The Study of a System of Cities of the Soviet Union

Odessa's advantageous economic-geographic situation has played a positive role in all phases of the city's development. It has promoted Odessa's pre-eminent place as a foreign trade center and its function as a key element in the geographical division of labor. The situational advantages of the city should be taken into account in any historical-geographic study and in insuring more rational economic relations between the city and the rest of the Soviet Union.     

Workers,Unions and the State: Migrant Workers in China's Labour‐intensive Foreign Enterprises

Migrant workers present a new challenge both to China's increasingly diversified industrial relations and to its state–society relationship, especially vis‐à‐vis China's developmental state. Through an examination of the situation of migrant workers in the country's labour‐intensive foreign investment enterprises, this article argues that it is difficult to establish tripartite industrial relations in China and that pluralistic labour organizations will not easily develop into civil society type labour entities. China's developmental state is in an ambiguous process in redefining its role. Its ability to micro‐manage society is weakening substantially. However, its developmental character at the macro‐level largely remains strong, allowing it to continue to restrict progress towards civil society. The future will ultimately depend on a collective determination by key players — the workers, unions and the state — to find a compromise.     

Off‐road policing: communications technology and government authority in Somaliland

Prompted by the trend to see information and communications technology (ICT) as a tool for capacity building, this article asks whether the use of ICT has—or can—recast centre–periphery relations in a hybrid country such as Somaliland. Taking as its departure point Herbst's observation that a fundamental problem confronting African leaders concerns how to extend or consolidate authority over sparsely settled lands, it uses recent developments in Somaliland's coast guard and immigration police to assess ICT's contribution to changing security provision in remote and coastal areas. This allows for an analysis of Somaliland's law enforcement framework, the relationship between its politics and practice, the practical application of its coercive resources, and the Silanyo government's priorities and preference for consensus and co‐existence whenever security imperatives allow. It suggests that ICT can be a desirable operational tool or a variable in existing power networks, but that it does not represent a new mode of security governance. ICT's potential to connect Somaliland's government and populace, and politics and practice, is for now minimal, but identifying the ways in which security actors such as coast guards actually use ICT allows for a more accurate assessment of the variables shaping centre–periphery relations. Contrary to Herbst's observation, the Silanyo government does not need to overtly or systematically extend, consolidate or exert its authority in remote and coastal areas. Spatial metaphors such as centre–periphery help to clarify the situation, but the significance invested in them reflects western rationalities, rather than Somali realities.     

Japan's global environmentalism: rhetoric and reality

The 1992 Earth Summit marked the emergence of a new type of global environmentalism in which nation states increasingly sought to represent themselves as key environmental actors. Since the early 1990s, Japan has attempted to position itself rhetorically as a global environmental leader. This rhetoric must be compared to Japan's international environmental impacts, which are considerable, especially in East and Southeast Asia. Japan's domestic environmental situation is evaluated, and five key areas of international environmental impacts are discussed: official development assistance, foreign direct investment, deforestation, overfishing, and the promotion of high technology. Motivations for Japan's use of global environmentalist rhetoric including its domestic political environment, geopolitical goals, geoeconomic motivations, and the increasing globalization of the Japanese economy are analyzed. The spread of the Japanese model of development is linked to Asia's continuing environmental crises.     

Revolution,Reaction, Restoration: The Meanings and Uses of Seventeenth-Century English History in the Political Thinking of Benjamin Constant,c.1797–1830

Comparisons, juxtapositions or analogies between France's recent Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary history and England's experiences of Revolution, Civil War and Restoration between the 1640s and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 were a common but controversial feature of political discourse dealing with France's contemporary situation in the decades following the Revolution of 1789. The present article probes this dimension of post-Revolutionary political debate, by tracking the shifting meanings and uses of seventeenth-century English history in the published and unpublished political writings of the leading liberal thinker and politician Benjamin Constant, from the 1790s through to his death in 1830. Such an analysis reveals the sometimes striking reversals and inconsistencies to which Constant was driven in his effort to adjust his historical readings to France's rapidly changing political conditions, but it also reveals underlying continuities in his historical and political thinking. The exemplarity of England's case lay, for Constant, less in the provision of a constitutional model that France might hope to appropriate than in the historical spectacle of a nation's struggle for liberty, and the value of this spectacle lay as much in its cautionary messages—focused on the sterile brutality of the Stuart Restoration—as in its eventually progressive outcomes.     

The art of science at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory: The rhetoric of aesthetics and humanism in the national laboratory system in the late 1960s

This paper examines how rhetoric shaped the early history of the National Accelerator Laboratory. In a situation defined by a contentious site search and shrinking budgets for research, Robert Wilson crafted an institutional identity for the NAL that emphasized both aesthetic and scientific experience. The paper addresses the circumstances of the laboratory's founding, the "audiences" important to its success, and the ways in which the physical environment and management structure--framed by Wilson's vision of a scientific utopia--reorganized existing perceptions of physics within a humanistic framework intended to distinguish the NAL from its predecessors in the National Laboratory system.     

Grammar and Interpretation at Sallust Cat . 57.4

The meaning of the utpote qui sentence at Sal. Cat. 57. 4 is discussed with an assessment of its relevance for the situation before Catiline's final battle.     

Burma's ‘saffron revolution’ and the limits of international influence

The demonstrations in September 2007 were the most significant civil protests seen in Burma since the ill-fated pro-democracy uprising of 1988. The military government's brutal response to the latest unrest prompted an unprecedented level of diplomatic activity and a rare consensus on the need for political change. Since then, however, efforts to resolve the crisis have withered away, underlining the international community's inability over the past 20 years to make a significant impact on the situation in Burma. Neither the principled approach of some countries and organisations, nor the more pragmatic attitude adopted by others, has persuaded the regime to abandon any of its core positions. Indeed, by demonstrating the international community's continuing disagreement over Burma, and the limited policy options available, the lack of concerted action since the protests has probably encouraged the regime's obduracy and increased its confidence that it can survive external pressures. An appreciation of the generals’ threat perceptions may help the international community to understand the regime's intransigence, but it is still difficult to see what policies can be effective against a government that puts its own survival before accepted norms of behaviour and the welfare of its people. Real and lasting change will have to come from within Burma itself, but the events of 2007 suggest that this is a distant prospect.     

SOCIAL INJUSTICE AND INTER-NATIONALITY RELATIONSHIPS IN THE USSR

The deteriorating economic situation Kyrgyzstan provides an argument against the past selective development of republic economic profiles and for the need for a rational pricing system for raw materials and manufactured goods. The authors maintain that once realistic prices of Kyrgyzstan's products are established and republic authorities have the opportunity to make its production structure more rational, the republic could represent a net income donor to an all-Union budget. Thus, the paper provides a good synopsis of the concerns of the “weaker” republics in the currently more competitive situation evolving upon the weakening of central authority. translated by H. L. Haslett, Leamington Spa, UK, from: Territorial'naya organizatsiya obshchestva i problemy mezhnatsional'nykh otnosheniy: Materialy k IX s'yezdu Geograficheskogo Obshchestva SSSR. Leningrad: Geograficheskoye Obshchestvo SSSR, 1990, pp. 17-20.     

Asia's century and the problem of Japan's centrality

Japan has long been regarded as a central component of America's grand strategy in Asia. Scholars and practitioners assume this situation will persist in the face of China's rise and, indeed, that a more ‘normal’ Japan can and should take on an increasingly central role in US‐led strategies to manage this power transition. This article challenges those assumptions by arguing that they are, paradoxically, being made at a time when Japan's economic and strategic weight in Asian security is gradually diminishing. The article documents Japan's economic and demographic challenges and their strategic ramifications. It considers what role Japan might play in an evolving security order where China and the US emerge as Asia's two dominant powers by a significant margin. Whether the US–China relationship is ultimately one of strategic competition or accommodation, it is argued that Japan's continued centrality in America's Asian grand strategy threatens to become increasingly problematic. It is posited that the best hope for circumventing this problem and its potentially destabilizing consequences lies in the nurturing of a nascent ‘shadow condominium’ comprising the US and China, with Japan as a ‘marginal weight’ on the US side of that arrangement.     

Perspectives on Australian foreign policy 2006

Australia in 2006 reaffirmed its close relationship with the United States while deepening engagement with other major power partners, with further agreements concluded with China, cooperation extended with Japan, and the profile of ties with India enhanced. Australia continued to navigate through the sometimes sensitive relations among the major powers, amid additional pressures arising from North Korea's nuclear test. Tensions with Indonesia were followed by a new security agreement, though increased confidence was needed in the relationship at both official and public levels. Internal disorder in several southwest Pacific states challenged Australia's capacities to provide effective short and medium term responses. Involvements in Afghanistan and Iraq continued, with the latter situation particularly problematic. Growing demand for energy in the Asia–Pacific region directed further attention towards Australia's uranium resources, as climate change issues assumed a higher profile in domestic debate and multilateral activities.     

Big Pharma's Internationalization of R&D to China

China's increasing integration into the global pharmaceutical value chain is occurring at a time when big pharma's traditional R&D model has entered a period of crisis, and when China faces significant challenges in providing healthcare for its huge and rapidly ageing population. Despite China's ambitions of promoting its own pharmaceutical sector, it is likely to continue to depend for some time on significant contributions from foreign companies. While this situation provides considerable opportunities for big pharma companies to expand their markets in China, they are also hoping that offshoring aspects of their R&D to China may contribute to reconfiguring their current R&D model with its weak record of producing new drugs. Drawing on interviews with a small number of pharma R&D centres in Shanghai, patent analyses and industry reports, we provide insights into both the challenges and the opportunities associated with the early stages of establishing such centres in an emerging region with a rapidly growing market. This paper contributes towards a more nuanced view of the internationalization of R&D in emerging regions.     

The Specter of Revolution: Reconsidering Japan's Decision to Surrender

Existing studies of the Pacific War tend to focus on the adverse military situation in explaining Japan's decision to surrender. Special emphasis has been placed on both the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet entry into the war. Although these are no doubt critical to understanding the end of the Pacific War, they fail to tell the whole story. This paper seeks to broaden the scope of the scholarly debate by focusing on Japan's domestic situation as a major factor behind the decision to surrender. It argues that a near-obsessive fear of social revolution among Japan's conservative ruling elite played an important role in prompting Japanese elites to make the decision to end the war.     

Pierre Manent and the Politics of the Possible

Pierre Manent's recent works are marked by what he describes as a sense of realistic political possibility, which he uses to form a political response to the challenge of Islamic radicalism. Manent's “politics of the possible” differs from the usual alternatives that propose to integrate Islamic communities on liberal-individualist terms, or to repatriate Islamic immigrants to their countries of origin. Neither of those alternatives involves “politics” in the sense of articulating a political form within the polity given to us—a polity that now includes a sizable antiliberal minority. Manent's proposal to incorporate Muslim communities formally into the French polity by way of a certain social contract is thus a “politics of the possible” even if it is unlikely to be pursued. This article outlines Manent's account of political possibility and discusses two difficulties with his approach. First, the modern state's success and account of its legitimacy have distanced it from the foundational experiences in which it was capable of addressing the question of religion. Second, the situation caused by the radicalization of existing and new Muslim communities occurs at a different juncture in European political history from that which gave rise to the modern state.     

GENEALOGY,PROBLEMATIZATION, AND NORMATIVITY IN MICHEL FOUCAULT

Colin Koopman's excellent Genealogy as Critique argues that Michel Foucault's genealogies—and, in fact, his archaeologies—should be read as historical accounts of the emergence of particular “problematizations.” The idea of a problematization, which Foucault introduces late in his career, has two sides. First, there is the idea that the situation whose emergence a genealogy traces is problematic in the sense of being fraught or dangerous. Second, by tracing the genealogy, Foucault problematizes the situation itself, showing how it calls for attention. Koopman argues that Foucault's genealogies are not themselves normative, but they instead outline situations or practices in a way that allows for normative investigation and political intervention. What is required, then, are normative approaches that complement Foucault's genealogies. Koopman argues that Foucault's own late discussions of self‐transformation are inadequate to fully accomplish the task; they need to be complemented by recourse to Deweyan reconstruction or Habermasian normative reflection. However, and in turn, such reflection cannot be had on an absolutist ground but rather must be seen as historically contingent, universalizing rather than universalist in Koopman's vocabulary. I argue that there are several reasons to think that the strong separation between genealogy and normative posited by Koopman may be too strict. Foucault's rhetoric, his choice of certain problematizations, and Koopman's own commitments to problematizations as requiring attention all seem to point toward a more intimate, although admittedly implicit, relation between genealogy and normative positions in Foucault's work.     

The United States and Bahrain: Interpreting the Differentiated U.S. Responses to the Arab Spring

We examine how the United States' response to the situation in Bahrain can be differentiated from that in Libya and Egypt based on a comparative content analysis of the U.S. administration's press releases, remarks, and interviews during the first three months of the Arab Spring movement. Our findings indicate that although the level and duration of violence were comparable, the U.S. government response was strikingly different with the support given to the Bahraini government, in contrast to the critical stances adopted towards Libya and Egypt. We explain how the United States' lack of political incentive to act and concerted support by its allies were influential factors for the United States' differentiated policy during the Arab Spring.     

Guerrilla healthcare innovation: creative resilience in Zimbabwe’s chimurenga, 1971–1980

Abstract

Drawing from the last five years of chimurenga, Zimbabwe’s war of self-liberation from the early 1960s to 1980s, this paper shows that the most important aspect of technology and innovation in Africa is not the technology and innovation itself, but the African spirit of creative resilience born of the specificities of struggles its people have endured. By creative resilience is meant a phenomenon whereby, even where death is the outcome, and where the situation is insurmountable, people do not just surrender to fate, but die fighting. As a site of creative resilience, chimurenga is the ultimate site of creative labor and a vast laboratory, not simply a destination for incoming technologies, or a 'user' space but generative of its own insurgent and counter-insurgent innovations. Focusing on the communal war effort involving guerrillas and ordinary Africans in the rear bases of Mozambique and Zambia and on the front inside Zimbabwe, the paper makes its argument through a focus on healthcare innovation.     

“Bound in darkness and idolatry”? Protestant working-class underachievement and unionist hegemony

Over the past decade or more there has been a growing concern at the levels of educational underachievement within loyalist working-class areas of Northern Ireland. The inability of both educational and social policy initiatives over the past decade to improve the situation in any meaningful way has raised important questions concerning how the problem can be tackled more effectively. Placing the issue within the theoretical framework of Gramsci's hegemony, this paper argues that there is a need to better understand the historical nature of the problem and to recognise the political and social forces that have shaped its existence. It argues that there is a need to move away from explaining Protestant underachievement simply by the availability of jobs in Ulster's industrial past and to place its roots in the complex battle for social, political, and economic power since the 1801 Act of Union.     

Occult Spheres,Planes, and Dimensions: Geometric Terminology and Analogy in Modern Esoteric Discourse

This is an article on the history of religion and mathematics, which explores the origins and uses of geometric terminology in late‐nineteenth‐ and early‐twentieth‐century esoteric discourses, and inquires as to whether or not such adaptions are instances of the discursive strategy identified by Olav Hammer as terminological scientism. For the situation regarding spheric terminology, I argue that the context is not scientistic, being rather an example of the decontextualised modern appropriation of antique terminologies. In the case of planar terminology, I conclude that while its origin with Emanuel Swedenborg as an adaption of anatomical vocabulary does indeed fit Hammer's definition of scientism, modern usage stripped the term of Swedenborg's scientistic rationale — making the scientistic designation something of a vestigial atavism. In dealing with dimensional terminology, my conclusion is that from Johann Zöllner's initial formulation to the broader Spiritualistic and Theosophical applications, it exemplifies terminological scientism through and through.