Is there a place for children's geographers in the policy arena?

Despite a limited number of notable exceptions, children's geographers are not generally engaged with the policy process. Drawing on research carried out for the UK's Department for Education and Skills, this paper will argue that children's geographers are ideally placed to explore a number of important research questions appertaining to the impact of policy reform on children's lives. It suggests that by actively engaging with the policy process, we, as children's geographers, can bring a fresh and important perspective to the policy arena.     

Is Land‐based Resettlement Still Appropriate for Rural People in China? A Longitudinal Study of Displacement at the Three Gorges Dam

Now complete, the effects of the Three Gorges Dam on rural livelihoods can be observed. This article presents the first longitudinal analysis of the livelihoods of two groups of rural households that were first surveyed in 2003, just after inundation, and again in 2011. It finds remarkable gains in income and social well‐being along with moderate improvements in food security and income equality. This study explores the livelihood strategies associated with these outcomes, namely land consolidation, agricultural specialization, livelihood diversification and migration. These strategies are discussed in the context of the dramatic changes that have taken place in the Three Gorges Resettlement Area over the last decade and across China more broadly. The article concludes that while non‐farm jobs are increasingly important, land remains an essential resource in the reconstruction of rural livelihoods, allowing rural households to respond to their drastically altered environment more effectively and at a pace of their own choosing.     

Is there a need for a new cultural policy strategy in the Nordic welfare state?

Cultural policies have existed as a structural element of the Nordic welfare states from the very beginning. Today these policies are being re‐evaluated, and there are some indications that they may be gradually dismantled. Local cultural politicians in municipalities (cultural boards) and professionals (e.g. cultural secretaries) have become uncertain and anxious about their future role and legitimacy.

This new situation is addressed and analysed by using the ideas of Goffman's on‐and off‐stage representations, and Foucault's governmentality. Important background factors in the development of cultural policies both in the past, present and future are identified and used to explain the present unclear situation as a reflection of an existing cultural hierarchy or hegemony (see Gramsci). This paper also discusses the role of cultural professionals and local cultural politicians in the implementation of the Nordic cultural policies with references to examples from Finland and Sweden.     

Does Patronage Still Drive Politics for the Rural Poor in the Developing World? A Comparative Perspective from the Livestock Sector

Is the analysis of patron–client networks still important to the understanding of developing country politics or has it now been overtaken by a focus on ‘social capital’? Drawing on seventeen country studies of the political environment for livestock policy in poor countries, this article concludes that although the nature of patronage has changed significantly, it remains highly relevant to the ways peasant interests are treated. Peasant populations were found either to have no clear connection to their political leaders or to be controlled by political clientage. Furthermore, communities ‘free’ of patron–client ties to the centre generally are not better represented by political associations but instead receive fewer benefits from the state. Nonetheless, patterns of clientage are different from what they were forty years ago. First, patronage chains today often have a global reach, through trade, bilateral donor governments and international NGOs. Second, the resources that fuel political clientage today are less monopolistic and less adequate to the task of purchasing peasant political loyalty. Thus the bonds of patronage are less tight than they were historically. Third, it follows from the preceding point and the greater diversity of patrons operating today that elite conflicts are much more likely to create spaces in which peasant interests can eventually be aggregated into autonomous associations with independent political significance in the national polity. NGOs are playing an important role in opening up this political space although at the moment, they most often act like a new type of patron.     

Is there a future for the past? An overview of archaeology in western Russia and Ukraine

The current political and economic situation in Russia and Ukraine poses grave dangers for the archaeological and museum professionals who guard these nations' legacies. At the moment that political barriers to Western collaboration were removed, new problems have crippled the post-Soviet archaeological community. Concurrently, Westerners tend to misunderstand Soviet and post-Soviet archaeological theory, forgetting that techniques such as lithic microwear and taphonomic analysis were introduced by Soviet scholars. New discoveries are described in three general categories: the origins of food-producing economies in western Russia and Ukraine, the evolution of surprisingly large towns in Copper Age Ukraine, and the origins of pastoralism in the Russian and Ukrainian steppes.     

Resilience in the Light of Climate Change: Useful Approach or Empty Phrase for Spatial Planning?

In the context of adaptation to climate change and spatial planning, the idea of urban and regional resilience has been attracting increasing attention because it recognizes both the given uncertainty of climate change and the complexity of cities and regions. Even if initial attempts have been made to operationalize the concept of resilience, a gap exists between the intense theoretical discussion and the use of resilience thinking in planning practice. On the basis of a discussion of existing attempts that define resilience principles, the authors derive eight principles for urban and regional resilience: diversity, redundancy, flexibility and adaptability, modularity, interdependency, stabilizing and buffering factors, mobility, as well as planning and foresight. Referring to two exploratory studies—the City and Region of Stockholm (Sweden) and the City and Region of Rostock (Germany)—this article aims to explore whether spatial planning already contributes to these principles and so to build resilience. The analysis shows that spatial planning already contributes to urban and regional resilience. Also, the principles, as suggested here, can be used to operationalize the idea of resilience. Prospectively, such principles may support spatial planning to choose adaptation measures and specific objectives and to contribute to urban and regional resilience.     

Wealthy-gentry politics: How are capitalists in China chosen for the ‘Houses’?

Choosing individual private entrepreneurs to be members of the People's Congress (PC) or the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) is one of the most important mechanisms for ‘cooperative capitalism’ in China. This article aims to answer two questions: First, what are the differences between factors for winning a seat at the PC and a seat at the CPPCC, respectively? Second, is there any difference between factors that have a significant impact on winning a seat at the county-township level and the prefecture-and-above level of the PC or CPPCC? Based on empirical findings, I have coined the term ‘wealthy-gentry politics’ to conceptualise the fact that behaving as a member of the socially responsible ‘gentry’ plays an increasingly significant role at the higher level and in the PC compared to the lower level and the CPPCC, while economic wealth is just a threshold and party membership is not a guarantee.

挑选私营企业家个体进入两会是中国“合作型资本主义”的一个最重要机制。本文回答两个问题。1）获得人大代表的因素与获得政协委员的因素有何区别？2）获得县镇级两会代表和地级以上两会代表的影响因素是否有区别？ 根据实证研究,笔者发明“财—绅政治”的概念来描述一个事实：负有社会责任的社会贤达在高一级的人大较之低一级的政协发挥了越来越大的作用,财富仅仅是门槛,党籍也不起决定性作用。     

Is cultural democracy possible in a museum? Critical reflections on Indigenous engagement in the development of the exhibition Encounters: Revealing Stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Objects from the British Museum

Recent museological scholarship emphasises visitor participation and democratic access to cultural heritage as key to securing the ongoing relevance and future sustainability of museums. But do legacies of colonialist collecting practices and hierarchical conventions of representation in museums afford the possibility of genuine cultural democracy? This paper explores this question via detailed analysis of the Encounters exhibition, developed by the National Museum of Australia in partnership with the British Museum and promoted as an unprecedented partnership between the institutions and Indigenous Australian communities. Drawing on an extensive and emerging literature on museums, community engagement, participation and democracy, in tandem with analysis of public critiques and Indigenous responses to the exhibition, the paper suggests that the extent of Indigenous agency within the collaboration fell short of the articulated goals of the project. It concludes that the concept of maximal participation and release of agency to communities of interest may be difficult to achieve within existing museum frameworks.     

Can the Raman spectrum of anatase in artwork and archaeology be used for dating purposes? Identification by Raman microscopy of anatase in decorative coatings on Neolithic (Yangshao) pottery from Henan,China

Scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive X-ray analysis has earlier shown that the white background layer (slip) on painted pottery sherds (Yangshao culture, Henan, China, 4200 BC) is composed of kaolinitic clay containing titanium in the assumed form of TiO₂ at just 1 wt%. The same samples of white slip have now been studied by Raman microscopy, revealing bands characteristic of anatase, but none from the majority species, the matrix of kaolinitic clay. These results highlight the extraordinarily intense Raman scattering from even trace amounts of anatase and thus the need to recognise that, although the colours of archaeological artefacts are almost always determined by the nature of the matrix, the Raman spectrum may be determined by a highly scattering trace component such as anatase. The significance of anatase as a potential date-marker pigment on works of art and archaeological artefacts is discussed.     

Earliest Evidence for the Ivory Trade in Southern Africa: Isotopic and ZooMS Analysis of Seventh–Tenth Century <Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">ad</Emphasis> Ivory from KwaZulu-Natal

KwaGandaganda, Ndondondwane and Wosi were major Early Farming Community settlements in what is today the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. These sites have yielded, among other remains, abundant evidence of ivory and ivory working dating to the seventh–tenth centuries ad, pre-dating by approximately 200 years the better-known ivory artefacts from sites in the Limpopo River Valley and surrounding regions. We report the results of carbon, nitrogen and strontium isotope analysis to explore the origins and procurement of this ivory, in combination with Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) to identify the species of animals from which it was derived. All of the ivory studied using ZooMS was elephant, despite the presence of hippopotamus remains on all three sites. Some ivory was probably obtained from elephant herds that lived close to the sites, in the densely wooded river valleys favoured by both elephants and early farmers. Other material came from savannah environments further afield. Ivory found at these three sites was drawn from different catchments, implying a degree of landscape/resource partitioning even at this early stage. These communities clearly invested substantial effort in obtaining ivory from across the region, which speaks to the importance of this commodity in the economy of the time. We suggest that some ivory items were for local use, but that some may have been intended for more distant markets via Indian Ocean trade.