Conflict and collusion in the British sugar industry, 1924 to 1928

An examination of the historical geography of the U.K. beet sugar industry from 1924 to 1928 with special reference to the inter-relationships of the different firms in making location decisions. The account is based principally on evidence from formerly confidential documents which became available for public consultation in the early 1970s. The behaviour of the firms is explored within their contemporary technological and task environments. The locational decisions are seen as part of a locational game in four rounds: absorption, conflict, collusion and aftermath. Various strategies for preserving corporate space from competitors are outlined.     

Self,Health, and Gender: Complementary and alternative medicine in the British mass media

The growth of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in the West entails complex geographies of health, identity and knowledge. Debates about why people are attracted to CAM highlight the importance of consumer agency and increasing access to health care information. The article explores a key space within which information on CAM is produced and negotiated: health and lifestyle magazines. Drawing upon interviews with the editors of eight British titles, the article outlines three ways in which CAM is discursively framed: as a pragmatic medical tool kit brought to bear on the diseased body; as a means of achieving 'total well-being' in everyday metropolitan space; and as a central pillar of an alternative lifestyle. The final section of the article considers how editors understand and address their predominantly female readerships, with an emphasis on how CAM is articulated within an ostensibly emancipatory project of self-responsibility and personal empowerment against the ambivalent backdrop of consumer culture.     

Central Government and the Modernization of the British Fire Service, 1900-38

At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was no suchnotion of a ‘national and onerous’ fire servicein Britain. Organized fire protection was a purely local functionleft to the discretion of local authorities, voluntary organizations,and private enterprise. By the outbreak of the Second WorldWar, although there remained in excess of 1,450 local brigades,the service had been accepted as of national importance, particularlyin view of the threat posed by aerial bombing and incendiaryfires to British towns and cities. This paper traces the developmentof central government intervention within the fire service duringthe first four decades of the twentieth century, contrastingthe peacetime and wartime impetuses for reform, and locatingreform within wider debates about the nature and practice oflocal government. Although financial, technological, and organizationalfactors were important influences on the professionalizationand modernization of the service, the threats posed to the nation'swartime economic capacity and public morale were, ultimately,decisive factors in compelling local authorities to maintainprofessional fire brigades.     

淞沪会战初期英美对中日冲突的介入

卢沟桥事变后,上海局势日益紧张,8月9日"虹桥事件"的发生更使得形势急转直下。英美两国为阻止上海爆发战争,积极展开外交活动,强调中日均对上海和平负有责任并敦促双方撤军,但未能成功。上海战事于13日爆发后,英美对中国空军轰炸租界提出抗议,但中国方面强调其为抵御外侮,有权进入包括租界在内的全部中国领土作战。面对中国方面捍卫主权的决心,英国意识到日本对上海战事负有主要责任,开始将交涉的重心转向日本方面,并提出了由在沪外国军队保护日本侨民的方案,以换取日本同意从上海撤军。但日本已决心借上海战事扩大对华战争,对此反应冷淡,国内孤立主义情绪强烈的美国亦始终未改变中立态度,并未与英国合作,这一方案最终胎死腹中,上海战事也发展为大规模战争。     

Gender and Organisational Restructuring in the National Health Service: Performance, Identity and Politics

Over the past decade, debates within economic geography and organizational sociology have shown that gender is embedded within economic discourses, organisational relations and processes of restructuring. The argument has been widely illustrated through reference to "identity", with examples offered of the ways in which organizations and organisational change draw on specific performances of masculine and feminine identities. However, whilst we now know a great deal about organisational expectations of gendered performance at work, we actually know little of how these required performances impact individual constructions of identity. This paper aims to explore this gap between organisational discourses of gender, on the one hand, and the construction of individual identities, on the other. The paper uses narrative analysis of interviews with five nurses working in two hospitals in the British National Health Service (NHS) to trace the place and articulations of organisation, profession and gender in the construction and presentation of self. The paper reveals complex processes of negotiation and resistance and both stable and shifting identifications as individuals actively construct gendered identities inter alia through their interpretations of organisational and professional change. This emphasis on agency, resistance and personal politics has important implications for thinking about the nature and form of workplace politics and may offer a missing piece of the puzzle in recent bids to build new forms of labour organisation.     

英属东非公职机构本土化初考

国内学术界对英属东非公职机构本土化问题尚无研究,国外学术界有一定的研究,但亦未见专文论述。本文在利用有关档案材料的基础上,对英属东非公职机构的本土化进行初步考察。英属东非公职机构的本土化特别是高级职位的本土化起步晚,滞后于民族独立进程,以致在殖民地独立时,仍有许多原宗主国的人员留下任职。公职机构本土化滞后的主要原因可以说是:第一,殖民地公职机构的本土化是与殖民统治者的利益相背离的,因此,他们长期以来并不热衷于推进本土化;第二,由于教育被忽视,殖民地独立时确实缺乏担任某些职位的人选,尤其是专业技术人员。殖民地公职机构的本土化进程滞后给新生国家带来了负面影响。     

Health Care Service Improves in Aba

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Private Conflict and Policy Passage: Interest-Group Conflict and State Medical Malpractice Reform

James Madison argued in Federalist 10 that "rival political factions" work against the public good. In contrast to Madison's pessimistic account, I suggest that factional conflict can lead to more representative public policy, and thus further the will of the people. I theorize that elected officials often seek a safe political position—one that corresponds to the preferences of the public at large—during periods of high conflict. I assess this theory in one, salient policy area, medical malpractice. I measure conflict with contributions for state candidates given by (i) the health and insurance industries, which generally support malpractice laws, and (ii) lawyers, who frequently oppose the laws. I find that group conflict matters to policy outcomes. I also find evidence that, under conditions of elevated conflict, adopted policies are more likely to move toward the general ideological preferences of the public at large. These results suggest that group conflict affects both the quantity and character of policy in the American states.     

British and Irish Conflict Regulation from Sunningdale to Belfast Part I: Tracing the Status of Contesting Sovereigns, 1968–1974

Abstract. This article, which is presented in two parts, analyses the changing conceptions of the status of the two sovereigns (the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic) whose competing claims to sovereignty over Northern Ireland has been the ultimate cause of conflict. In Part I (presented here) I adapt Ian Lustick's theory of state contraction and expansion to the British-Irish relationship as it affected the negotiation of the Sunningdale Power-sharing Agreement of 1973–1974. I argue that the failure to address the competing claims to sovereignty limited the possibilities of achieving and maintaining the consent of sufficient proportions of each ethno-national community. Part I of the article (forthcoming) will extend the analysis to explain the relative equalisation of sovereignty status between Britain and Ireland and presents a modification of a ‘liberal intergovernmentalist’ explanation of the evolution of the Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985) and Belfast Agreement (1998).     

Russia and Syria: explaining alignment with a regime in crisis

This article explores explanations of Russia's unyielding alignment with the Syrian regime of Bashar al‐Assad since the Syrian crisis erupted in the spring of 2011. Russia has provided a diplomatic shield for Damascus in the UN Security Council and has continued to supply it with modern arms. Putin's resistance to any scenario of western‐led intervention in Syria, on the model of the Libya campaign, in itself does not explain Russian policy. For this we need to analyse underlying Russian motives. The article argues that identity or solidarity between the Soviet Union/Russia and Syria has exerted little real influence, besides leaving some strategic nostalgia among Russian security policy‐makers. Russian material interests in Syria are also overstated, although Russia still hopes to entrench itself in the regional politics of the Middle East. Of more significance is the potential impact of the Syria crisis on the domestic political order of the Russian state. First, the nexus between regional spillover from Syria, Islamist networks and insurgency in the North Caucasus is a cause of concern—although the risk of ‘blowback’ to Russia is exaggerated. Second, Moscow rejects calls for the departure of Assad as another case of the western community imposing standards of political legitimacy on a ‘sovereign state’ to enforce regime change, with future implications for Russia or other authoritarian members of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Russia may try to enshrine its influence in the Middle East through a peace process for Syria, but if Syria descends further into chaos western states may be able to achieve no more in practice than emergency coordination with Russia.     

Institutions,informality, and influence: explaining nuclear cooperation in the Australia-US alliance

ABSTRACT

Nuclear cooperation has been a consistent feature of the Australia-US alliance. In the 1950s and 1960s, Canberra explored transferring US nuclear weapons to Australian forces operating in Southeast Asia. Since the 1960s, Australian governments have supported hosting joint facilities that contribute to America’s ability to execute global nuclear operations. And Australia has regularly invoked the nuclear umbrella as part of the alliance. We explain the key sources of nuclear cooperation in the alliance by leveraging realist and institutionalist theories of alliance cooperation. While realism explains limits to US nuclear commitments in the 1950s, institutional explanations are more relevant in pinpointing the sources of nuclear cooperation and in explaining why Australia has often achieved its policy preferences as the junior partner.