The preservationist paradox: modernism, environmentalism and the politics of spatial division

According to Bruno Latour, the imposition of crude classificatory schemes onto complex entities has two main effects: firstly, the classifications lead social actors to sift the world into the schemes' simple categories; secondly, underlying relations subvert the schemes' functioning, resulting in the production of transgressive 'hybrids'. Thus, classification and relation interact and this interaction shapes both the practice of classification and the world that is classified. In this paper, we examine the interaction between a scheme of spatial classification and the spaces that are enrolled within the scheme. We show that a division between urban and rural areas was put in place in post-war England in order to protect a 'vulnerable' rural nature from urban advance. However, as soon as it was imposed, this division was transgressed by complex socio-economic processes. We assess the response to this transgression by considering the activities of the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), an environmental group that played some considerable part in constructing the urban–rural divide in the first place. We show that the CPRE has responded to the 'paradox of preservationism' by placing urban–rural divisions in the context of 'ecological' relationships. We illustrate this 'ecologization' of the modernist divide using the example of housing and we argue that the CPRE's ecological approach illustrates how a new alignment between 'urban' and 'rural' may herald a new and more sophisticated form of spatial classification.     

The benefit-sharing principle: Implementing sovereignty bargains on water

A global water crisis is emerging that may challenge states' existing and future water availability. With countries already heavily reliant on international rivers, the issue of managing water scarcity in these basins is mounting. An already complex issue due to climatic change and the politics of access, the management of water resources is complicated further by sovereignty. In a context shaped by political boundaries and a concomitant territorial exclusivity, nation-states seek to guarantee their societies' water by exerting control through physical and institutional infrastructure. Yet, the basin's hydrological interdependency implies co-riparian countries remain vulnerable to each other's use of the shared river, suggesting ecological rather than just political limits to sovereignty. The continued vulnerability, as envisaged within the greening of sovereignty, suggests international cooperation is necessary. Explained as sovereignty bargains, in which states trade reduced autonomy for future benefits, international cooperation is, we suggest, bi-directional and can stem from or create international institutions. We examine an instance of international cooperation that exemplifies an alternative approach to international river management. The benefit-sharing principle focuses on allocating the outputs from water use, rather than the water itself; and was used by the Senegal basin riparians to access key services such as electricity despite a context of poverty, climatic change and intra-basin politics. What emerges is a strong narrative of cooperation sustained, over decades, by the states' willingness to engage in sovereignty bargains.     

The iron age in Mediterranean France: Colonial encounters, entanglements, and transformations

During the last seven centuries of the first millennium BC, the indigenous societies of Mediterranean France underwent a series of gradual social and cultural transformations that are linked in complex ways to their encounter and increasing entanglement with the broader Mediterranean world. This article presents a synthesis of current knowledge of this issue and explores some of the main themes guiding research. New evidence concerning the alien colonial agents (Etruscan, Greek, Punic/Iberian, and Roman), and the contrasting nature of their presence and power in the region, is discussed, as is evidence concerning forms of indigenous engagement with colonial states and paths of social and cultural change. The consumption of alien goods (wine, ceramics) and the adoption of foreign techniques and practices (ceramic production methods, coinage, writing) are examined in terms of the locally situated logic of demand and the ramifications for entanglement and change. Transformations in settlements, ritual spaces, funerary practices, and the agrarian landscape are discussed.     

The UK,threshold status and responsible nuclear sovereignty

The example of the UK is used to explore two linked ideas relevant to the current international politics of nuclear weapons: that of the threshold state, whereby a state moves from possession to non‐possession of weapons rather than in the opposite direction; and that of responsible nuclear sovereignty, adapting the notion of responsible sovereignty to the nuclear context. The UK regards itself as an exemplar of responsible nuclear sovereignty and is closest to the disarmament threshold, being driven closer by military and economic stresses. Nuclear disarmament will require all nuclear‐armed states to approach and cross this threshold, a journey assisted albeit ambiguously by the shared practice and norms of responsible nuclear sovereignty. Yet the nine nuclear‐armed states' relations to the threshold differ markedly, raising more questions about the feasibility of the popular model of coordinated disarmament. Although coordination remains desirable, the UK seems more likely to abandon its nuclear force by deciding that ‘enough is enough’ than through the conclusion of a grand multilateral initiative.     

The year of the insurgents: the 2008 US presidential campaign

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush's unpopularity at home and abroad and the looming threat of recession would have made a gripping drama of the 2008 presidential election campaign even without the ground‐breaking emergence of the first credible black and female candidates for the White House. But the defeat of the Democratic establishment's front‐runner, Hillary Clinton, by a little‐known freshman Senator of mixed ancestry suggested that this was to be the year of the insurgent, just as the Republicans rallied to the least loyal and most contentious of their candidates, the maverick Senator John McCain. The extraordinarily attractive and articulate Senator Barack Obama re‐wrote the rule book on winning primaries and caucuses with the help of Silicon Valley and an unprecedented turnout among black and young voters, before veering sharply to the centre once the nomination was secured. Orthodoxy returned at the conventions, with Obama picking a safe centrist as running mate and McCain choosing a Christian conservative, although generating great excitement by nominating a woman and undermining the usual democrat advantage among female voters. And for all the talk of a ‘new politics’, the year of the insurgents came down at the end, as US elections usually do, to a handful of swing states and the money and organization to win them.     

Competing entanglements in the struggle to save the Amazon: The shifting terrain of transnational civil society

Transnational civil society has often been conceptualized as a third sector, buffered from the power politics of nation-states and global capital. The relative autonomy of this sector has been seen as key in empowering the voices of marginalized peoples and in advocating new counter-hegemonic agendas on the world stage. Recent research, however, has begun to explore power imbalances within the transnational civic sphere, and how different transnational NGOs' modes of articulation with political institutions and market actors inform those power dynamics. We suggest here that the concept of “entanglements,” recently introduced within political geography, can offer a useful spatial imagery in assessing the effects of these varied lines of influence. The article first traces the evolution of the Amazon Alliance, a transnational network of environmental and human rights NGOs and Amazonian indigenous federations. It then examines a countervailing nexus of governmental and corporate entanglements that have been drawing conservation NGOs away from indigenous eco-political engagement in recent years. To understand the waning salience of the eco-indigenous conservation agenda, we argue, requires analysis of the shifting terrain of civil society, and of the articulation of different NGOs with institutions beyond the frontiers of the third sector.     

Introduction: Transnational retail and the global economy

The fastest retail-system transformation in history has beensweeping across the emerging markets of East Asia, Central andEastern Europe, and Latin America over the past decade withprofound impacts on economies and societies in those regions.Conceptualized by researchers in development studies and agriculturaleconomics as the ‘supermarket revolution in developingcountries’ (see, for example, Reardon et al., 2003; Reardon,2005; Reardon and Hopkins, 2006; Humphrey, 2007; Reardon etal., 2007), that transformation has been driven not only bydemand-side forces such as urbanization and income growth inthe emerging markets, but also by supply-side forces such     

地域社会的跨国叙事:近代以来广东潮阳陈四合批局与陈氏跨国家族的建构

论文通过个案研究,探讨了近代以来广东潮阳陈四合批局与陈云腾跨国家族的建构。在中国近代政治史上,闽粤交界的潮汕地区少为国史学者所关注,但在社会经济与文化变迁领域,这是一个需要深入研究的地方。无论是跨国主义、海洋史,还是从方兴未艾的跨国史视角看,近代以来的潮州人一直都是一个活跃的、深具跨国性特征的群体。陈云腾家族的故事首先说明,要深刻理解跨国空间的人群,任何时候都不能忽略近代以来国家的制度变迁与地方社会脉络的因素。在海外的"跨国"要素影响本土社会的同时,本土社会业已存在的历史文化传统也深刻影响着处于跨国空间的人群。