Mapping the arts: industry concentrations,distribution, and change in the US, 1980–2010

This paper studies arts industries in all 366 US metropolitan statistical areas between 1980 and 2010. Our analysis provides evidence that the arts are an important component of many regional economies, but also highlights their volatility. After radical growth and diffusion between 1980 and 2000, in the last decade, the arts industries are defined more by shrinkage and reconcentration in fewer metropolitan areas. Further, we find that the vast majority of metros have strengths in particular sets of arts industries. As we discuss in the conclusion, these conditions present challenges and opportunities for urban cultural policy that goes beyond the current focus on the arts as consumption amenities.     

The challenge of the spaceship: Arthur C. Clarke and the history of the future, 1930–1970

Arthur C. Clarke’s 1946 essay on ‘The Challenge of the Spaceship’ was one of the founding manifestoes of the Space Age, and helped to establish him as the West’s leading techno-prophet. Restating his ideas in subsequent factual and fictional works, Clarke successfully propagated the belief that man’s destiny lay in space and that the process was already underway. On the surface Clarke’s oeuvre offers a classic astrofuturist model of progress as technology-driven, but on closer examination it also incorporates a more pessimistic, historically based strand of philosophy, British rather than American. This essay traces the genesis of Clarke’s early work and the influence upon him of the historian Arnold J. Toynbee and the moral philosophers Olaf Stapledon and C.S. Lewis. Toynbee was essentially a Christian pessimist who believed that western civilization was on the way out; his long historical perspectives were an important source of inspiration for Clarke, leading him to a cyclical rather than a simply progressive model of history which contemplated both the beginning and the end of civilizations. The concerns of Stapledon and Lewis with grand narratives of decline and redemption were also influences on Clarke. All this needs to be understood in relation to both the European experience of World War I and to the coming of the atomic bomb, the latter a profound influence on Clarke’s generation. Such perspectives gave European astroculture a more modulated vision of the human future in space than the technologically based astrofuturism which dominated in the USA.     

A history of transboundary storm water flows: flooding,tunnels, and the spatial incongruity of the U.S.–Mexico border

The benefits of transnational flows and the concern for national security have framed development in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands since the formative beginnings of both nations. As national discourses, trade and security work against each other in borderland spaces, the former requiring openings in the border, the later seeking to control it. This paper considers the material implications of these discourses on the border landscape with particular attention to historical boundary development, urbanization, and impacts of chronic flooding. It argues that material discursive dynamics not only constitute the contemporary landscape, but create spatial incongruities that influence the impacts of natural processes, such as storm water flow. Using the southern Arizona border as a case study, the paper uses archival research to explore the historical geography of chronic flooding in the twentieth century and the shift in dynamics of flooding due to border boundary build up.     

Vienna and the Jews, 1867–1938: A cultural history

This article examines Ernest Belfort Bax's interpretation of the French Revolution and traces the impact that his idea of the Revolution had on his philosophy and his political thought. The first section considers Bax's understanding of the Revolution in the context of his theory of history and analyses his conception of the Revolution's legacy, drawing particularly on his portraits of Robespierre, Marat and Babeuf. The second section shows how the lessons Bax drew from this history shaped his socialist republicanism and discusses his support for Jacobin methods of revolutionary change. The third section of the article looks at the ways in which Bax's reading of revolutionary history affected his internationalism and shows how his ‘anti-patriotism’ led him to support the Anglo-French campaign in 1914. I argue that the Bax's understanding of the French Revolution gave body to his philosophy and greatly influenced his understanding of the socialist struggle. Bax believed that socialists had history on their side, but was so emboldened by the idea of the Revolution that he was led to advance a view of socialist change that undermined the historic values that socialism was supposed to enshrine.     

Blair,Brown and the Gleneagles agenda: making poverty history,or confronting the global politics of unequal development?

In a series of speeches, statements and interviews in early 2005 Tony Blair and Gordon Brown set out an ambitious agenda of global development change for the UK's Presidency of the G8. The Gleneagles summit, held in July of that year, did make a number of significant policy commitments in the areas of trade, finance and the environment. But, with the passage of time and as the details were worked out, many of these turned out to be much less far-reaching than the claims initially made by the two politicians. The Gleneagles agenda could never, in fact, have worked to 'make poverty history', because such an achievement was simply not within the compass of the G8 to deliver. The global politics of development is not animated by what the 'North' is or is not willing to do for the 'South'. It is instead worked out within the context of a global politics of unequal development that neither Blair nor Brown appear to comprehend.     

Where is the state? How is the state? Accessing water and the state in Mumbai and Johannesburg

This article examines the water distribution systems in Johannesburg and Mumbai to argue that the political and institutional contexts of service delivery shape people’s access to the state and its resources, and also mediation between citizens and government institutions by councillors. Through ethnographies of water supply and distribution systems in Mumbai and Johannesburg, I explain how the organizational structure of the water utility, institutional arrangements of service delivery, regulatory systems, councillors’ proximity to decision makers and their relationship with municipal officials, civil servants and party members variously influence councillors’ mediation capacities and their ability to fulfil the claims of their constituencies for piped water supply and connections.     

Counting eyeballs,soundbites and ‘plings’: arts participation,strategic instrumentalism and the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad

This article examines cultural participation, its metrics and ‘drivers’ as they are defined through cultural programming for the London 2012 Olympics. The meanings and interpretation of these terms are considered by examining the development of an evaluation framework for the We Play programme in the North West of England, an initiative funded by Legacy Trust UK and part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. It argues that in spite of the dissonance between arts and sports within Olympics programmes and claims of the deleterious impact on arts funding, particular within the regions, London 2012 has engendered creative programming which strategically deploys the Cultural Olympiad to satisfy local cultural policy objectives as well as meeting broader interests in ‘legacy’ from the Games. Such ambitions require the development of appropriate methodologies for understanding arts participation and engagement for the purpose of evaluation and evidence-based policy making, a particular challenge for such a complex range of activities, sites and settings for arts participation.     

Collaboration as Resistance? Reconsidering the processes,products, and possibilities of feminist oral history and ethnography

As multiple norths emerge in the so-called souths (and vice versa) and non-government organizations (NGOs) become important partners in knowledge production, it becomes imperative for feminist actors to envision new collaborative methodologies that can simultaneously resist the ‘deradicalization of feminist politics’ in the increasingly corporatized academy as well as in the increasingly donor-driven, professionalized, and state-identified NGO sector. Based on an extensive reading of literature on oral history and critical ethnography, this viewpoint identifies four interrelated areas where reflexive interventions by feminist collaborators working across geographical, sociopolitical and institutional borders can advance such a project: rethinking the relationships between processes and products of collaboration; more conscious interweaving of the collaborative theories and methodologies; producing knowledges that can travel across the borders of academia/NGOs/people's movements; and reimagining reciprocity in collaboration.

¿Colaboración como resistencia? Reconsiderando los procesos, productos, y Posibilidades de una etnografía y Historia oral feminista

Mientras que emergen ‘nortes’ múltiples en los así llamados ‘sures’ (y viceversa) y que los organismos no gubernamentales (ONG) se hacen parejas importantes en la producción de conocimiento, resulta imperativa para que los/as actores/as feministas prevean nuevas metodologías colaborativas que puedan resistir simultaneo la ‘de-radicalización de las políticas feministas’ en la cada vez más corporatizada academia así como en los ONGs que son cada vez más profesionalizados y influido por el estado y donantes internacionales. Basado en una lectura extensiva de historias orales y etnografías criticas, ésta punta de vista identifica cuatro áreas entrelazados donde intervenciones reflexivas por colaboradoras feministas a través de fronteras geográficas, institucionales, y sociopolíticas puedan adelantar tal proyecto: repensando las relaciones entre los procesos y los productos de colaboración; más entretejiendo consciente de las teorías y metodologías colaborativas; la producción de conocimientos que puedan viajar a través de las fronteras de academia/ONG/movimientos sociales; y una reimaginación de reciprocidad en colaboraciones.