Towards The “New Rural History”: A Review Essay

The true subject of art history is the succession of innovations that have changed the practices of artists over time. This article uses a survey of illustrations in textbooks to consider not only when in their careers the greatest artists of the twentieth century made their greatest discoveries but also how quickly they made them. The results underscore the dominant position of Pablo Picasso and Cubism in twentieth-century art: Picasso alone accounts for the two best three-year periods produced by any artist, and he and Georges Braque account for three of the best five-year periods, all for the work the two young artists did in creating Cubism. Andy Warhol's innovations in pop art and Henri Matisse's development of Fauvism also rank among the century's most important breakthroughs. In general, identifying the most important short periods of artistic creativity highlights the differing methods of conceptual and experimental artists: great conceptual innovators (e.g., Picasso, Matisse, and Warhol) made their greatest discoveries abruptly, whereas great experimental innovators (e.g., Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, and Jackson Pollock) made their discoveries more gradually. The finding that artists who innovate early in their lives do so suddenly, whereas those who innovate late do so more gradually, adds an important dimension to our understanding of human creativity.     

“New Tibet” Photo Show

China＇s Tibet and the Tibet Literature and Art Federation held the “New Tiber” Photo Prize Awards Ceremony and Photo Exhibition in the Tibet Museum from August 9-6,2005.Marking the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Tibet Autonomous Region,the exhibition showed Tibet＇s socio-economic progress over those four decades,     

Planning's “Failure” to Ensure Efficient Market Delivery: A Lacanian Deconstruction of this Neoliberal Scapegoating Fantasy

Our neoliberal governance model places a burden on planning to often take “responsibility” for the failure of market-lead governance to deliver its policy promises of betterment, security and future enjoyment. These include promised, but often-unachievable policies, such as those of increased global competitiveness for areas of structural economic decline; or housing affordability in areas of population growth and constrained land availability. Resultant policy failures then result in a scapegoating response where planning is held responsible. Examples include that economic development, or housing affordability, is obstructed by planning impediments, such as regulatory controls or process delays, which are claimed to hamper efficient market delivery. To deconstruct this neoliberal fantasy that planning often impedes policies for market-lead success, the article will first document exemplars of this scapegoating process. It will then explore the role of fantasy and ideology in governance policy formulation and, from a Lacanian perspective, the theorization that underlies this process. Then, it will investigate the role of the “scapegoat” for public policy facilitation so as to explain why planning is often placed in this role, and why this role is often ideologically necessary, at least for neoliberal governance, when planning undertaking its statutory responsibility of facilitating the public interest.     

New Zealand’s “arc of influence”: the “clean,blue, green” country

Over the last 50 years, the area of New Zealand has been expanded to include territorial seas, an Exclusive Economic Zone, marine protected areas, an extended continental shelf, the Ross Sea, and a wedge of the Antarctic continent. While New Zealand’s territory is now significantly more marine rather than terrestrial, the country is often imagined as a series of isolated islands floating adrift in the Pacific. In this paper, we consider how the space of the nation-state can be reimagined to create a more relevant sense of place and identity. We argue that the perception of New Zealand as “100% pure” and “clean green” can be developed into a “clean, blue, green” image that better reflects the country’s expansive and diverse “arc of influence” through conservation values. We focus on the role of mapping within this issue; critiquing existing maps of New Zealand’s marine territory while also presenting our own speculative maps.     

Anthropologist and “Native” in Early Twentieth Century New Guinea: Malinowski and Thurnwald

Malinowski, an anglicized Pole and Thurnwald, a German, were in their different ways pioneers of anthropological fieldwork. Both men kept diaries in which they candidly recorded their experiences, Thurnwald’s remaining unpublished. These diaries, unlike retrospective and sanitized accounts, reveal their attitudes and behaviours towards two main categories of “natives”: the “boys” they employed, and the “savages” who were the object of their research. Comparison of the diary contents show some striking contrasts, attributable to differences in their field situations and also their personality characteristics. In particular, Thurnwald maintained a far greater social distance than Malinowski. Yet both men displayed the then taken‐for‐granted sense of unquestioned European superiority, and retained elements of that stance to the end of their careers.     

Sustaining China's Economic Growth: New Leaders,New Directions?

An American specialist on the economy of China assesses the options and obstacles the country's new leadership will face as it attempts to sustain the current economic growth trajectory in the future. Putting the current situation in historical context, the author first reviews the reforms leading up to the agenda advanced by the previous leadership team (led by Hu Jintao) and then examines the health of China's economy in late 2012 (a situation she argues is characterized by the exhaustion of three key drivers of growth). The paper advances the thesis that further reforms and improvements in technology will be essential to sustained growth, and that additional reforms will be necessary before sustained innovation can take root. As signs of successful further reform going forward, readers are advised to look to increased private-sector legitimacy, a decline in state-sector monopoly power, and strengthening of legal foundations for reform policies.     

Ottawa's Byward Market: a festive bone of contention?

This paper considers recent developments in the revitalization of the Byward Market, with reference to applicable concepts of the 'tourist-historic city' and the 'convivial city. The central objective is to assess its convergence, in specific detail, with the festival marketplace model. Convergence on most dimensions is demonstrated, but shown to be limited by alternative management philosophies and the fractured complexity of a 'real world' setting. The Market's growing real-world centrality is shown to give rise to a range of stakeholder contest beyond a festival marketplace, as specifically defined. It is suggested that this will prove more generally true of evolved traditional markets.