurt, I argue that this vision is informed by neoliberalism and by racialized concerns with migrants and ethnic minorities. It entails particular classed and racialized preferences that normalize and underwrite the partial displacement that is underway in the neighbourhood.     

‘Best Practice’ Options for the Legal Recognition of Customary Tenure

Is there a ‘best practice’ model for the legal recognition of customary tenure? If not, is it possible to identify the circumstances in which a particular model would be most appropriate? This article considers these questions in the light of economic theories of property rights, particularly as illustrated by the World Bank's 2003 land policy report. While these theories have their flaws, the underlying concept of tenure security allows a typological framework for developing legal responses to customary tenure. In particular, this article suggests that the nature and degree of State legal intervention in a customary land system should be determined by reference to the nature and causes of any tenure insecurity. This hypothesis is discussed by reference to a wide variety of legal examples from Africa, Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific. The objective is not to suggest that law determines resource governance outcomes in pluralist normative environments, but to improve the quality of legal interventions in order to assist customary groups to negotiate better forms of tenure security and access to resources.     

Punctuated Equilibrium in Limbo: The Tobacco Lobby and U.S. State Policymaking from 1990 to 2003

Since the mid-1980s, U.S. tobacco policy has been an intense and acrimonious issue between antitobacco advocates and the tobacco industry. In the United States, the tobacco industry has responded to heightened state antitobacco litigation, adverse public opinion, and public health advocacy by aggressively mobilizing against tobacco taxes and regulations. This article examines whether these tobacco policy trends can be generalized to punctuated equilibrium theory ideas that policy monopolies are stable over long periods and usually change because of sharp and short-term exogenous shocks to the policy system. From 1990 to 2003, there was a sharp mobilization by health advocates in all states and a significant rise in new legislation to control tobacco use. The tobacco industry, nevertheless, was able to generally keep state tobacco taxes low and counter significant regulatory threats to tobacco sales. From this, I conclude that the policy monopoly favoring the tobacco industry did not significantly change, despite the symbolic appearance of punctuation in the policy system.     

U.S. Foreign Policy and the Arab Spring: Balancing Values and Interests

The rapid and unpredictable changes in the Middle East collectively known as the “Arab Spring” are posing tremendous challenges to U.S. policy formation and action. This article will explore and evaluate evolving U.S. policy in the Middle East and its potential implications. There has always been a tension in American foreign policy between pursuing American “values” (foreign policy idealism) and protecting American “interests” (foreign policy realism). For decades, the United States has sought to “make the world safe for democracy,” while at the same time often supporting repressive, nondemocratic regimes because of national security or economic self‐interest. The tension between these two fundamentally distinct policy orientations has become even more pronounced as the United States tries to respond to the Arab Spring uprisings. Why did the United States actively support the rebels in Libya but not the protestors in Syria or Bahrain? Is there an emerging, coherent “Obama Doctrine” on intervention in Arab countries, or was Libya just a “one‐off” event? These are some of the questions that this article will attempt to answer.