From liberal to conservative: shifting cultural policy regimes in post-Soviet Russia

In this paper, we analyze the evolution of Russian cultural policy from the end of the Soviet era through the current against the framework of welfare state regimes. The end of the Soviet Union 25 years ago ushered in a decade of liberalization marked by a withdrawal of the state from cultural responsibility and hopes that market demand and private support would emerge to fill in the void. With the latter hampered by the economic hardships of the transition and the loss of philanthropic traditions after more than 70 years of communism, a liberal policy regime did not take firmly hold and has gradually been replaced by a new cultural policy consensus more akin to a conservative welfare regime, marked by a return of the state to a more dominant role with the support of core cultural policy constituencies.     

Organizing European Labour: Governance, Production, Trade Unions and the Question of Scale

This paper addresses two main debates: the recent geographical literature on trade union strategy and structure, and contemporary accounts of European labour market governance. Geographers have begun to take notice of organized labour just as it has faced a series of unprecedented challenges, which are partly derived from ongoing changes in the organization of production. In interpreting these debates I focus on the process of scaling – the ways in which the politics of labour market governance are constituted in, and are at the same time constitutive of, one geographical scale or another. These issues are explored through two key recent developments: the changing status of the European Trade Union Confederation, and the creation of European Works Councils. The ETUC and EWCs are particularly significant because they pose a challenge to existing arrangements, and potentially enable a re-configuration of the relation between capital and labour at different scales. I conclude that further exploration of European labour geography could re-connect the diversity of forms of organization of production with the scope and potential of trade union strategy; and that thinking in terms of scale is useful because it highlights the significance of both political and relational issues.     

中日俄在东北亚地区的能源博弈

国际能源消耗与日俱增,原油价格不断飙升,“能源安全”问题日趋凸显。比邻而居的中日两国都是世界能源消耗大国和能源进口大国,在能源领域有着“共同的弱点”。近些年中日在东北亚地区围绕俄罗斯西伯利亚·远东输油管线建设问题展开了激烈的博弈。作为能源供应国的俄罗斯,大搞能源外交,有意在东北亚能源市场中引入竞争机制,谋求本国利益最大化,这在客观上进一步加剧了中日在输油管线问题上的恶性竞争。在能源领域,如何协调和缓解对抗式、排他式的恶性竞争,避免传统的“零和博弈”是摆在中日俄面前的重要课题。     

Growth in the International Reserves of Russia,China, and India: A Comparison of Underlying Mechanisms

A noted international specialist on the Russian economy compares the different mechanisms by which the emerging powerful economies of Russia, China, and India accumulated substantial foreign reserves during the 2000s in the lead-up to the global financial crisis. He also investigates the costs incurred by these countries of intervention into exchange markets to maintain exchange rate regimes supporting such accumulation, as well as measures undertaken after the crisis to address sudden and massive outflows of foreign private capital and considerable decreases in demand for imports in developed countries. The author argues that each of the three countries can be viewed as a prototype for a particular means of reserve accumulation among emerging market countries that has led to the revival of the Bretton Woods international monetary system.     

Monumentality in Urban Design: The Case of Russia

A prominent American urban geographer and observer of the Russian urban scene provides an overview of grand planning and monumental urban design in Russia and the former Soviet Union through the lens of four themes outlined in a previous paper by Larry Ford (2008). In the process, he adds two more themes relevant to Russia and the former USSR: town building and architecture intended to define and legitimize state power, and the shaping or remodeling of society to reflect a regime's ideology. Noting the obstacles in the West to getting large urban projects planned, accepted, and completed, he argues that monumental urban landscapes appear to demand some degree of sustained, centralized, authoritarian leadership. The latter has been present in Russia and the USSR during much of the past millennium, including the present, but the emergence of new commercial/corporate forces in urban land development also bears scrutiny in studies of the processes promoting urban monumentality. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O18, R14, R52. 10 figures, 44 references.     

救援、革命、外交——华工联合会研究

华工联合会原名中华旅俄联合会,1917年由在俄学习的中国留学生发起成立。成立以后,华工联合会对第一次世界大战时期进入俄国的华工提供了大量帮助。1918年底,华工联合会转变为“无产主义者组织”,它积极对在俄华工进行革命宣传,建立起与中国境内革命组织之间的联系,促进了中国革命事业的发展。此外,华工联合会还促成中国政府与苏维埃俄国之间进行对话,在俄中两国的外交活动中发挥了重要的作用。本文依据大量史料,追溯了旅俄华工联合会在救援、革命和外交等方面做出的卓越贡献,对华工联合会这一以往较少引人注意的华侨组织进行了深入的探讨与研究。     

From born to made: technology, biology and space

This paper is concerned with forging new links between geography and biology and technology by delivering a set of shocks to the meaning of accepted categories like 'nature' and 'technology'. To achieve these dual aims, the paper will double click on the icon 'intelligence'. 'Intelligence' prioritizes the active shaping of environments . It thereby allows space for the spaces of the world to themselves become a part of intelligibility and intellect as elements of distributed cognition and , as will become clear, pre-cognition. The paper argues that such a conception of sentience can provide a series of new perspectives, as well as a pressing ethical challenge.     

Battle over the box: international election observation missions, political competition and retrenchment in the post-Soviet space

The organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's international election observation missions (OSCE IEOMs) have fuelled a new political competition in the post-Soviet space. Even if previously largely ignored, OSCE evaluations have highlighted diff erences in political values between the West and several post-Soviet republics. Recently, however, they have gained political, and even strategic, importance in the region by contributing to political change in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. IEOMs have also provoked resistance from several post-Soviet governments. This has taken several forms, including contesting the apparent western terms of democratization and the creation of alternative rules and practices for democratization and election observation. These challenges risk corrupting the whole practice of IEOMs, and the OSCE has sought to respond. IEOMs have also contributed to changes in Russian foreign policy, including its policy towards the OSCE. In addition, attitudes towards IEOMs within some post-Soviet governments are adding to evidence of a deepening divide between non-democratizing polities and the West.     

Conceptions of place: approaching space,children and physical activity

In this paper, we argue that place mapping is useful for approaching children's conception of place and that this is of relevance when designing physical activity interventions. We contend that socio-material factors influence children's perception and use of places, and are crucial to understand in relation to their use of local neighbourhoods for physical activity. A place mapping of children's understandings and everyday use of their local neighbourhood in suburban Copenhagen was conducted with a fifth grade elementary school class. The mapping and subsequent analysis resulted in three categories of relevance to children's conceptions of place; located social experiences, experiences of the unknown, and children's contested spaces. We argue that such knowledge can provide useful information in the development and evaluation of activities that promote physical activity in urban spaces.     

俄罗斯中国新移民现状及其课题研究

1991年以来的俄罗斯中国新移民是一个涉及面广泛的问题, 这一问题的复杂性及其对俄罗斯产生的正负面影响, 在俄罗斯引起了广泛争议。本文分析俄罗斯中国新移民产生的背景、特点及其人口统计学特征, 探讨俄罗斯官方对中国新移民的态度和政策, 概述俄罗斯各方面专家学者对这一问题的研究与看法。作者认为, 要很好地解决这一问题, 需要俄中两国开展明确的具有建设性的合作, 需要一个加强双边关系的更强大的社会平台, 也需要俄罗斯方面实行一种平衡的移民政策。     

Time,place, and the lifeworlds of feminist geographers: the US in the 1970s

The 1970s, the decade in which Susan Hanson took up an academic appointment in American geography, was a period of marked growth in women's representation and political activism in the discipline and of the emergence of feminist research and teaching. Susan's career illustrates the changes in consciousness, resiliency in the face of setbacks, and creativity of the times. Inspired by the women's movement, and exemplifying collegiality, women geographers identified masculine biases in scholarship and professional practices, initiated research and teaching on women and gender, and worked to enter the leadership of the Association of American geographers. Their efforts were the genesis of the feminism in the profession that has since flourished in the United States. It is fitting that Susan Hanson's leadership and contributions in this arena are widely recognized and honored.     

20世纪中日俄(苏)三国关系史分期问题试论

历史研究需要进行科学分期,由于所研究的对象不同,因而分期的标准也不尽相同。20世纪中日俄(苏)三国关系史可分为7个时期。1900-1917年为两强凌-弱时期;1917-1931年为三国关系初次变化时期;1931-1945年为战争笼罩三国时期;1945-1949年为三国关系特殊时期;1949-1960年为三国关系再次变化时期;1960-1972年为敌友关系相互转变时期;1972-1991年为三国关系终趋正常时期。     

Geographical Metanarratives in Russia and the European East: Contemporary Pan-Slavism

A specialist on Russian geopolitical metanarratives investigates the re-emergence of Pan-Slavism in the ideological landscape of contemporary Russia. Arguing that it is a heterogeneous assemblage of both mutually antagonistic and complementary narratives about the unity of Slavic peoples, the author posits that Pan-Slavism's durability lies not in its conceptual coherence but rather its emotional appeal to disparate Slavic peoples in the former Soviet Union as well as Eastern and Southeastern Europe. After briefly tracing the history of Pan-Slavism from its 17th-century roots through World War I into the Soviet period, he explores the metanarrative's capacity to take modern Russia's geopolitical thinking in new directions, including the potential to replace Russians' center-periphery worldview with a that of a cosmopolitan network of kindred nations affording Russia greater access to the European community.     

Introduction: space,place and the geographies of women's caregiving work

The vast majority of caregivers, whether formal or informal, paid or unpaid, are women. Health care restructuring across the West, inspired by a shift from the welfare to neoliberal state, has greatly impacted caregiving. The idea for this collection arose as a result of a special paper session on the geographies of caregiving, held as part of the Association of American Geographers Meeting (Chicago, 2006). In hearing the papers presented, it became clear that geographers are engaged in interesting and innovative research in this area, much of which involves women's caregiving work in particular. As both unpaid informal family caregiving and paid formal practitioner-provided care are mainly addressed in this collection, they are briefly discussed in this editorial. This is followed by a discussion of the geographical contributions to the growing caregiving literature, which provides the foundation for an overview of ongoing and new research directions. The four articles that make up this special issue are then reviewed in brief. Finally, we identify issues that cut across all four articles, leading to a discussion of future research directions.     

Restoring Berlin's Unter den Linden: ideology,world view,place and space

Berlin's Unter den Linden, a primary thoroughfare and ensemble of historic architecture and nationally significant cultural institutions, lay in ruins at the close of the Second World War. The buildings, public spaces, and public art forming this street bore testimony to diverse facets of German history, presenting a range of semantic issues to those interested in their future. Differences in key groups' world view resulted in different interpretations of these spaces, thus different approaches to policy development with regard to their future. Initially, the German cultural elite was determined to restore significant architecture, asserting architectural value while avoiding mention of ‘Prussian’ or ‘German’ identity. However, the German communist leadership viewed these same structures as testimony to ‘Prussian–German militarism’ and sought their effacement. The Soviet Military Administration remained largely indifferent to all but spatial value until 1947, when they began to use architecture to represent the Soviet Union. Finally, with the founding of the German Democratic Republic and import of Soviet ‘socialist-realist’ urban theory, architecture considered progressive was restored as national cultural heritage, although sites with considerable ‘militaristic’ content prompted more debate over their future.     

日俄战争后日俄美的东北亚政策

2005年作为日俄建交150周年的纪念,在日俄关系及东北亚国际关系中都将具有重要意义。同样,重新研究一百年前的日俄战争结束后东北亚地区主要国际势力的对策,对于认清国际外交舞台上瞬息骤变的政治风云,及各国纵横捭阖以采取符合本国利益的积极对策是有一定借鉴意义的。本文即对日、俄、美三个对东北亚地区有重要影响的国家在日俄战争后的外交对策进行了简要的论述。     

Teaching Economic Geography in Two Contrasting Asian Contexts: Decentering Anglo-American Economic Geography in China and Singapore

Teaching economic geography outside Anglo-American countries presents a particular pedagogical challenge, as theories and concepts developed in these countries might not be directly applicable outside their intellectual and national contexts. In this paper, the authors show how the peculiar institutional and development environments in China and Singapore have shaped the ways in which the economic geography curriculum is developed and taught in institutions of higher education. They also examine how students respond to the intellectual challenges presented to them. In their view, successful pedagogy in teaching economic geography requires a significant degree of localization of the curriculum.