Mobility and migration in Byzantium: who gets to tell the story?

This article underlines the importance of approaching written sources for what they are: authorial constructs. This is true also for depictions of mobility and migration. Byzantine authors instrumentalized these for their own purposes beyond the event at hand. Authorial focus, along with the requirements of the chosen literary genre, is also the reason for the different scales of actors that appear in these texts, whether large blurry masses of nameless people, smaller groups with a distinct profile, or finely drawn individuals.     

Dithering over Darfur? A preliminary review of the international response

The extreme violence against civilian communities in the Sudanese province of Darfur has coincided with the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. This article makes a preliminary assessment of the international response to Darfur to see how it compares to the denial and delay of ten years ago. The slow evolution of the international community's response is charted from early Chadian efforts at mediation in 2003, the eventual involvement of the UN Security Council in July 2004, the increasing role of the African Union and the US government's conclusion in September 2004 that the violence constitutes genocide. The international community has certainly been too slow and divided in its response in the face of competing political priorities. There were also significant misgivings about a US-led military intervention and considerable Sudanese intransigence and diplomatic skill. Nevertheless, there are important signs that key parts of the United Nations and the international community have worked with a definite post-R wanda consciousness. Important developments have also been made in combining humanitarian and political negotiation while a committed African Union is now in a position to make a real difference. Although late to gather force, international political will and US leadership have been strong. But, like many tragedies before it, Darfur shows that political will is not enough. The choices facing even the most wilful politicians still remain intensely difficult and 'doing something' is not as easy as most NGO press releases imply.     

Who needs a review of the financial system in Australia? the case of the Wallis inquiry

The Howard government reoriented the then existing institutionally based financial regulation towards a functionally based regime with new prudential and disclosure regulators in 1998. This paper uses the governmental agenda-setting framework of John Kingdon to explain this financial regulatory change undertaken in Australia following the Wallis Inquiry of 1996. It also examines the role of the Inquiry in the policy process. It shows that the financial regulatory change was on the bureaucratic agenda of the Treasury Department. A window of opportunity opened for the Treasury following the 1996 election, with the new Howard government keen to achieve financial regulatory reforms to address future regulatory challenges proactively while the new Treasurer Peter Costello wanted to consolidate his power within markets and politics. Costello coupled the Treasury's solutions to problems and to political processes. The Wallis Committee was ‘packed’ by the government in accordance with its regulatory policy preferences. Its role was to legitimise the government's policy preferences publicly, and to transfer the ‘governmental agenda’ into the ‘public agenda’. However, this was not a case of the government pressuring for its policy preferences over the financial services industry. In fact, the Inquiry was used as a venue to generate industry and public support for the regulatory changes, and was used to build a network of alliances within and outside the parliament.     

Critical review of desalination in Spain: a resource for the future?

There have been significant territorial changes in the Spanish Mediterranean in the last few decades because of the important growth of residential tourism functions. The Spanish National Hydrological Plan ( 2001 ) and, to a greater extent, the Action for Management and Use of Water Programme ( 2004 ) advocated large‐scale desalination of seawater to guarantee a supply for urban, tourism, and even future agricultural demands. The paralysis of urban development planning caused by the financial crisis (2007/08), together with the downward trend in the consumption of drinking water in the last decade, highlighted a capacity to produce desalinated water that was far superior to actual needs. This study reviews the current context in which desalinated water is produced in Spain, weighs up the advantages and disadvantages of this method of water management, and considers the potential role that this non‐conventional source of water could play as a strategic resource in the future. The main findings of the study are that desalination is not a panacea; rather, it should be considered in terms of technological parameters tailored to the circumstances of each geographical and socioeconomic environment.     

Winds in the ionosphere—A review

Winds in the upper atmosphere, and their effect on the ionosphere, are reviewed with an emphasis on information useful to ionospheric studies. The winds are driven by pressure gradients from solar and auroral heating, with some forcing by tidal energy from below. Simple calculations which balance the pressure gradient by ion drag and Coriolis forces are generally unreliable, so large-scale numerical models of the coupled atmosphere and ionosphere are required. The accuracy of these global models is limited by uncertainties in the energy inputs at high latitudes and at the lower boundary (about 90 km). The best current wind data come from incoherent scatter radar or airglow installations, at a few sites and for only a few nights per month. Satellite data are also available for several years, and results to 1989 are incorporated in the global HWM90 model. This seems acceptable for determining mean winds at night, less good during the day, and least good in the southern hemisphere where few data were available. Plots are given to show the mean winds at different latitudes and longitudes, for use in ionospheric calculations.Meridional winds alter the height of the mid-latitude F layer, causing large changes in the effective loss rate. This is the major cause of observed seasonal changes, of differences between the hemispheres, and of changes at different longitudes. An increased knowledge of the winds is essential for further progress in F region studies. Ionospheric data provide the most promising route, using routinely scaled parameters. The simplest calculations compare observed peak heights, obtained from M (3000)F2, with the value h_o predicted by simplified “servo” equations. Errors occurring for some hours after sunrise can be overcome using model results to define h_o this allows rapid and accurate wind calculations at dip latitudes of 23–62°. Winds can also be obtained from full model calculations, designed to match observed values of peak height or density.     

A progress review of entrepreneurship and regional development: What are the remaining gaps?

This study reviews the literature related to regional entrepreneurship. It identifies the main topical perspectives, advancements and shortcomings, discusses several research gaps and proposes ways forward. The literature review is based on 170 peer-reviewed articles in the leading journals of entrepreneurship and regional science. The findings reveal that major debates occur within the disciplines of regional economics, sociology and economic geography, but discussions across disciplines are scant. While regional economists tend to overlook the role of contextualized agency, and thus neglect processes that may influence entrepreneurs’ acting in distinctive localities, entrepreneurship scholars tend to overlook the role of the spatial and proximate contextual conditions in the entrepreneurial process. Future research should intensify its efforts on the interrelation between entrepreneurial agency and regional structuring in order to expand current understandings of which types of entrepreneurship prevail in different localities.     

Add shamans and stir? A critical review of the shamanism model of forager rock art production

The “shamanism” or “neurpsychological” model proposed by Lewis-Williams and colleagues has had a powerful impact on rock art research, and has significantly added to our knowledge of past foragers lifeways in southern Africa and elsewhere in the world. However, this model is primarily based on the view of shamanism as a universal and unvarying characteristic of foragers over space and time. This paper raises both theoretical and empirical problems with this view. The paper examines the relationship between the specific social roles and practices of shamanism and the overarching cosmological structures on which they are based in both southern Africa and Northern Eurasia. In both cases, the paper argues that many cosmological beliefs are highly persistent and durable, extending into prehistory, while the specific practices and roles of shamans are variable, changing to meet the immediate and local needs of their communities. This suggests that rock art is easier to relate to the overarching cosmological dispositions of the people that produced it and the paper closes by suggesting some theoretical and methodological alternatives recognizing this fact.     

What do we know about the punctuated equilibrium theory in China? A systematic review and research priorities

The punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) shows that government policy is mostly stable with occasional drastic change, which scholars attribute to institutional friction and limited information processing capacity. Although the existing PET literature predominantly focuses on democracies, scholars have started to apply the theory to authoritarian countries. Autocracies are a fertile testing ground for the theory's underlying mechanisms because they appear to experience less institutional friction but more informational restrictions than democracies. However, PET studies on autocracies are still rare. To deepen our understanding of the PET and the policy process beyond democracies, we conduct a systematic review of 88 Chinese language PET journal articles. We show that Chinese language PET research is increasing. Contrary to the English language PET literature, most Chinese studies are qualitative, while a key similarity is the weak operationalization of PET core concepts. The reviewed studies confirm a punctuated equilibrium pattern of policymaking in China but provide only limited evidence for more intense punctuations compared with democracies. Future PET research on China ought to use long-term data sets and examine institutional friction and information processing by policymakers. We also argue for more international exchange and comparative research to advance our understanding of the policy process in China and other autocracies.     

The Revenge of Practical Reason? A Review Essay On Gananath Obeyesekere's The Apotheosis of Captain Cook

The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific. By Gananath Obeyesekere. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Pp. xvii + 251. Price $US 24.95.