Shifts in the Global Capitalist Economy and the National Economic Domain

The greater part of regional development theory and thinking focuses most attention either upon spatial structure within nation states or upon inherent tendencies/free market forces within capitalist social formations/domestic economies. The great significance that is attached to the nation state is entirely understandable in terms of the historical specificity of the re-emergence of regional development studies in the post-war era. It is, however, no longer a sufficiently adequate basis for analysis Rather, it is necessary to commence analyses with a consideration of shifts in the global capitalist economy. Whilst the significance of the impacts of the growth in the internationalisation of production have been noted, more attention needs to be devoted to shifts from public to private economic power and from order to disorder in international finance markets. These shifts are not accidental They can be traced to internal weaknesses and inconsistencies in the Bretton Woods arrangements which eroded their ultimate foundation, that of monetary stability. As one consequence, the unregulated growth of private economic power, endemic instability and extreme volatility in international finance markets have all directly and indirectly undermined and eroded the extent of control over domestic economic policy on the part of the nation state     

THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEOLITHIC AND COPPER AGE SETTLEMENT IN THE GREAT HUNGARIAN PLAIN PART II: SITE SURVEY AND SETTLEMENT DYNAMICS

Summary. Within the region of the Great Hungarian Plain (discussed in the first part of this article) the processes of settlement change can be followed in greater detail from site survey in the Szeghalom area. This central part of the Plain, drained by the Körös and Berettyó rivers, was a major focus of settlement in Neolithic times (6000-4000 BC), and its rising importance can be followed in the emergence of a series of wealthy 'supersites'. During the succeeding Copper Age, the character of sites altered as the role of the area in relation to the rest of the region began to change. Around 3500 BC a dramatic shift in settlement patterns coincided with the appearance of large tumuli of steppe type, which mark a new phase of land use in this region.     

Palaeo-Eskimo Novice Flintknapping in the Eastern Canadian Arctic

Abstract

Data from two inland Palaeo-Eskimo sites on southern Baffin Island are evidence for novice flintknapping. The interior of the island boasts a rich and reliable supply of lithic raw material, and the two sites were occupied during the Artic warm season when access to it was unrestricted. The use of a direct procurement strategy to acquire the material at this time of year from such a localized source suggests that acquisition activities were structured as part of the seasonal resource exploitation strategies of the Palaeo-Eskimos on southern Baffin Island. The incidence of novice flintknapping appears to be directly linked to this procurement. By drawing on data from published replicative studies and archaeological remains, socially meaningful patterns of idiosyncratic assemblage variability can be identified, providing greater insights into the social components of lithic tool production and skill apprenticeship.     

Australian Labor and the Socialist Tradition

Amidst the turmoil of the so‐called ‘death of socialism’, both in Australia and elsewhere, there has been renewed debate about what socialism should be taken to mean. This paper attempts to come to terms with the competing claims about, in particular, socialism within the Australian Labor Party and, in general, how better to understand the meaning of socialism. A comparison and contrast between the first principles of liberalism and socialism helps to illuminate some of the inadequacies of Marxist criticisms of parliamentary Labor. In addition, the argument is made that if we are willing to give greater emphasis to questions of means and ends, socialism can be seen to be part of Labor's historic mission. Far from being a defence of the Hawke administration, however, the case is made that there has been, under Hawke, a fundamental break with the democratic socialist tradition; that the difference is in kind, not degree.     

Researchers,bureaucrats and the lifeworlds of cultural policy

This paper reflects on the value of cultural policy research, particularly when such research forms part of projects that seek to produce insights or ‘outcomes’ that are useful to non-university research partners. The paper draws from the author’s involvement in a project examining cultural diversity in the arts that was funded as part of the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Project scheme. It addresses Eleonora Belfiore’s provocation that this kind of instrumental cultural policy research routinely amounts to ‘bullshit.’ However, in order to understand the critical function of such research, there needs to be greater attention to the lifeworlds of cultural policy and the multiplicity of the policy-making process. This multiplicity both complicates the possibilities for usefulness in policy research, at the same time that it enables such research to be generative in unpredictable ways.     

High Court Review 2009: Exit Kirby,Enter Consensus?

In its first full year under the leadership of Chief Justice Robert French, 2009 marked two key developments in the High Court: the retirement of Justice Michael Kirby and a shift to greater consensus amongst members of the bench. The first part of the Review analyses Kirby's contribution to Australian jurisprudence and asks whether lower rates of dissent can be attributed to his exit alone. The second part of the Review examines the key constitutional decisions handed down by the Court in 2009, which decided matters relating to the acquisition of property on ‘just terms’ in the Territories, the application of the Kable doctrine to preserve the separation of powers in the States and the source and scope of the Commonwealth's power to spend.     

The Last of Australian Imperial Dreams for the Southwest Pacific: Paul Hasluck,the Department of Territories and a Greater Melanesia in 1960

This paper is a study of the vision held at the beginning of the 1960s by Paul Hasluck, the minister for external territories, and his department of the path to decolonisation for Melanesia. Faced by the ongoing West New Guinea crisis, Hasluck and his officials proposed to keep the western part of New Guinea out of Indonesian hands by expanding Australia’s empire, step by step, to include most of Melanesia. This greater Melanesian empire would eventually be guided to self-government. The proposal stood in a long line of ideas by Pacific-minded Australians going back for 100 years for an expanded Australian empire in the southwest Pacific. Consequently the Menzies cabinet’s rejection of Hasluck’s proposal was not just an important step towards changing its policy towards WNG; it marked the end to a century of Australian dreams and designs of a greater formal empire in the southwest Pacific.     

Y chromosomes of self-identified Syeds from the Indian subcontinent show evidence of elevated Arab ancestry but not of a recent common patrilineal origin

Several cultural or religious groups claim descent from a common ancestor. The extent to which this claimed ancestry is real or socially constructed can be assessed by means of genetic studies. Syed is a common honorific title given to male Muslims belonging to certain families claiming descent from the Prophet Muhammad through his grandsons Hassan and Hussein, who lived 1,400 years ago and were the sons of the Prophet’s daughter Fatima. If all Syeds really are in direct descent from Hassan and Hussein, we would expect the Y chromosomes of Syeds to be less diverse than those of non-Syeds. Outside the Arab world, we would also expect to find that Syeds share Y chromosomes with Arab populations to a greater extent than they do with their non-Syed geographic neighbours. In this study, we found that the Y chromosomes of self-identified Syeds from India and Pakistan are no less diverse than those non-Syeds from the same regions, suggesting that there is no biological basis to the belief that self-identified Syeds in this part of the world share a recent common ancestry. In addition to Syeds, we also considered members of other hereditary Muslim lineages, which either claim descent from the tribe or family of Muhammad or from the residents of Medinah. Here, we found that these lineages showed greater affinity to geographically distant Arab populations, than to their neighbours from the Indian subcontinent, who do not belong to an Islamic honorific lineage.     

Sexism and the celestial gynaeceum — from 500 to 1200

One indirect index of attitudes toward women, as well as their actual position in the medieval Church, can be gained through a collective study of saints' lives. For on one level, membership in the heavenly city reflected the earthly society of the middle ages. Although in theory the Church professed a policy of spiritual egalitarianism, in reality it was much more difficult for women than for men to transcend their sex and enter the ranks of the celestial hierarchy. The rather wide discrepancy in sanctity (approximately 85% of the saints of this period were male), can be explained in part by the exclusion of women from leadership roles in the secular Church hierarchy. However, certain periods were more conducive than others to the making of women saints. Women had a greater prominence, as reflected by their selection as saints, in the initial stages of the various movements of the Church. As the Church became more secure, right- minded and ultimately regularized and reformed, the premature enthusiasm for women waned. A backlash resulted in which women were viewed as liabilities and generally suspect. They were denied opportunities for a prominence in the religious community, a ‘visibility’ upon which sanctity was predicated.     

安徽新石器时代绘彩陶器

安徽新石器时代的绘彩陶器可分为彩陶和彩绘陶两类,前者主要分布在淮河流域和皖西,而后者则主要分布在皖西南一带。其年代从距今七千多年前一直延续到距今四千多年前,可分为四期。皖西南是我国彩绘陶发生年代较早的一个区域。     

泗水国出土泡桐材性研究

木质文物出土后环境发生了很大的变化,如不对其进行科学的保护处理就会发生快速的腐朽变化。在选择保护处理方法前对木材的材性进行科学的分析可以为保护方法的确定提供科学的依据。本工作从木材成分、含水率、干缩性、出土泡桐与新鲜泡桐干缩率比较、干燥过程中的电镜分析几个方面对泗水国汉墓出土的泡桐进行了材性研究。结果表明,泗阳汉墓出土的泡桐纤维素和半纤维素的含量比新鲜泡桐的含量下降很多,但木质素的相对含量却增加了,说明泗阳汉墓出土的泡桐在埋藏环境中可能更多地是受到褐腐菌的侵蚀。含水率的高低是反映木材腐蚀度一个重要指标,泗阳汉墓出土的泡桐平均含水率高达1211%,从弦向、径向、横切面的平均收缩率数值来看,出土的泗水国泡桐文物收缩变形很严重,从电子显微镜图片观察,细胞结构各向干缩特性与新鲜木材完全不同。由此可见,不能用常规木材的干缩特征和木材的变化规律来指导泗水国出土泡桐的研究和保护工作,在选择保护处理方法时要结合木材本身的现状选择适合的材料和工艺。     

PRODUCING GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE THROUGH VISUAL METHODS

The tradition of using qualitative interviews in the study of everyday life, place and identity in geography, housing studies and related disciplines is a long and sound one. Recently there has been increasing interest in using visual methods as part of qualitative methodological approaches. Through our own empirical work, this article explores one position in visual methodology, which suggests visual methods as a way of in a sense getting closer to the lived life. Drawing inspiration from qualitative methodology and performative perspectives in geography, this article argues that this position overlooks the ways in which the visual – here photography – can also be seen as performed. Based on the authors' experiences with visual methods in fieldwork in housing areas in greater Copenhagen, and using both informants' and researchers' photographic work, the article shows how a performative perspective on photography can be used in qualitative research in geography.     

现代馆的时代含义

艺术的力量不容忽视,南京博物院艺术陈列馆的现代馆需要鲜明的个性,这个个性要具有时代特色浓厚的展示内容来填充,从而达到推动社会文明进程及城市发展的目的,这是本文努力强调的。     

Organizing for British national strategy

In December 1968 Ernest May asked how the US government could gain access to ‘long‐headed’ staffers to provide greater strategic depth to foreign policy. The challenge of long‐term strategy persists: how should government be organized to support it, how can the right people be found to staff it and how can political leaders make time for longer‐term policy‐making given the challenge of the immediate? The policy planning staff in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have traditionally had the task of supporting longer‐range, broader foreign policy. A small group of diplomats—later leavened by externals from the media, non‐profit and private sectors—was meant to generate an improved approach to British interests and policy. As Robert Wade‐Gery recalls of its role in the 1960s, there was a push to forge fresh links with outside thinking. Did it work? Former policy planners can be circumspect about its achievements. One former British planner said he felt like ‘a spare part rattling around in a tin’, while former American planners have written about the challenge of injecting fresh thinking when detached from decision‐making. Other planners were dragged into operational work or speechwriting. Many planners nonetheless enjoyed the opportunity to think more broadly. Policy planning can be intellectually rich without being the source of actionable strategic thinking about the long‐term national interest. This article suggests that a greater focus on people rather than systems might help to foster more strategic, anticipatory and innovative thinking about the national interest.     

Decentralization and Democracy in Indonesia: A Critique of Neo‐Institutionalist Perspectives

This article assesses some of the major premises of neo‐institutionalist explanations of decentralization policy and practices, but focuses especially on the relationship between decentralization and democracy, in the context of the recent and ongoing Indonesian experience with decentralization. In the last two decades ‘decentralization’ has become, along with ‘civil society’, ‘social capital’ and ‘good governance’, an integral part of the contemporary neo‐institutionalist lexicon, especially that part which is intended to draw greater attention to ‘social’ development. The concern of this article is to demystify how, as a policy objective, decentralization has come to embody a barely acknowledged political, not just theoretical, agenda. It also suggests alternative ways of understanding why decentralization has often failed to achieve its stated aims in terms of promoting democracy, ‘good governance’, and the like. What is offered is an understanding of decentralization processes that more fully incorporates the factors of power, struggle and interests, which tend to be overlooked by neo‐institutionalist perspectives. The current Indonesian experience clearly illustrates the way in which institutions can be hijacked by a wide range of interests that may sideline those that champion the worldview of ‘technocratic rationality’.     

The Multifunctional Transition in Australia's Tropical Savannas: the Emergence of Consumption,Protection and Indigenous Values

As elsewhere in affluent, western nations, the direction, complexity and pace of rural change in Australia can be conceptualised as a multifunctional transition in which a variable mix of consumption and protection values has emerged, contesting the former dominance of production values, and leading to greater complexity and heterogeneity in rural occupance at all scales. This transition has been explored in accessible, high-amenity landscapes driven by enhanced consumption values. Less attention has been directed to remote, marginal lands where a flimsy mode of productivist occupance can, in part, be displaced by alternative modes with the transitions being facilitated by low transfer costs. Such is the case in Australia's northern tropical savannas where an extensive mode of pastoral occupance is selectively displaced by alternative consumption, protection and Indigenous values. This transition towards multifunctional occupance is most readily documented by mapping changes in land tenure and ownership over the last three decades. Tenure changes have been accompanied by new regimes of property rights and land ownership, including: native titles derived from common law; non-transferable, common-property Aboriginal freehold tenures; transfers of pastoral leases to Indigenous and conservation interests; expansion of conservation lands under public tenures; and revisions of the rights and duties of pastoral lessees. Future occupance scenarios remain unclear, given the sensitivity of this frontier zone to national and global driving forces.     

Going the extra mile: the impact of theological orientation and other congregational factors on the drive times of growing and declining church attendees

ABSTRACT

This study is part of a larger research project that collected and analysed data from 22 Mainline Protestant churches in Canada, 13 declining and 9 growing. Nearly 30 clergy and over 2000 church attendees were surveyed. Survey questions from the previous research explored the demographic and religious characteristics of these churches. In this paper, we analyse and compare the travel distance of the declining church and growing church attendees and then explore which characteristics of the attendees, clergy, and the church correlate with longer attendee drive times to worship. Through regression analysis, we conclude that theological conservatism of attendees, contemporary worship style, and greater emphasis on youth programming are predictors of longer drive times for attendees; while greater age of attendees is associated with a shorter commute to church.