Sauvons le Luxembourg: urban greenspace as private domain and public battleground, 1865-1867

This article examines the way in which public response to a municipal proposal concerning greenspace reduction in Paris during the Second Empire reflected not only political antipathy but also an ever-increasing understanding of public urban greenspace as part of the private domain. By examining archival records concerning the proposal, essays, newspaper accounts, and memoirs, this article argues that a particular proprietary sensibility, fomented by expansive public greenspace development in Paris, intersected with extant social constructs and political tensions to create a public, coordinated, and sustained challenge to the authoritarian regime. Thus, the battle over the Luxembourg Garden became more than just a fight to prevent a reduction in size of a particular public urban greenspace. Rather, public debate surrounding alteration of this garden underscores the extent to which public greenspace, in general, was urban space that blurred the public—private boundary and presented unique opportunities for community formation, social integration, and political action.     

The composition of late Romano-British colourless vessel glass: glass production and consumption

One hundred and twenty-eight colourless glass tablewares from settlement contexts throughout the British Isles, dating from the mid-3rd to 4th century AD, were analysed by ICP-AES spectrometry. Three distinct compositional groups were identified based upon the use of different decolourisers and primary raw materials, with possible sub-groups within these. These compositions have distinct, but overlapping chronological ranges, suggesting colourless glass production in at least three, possibly more, centres in the late Roman period. The compositional analysis highlights the high degree to which recycling of glass was taking place during this late period. The chronological distribution of some of these compositions is more restricted within the British assemblages than is observed in other published assemblages from Western Europe. This distinction may indicate different supply patterns of glass to the Western provinces.     

Gender and Environmental Justice in Louisiana: Blurring the boundaries of public and private spheres

Many scholars have examined the implications and effects of a putative dichotomy between public-as-masculine and private-as-feminine spheres on community activism, and suggest that women's community activism blurs this ideological divide in numerous ways. This article draws on a case study of a siting conflict in St. James Parish, Louisiana, to examine how, in the process of blurring boundaries between gendered spheres of interest and activity, predominantly women environmental justice activists contended with differently gendered contexts. Concepts of performance and performativity shed light on how gendered hierarchies of public and private sphere activism both constrained and enabled the protest group's political practice.     

Organising regional production networks in Southeast Asia: implications for production fragmentation, trade, and rules of origin

The globalisation of economic activities has fundamentally reshapedthe relationships between production and trade. The cross-borderproduction activities of transnational corporations (TNCs) havenot only deepened spatial divisions of labour, but also complicatedour understanding of international trade patterns. The developmentof intricate regional production networks by global corporationshas major implications for production fragmentation, internationaltrade, and rules of origin in the global economy. Empiricallygrounded in a study of regional production networks controlledby Singapore-based TNCs, this paper aims to make a modest contributionto the emerging literature on production fragmentation and rulesof origin. Based on an analysis of empirical data from a surveyof 63 parent Singapore-based manufacturing TNCs that have cross-borderoperations in Southeast Asia, I found that their spatial productionfragmentation is rather limited. Most of their Southeast Asiansubsidiaries cater to local markets, or manufacture components/partsfor the regional production facilities of their major globalcorporation customers. I also consider the implications forbusiness strategies and public policies in relation to productionfragmentation and rules of origin in Southeast Asia.     

Ceramic production,consumption and exchange in the Banda area,Ghana: Insights from compositional analyses

Ceramic production, exchange and consumption in the Banda area, west central Ghana has been affected by historical developments ranging from recent competition with alternative vessels (made of metal and plastic) to political economic upheavals that altered community relationships within and outside the region. In this study, we explore spatial and temporal patterning in pottery production, exchange and consumption using a combination of analytical techniques. Instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) of a large sample (491 specimens) of archaeological and ethnographic pottery, clay and temper samples from sites across the Banda area has led to the identification of seven compositional groups whose differential distribution implies shifts in resource selection through the last thousand years. Laser ablation-ICP-MS analysis was used to explore the effects of distinctive tempering agents (crushed slag) on the bulk chemical signature of a subset of Banda ceramics, while petrographic analysis provides insight into the preparation of ceramic fabrics. We integrate insights from these diverse physical studies to investigate the dynamics of pottery production, exchange and consumption over the course of the last millennium in the Banda area and explore potential linkages with broader political economic transformations.     

Spatializing the ecological Leviathan: Territorial strategies and the production of regional natures

This paper explores a dual absence — the absence of the state within contemporary geographical analyses of nature; and the absence of nature within contemporary explorations of state power. We argue that the modern state continues to play a crucial role in framing social interactions with nature, while nature is still vital to states within their realization of different forms of material and ideological power. In order to reconnect analyses of the state and nature, this paper combines work on the production of nature and state strategy with Lefebvre's recently translated writings on state space and territory. By focusing on the production of territory (or state space), we explore the interaction of the state and nature in the context of the political management of social and ecological space. We unravel the spatial entanglements of the state and nature through an analysis of the British state's territorial strategies within the West Midlands region. By considering three key historical periods within the history of the West Midlands we reveal how the emergence of the regional space called the West Midlands is a product of the ongoing spatial dialectics of state and nature therein.     

Indexing the great ledger of the community: urban house numbering, city directories, and the production of spatial legibility

Despite the recent focus on the spatial politics of calculation, few studies have explored the historical geography of house numbering, a spatial practice that has arguably been one of the principal strategies for rationalizing the geographic spaces of everyday life over the course of the last two centuries. This paper provides the beginnings of a critical spatial history of street and house numbering in the gridded cities of the United States since the eighteenth century. City directory publishers were among the leading proponents of numbering houses at a time when many local governments had yet to firmly commit to systematic house numbering as an essential responsibility of the local state. I therefore examine the connection between the publishing of city directories and the development of urban house numbering systems, both of which were integral to the production of spatial legibility and the individualization of the urban population. The notion of viewing the city as a ‘text’ is historicized through a critical analysis of the modernist comparison of urban space to a recordkeeping book. The paper concludes by tracing the institutionalization of house numbering as a practice of spatial governmentality.     

City, region, and in between: New York City's water supply and the insights of regional history

Urban historians have greatly expanded their geographical purview in recent years, incorporating suburbs and hinterlands into their analysis of social and environmental change. Urban environmental historians and suburban historians have played a critical role in the regionalization of urban history over the last decade. This case study of the development of New York City’s water supply reveals the benefits of taking a regional approach to urban history. From the New York Public Library to Central Park’s Great Lawn to neighborhood parks, the New York City landscape bears the traces of the continuous development of the city’s water network. Expansion of the water system in rural hinterlands enabled municipal officials to put urban reservoirs to new uses, creating some of the city’s most beloved public spaces. The rehabilitation of urban infrastructure underscores the intimate linkages between rural development and the urban built environment.     

Lapita subsistence strategies and food consumption patterns in the community of Teouma (Efate,Vanuatu)

The subsistence strategies of the Lapita populations (3100–2800 BP), the first colonisers of the pristine environments of the islands of Eastern Melanesia and Western Polynesia, have been a matter of ongoing debate for decades. Opinions have ranged between the two extremes of Lapita colonisers being either characterised as highly mobile foragers to fully horticultural communities. To further address the question, this paper presents stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic data obtained from analyses of human and animal collagen samples from the site of Teouma (Efate, Vanuatu) dated to between c. 3000–2500 BP. The isotopic signatures obtained from 28 samples (23 human and 5 animal), interpreted in combination with isotopic information from several coastal and insular environments, suggest a diet primarily made up of terrestrially derived animal protein with lesser contributions from vegetable produce and inshore marine species. Comparisons linking the isotopic data gleaned from the Teouma individuals and Lapita subsistence patterns reconstructed through archaeozoological and archaeobotanical remains support the hypothesis of a mixed economy, that included terrestrial foraging, inshore marine exploitation and a low level of food production for at least some of the earliest Lapita colonists in Vanuatu.     

British voluntary hospitals, 1871-1938: the geography of provision and utilization

This article examines the distribution of beds, staff and in-patients in voluntary hospitals in England, Wales and Scotland between 1871 and 1938. The findings bear upon two theoretical debates; first, the concern of historians of social policy with the extent to which charity and mutual insurance delivered a satisfactory level of institutional care before the NHS, and second, the broader issue of whether the localism of voluntary sector provision tends to produce a geographically uneven service. We survey the chronology of voluntary hospital growth pointing to reasons for foundations. We then analyse the levels of beds, staff and in-patients per head of population in counties, county boroughs and large burghs. This evidence suggests that despite the expansion of the sector and the narrowing of differences between places, considerable variations in provision and utilization remained. We argue that these variations were likely to have had an impact on the health of individuals. We conclude by tracing the emergence in political and public discourse of the perception that geographical unevenness was a failing of the voluntary system.     

Learning to be suburban: the production of community in Westwood Hills, Pennsylvania, 1952–1958

In 1952, working-class women in the newly built suburb of Westwood Hills, Pennsylvania began publishing a mimeographed newsletter entitled The Hilltrotter. They used the newsletter to shape their community and by doing so learned and taught how to be suburban. This process occurred both discursively and materially, as the staff of The Hilltrotter simultaneously sought to create a shared conception of community and to shape the everyday lives of Westwood Hills' residents. This paper investigates the work of women on The Hilltrotter and by doing so shows how they produced a constellation of identities – of community, class, age, gender, and citizenship. They constructed these identities through their efforts to make Westwood Hills into a safe, stable, and well-ordered suburban community. In doing so they contributed to the formation of a postwar hegemonic order that enlisted the working class in the reproduction of capitalism.     

Transfer of population as a solution to international disputes: population exchanges between Greece and Turkey as a model for plans to solve the Jewish-Arab dispute in Palestine during the 1930s

The author explores the reasons for the failure of a plan for population exchanges that took place between Jews and Arabs in Palestine in the 1930s. Special focus is given to the success of previous exchanges between Greece and Turkey that took place during the 1920s and why this model failed in Palestine. The author concludes that "the Zionist plans which assumed that one could encourage voluntary transfer by creating attractive economic conditions in the target areas, did not take into account the factors of nationalism, ties to place of residence, religion, etc. These factors carried no less weight than the economic factor and they could effectively prevent any voluntary transfer of the Arab population."     

Citizenship, accountability and community: the limits of the CSR agenda

While the issue of the role of the private sector in development is very much on the agenda of donors and governments, mainstream Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) debates continue to neglect questions with regard to the accountability of companies to the communities in which they invest. Liberal notions of CSR place great emphasis on voluntary, partnership and market based approaches to tackling social and environmental problems and managing conflict. While the rise of voluntary standards and codes of conduct in the North and the growing popularity of various forms of 'civil regulation' has improved the responsiveness of corporations to social and environmental issues, there are doubts about their transferability or relevance in many southern settings. This is particularly so when viewed from the perspective of communities pursuing corporate accountability in the absence of donor, NGO or government pressure for company reform. It is in these 'majority world' settings that we encounter the limits of the liberal CSR agenda.
This article therefore explores the different tools that poorer communities have developed in order to construct mechanisms of corporate accountability. Recent work in India is drawn upon to ground the analysis, but reference is made to many other cases in different regions of the world and across a variety of sectors. It is suggested that many state-based, community-based and company-based factors determine the likely success of such initiatives. Power disparities and how to contest them emerge as key, however, and their neglect within mainstream CSR approaches undermines their ability to address issues of corporate accountability in situations characterized by sharp inequities in power. The emphasis here is on the process of promoting corporate accountability, and the relations of power that underpin these, rather than the achievement of more narrowly defined indicators of corporate performance.