European coherence and regional policy? A Finnish perspective on the observed and reported territorial impacts of EU research and development policies

The present article focuses on recent analysis on the regional impacts of research and development (R&D) actions within the European Union (EU). Focus will be on exploring a report produced by the European Spatial Observation Network (ESPON), and essential viewpoints of the report will be studied from the Finnish perspective. The operating framework is based on social scientific methodology. The conclusions are based on the current evolution of the Finnish innovation and technology policy. Also thematic areas for further research programming and information needs are proposed.     

Nationalism and Sexuality,What are the Issues?

Abstract. This article attempts to clarify in a systematic fashion the relationship between nationalism and sexuality. Whilst a relationship is now generally recognised between the two phenomena, it has been neglected relative to other issues. There are genuine reasons for this, the relationship being fraught with conceptual and empirical problems. Such problems are evident in the writings to date directly on nationalism and sexuality. This discussion attempts to initially disentangle racism and gender from nationalism and sexuality, respectively, before outlining what I consider to be the three major intersections: national sexual stereotypes, sexuality in national conflict and sexuality in nation-building. Each of the intersections are indicated by an assessment of their conceptual relationship, and illustrated by various historical instances.     

What are patterns in the humanities?

ABSTRACT

This paper is concerned with patterns in past human behaviour, what they are, and how this relates to the detection of patterns in data by means of computation. Theorists have not given patterns the attention they deserve. Therefore it is far from clear what patterns are and to what purpose scholars may use them. This paper presents eight propositions on patterns which hold true for patterns found ‘by hand’ and patterns found ‘by computation’. One such is that a pattern is discernible in behaviour when we subject it to the intentional stance, as the philosopher Daniel Dennett argues. Here behaviour is part of an intentional system. This paper’s argument is that the patterns found ‘by computation’ too are part of an intentional system. To substantiate this claim this paper discusses two important examples of detecting computational patterns in the domain of the humanities.     

A diamond in the rough?: an examination of the issues surrounding the development of the Northwest Territories

Over a period of approximately five decades, the federal government of Canada has transformed the predominantly nomadic hunting and gathering society of the Northwest Territories (NWT) to one which is based largely on wage and/or transfer income, and life in permanent communities. Several decades of planning for regional development and the expenditure of large sums of public monies have failed to give rise to a viable economic system in the region. This paper argues that the inefficacy of these past policy approaches stems at least partly from a failure to recognize explicitly the interrelationship between the economy of the region, its constitutional status and that of its Native population.
Au cours d'une période d'approximativement cinq décennies, le gouvernement fédéral du Canada a transformé la société principalement nomade de chasseurs et cueilleurs des Territoires du Nord ouest en une société d'une part basée sur le revenu salarié et/ou de transfert et d'autre part composée de communautées établies de façon permanente. Plusieurs décennies de planification en vue d'un développement régional ainsi que des dépenses importantes des deniers public n'ont pas réussi à mettre en place un système économique viable dans la région. Le présent article défend la thèse que l'inefficacité de ces anciennes politiques provient en partie à l'incapacitéà reconnaître explicitement les interrelations entre l'économie de la région, son statut constitutionel et sa population autochtone.     

How old are Australia's pictographs? A review of rock art dating

Australia contains some of the world's richest and apparently longest traditions of rock pictographs. Dating this art, however, has been problematic, with few ‘direct’ and reliable dates of Pleistocene or early Holocene age having been obtained from visible, representational imagery. This paper critically reviews the evidence for the antiquity of pigment rock art in Australia by examining the various dating techniques employed. The accurate and reliable dating of rock art worldwide is crucial to understanding the evolution of modern human symbolism and whether cognitive modernism came about after, rather than with, the first signs of full biological modernism; understanding the pitfalls and devising proper methods are crucial prerequisites. Towards these ends, this paper reviews the results and techniques that have been employed to date the apparently earliest known pictographs in Australia.     

The invasion of Iraq: what are the morals of the story?

It is uncontroversial that the invasion and occupation of Iraq involved the following errors: the misinterpretation of intelligence; the underestimation of the number of troops requisite for law and order; the disbanding of the Iraqi army; and indiscriminate debaathification of the civil service. The first error was one of imagination rather than virtue; the others were caused by ‘callousness”, impatience, and consequent imprudence. These vices were partly responsible for massive civilian casualties, which many wrongly assume to teach the fundamentally erroneous character of the invasion. Nonetheless, we should beware such moral flaws in tomorrow's policy‐makers and renounce the managerial mentality that fosters them. Another lesson is that, in so far as nation‐rebuilding requires substantial and long‐term commitments, it must command the support of the nation‐builder's domestic electorate; and to do that, it must be able to justify itself in terms of the national interest. From this we should not infer the further lesson that morality's reach into foreign policy is limited, since, according to Thomist ethics, the pursuit of the national interest can itself be moral. Finally, one lesson that we should not learn from Iraq is never again to violate the letter of international law and intervene militarily in a sovereign state without Security Council authorization. The law's authority can be undermined as much by the UN's failure to enforce it, as by states taking it into their own hands. It is seriously problematic that the current international legal system denies the right of individual states to use military force unilaterally except in self‐defence, while reserving the enforcement of international law to a body, whose capacity to act is hamstrung by the right of veto. Given this situation, military intervention without Security Council authorization could be morally justified on certain conditions.     

Corporate Social Responsibility: reinventing the meaning of development?

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been adopted as an approach to international development. But who does it benefit and in what ways? Most importantly, does it allow certain interest groups to redefine the meaning of international development success? This article examines the historical relationship between business and development and compares how expectations of business as exemplified through CSR practices differ from those in the past. It then looks at the role and expectations of business in developing countries and proposes two tests for assessing if CSR makes a positive contribution to development goals based on whether it redefines the meaning of good business practice in the interests of the poor and marginalized, and if it helps development practitioners to manage more effectively the possibility and consequences of global capitalism for poor countries. The article argues that the interests of business are not adequately aligned with those of the poor, and explains why CSR does little to redress this. It argues that the business case in some instances overrides the developmental case for certain actions, and that business thinking is increasingly evident in the policies and practices of international development. Although CSR may have a positive contribution to make in some circumstances, its limitations need to be understood if development's case for involving business is not to be subsumed by business reasons for engaging with (and by‐passing) developing countries.     

Add shamans and stir? A critical review of the shamanism model of forager rock art production

The “shamanism” or “neurpsychological” model proposed by Lewis-Williams and colleagues has had a powerful impact on rock art research, and has significantly added to our knowledge of past foragers lifeways in southern Africa and elsewhere in the world. However, this model is primarily based on the view of shamanism as a universal and unvarying characteristic of foragers over space and time. This paper raises both theoretical and empirical problems with this view. The paper examines the relationship between the specific social roles and practices of shamanism and the overarching cosmological structures on which they are based in both southern Africa and Northern Eurasia. In both cases, the paper argues that many cosmological beliefs are highly persistent and durable, extending into prehistory, while the specific practices and roles of shamans are variable, changing to meet the immediate and local needs of their communities. This suggests that rock art is easier to relate to the overarching cosmological dispositions of the people that produced it and the paper closes by suggesting some theoretical and methodological alternatives recognizing this fact.     

Dithering over Darfur? A preliminary review of the international response

The extreme violence against civilian communities in the Sudanese province of Darfur has coincided with the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. This article makes a preliminary assessment of the international response to Darfur to see how it compares to the denial and delay of ten years ago. The slow evolution of the international community's response is charted from early Chadian efforts at mediation in 2003, the eventual involvement of the UN Security Council in July 2004, the increasing role of the African Union and the US government's conclusion in September 2004 that the violence constitutes genocide. The international community has certainly been too slow and divided in its response in the face of competing political priorities. There were also significant misgivings about a US-led military intervention and considerable Sudanese intransigence and diplomatic skill. Nevertheless, there are important signs that key parts of the United Nations and the international community have worked with a definite post-R wanda consciousness. Important developments have also been made in combining humanitarian and political negotiation while a committed African Union is now in a position to make a real difference. Although late to gather force, international political will and US leadership have been strong. But, like many tragedies before it, Darfur shows that political will is not enough. The choices facing even the most wilful politicians still remain intensely difficult and 'doing something' is not as easy as most NGO press releases imply.     

What do we know about the punctuated equilibrium theory in China? A systematic review and research priorities

The punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) shows that government policy is mostly stable with occasional drastic change, which scholars attribute to institutional friction and limited information processing capacity. Although the existing PET literature predominantly focuses on democracies, scholars have started to apply the theory to authoritarian countries. Autocracies are a fertile testing ground for the theory's underlying mechanisms because they appear to experience less institutional friction but more informational restrictions than democracies. However, PET studies on autocracies are still rare. To deepen our understanding of the PET and the policy process beyond democracies, we conduct a systematic review of 88 Chinese language PET journal articles. We show that Chinese language PET research is increasing. Contrary to the English language PET literature, most Chinese studies are qualitative, while a key similarity is the weak operationalization of PET core concepts. The reviewed studies confirm a punctuated equilibrium pattern of policymaking in China but provide only limited evidence for more intense punctuations compared with democracies. Future PET research on China ought to use long-term data sets and examine institutional friction and information processing by policymakers. We also argue for more international exchange and comparative research to advance our understanding of the policy process in China and other autocracies.     

What are the concerns? Looking back on 15 years of research in cultural and creative industries

This paper surveys the research literature on cultural and creative industries (CCI). Academic discussions on CCI have grown extensively after the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) identified 13 sectors as constituting creative industries in the UK in 1998. The public has also become gradually convinced of the significance of CCI as being important for economic growth. We adopt a systematic and quantitative method to review the academic CCI literature. After collecting data, we first investigate the research fields under which the journals that publish CCI papers are categorized, finding that Business, Economics and Geography are the top three research fields. A second examination on the authors’ nationality indicates that their cultural background induces a different emphasis on their research field. We lastly apply the multiple main paths analysis to uncover the development trajectories of CCI research, with the result showing that the research agenda has changed along with a better understanding of the essential elements of CCI. Based on the literature on the main path, we observe the top five discussed themes: information technology, global cooperation, micro and fragmentary creative activities, remote places, and country/regional characteristics. Monitoring the discussions on these themes may help CCI researchers, creative workers, and policy makers to assess future directions for economic development.     

From the ‘new localism’ to the ‘new regionalism’? The implications of regional development agencies for city–regional relations

Throughout the last three decades efforts to regenerate British cities have been based around the construction of new institutional alliances and policy networks supported by a series of urban-based initiatives. Successive Conservative governments premised their intervention on the assumption that cities (and particular parts therein) were the most appropriate geographical level around which to organise policy intervention. In pursuing this city-based agenda, the policies were themselves instrumental in constituting the city as an object of policy: a problem in need of a solution. The aim of this paper, however, is not to explore how certain spaces or scales become constructed through, for example, government policy, political practices or state restructuring. Rather the paper augments work conducted on the socially constructed nature of ‘cities’ and ‘regions’. It explores for regeneration policy and politics the implications of the tendential shift away from a model of ‘new localism’ towards an alternative model of ‘new regionalism’. The origins of the central element of New Labour's emergent regional project — the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) — are established before the paper moves on to examine the likely political relationships between the local state, drawing upon the example of Manchester, and the regional state, drawing upon North West England, under the new institutional arrangements.     

Where are the dead of medieval battles? A preliminary survey

Abstract

Only a handful of mass graves from late medieval battles in Western Europe have been subject to large scale excavation to modern standards. The principal reason is that these, and indeed even early modern battlefield graves, have proven extremely elusive, most being identified by chance. Despite a few successes, no combination of prospecting techniques yet provides a consistently effective method of locating such small archaeological features set almost anywhere within a site covering many square kilometres. But this important resource should be explored and conserved for, as Towton has shown, much can be learnt through modern excavation and analysis of the remains. While this paper does consider the existing archaeological record, its primary focus and the starting point for almost any search for mass graves on a battlefield, has to be the documentary record. Using this evidence one must debate the number who actually died, how they were interred and commemorated and whether this varied according to status or allegiance, and where on the battlefield the graves might lie. One must also consider how often we will need to look further afield for the dead, for it is unclear how often the desire for appropriate Christian burial meant some or even most were interred in, or later moved to, consecrated ground.     

Human rights and the development of a twenty-first century peace architecture: unintended consequences?

The ‘long peace’ of the last twenty-five years has linked various forms of intervention—from development to peacebuilding and humanitarian intervention—with human rights. This ‘interventionary system/order’ model has premised its legitimate authority on expanded versions of human rights, connected to liberal frameworks of democracy, rule of law, and capitalism in order to connect peace more closely with justice. Human rights offer a tactical way forward for those interested in conflict resolution, but this has led to unintended consequences. Unless conceptions of rights are continually expanded as new power structures and inequalities are uncovered and challenged, philosophical and material matters of distributive and historical justice will remain.