Sparse,Inconsistent and Unreliable: Tax Records and the World Inequality Report 2018

This article reviews the World Inequality Report 2018, a large collaborative data project based on the work of Thomas Piketty and the late Anthony Atkinson, which critiques the entire literature of inequality measurement from survey data and purports to provide superior, unprecedented and reliable coverage of income and wealth inequalities over the entire world, based primarily on tax records. The article examines three major issues: the coverage provided by tax data in the world economy, the consistency of tax data with other sources of information on income inequality, and the peculiarities of tax‐based measurement of inequality in the United States. Then a comparison is made with measures drawn from other forms of administrative data — specifically payroll records — which are generally more consistent with records of inequality measured in household surveys than are tax records. Following this, the article discusses the analysis of wealth and wealth inequality before offering a few closing remarks about policy.     

A Critical Analysis and Philosophical Review of ‘Rapid Reburial’: the Clarence project

In 2012, Australian cultural heritage practitioners and conservation scientists collaborated on a national underwater cultural heritage (UCH) reburial project, known as the Australian Historic Shipwreck Preservation Project (AHSPP) funded by the Australian Research Council. This resulted in the excavation, documentation and reburial of the ‘at risk’ shipwreck Clarence. Following the excavation, the site and associated artefacts were reburied and subsequently covered by shade cloth and finally, with polyvinyl chloride (PVC) tarpaulins. After completion of the in situ reburial, a number of critical issues were put into sharp relief including: what constitutes the accurate identification of a site as being ‘at risk’; and the implications of ‘rapid reburial’.     

Constitutional Reforms in Jordan: A Critical Analysis

This study aims to shed light on the experience of the Jordanian constitutional reforms during the era of King Abdullah II and the Arab Spring. Moreover, this study provides a comprehensive and integrated view of these vital reforms and the democratic process in Jordan. With due consideration to the fact that the constitution represents the backbone of any political regime, constitutional developments in Jordan have been reviewed since the first Jordanian Constitution was drafted in 1928. By analyzing the most recent constitutional amendments, we identify the main features of these amendments as well as their strengths and weaknesses, potential for success or risk of failure, and the positive and negative reactions thereto. This study provides a summary and recommendation, notably, the need for further constitutional amendments to consolidate the process of reform and democracy in Jordan.     

A Critical Comment on the Taylor Approach for Measuring World City Interlock Linkages

In the study of economic‐geographic structures, the shifting focus from the national state to the city and its region has highlighted the lack of reliable interurban data sets. The abundance of usable data sets on international structures and flows has no counterpart when studying interurban relations, which makes it hard to draw any extensive conclusions regarding the structure of world city networks. Instead of relying on available data sets, Peter Taylor has developed a method for generating data sets that, it is argued, can be used in research on the structure of the world city network. In this approach, actors are defined as cities with internal attribute service values, values reflecting the presence of different transnational service‐producing corporations in each city. The structural values between each pair of cities are then established by a mathematical formula based on the service value of each firm in each pair of cities. This procedure can be criticized on two accounts. First, although internal attributes on exceptional occasions can be used as a proxy and as a rough estimate for structural values, such studies must have a firm theoretical underpinning in order to be valid from a network‐analytical perspective. If not, such generated structural values become nothing more than a function of internal attributes, thus losing the whole basic idea of social network analysis. Second, the Taylor function used for generating structural values can be questioned. Why should a large presence of TNC offices in a pair of cities imply a larger city interlock link than would be the case between a high‐ranked city and a low‐ranked city, as the city with the larger service value probably serves cities with a lower service value with economic command, control, and support functions?     

‘Chinatown Re-oriented’: A Critical Analysis of Recent Redevelopment Schemes in a Melbourne and Sydney Enclave

This paper develops a critical analysis of Chinatown redevelopment schemes undertaken by State governments in Victoria and New South Wales since the early 1970s, This period marks a transition in Australian management strategy toward minority groups from one of assimilation/discrimination to cultural pluralism. At the local level, this shift has been marked by efforts on the part of planners and politicians to promote Chinatown for its perceived contribution to ‘Multicultural’ Australia The paper argues that the Melbourne and Sydney schemes share with similar projects in other Western countries long-standing assumptions about ‘a Chinese race’. This has implications both for the conceptualization of ‘Chinatown’ and for public policy relating to ethnic relations.     

The changing World : A review

Abandoned farmsteads are a characteristic feature of Scotland's marginal uplands. Yet little is known of the quantity or location of these early settlements or indeed, of the date of their abandonment. This paper outlines a method of mapping and dating deserted settlement sites and exemplifies the method by reference to abandonment in the Lammermuir Hills in South East Scotland. In this area alone it appears that more than 230 settlements were abandoned before 1860, and a further 104 over 1860‐1970. The scale of this abandonment is greater than has been generally supposed and must lead to speculation about the extent of former settlement elsewhere in upland Scotland.     

‘Social Development’ as Neoliberal Trojan Horse: The World Bank and the Kecamatan Development Program in Indonesia

This article seeks to reconceptualize the post‐Washington consensus (PWC) by focusing not simply upon the institutional structures and ideology promoted by it, but the manner in which these are promoted on the ground. The aim is to reveal a central distinction between the Washington consensus and the PWC that has been somewhat neglected: their diverging approaches to implementation. The author focuses on the World Bank‐funded Kecamatan Development Program (KDP) in Indonesia, a project that is viewed by some as being somewhat unorthodox. He argues that in addition to its promotion of the latest round of institutional reforms, what is really different about KDP, compared with older approaches to market‐led development typical of the Washington consensus, is the manner in which it delivers its mix of neoliberalism. What is radical about a programme like KDP is that it constitutes a new Trojan horse for embedding market‐centred norms and practices.¹ In general, this is demonstrative of a key difference between the Washington consensus and the PWC that has been undervalued in many analyses of the dominant development paradigm: the methods used to embed and sustain liberal markets.     

The Cultural Complexities of Learning and Development in A Post-Modern World

The books under review focus on the role culture plays in studies of childhood socialization, learning, schooling in global contexts, and educational change. Key chapters highlight schooling practices not well known in Western culture. Both books advocate understanding and respecting cultural differences while emphasizing that cultures are dialectally reshaping and reorganizing in response to rapidly changing economic, political, and social forces. The challenge facing societies in the age of global communication is to preserve unique cultural heritages while acknowledging shared human values that may transcend the boundaries of a given world.