A Multi-scalar Approach to Place Branding: The 150th Anniversary of Italian Unification in Turin

This study draws from an interpretation of scale as a social construct to elaborate a multi-scalar approach to place branding that represents a growing set of theories and managerial practices aimed at leveraging the reputational capital of places. The article unveils that far from consisting of clear-cut processes which occur within a pre-given and fixed set of scalar boundaries, city, regional, country and supra-national brandings actually converge in a complex mechanism of intertwined practices and discourses. By grounding its theoretical investigation in a case study about the celebration of the 150th anniversary of Italian unification, this paper furthers the understanding of place branding from a multi-level perspective, addressing the tendency of previous studies to treat scale as a fixed hierarchy of nested levels. The findings show that scalar boundaries remain significant for the purpose of coordination and identification among the institutional actors involved. And yet, the investigation highlights that scalar boundaries do not constitute a structure of ontologically given contexts, but rather are the outcome of an ongoing dialectic process among place stakeholders through which scalar relations are constantly reproduced and nurtured during the staging of the place branding project.     

The Impact of Agglomeration Economies on Estimated Demand Thresholds: An Extension of Wensley and Stabler

Central place theory predicts that geographic markets located in rural areas have lower demand thresholds, and, therefore, a higher frequency of business establishments relative to areas that are more proximate to urban centers, other things equal. Wensley and Stabler (1998) confirm this prediction using data on the location and frequency of business activities in rural Saskatchewan. We demonstrate that this relationship may not always hold true depending on the existence and magnitude of agglomeration economies. If average cost differences associated with being located in an urbanized area are sufficiently large, then the relationship between urban proximity and number of establishments may be reversed. We provide evidence of this reversal using 1996 cross-sectional data on hospital services in Texas.     

中原龙山城址的聚落考古学研究

在夏商周文明发祥的中原地区,诸多龙山城址已具早期城市性质,并形成了以城址为中心、明显具有不稳定性和对抗性特点的扇形聚落群布局结构.其中聚落群同盟组织的存在可能是扇形聚落群成立的社会基础,而导致扇形聚落群及其同盟组织发生的原因则应是中原地区居民所面临的巨大生存压力.     

基于地域性认同的土地利用规划模式反思

传统封闭式"自上而下"土地利用规划模式在包容社会主体的土地利用需求矛盾、协调土地利用对人地关系的复杂影响、统筹区域多元增长目标等方面存在不足。地域性认同理论及相关研究成果,可为创新国内土地利用规划模式提供借鉴。本文以社会建构论为切入点,在剖析封闭式、公开式等两种主要土地利用规划模式的基础上,将以社会建构为核心的地域性认同理论融入我国现有土地利用规划体系,构建基于地域性认同的土地利用规划模式,以提升土地利用规划的过程和结果质量。     

'Shareholder value' versus the regions: the closure of the Vaux Brewery in Sunderland

‘Financialization’ and ‘shareholder value’loom large in the closure of the Vaux Brewery in Sunderland.They are necessarily intertwined with the geographies of spaceand place. Geography inevitably enters into assessments of shareholdervalue by social agents. A geographical political economy approachargues that generalized pressures created by financializationand shareholder value are mediated and contested by specificand particular configurations of spatialized social relations,social agency, and socio-institutional contexts over time, acrossspace, and in place. Geographical political economy frames theanalysis of the Vaux Brewery closure in Sunderland. A more spatiallysensitive, place aware, and locally and regionally rooted financialinfrastructure may be necessary but not sufficient to underpinlocal and regional development.     

Mirage in the Desert? Access to Educational Opportunities in an Area of Social Exclusion

While for British policymakers the route out of social exclusion is paid work through the acquisition of educational qualifications, research shows that academic achievement in areas of social exclusion is often poor. Based on a study undertaken on an inner London council estate, this paper explores the experiences of a group of carers and their children's access to secondary school education. It demonstrates the importance of a geographical focus on inequality, and the need for a nuanced approach in explaining educational opportunities in socially excluded areas. It also counters the notion of working class people as an undifferentiated group, devoid of cultural capital, whilst at the same time acknowledging the structural constraints of place which limit the full exercise of agency, so that for many, the opportunities apparently open to them turn out to be illusory.     

The Archaeology of Food and Social Inequality in the Andes

A comparative examination of food practices is useful for assessing the nature of diverse forms of social inequality. This article examines three key contexts in which to evaluate the relationship between social differentiation and food practices in the Andes: early complex societies, pre-Columbian states and nonstate complex societies, and colonial societies. A review of these distinct contexts suggests that social and subsistence change may follow different rhythms and that food-related differentiation, just like other forms of social differentiation, is neither consistently augmented in a scalar fashion in relation to “degrees” of social complexity, nor is it in all cases a direct indicator of economic inequality.     

Anthropologists,Education, and Autoethnography

Autoethnographies place personal experience within social and cultural contexts and raise provocative questions about social agency and socio-cultural constraints. Several authors are discussed who write about educational settings that are quite familiar to them, thereby positioning themselves as insiders to the milieus studied. At the same time, each book considered here poses dilemmas for the construction of an insider/outsider divide, leading to questions about how to evaluate an insider perspective. For the wider discipline of anthropology, these texts remind us that our scholarly production takes place in the context of particular social fields within which we negotiate as social actors.     

Generations,Mobility and Community: Geographies of Three Generations of Greek and Italian Ancestry in Sydney

Geographies of three generations of Greek and Italian ancestry in Sydney totalling 245 000 people in 2001 are identified. A model of community sequences is developed within a conceptual framework of intergenerational spatial, occupational and social absorption. Considerable intra‐ and inter‐generational occupational mobility took place and the third generations showed higher proportions as managers, professionals and associate professionals than persons of Australian ancestry. Second and third generations had occupational profiles which were much closer to the host society than the first generations. Despite occupational mobility, employment, residential and social trends associated with the first generations affected the adult second generations and to an extent the third. Several thousand members of three generations re‐grouped into successive local communities, patronised facilities in core communities, and maintained place identities.     

The paradox of contemporary linguistic nationalism: the case of Luxembourg

Through a case study of the mobilisation around the Luxembourgish language in the 1970s and 1980s, this article investigates the paradox of contemporary linguistic nationalism, resulting from a hiatus between the continued influence of the classic nation‐state model and the new constraints linked to a changed socio‐historical context. Based on an analysis of actors' discourses, parliamentary debates and legislative documents, the investigation retraces the social, political and economic dynamics as well as the cognitive mechanisms leading to a change in the social perception of the Luxembourgish language. It shows how the contemporary context implies specific constraints and difficulties for mechanisms of the invention of tradition, but that at the same time the traditional nation‐state model, where one nation equates with one state and one language continues to function as a reference. Through the Luxembourgish case is raised the more general question of the relation between linguistic nationalism, modernity and change in a contemporary context.     

民族旅游村寨居民文化依恋的时空变迁及其机理——以贵州西江千户苗寨村落群为例

地方是人文地理学的重要研究内容。基于地方理论,以贵州西江千户苗寨村落群为例,运用结构方程模型方法分析了旅游影响下民族村寨居民文化依恋在不同时空范围的影响路径及其作用机理。研究结果表明：①旅游利益感知和旅游成本感知对文化依恋、文化依恋对文化保护态度及行为在不同时空范围具有不同的影响路径关系;②旅游影响下的地方时空分离及其脱域机制是引起民族村寨居民文化依恋时空变迁的主要动力。对引起文化依恋时空变迁的前因影响关系和与之引起的后果效应进行整合分析,探讨文化依恋在不同时空范围的影响关系机理,希冀对民族村寨的可持续发展提供借鉴。s     

The evolution of elite high-rise condominiums in India: from the global to the neo-colonial?

The article focuses on the neo-liberal model of elite residence in India—the high-rise, high-density condominium. The growing presence of this model as an expression of social mobility indicates the critical role played by this new housing type in relation to the socio-cultural transformations advanced by neo-liberalism. This article, then, is an architectural inquiry into this new residential type within the contemporary setting of globalisation. I employ the idea of physical and social thresholds as a conceptual tool to investigate the progress of this spatial and cultural typology, following its injection into the Indian architectural landscape. I explore the multiplicity of physical thresholds within its spatial planning as a signal of manifest social relationships of increasing complexity. The two case studies in the global node of Mumbai explored in this research represent the beginning and the peak of development of this gated housing type. The methods used include spatial analyses of the design of the condominiums, participant observation and a reading of marketing material. The findings reveal that what started as a global residential type devoid of socio-cultural overlays has now evolved into a residential form with deeply entrenched cultural hierarchies echoing many attributes of colonial elite-status building.     

CULTURAL AND SOCIAL DISCONNECTION IN THE CONTEXT OF A CHANGED PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

The context of the study was provided by the enforced relocation of an old coal mining community in the UK and describes the changes that were experienced by relocatees. The study is longitudinal in design over a six year period and this article is based on the qualitative part of the study. The old village had consisted of five straight rows of terraced houses whereas the new village was built in a curvilinear design with additional housing, occupying a much larger space. Reduced visual access to others not only diminished a sense of connectedness but also restricted an information flow which had been part of the functioning of the previous community, leaving indigenous participants with a sense of isolation. This unwanted isolation diluted the previous collective identity and weakened social support. In addition, an abrupt change in the community's socio‐cultural patterns occurred and previously learned privacy mechanisms were found to be inappropriate in the new setting. New values, priorities, lifestyles and overt materialism were evident and the data suggest that the earlier mostly collective functioning of the community had been replaced by individual functioning. It is proposed that spatial aspects provide constraints and opportunities for different behaviour patterns, highlighting the crucial importance of the physical environment and illustrating the essentially dynamic relationship between person, group and place.     

旅游小企业与旅游地社会文化变迁:阳朔西街案例

本文以阳朔西街的旅游小企业为例对旅游小企业与旅游地社会文化变迁的关系进行了具体分析。论文首先研究了西街旅游业发展以后产生的种种社会文化变迁的现象,在此基础上分析了西街的旅游小企业在旅游地的社会文化变迁中所发挥的作用:西街旅游小企业的经营内容之一就是中西方文化的交流;旅游小企业的从业人员成为社区社会文化变迁的先锋人群;西街旅游小企业是当地居民与外来游客进行交流或沟通的一个平台。最终文章得出旅游小企业的存在直接促进或加速了社区的这种社会文化变迁的研究结论。     

Environmental history in the Mediterranean world: cross-disciplinary investigation of cause-and-effect for degradation and soil erosion

Environmental history is a multidisciplinary enterprise united by shared interests in ecological change and the complex interactions between people and the environment. Its practitioners include expertise in the natural sciences, in history or archaeology, or in political ecology and related social sciences; but there is no agreement on a common agenda and limited success in bridging methodological and epistemological divisions that impede integrative and interdisciplinary research. World-systems history and environmental history also have overlapping interests in long-term change and matters of sustainability. The Mediterranean world sustained agricultural lifeways across some 8000 years, yet its environment has repeatedly been described as degraded, suggesting conceptual confusion between transformation and destruction. This paper is didactic in purpose and uses landscape histories for the Peloponnese and eastern Spain to show that the impact of recurrent, excessive precipitation events and of reduced quality of land cover are difficult to unravel, because they commonly appear to work in tandem. As a result (a) environmental change cannot be assumed or “predicted”, but must be studied inductively by experts with science skills, and (b) cause-and-effect relationships demand an understanding of ecological behavior, for which humanistic insights are indispensable. Social science models highlight systemic relationships from socioeconomic and structural perspectives, but are less suited to deal with the complexity of environmental change or the contingencies exemplified by human resilience. Near Eastern, Greek and Roman agronomic writings offer elite “voices” that speak to cumulative technological change, scientific understanding, and the context of intensification. Rural voices can be heard through ethnography, and in eastern Spain are extended into the past by archaeology and archival research. In the absence of structural constraints, they reveal collective decision-making with respect to a shifting repertoire of agricultural strategies that take into account market opportunities, demographic growth, finite resources and environmental problems. Such adaptability spells resilience, and “good farming” is culturally embedded as a civic responsibility, both in the ethnographic present and in the older, elite agronomic writings. But if the “moral economy” erodes in the wake of food stress, tax extortion, instability, insecurity, or ideological oppression, there is little incentive to pursue long-term strategies, so that behavior focuses on short-term survival. The context for this dialectic of poor versus good ecological management may be structural, but cause-and-effect in the traditional Mediterranean world ultimately depended on ecological and human resilience. Long-term sustainability is similarly non-predictive. It depends on people, rather than social theory.     

‘Site unseen’: the case for reburial of archaeological sites

Abstract

The decision-making process for managing and conserving archaeological sites is increasingly accepted as being driven by a thorough assessment of values, physical condition of the resource and the management context. Reconciling the results of these assessments, which may point in different directions, to arrive at a decision that is most appropriate for the resource can be a complex process. When reburial (also referred to as backfilling) is being considered as an option for the preservation of an excavated site (especially long-term reburial), there are particular opportunities and constraints and a host of considerations (stakeholder, technical and management) that need to be taken into account if the values of a place are not to be compromised and stakeholders alienated. For, however beneficial reburial may be from a conservation perspective, it is generally viewed with scepticism or disfavour by those with legal authority over a site, and by those stakeholders who want access to the site for study, education or money-making. This paper examines the rationales for reburial, as well as the objections to it, and puts forth a decision-making model for reburial interventions that takes into consideration stakeholder, technical and management needs.     

Subsistence economics,family size,and the emergence of social complexity in hunter–gatherer systems in eastern North America

A consideration of ethnographic data, computational model results, and archaeological data suggest that changes in family-level economics coincident with subsistence intensification contributed to the emergence of social complexity among prehistoric hunter–gatherers in eastern North America by creating the conditions for a “rich get richer” scenario. Ethnographic data are used to construct a general computational model representing key person- and family-level behaviors, constraints, and decisions affecting the size and composition of hunter–gatherer families. Results from model experiments suggest that lowering the age at which children make a significant contribution to subsistence (e.g., through the broadening of the diet to include the kinds of mass-harvested, “low quality” foods that were increasingly exploited during the Archaic and Woodland periods) relaxes constraints on family size and makes large, polygynous families economically viable. Positive feedbacks between the productive and reproductive potentials of larger families produce right-tailed distributions of family size and “wealth” when the productive age of children is low and polygyny is incentivized. Size data from over 800 prehistoric residential structures suggest right-tailed distributions of family size were present during the Late Archaic through Middle Woodland periods. These distributions would have provided variability in family-based status that permitted the emergence of hereditary social distinctions.     

'GLOCAL' MOVEMENTS: PLACE STRUGGLES AND TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZING BY INFORMAL WORKERS

This paper investigates the scalar practices of collectively organized informal workers and the political implications of such practices. It illustrates how the studied group organizes across scales – hence, a 'glocal movement'– and stresses the importance of an analysis that integrates these multiple scales of collective organizing, as they may have a bearing on each other. In so doing, it contests a common tendency to analytically privilege one or other scale of resistance and agency. In particular, I argue that networking across scales may be of significance for local struggles and thus play a role in local politics. The transnational activities of the studied group assist it in challenging local power relations and dominant place projects that repress informal livelihood activities. This paper comprises a conceptual discussion of notions of scale, of conceptions of the spatialities and scales of resistance as well as of place, followed by an empirical illustration that refers to an association of informal vendors in Maputo, Mozambique, and its international connections. The analysis is based on interviews with vendors, leaders of the association and with the international partners of the association.     

The Egyptian Predynastic and State Formation

When the archaeology of Predynastic Egypt was last appraised in this journal, Savage (2001a, p. 101) expressed optimism that “a consensus appears to be developing that stresses the gradual development of complex society in Egypt.” The picture today is less clear, with new data and alternative theoretical frameworks challenging received wisdom over the pace, direction, and nature of complex social change. Rather than an inexorable march to the beat of the neo-evolutionary drum, primary state formation in Egypt can be seen as a more syncopated phenomenon, characterized by periods of political experimentation and shifting social boundaries. Notably, field projects in Sudan and the Egyptian Delta together with new dating techniques have set older narratives of development into broader frames of reference. In contrast to syntheses that have sought to measure abstract thresholds of complexity, this review of the period between c. 4500 BC and c. 3000 BC transcends analytical categories by adopting a practice-based examination of multiple dimensions of social inequality and by considering how the early state may have become a lived reality in Egypt around the end of the fourth millennium BC.     

Contesting coal and climate change using scale: emergent topologies in the Adani mine controversy

The Adani mine controversy is a significant new space of contestation in conflicts over coal mining and climate change in Australia. Proposed as one of the largest new coal mines in the world, the Adani (or “Carmichael”) mine has become a flashpoint between two broad coalitions—the pro‐mine coalition, consisting of governments, elements of the media, and mining interests, and the anti‐mine coalition, consisting of community groups, environmental non‐government organisations, activists, Indigenous communities, and farmers. Based on thematic analysis of news media articles and interviews with environmental actors in the Adani mine controversy, this article demonstrates how each coalition employs discursive scale frames and counter‐scale frames to represent and contest the controversy. We find that the pro‐mine coalition remains situated within a topographical spatiality, with a backwards oriented temporality, that obscures emergent topologies from their view. In contrast, while retaining capacity for operating within traditional scalar topographies, the anti‐mine coalition is more adept at negotiating topologies that increasingly define our social worlds. It is oriented towards a deep future horizon in which the Adani mine controversy represents an opportunity to reshape existing social and political orders. The sorts of scalar tactics documented here are likely at work in other resource extraction controversies, highlighting the need to attend to how scale may be being used to obscure irrationalities and injustices in extraction projects, and the potential for counter‐scale frames to help destabilise fossil fuel regimes.