读城·奥斯汀

在我的眼中,德克萨斯首府奥斯汀就像一位神奇的牛仔女郎.她与生俱来的德州骄傲仿佛拒人千里,但当你走进她的世界,"硅丘"高科技公司的无限创意与"东六街"夜晚喧嚣的摇滚音乐和谐相生;丰厚的历史人文积淀与炭火上"滋滋"冒响的烤肉相映成趣……"让奥斯汀与众不同"的口号,令这一切皆为可能.     

Racism, ethnicity and multiculturalism in contemporary Europe: a review essay

This essay examines the specificities of contemporary European racism. In particular it compares and contrasts recent expression of racism with nineteenth century expressions of racial exclusion and racial hatred. Building on arguments from two important recent collections on the upsurge of racism in western Europe, it seeks to develop a political geography of racism, one that could supplement political and sociological theories of race and racism in contemporary Europe. In so doing it links recent expressions of racism to the politicisation of migration, the tightening of community and political borders, and the development of a new politics of exclusion and new geographies of closure which seek to control exogenous minorities in, and exclude ‘foreigners' from, Fortress Europe. In examining the racial geographies of countries as divergent as France, Britain, Spain, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands, it provides a critical overview of social processes and ideological developments that have led to the recent resurgence of racism in western Europe.     

Germany in Transition: Immigration,Racism and the Extreme Right

Abstract. German society is on its way to changing from a relatively homogenous population as a result of the Second World War and prior events to a more culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse society, based on its huge post-war immigration. The emergence of racism, political extremism and violence in post-unification German society points to deficits of political legitimacy, political culture and social cohesion. The strains of unification and waves of immigration from East Germany, ethnic German resettlers (Aussiedler), and asylum seekers have exacerbated and made visible unsolved questions of national identity, diversity, immigration and integration of foreigners. These events have affected German political culture and polarised the traditional party system along a ‘New’ and ‘Old Politics’ axis. These new realities have led to a growth of far right parties, racist violence, and an increase of neo-nationalist, anti-immigrant and welfare-chauvinist rhetoric.     

Crime and the City Solution: Crime Fiction, Urban Knowledge, and Radical Geography

Radical urban geography has recently begun a critique of crime fiction, seeing its ideological shortcomings as politically instructive. This paper argues that this critique is theoretically naive and suggests that a concentration on the epistemological claims of both fiction and urban geography is more fruitful. The paper turns the critique back on radical geography and celebrates the critical possibilities of some forms of crime fiction. Specifically, the police procedurals of British author John Harvey are used to illustrate the genre's ability to articulate alternative epistemologies, ways of knowing the city that track the structure of everyday life and thus offer a critical, realistic, and reflexive approach to the city and itsproblems.     

National Parks in Scotland: Balancing Environment and Economy

The use of National Park designations to bring about aims including the protection and conservation of the natural environment has become established in most European Union member states. In the UK, such arrangements have long featured in England and Wales, but they have not been paralleled by similar designations in Scotland. Now, however, National Parks are being introduced in Scotland. While the proposed arrangements build on the experience of National Parks elsewhere in Europe, and particularly in England and Wales, they incorporate the distinctive feature of seeking to bring about socio-economic development as well as environmental protection.     

Domestic Security: Defending the Evangelical Home in the Southern California Sunbelt

Historians have been eager to trace the roots of “family values” discourse as a political phenomenon linked to the rise of the Religious Right. But the sacralisation of the Christian family deserves attention in its own right as a cultural phenomenon. Southern California provides an obvious case study, as religious conservatism and a growing military‐industrial presence intersected there in the postwar era. A case study of this region also illumines larger trends, since the national experience and the Californian experience converged in this period. A popular set of 1950s advice booklets by Bible Institute of Los Angeles (Biola) Vice President William W. Orr provides crucial understanding of evangelical efforts to provide foolproof methods for enacting God’s design for family security. Evangelical visions of family order did occasionally represent real rifts with postwar mainstream culture. But more often, oppositional rhetoric served to symbolically preserve evangelicals’ distinctive identity even when cultural trends were largely consonant with their own. Their assumptions about gender, emphasis on sexual fulfilment within marriage, and guidelines on the roles of husbands and fathers, ostensibly grounded in timeless biblical principles, were deeply indebted to mainstream values of companionate marriage and affectionate parenting.     

Sheepology: The Postcolonial Politics of Raceless Racism in Switzerland

Discussing racism and its colonial genealogy remains difficult in contemporary Switzerland. This article addresses the politics of racism's name-ability at the crossroads of studies of ‘postcolonial Switzerland’ and ‘raceless racism’ in continental Europe. The former highlight Switzerland's self-conception as outside colonialism. The latter emphasize the complexities of Euro-racism, in particular its production through the absence of explicit racial references. Drawing on postcolonial discourse-analytic methodology, I explore the famous case of the ‘sheep poster’ that supported the far right-wing Swiss People's Party campaign in 2007 and triggered an important controversy around legitimate public images of ‘Swissness’ and ‘difference’. The first section analyses the (untold) history of colonial racialised discourses that are conveyed by the poster. The second and third sections comprise a discourse analysis of the public claims that were expressed by various actors against or in defence of the poster. I show that the controversy consisted of a struggle between three antagonistic articulations of ‘Swissness’ and ‘difference’, namely between an antiracist discourse, and anti-exclusionary discourse, and defensive interventions. As the two latter discourses became hegemonic at the expense of the anti-racist critique, this struggle reasserted and renewed a regime of raceless racism, revealing both specificities and commonalities between the Swiss case and the broader context of postcolonial Europe.     

Scaling the City: The Political Economy of 'Glocal' Development - Brussels' Conundrum

In this contribution, the new position of the city in the urban political economy will be considered in the context of the shifting realities that characterize an increasingly hybridizing and cosmopolitan global (dis)order. We shall argue that globalization is paralleled by a restructuring of the city and with an increasing importance of the urban in a context of intensifying inter-urban competition. The success of cities is dependent on their local 'embeddedness' in institutional and other networks of power. Attention will be paid to the role of local elites and to the need to forge 'growth coalitions'. We shall conclude that the formation of an inclusive and cohesive growth coalition is a key condition for the future development of Brussels in a context of intense inter-urban competition. However, this poses a host of political problems. Not in the least, the fact the new 'glocal' elites often refuse to partake in local institutional or political networks. The commitment to place that invariably comes with a greater 'local' institutional embedding which may militate against their global strategies and aspirations. The key question for 'local' politics then becomes one of how to forge networks and linkages that force 'glocal' elites to become inserted actively in the regional armatures of governance.     

Ecological Knowledge and the Regional Economy: Environmental Management in the Asesewa District of Ghana

This study examines perceptions of the environment in farming communities in the forest ecotone of Ghana. It places local knowledge within a socio-economic and historical context and argues that knowledge is continually evolving, attempting to solve existing problems and discovering new ones. It maintains that favourable conditions exist in farming communities for environmental actions and development approaches based on sustainable development, since these areas have suffered from the negative effects of degradation. However, major constraints exist within the wider political economy and policy framework, which is still locked into environmentally-hostile export-oriented production, and political models which marginalize rural people.     

Building a Knowledge Economy in Ireland Through European Research Networks

The success of the Irish economy, and the technology sector in particular, over the last decade has been well noted. This article seeks to uncover the role that Irish participation in the ESPRIT programme of the European Union's Fourth Framework Programme has played in the building of Ireland's knowledge economy through its promotion of research collaboration. The primary goal of ESPRIT was the promotion of networking between organizations of similar interest across Europe, and in this article we examine the effects of the imposition of these more formal networks on organizations. The shift towards the promotion of more informal networks among European organizations in the pursuit of innovation is highlighted. After looking at Irish participation in the programme, we gauge the success of various projects and partners, and note the differences between networks, which were in place before participation in ESPRIT, where personal networking was evident, and the more formal networks created by ESPRIT. What becomes most obvious from analysing Irish participation is the conscious move on the part of those networks with a prior existence to advance their own research agenda by means of ESPRIT.