The Decline of the Scottish Conservatives in North‐East Scotland, 1965–79: A Regional Perspective

This article takes a fresh look at the decline of the Conservative Party in post‐war Scotland, a phenomenon that has provoked much debate. The analysis presented here is innovative in that it takes a regional approach, whereas other contributions to this field have tended to ignore the considerable regional diversity of Scottish political behaviour. By examining one particular region of Scotland – the rural north‐east – this article demonstrates that the Conservatives’ decline occurred at the hands of parties – the Liberals and the Scottish Nationalists – that did not brand themselves as left wing or right wing; the latter in particular eschewed conventional political labels. This marks another departure from the established literature, which has tended to discuss the decline in terms of the Conservative Party or the Scottish electorate moving ‘left’ or ‘right’. Furthermore, the article makes it clear that a serious decline befell the party between 1965 and 1979: before the advent of Thatcherism that has widely been held responsible for the Scottish Conservatives’ electoral woes. This analysis is conducted by examining the local press coverage of the region, as well as the national and regional records of the parties concerned. It therefore seeks to make a contribution to the wider study of post‐war British politics, by demonstrating the benefits of local and regional approaches in this period where they have been largely overlooked. This article demonstrates that even in the 1960s and 1970s, when politics seemed so nationally uniform, there is considerable diversity to be appreciated in different parts of the country.     

Ceramic Production and Dietary Changes at Juffure,Gambia

This paper explores the connection between ceramic production and dietary changes immediately before, during, and through the decline of the Atlantic trade at Juffure on the Gambia River. The height of the Atlantic trade in the eighteenth century was a period of increased ceramic production and technical experimentation. Simultaneously, there is increase in the diversity of consumption evident in the faunal and botanical remains recovered. This diversity, in both ceramic manufacture and diet, all but disappears with the decline of the Atlantic trade on the river. It is argued that the greater variety observed in ceramic manufacture during the height of the Atlantic trade is related to social practices of display associated with food. This is accomplished through a comparison of everyday and special events composed of displays of food and wealth across ethnic boundaries. These are indicative of different traditions of consumption and discard rather than signaling ethnic differentiation.     

Excessive rightsizing? The interdependence of public school closures and population shrinkage

Shrinking cities have, by definition, lost population. Rightsizing is a strategic planning approach to mitigate the challenges of population loss by adjusting a municipality's services, amenities, or even footprint to fit a new demographic reality. While studies have documented the unacceptability and ineptitude of municipality-driven rightsizing, public school closures have proliferated and quietly become a noteworthy material manifestation of population change. However, as public schools are widely considered to be a foundational component of community cohesion, identity, and prosperity, it begs the question of whether their closure may accelerate the decline feedback mechanisms already present in many shrinking cities. Our study examines public school closures in Ontario, Canada, from 2011 to 2016 to determine the relationship between municipal population trajectories and size and public school closures, and to explore the prevalence of school closures and the community context in shrinking Ontario municipalities. We find that public school closures occurred disproportionately in shrinking and smaller municipalities. Furthermore, public school closure prevalence is associated with low income, low ethnoracial diversity, and low educational attainment.     

A Late Holocene Population Bottleneck in California Tule Elk (Cervus elaphus nannodes): Provisional Support from Ancient DNA

Zooarchaeological analyses have suggested a possible case of late Holocene resource depression in California tule elk (Cervus elaphus nannodes). We develop and conduct a preliminary independent test of this here based on trends in genetic diversity derived from ancient DNA extracted from archaeological elk bone. Mitochondrial DNA sequence data from 24 tule elk temporally dispersed across the late Holocene deposits of the Emeryville Shellmound, California, provide provisional support for a decline in genetic diversity and a population bottleneck beginning about 1600 B.P. Final confirmation of this pattern must await complete replication of the sequences. Stable isotope analyses of the elk bone provide a record of change in the terrestrial environment across the period of deposition and no suggestion that climate change may have played a role in an elk population decline. The analysis has implications for our understanding of change in human behavior and biology during late Holocene of central California, the methodology of resource depression analyses, and the conservation biology of tule elk.     

The Index of Economic Disparity: Measuring trends in economic disparity across Canadian Census Subdivisions and rural and urban communities

Territorial inequalities have long been a subject of study and concern in Canada. In the face of large structural changes such as industrial shifts and the decarbonization of our economies, there is an urgency to understand such inequalities and design effective policy interventions for those places facing persistent economic decline. This paper shares a novel composite index that measures economic disparity across Canadian Census Subdivisions (CSDs) using Census data from 2001 through 2016 and the 2011 National Household Survey. Named the “Index of Economic Disparity,” it is comprised of an equally weighted average of four sub-indices that assign percentile rankings for all CSDs based on whether they experience persistent and substantial decline in key economic areas: population, labour force outcomes, working-age share of population, and industrial diversity. The variation of outcomes across geographies—urban and rural—highlights the importance of place-based policies.     

Race-based districting: does it help or hinder legislative representation?

This paper assesses the impact of using race-based districts on membership diversity of the US Congress and state legislative chambers as well as on electoral competition and voter participation in US Congressional and state legislative elections. In the 1990s membership diversity has increased in the US House of Representatives and state legislative chambers due to increased reliance on the use of race and ethnicity in drawing Congressional and legislative districts. But anecdotal evidence suggests that the creation of more homogeneous districts may lead to a decline in electoral competition, and thus a decline in voter participation in elections held within those districts. Uncompetitive Congressional or state legislative districts are posited to reduce the incentives for candidates or parties to mobilize voters and to restrict the electorate to habitual voters only. A lack of incentives to vote in district elections may diminish overall participation and have consequences in elections for statewide offices. I examine electoral competition and voter participation in recent Congressional and state legislative elections to determine whether electoral competition and voter participation have decreased, and whether that decrease can be linked to changes in the homogeneity of districts. I conclude by suggesting that bodies who adopt districting plans as well as those charged with a review of such plans take into account how line drawing affects electoral competition and voter participation as well as membership diversity.     

Local Labour Market Diversity and Business Innovation: Evidence from Irish Manufacturing Businesses

This paper estimates the effect of diversity within local labour markets on business-level innovation. Using survey data and Irish census data, the paper explores whether the diversity of human capital at county level is associated with higher innovation output. Diversity in age, nationality and educational attainment is measured using an index of heterogeneity and its effect on business innovation is estimated using an innovation production function approach. It is found that diversity in nationality and educational attainment is positively associated with the probability of a business product innovating. The findings also suggest that greater external labour market diversity and greater levels of internal third-level education may be substitutes. Where a business is in a diverse location, it may not require higher levels of educational attainment among its workforce to source knowledge for product innovation.     

The changing face of Canada: the uneven geographies of population and social change

This paper attempts to convey a sense of the increasing importance of the population question for the future of Canada and its social geographies. This future will be shaped as much by changes in population processes and living conditions as by economic and political factors. Specifically, four transformations are rippling through the country's social fabric and urban landscapes: slow growth and the demographic transition modifications to family forms and living arrangements; increasing ethnocultural diversity; and the shifting relationships among households, labour markets and the welfare state. There is increasing unevenness of population growth, juxtaposing localized growth and widespread decline, massive social changes, the concentration of immigration and new sources of diversity in metropolitan areas, and fundamental shifts in social attitudes concerning family, work and gender relations. Deepening contrasts in living environments and economic wellbeing flow from these trends, and the varied challenges they pose for private actors, governments and service-providers. Questions relating to the country's future population geographies and social structures are complex, analytically difficult, and politically charged, but are too important to ignore.     

The Strategic Significance of Workforce Diversity in Museums

This paper considers increasing international interest, both academic and professional, in the implications and strategic significance of workforce diversity. Drawing on research that has been undertaken principally within the field of human resource management, as well as the experiences of museum sectors internationally, the paper explores the rationale behind, and potential efficacy of, recent initiatives to enhance cultural diversity within the UK museum sector through an approach characterised by the use of positive or affirmative action. It is argued that workforce diversity will become increasingly important to the sector as, in response to changing socio-political agendas, museums are required to assume new roles as agents of social inclusion. The paper concludes by broadening the concept of ?diversity management' (which has emerged from the field of human resource management) to take account of the museum's unique goals and functions and presents a conceptual framework within which the dynamic interrelationships between diversity within a museum's workforce, audiences and programmes can be considered.     

The Unfolding of Unreason: Javad Tabatabai's Idea of Political Decline in Iran

Javad Tabatabai, a leading theorist and historian of political thought in Iran, has presented a controversial theory regarding the causes of the decline of political thought and society in Iran over the last few centuries. His ideas on Iranian decline have affected the intellectual debates on modernity and democracy currently underway in Iran. Tabatabai's career-long research has revolved around this question: “What conditions made modernity possible in Europe and led to its abnegation in Iran?” He answers this question by adopting a “Hegelian approach” that privileges a philosophical reading of history on the assumption that philosophical thought is the foundation and essence of any political community and the basis for any critical analysis of it as well. This article critically engages with Tabatabai's ideas of “crisis,” and “decline” by challenging his exposition of the Persian tradition.     

The Turnbull government’s ‘Post-multiculturalism’ multicultural policy

ABSTRACT

The Turnbull government presented Australia’s fifth national multicultural policy statement in March 2017. This article analyses the policy statement and argues that it represents the most significant change to Australian multicultural policy in four decades. Among other things, it abandons the language of government responsiveness to cultural diversity that previously defined Australian multiculturalism. The 2017 policy amounts to a new form of post-multiculturalism—different from earlier conservative, neoliberal and centre-left versions—in that it seeks to ‘mainstream’ multicultural policy on the grounds that Australian multiculturalism has succeeded in its intended task. While a mainstreaming strategy of this sort is, I argue, theoretically consistent with Australia’s liberal nationalist approach to cultural diversity, the institutional and attitudinal conditions that it presupposes are yet to be fully realised in Australia. More multicultural work needs to be done before this kind of post-multiculturalist approach is practicable.     

Consociationalism under examination: Is consociationalism the optimal multiculturalist approach for Turkey?

Some scholars maintain that the Republic of Turkey should construct a consociational model to manage its ethno‐cultural diversity. This article suggests consociationalism is not the optimal multiculturalist approach for Turkey, where there is some degree of interethnic moderation between ethnic Kurds and Turks at the grassroots level. In the presence of this mass‐based moderation, a consociational formula is unlikely to provide Turkish political leaders with political incentives that urge them to cooperate and enter into consociational power‐sharing arrangements with their Kurdish counterparts. This renders consociational power‐sharing arrangements difficult to promote or enforce in Turkey. In the absence of such incentives, any multicultural reform of the consociational formula would not be sustainable in Turkey. There would simply not be enough popular support for such reforms. There are some electoral strategies that offer both majority and minority leaders political incentives to move toward the moderate middle, form interethnic coalitions, foster interculturalism, and increase the number of intercultural citizens. These strategies are offered by centripetalism, another multiculturalist approach to managing ethno‐cultural diversity.     

Culture for competitiveness: valuing diversity in EU-Europe and the ‘creative city’ of Berlin

The European Union (EU) has in recent years propagated an approach to ‘culture’ that pulls together support for the creative and cultural industries with diversity-sensitive immigration and integration strategies, drawing on popular policy visions of the ‘creative’ and ‘intercultural’ city. This approach emphasizes the role that the diversity of culture, as personal resource, can play in enhancing economic competitiveness. The article examines its logic and possible effects through an analysis of EU documents and policy in Berlin. Berlin intersects with the EU’s agenda, using EU structural funds and participating in the European program ‘Intercultural Cities’. It is shown that the attempt to use ‘culture for competitiveness’ equates support-worthy ‘diversity’ with forms of culture that conform to (neo)liberal values and priorities. The attempt to shape a cosmopolitan place attractive for investment and the high-skilled feeds into gentrification processes that create ‘diverse’ neighborhoods where ‘difference’ has no place.     

Rethinking ethnography: A study in public anthropology

This editorial calls for an alternative approach to writing ethnographies. Instead of treating a group as a cultural whole to make writing about it easier, the author emphasizes the importance of understanding the intracultural diversity that exists within that group. In addition, he asks ethnographers to step away from a framework which places them as the primary interpreters of a group. Instead, he calls for more dialogic, multicentric narratives, that allow the people they study (as well as their readers) to compose their own empowering narratives about the group. Intracultural diversity ensures there is not one true account, but many.     

Crisis and communitas: Victor Turner and social process

Victor Turner anticipated many of the new directions that distinguish contemporary sociocultural anthropology. In The Ritual Process, Turner set out the significant parameters of his approach in which ethnography plays a central role. He advocated an anthropology that is open, non-dualist, and that is concerned with the human condition in the diversity of its practices. In his introductory guest editorial to part two of the special issue on Ritual process, Bruce Kapferer focuses in particular on the structure/anti-structure dynamic in Turner’s approach to ritual process.     

Transitions to Formality and Declining Inequality: Argentina and Brazil in the 2000s

Although inequality and labour informality continue to be distinctive characteristics of Argentina and Brazil, during the last decade the two countries have been successful in reversing the negative trends of the 1990s. This article presents a comparative analysis of the labour formalization process that took place in Argentina and Brazil during the 2000s. It studies the flows towards labour formality, what caused them, and the interrelations of this process with the changes that occurred in labour institutions and the decline in income inequality. The study contributes to two debates: the role of labour market flexibilization in employment formalization, and the decline in income inequality. Most of the literature emphasizes the evolution of returns to education; this study complements this approach by analysing the contribution of formalization to the decline in inequality in Argentina and Brazil. The results show that labour formalization has reached all categories of workers, that it has been accompanied by real minimum wage increases, and that it has had an equalizing effect.     

Fertility decline in rural China: a comparative analysis

Many models have been proposed to explain both the rapidity of China's fertility decline after the 1960s and the differential timing of the decline in different places. In particular, scholars argue over whether deliberate policies of fertility control, institutional changes, or general modernization factors contribute most to changes in fertility behavior. Here the authors adopt an ethnographically grounded behavioral-institutional approach to analyze qualitative and quantitative data from three different rural settings: Xiaoshan County in Zhejiang (East China), Ci County in Hebei, (North China), and Yingde County in Guangdong (South China). The authors show that no one set of factors explain differential timing by a combination of differences in social-cultural environments (e.g. spread of education, reproductive ideologies, and gender relations) and politico-economic conditions (e.g. economic development, birth planning campaigns, and collective systems of labor organization) during the early phases of the fertility decline.     

Mutualism on Australian heritage breed farms

For millennia, humans and domesticated animals have lived interdependently. In return for shelter, feed and care, animals have provided people with diverse material and symbolic resources within high-stakes mutualistic relationships. However, mutualisms are always susceptible to ‘cheaters’, where one partner enjoys the benefits without providing adequate reciprocation. When considering mutualisms on an ethnographic scale, industrial agriculture's reduction of animals to unidimensional commodities can be seen to constitute such cheating. By analyzing the practices of nourishment, procreation and protection on Australian heritage breed farms, where breed diversity and convivial interspecies reciprocity are valued above profit, this essay offers a case study of a more nuanced mutualism within the domestication nexus. Since partners in a mutualistic relationship tend to face a shared fate, protecting the integrity of these relationships is critical in an era where climate change and ecosystem decline are both hastened by and detrimental to agriculture.     

Rethinking the global heritage discourse – overcoming ‘East’ and ‘West’?

This article illustrates how Japan’s involvement in international heritage discourse, in particular since the Nara Conference in 1994, played an important role in the development of a global understanding of heritage and what it constitutes. It explores the way the Ise Shrine came to be represented as an iconic example of an ‘Eastern approach’ to heritage to become central in the paradigm shift within global heritage discourse towards acknowledging cultural diversity. In this article, however, I argue that the presentation and understanding of the Ise Shrine has perpetuated a number of misconceptions about an Eastern approach to heritage conservation. In particular, its presentation and interpretation as a cultural site devoid of its distinct religious and political significance, limits what can be learned from it. This article argues that without full recognition of the religious beliefs intimately embedded in the traditional social structures, practices and attitudes related to heritage sites, recognition of cultural diversity would remain limited.