The today and tomorrow of Geography

The author proposes a fundamental shift of the center of gravity of Soviet geography from Its present emphasis on physical geography toward greater stress on economic geography. He feels that most major geographic problems should be solved by inter-disciplinary teams of geographers from various specialized fields in which economic geographers would act as conductors of the geography orchestra.     

The Crimean War and its lessons for today

Orlando Figes's book The Crimean War: a history, based on English, Russian, French and Turkish sources, throws a new light on the Crimean War in a number of ways. It shows that the conflict was far from being a small war, but a landmark event. It was the only example of a war between Britain and Russia—and it led to enormous casualties. It also represented a stage in medical history, since most of the casualties were caused by disease. In Britain, it marked a new advance in the power of the press, which did much to fuel anti‐Russian sentiment. The war was also fuelled, on both sides, by religious and nationalist sentiment—but its most important cause related to the fate of the Ottoman Empire, then in decline, and fears that its collapse could result in a dangerous power vacuum. The war still has a significance for the present day because the collapse of communism has failed to resolve the antagonism between Russia and the West. Here, the book throws an important light on the development of British and western attitudes towards Russia, many of which were shaped in the nineteenth century. The book deserves attention, both here and in Russia.     

The geography of community and political organisation in London today

Set in the context of growing concern about the lack of a coherent political response to the economic crisis, and in the aftermath of devastating urban violence in English cities, this paper highlights the pressing need for new forms of political organisation in countries like the UK. The paper focuses on the remarkable growth and prominence of community organising in the UK. The largest community alliance, called London Citizens, now commands significant support and influence in the capital and is attracting attention from politicians, journalists and commentators from across the UK. The rising profile of community organising flies in the face of much scholarship in the social sciences which has long declared the death of geographical community – and its socio-political significance – in the modern metropolis. The paper provides an overview of this literature and highlights the particular importance of population turnover, increased diversity and stretched social networks. In this context, the paper then explores how London Citizens has been able to use a particular geographical architecture to work with and against these challenges. The paper argues that London Citizens’ territorial but institutionally networked structure is particularly important to its growth and impact. This model of politics locates institutional islands of social solidarity and forges connections between them, creating a new community that is able to mitigate some of the effects of population turnover and stretched social networks in the city-at-large. The paper highlights the strengths and weaknesses of this geo-political architecture, drawing attention to the importance of institutional affiliation, identity-making, the reproduction of collective memory, and the issue of funding.     

The Oedipus complex in cultural anthropology today

Spiro, Melford E. Oedipus in the Trobriands. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. xii + 200 pp. including references and index. $8.00 paper.     

Aesthetics versus function: the fall of the Dee bridge, 1847

Abstract

Numerous new bridges were needed when the railway line from London to Holyhead in Wales was built in the 1840s. The project's chief engineer, Robert Stephenson, chose a cast iron girder design to cross the river Dee just outside Chester, and the bridge was finished in November 1846. About six months later, on 24 May 1847, a local train was crossing the final span when one of the girders failed suddenly, sending most of the train crashing into the river below. Five lives were lost. The accident created a national furore, and Stephenson came close to being accused of manslaughter for the design. We have reviewed the witness evidence and concluded that the bridge probably failed by fatigue due to a defect at a sharp corner in a flange on a girder. The corner was present in a cavetto moulding, which had presumably been added as an artistic flourish.     

Anthropology in the arctic and subarctic today

Gösta Berg, ed. Circumpolar Problems: Habitat, Economy and Social Relations in the Arctic. Wenner‐Gren International Symposium Series. Vol. 21. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1973. vi + 194 pp. Figures, tables, and references. $19.50.     

Policing the social boundaries of the American Medical Association, 1847-70

In May 1870 the American Medical Association (AMA) voted to deny the admission of black delegates and their white colleagues to the national meeting in Washington, D.C. Historians of race and medicine have customarily viewed this decision as marking a crucial milestone in the formation of the nexus between racism and the development of the American medical profession in the era after the Civil War (1861-64). This study recasts this narrative by locating the 1870 decision in relation to the antebellum practices of the association and their social consequences for American medicine. It argues that the viability of the AMA as the national voice of the profession was critically dependent on rejecting racial equality. Indeed, at a moment when the question of the abolition of slavery polarized the nation, the AMA was founded in 1847 to create a voluntary professional organization, national in scope, dedicated to raising the standards of medical training and practice. To this end, the AMA elected presidents and selected host cities for annual meetings in the North, South, and West. Seven out of the fourteen meetings and six out of fourteen presidents were from slave and/or border states. These institutional practices together with the representation of blacks as different and enjoying an appropriate status as slaves grounded the national identity of the profession in black subordination. Similarly, the gendered discourses about healing and practices of female exclusion privileged medical authority as male by drawing on and reinforcing patriarchy. In the wake of the war, leaders hoped to restore the national character of the organization by resuming antebellum practices. In response to the new possibilities for blacks in medicine--as represented by the biracial National Medical Society--the AMA took steps to vigorously police the racial boundaries of the national profession. As this study will show, the 1870 decision reflected the logic of the racial politics at the heart of the association's antebellum past and would loom large in its future.     

Regional policy in Russia today: The new role of the state

For many years, all regional policies in the USSR were realized by industry ministries (i.e. supermonopolies). The present regional problems are mainly the result of their activity. The disintegration of the USSR sees the end of this traditional regional policy, but at the same time all spatial problems became more acute. Russia needs social and economic regional policies, the absence of which can stop reform and increase the disintegration of the country. However, the present liberal economic strategy of the government does not leave enough space for Western‐style regional policy.     

Agents of altruism: the Great Irish Famine and Italian civil society (1847)

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the participation of individuals, networks and international organizations in transnational fundraising aimed at providing humanitarian relief aid. Focusing on fundraising campaigns organized in the Italian states in favour of Ireland in 1847, when the Great Famine scourged its population the most, the article highlights the agency of the fundraisers in setting in motion an economy of altruism that transcended groups’ boundaries and state borders. The activism and networking of a few well-established individuals in Rome were pivotal in mobilizing the lay and religious elites at a local level. In January and February 1847, the elites of the Italian capitals collected copious sums within private events and initiatives directed at their peers, while the Christian faiths present in Rome organized the first alms collections. This wave of altruism succeeded in setting humanitarian relief for Ireland as one of the goals of the global Catholic Church. In March, Pope Pius IX issued the Encyclical Praedecessores Nostros, appealing for Catholics to donate in favour of Ireland, and thereby generating much local fundraising, mainly in the Italian states and Southern Europe, until the early months of 1848. The Catholic clergy served the cause, raising money locally and taking charge of its delivery to Ireland, with partial coordination from Rome. Although implementing a transnational fundraising campaign involved obstacles of a political, logistical and financial nature, the alms collection raised in the Catholic churches aggregated many small donations over a considerable time span, providing more than double the amount raised in the lay initiatives organized by the elites of the Italian states. The article, based on unedited archival sources from the Italian, Vatican and Irish archives, shows how the charitable fundraisers overcame the obstacles imposed by state politics, international conflicts and transaction costs over the transnational circulation of ideas, initiatives and capitals.     

Sport and society in Italy today

Summary

In ‘Itinerary’ Patrick McCarthy provides an introduction to the four articles that examine the connections between sport, politics, business and contemporary culture in Italy. Noting that mass participation in sport has been closely related to modernization, McCarthy argues that the forms of contemporary mass sport reflect the particular cultural, political and economic conditions of each European society. In Italy these made soccer and cycling the most popular mass sports by 1945.

Patrizia Dogliani’s article ‘Sport and Fascism’ examines the development of mass sport in Italy from the late nineteenth century, showing the critical role played by the Fascist regime, which rapidly expanded public sports facilities while the language of politics and combat permeated the vocabulary of sport in Italy in the 1920s and 1930s. Initially the emphasis was on international competition as a symbol of national virility, but following the success of Germany and the USA in the 1936 Olympics the regime’s search for consensus placed new emphasis on recreational aspects. The institutional and administrative organization of sport established in the 1930s remained in place in Italy, however, until more recendy.

In ‘Itinerary 2’ McCarthy examines the roles of the boxer Carnera from Friuli and the racing driver Tazio Nuvolari as sporting heroes of Mussolini’s Italy and in ‘Itinerary 3’ shows how the struggles between Catholic Italy and Communist Italy were personified in the rivalry between the cyclists Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi in the post-war period.

In ‘Itinerary 4’ he asks why soccer had by the 1970s overtaken cycling as Italy’s most popular sport. That theme is examined in greater detail by Nicola Porro and Pippa Russo, whose article reconstructs the ‘hybridization of sport, mass media and politics’ in Italy in the 1990s. Its central focus is Silvio Berlusconi, the self-made media tycoon who founded Fininvest in the 1970s, acquired AC Milan in 1986, and by 1994 controlled a media empire that enabled him to found a new political party (Forza Italia) and become Italy’s Prime Minister albeit for less than a year. Porro and Russo examine the ways in which Berlusconi’s roles in the world of the media and professional soccer have changed both Italian politics and Italian sport.

In ‘Itinerary 5’ McCarthy sets the example of Berlusconi in the context of the integration of soccer and mass media, the commercialization and politicization of sport at a global level in the last decade. These issues are developed in greater detail in Emanuela Poli’s article, ‘The revolution in the televised soccer market’, which emphasizes the critical role that has been played by soccer and soccer clubs in the development of the new media empires based on digital pay-per-view TV and the sale of sporting events in the 1990s. This has left control of the sport (in terms of who can watch and when) in the hands of major international communications moguls like Berlusconi and Rupert Murdoch.

‘Itinerary 6’ links the fragmentation of collective myths like the national soccer championships to the decline of the nation state, and surveys the situation of other sports in Italy (the Americas Cup, skiing, rugby football. Formula 1 motor racing and the gymnasium). The latter is the subject of the final article by Roberta Sassatelli on ‘The commercialization of discipline: keep-fit culture and its values’ which explores the social and cultural meanings attached to the growing vogue for fitness clubs and the shaping of the ideal body in contemporary Italy.     

Society and politics in China today

China's social and economic transformations, and their growing global impact, have prompted a plethora of books. This review article examines five recent books in Polity's China today series as a basis for discussion about society and politics in China. The series is structured around applying different themes or concepts to China, and these five look at consumption, social welfare, class, ethnicity, and the nature, role and performance of the Communist Party and state. The books provide well‐researched and balanced accounts of developments in China, especially since the era of ‘reform and opening up’ began in 1978. The article argues that important themes of the books—the growing discourse of consumption, the depoliticization of class as socio‐economic strata, the Party‐state as a pragmatic provider of citizen services, and the role of the private sector in the provision of social welfare—are all features of the current phase of a globalized capitalist modernity, and concludes that while the country wants to be seen as different, the accounts of politics and society in this series suggests that China today offers more of an alternative within that modernity than an alternative to it.