Tourism as a vehicle for regional development in peripheral areas – myth or reality? A longitudinal case study of Swedish regions

In the contemporary so-called ‘competition state era’, many rural and peripheral regions are in decline. Tourism is increasingly viewed as being able to alleviate and rejuvenate regions that are facing economic difficulties. The European Union has launched several programmes with the goal of stimulating growth and employment in peripheral areas. These programmes are often used to support tourism development projects. In this paper, a longitudinal analysis of spatial changes in Swedish tourism is conducted. The analysis is based on statistics regarding overnight stays in Swedish commercial accommodation facilities. The aim is to investigate if tourism and tourism policy contribute to the reduction in disparities between regions. Although there are exceptions, the main findings indicate that the potential for creating sustainable rural tourism growth through tourism policy seems to be much less than the popular discourse suggests.     

Paul Keating is the prime minister,but who delivers the mail? A study of political knowledge amongst young people

Very little research in Australia has attempted to evaluate the level of political knowledge of young people. Explanations as to why young people have a low interest in, and little knowledge of, politics have been even rarer. Assessing the political knowledge of Australian young people provides a step toward understanding their responses to the political system.

The present study examines the political knowledge of final year school students and makes comparisons to research into political knowledge conducted previously in Britain. The results are examined within two terms of reference: firstly, factors that include interest in politics, media usage and interest in participating in politics; and secondly, demographic factors such as gender, non‐English speaking background/ English speaking background (NESB/ESB), and parents’ occupation. All, except parents’ occupation, were found to influence young people's level of political knowledge. An interaction was found between interest in politics and gender as determinants of political knowledge.     

A Lone Islet or A Center of Communications? Shanghai in the Indian National Army Movement

Students of modem Chinese history,and modern Shanghai history in particular,tend to view Shanghai as having been a lone islet during the Pacific War,when it was cut off from other parts of the world.This article,however,argues that Shanghai was still well connected to areas under the control of the Japanese throughout the war.Using the Sikh community in Shanghai as a case,it demonstrates how the Indian National Army used both a Japanese-initiated military highway and the long-existing Indian diasporic network in Southeast and East Asia to facilitate a certain kind of mobilization.It further sheds light on how the Sikhs in Shanghai were influenced by and responded to the Indian National Army's endeavors.     

A study of social‐market interventions in the shaping of the field of cultural production

A social analysis based on extensive evaluation of the Dance and Drama Awards programme reveals the social‐market political paradigm underpinning the formation of cultural policy in the UK underthe New Labour government. This specific intervention in the field of cultural production is placed in the context of broader government interventions in the cultural domain that seek to give respect to undervalued social and cultural groups. There is a political analysis of the characteristics of the social‐market political formation that underpin New Labour’s “affirmative” actions, and the political strategies informing the government’s “access” and “inclusion” agendas and their impact on the cultural and creative industries. The authors argue that the construction of a “social‐market” position in New Labour’s cultural policy represents an attempt to bridge or “hyphenate” the contradictory claims of social democracy, on the one hand, and economic fatalism, on the other. Despite the rhetoric of social and cultural “transformation”, the authors argue that a “faith” in the market prevents New Labour from transforming the political‐economic and cultural structures that generate economic and cultural injustices.     

A regionalisation or long-distance trade? Transformations and shifts in the role of Tana in the Black Sea trade in the first half of the fifteenth century

Abstract

The Italian trading stations in Tana were important in the long-distance trade system of the Italian maritime republics Venice and Genoa. The deeds of two Venetian notaries who worked there during the 1430s, Nicolo de Varsis and Benedetto de Smeritis, are an important source for tracing the transformation of the issues and directions of Italian trade in the Black Sea region, a trade which was recovering from the crisis of the fourteenth century. Notwithstanding the Venetian-Genoese struggle and previous crisis events, this recovery made the economic conditions favourable. Although some scholars see a regionalisation of trade in fifteenth century, the source evidence challenges this interpretation. Westerners began to import Italian, Flemish and English textiles to the Eastern markets, and the local goods (fish, caviar) were widely exported to Europe – even to the markets of Flanders. Finally, the slave trade was intensive. My main argument here is that though there were considerable transformations in the Italian trade, there was no real regionalisation of trade, which retained its long-distance character.     

Is the evaluation of millennial changes in stature reliable? A study in southern Europe from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages

Analyses of stature variation in prehistoric and historical populations encounter considerable problems of reliability of the comparisons. To properly compare the results of different studies, it is necessary to conduct a systematic review of the chronological and cultural context of the skeletal series used and identify the most appropriate method to calculate stature values, since stature reconstruction formulae are specific for certain times and places. Stature variations in the population of Sardinia (a Mediterranean island now part of the Italian Republic but considered separately given its unique genetic structure) from the Neolithic to the Modern Period were studied to evaluate the intensity of millennial changes. The results were then compared with the values of coeval skeletal series reported in the literature for other Southern European countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal). We used Sardinian skeletal series with radiocarbon dates or from culturally well-defined archeological contexts. The osteometric measurements were taken on femora of adults who had completed growth and who did not present evident pathological conditions. The data we collected and analyzed indicate that the conditions are lacking to reliably identify a common trend in millennial changes among the considered populations of southern Europe.     

The Vietnamese Concentration in Cabramatta: Site of Avoidance and Deprivation,or Island of Adjustment and Participation?

The Vietnamese over-representation around Cabramatta in western Sydney has been unfavourably looked upon by politicians, the public and academics. Both inclusionary and exclusionary forces of ethnic concentration have contributed to the concentration of Vietnamese in Cabramatta, in a reflexive and inter-related way that often makes a taxonomy of agency and structure difficult. Evidence from informal interviews with key informants of the Vietnamese communities and from documented international experiences are drawn upon to show us that ethnic concentration is not necessarily a negative phenomenon. The positive aspects of Vietnamese concentration in Cabramatta should be capitalised upon and social theorists should not be so quick always to damn ethnic concentrations.     

War-like history or diplomatic history? Contentions over the past and regional orders in Northeast Asia

Northeast Asian countries have been engaged in disputes over history. While their historical contentions have caused suspicion and friction among them, I argue that they have also served as a medium of dialogue that helps establish a common understanding about the individual countries’ contemporary reality and future direction. Historical contentions contribute to such a dialogue if and only if two conditions are met: regional actors recognise each other as legitimate participants in a dialogue about the salient past; and they contend over the past within a common framework of meaning. Northeast Asia, through historical contentions in the 1980s and 1990s, produced an embryonic form of a regional public sphere that made possible transnational communications about the region's future and each nation's desires, but it now stands at a fork between strengthening the regional public sphere and fracturing it into a contentious regional sphere.? ?. Earlier drafts of the article were presented at The Emergence of East Asian Community: Material and Ideational Foundation, Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, June 2006, and Re-envisioning Asia–Pacific Security: A Regional–Global Nexus, Australian National University, Canberra, August 2006, organised respectively by Yong-Wook Lee and Bill Tow. My research for the article was facilitated by a fellowship from East Asia Institute and a research grant from Smith Richardson Foundation. Yae-Ji Park provided invaluable research assistance. Many, including Hayward Alker, Jia Qingguo, Kim Byung-Kook, Kim Ha-Jeong, Kim Tae-Hyun, Nobori Amiko, Soeya Yoshihide, and Zhang Haibin, offered helpful comments and/or helped make arrangements for my research in the region. I gratefully acknowledge their assistance. View all notes     

Austronesian aboriginality or the ritual organization of the state? A controversy on the political dimension of temple networks in early bali

Since early colonial times, Dutch government officials as well as anthropologists have made a distinction between what have been called “Bali Aga”, the allegedly aboriginal inhabitants of Bali (Indonesia), and those inhabitants associated with title‐bearing groups oriented towards royal courts and brahmana ritual specialists. While the former have been described as constituting a society characterized by equality and democracy, the latter have been portrayed as being almost the opposite. This article questions the basic assumptions about the “Bali Aga”, especially the role of their ritual networks focusing on regional temples. These have been interpreted as a demonstration of equality and of a bounded “Bali Aga” ethnicity. This article suggests a different interpretation, one in which the ritual networks are understood as basic segments, not restricted to the Bali Aga, in the ritual organization of the pre‐colonial Balinese state.     

Did the minority Gillard government keep its promises? A study of promissory representation in Australia

When the Gillard government formed a minority government in 2010 many commentators argued that the government would be unable to fulfil its mandate. Despite this, the Gillard government was able to pass a record amount of legislation – comparable to previous majority-led governments – suggesting the government was effective at negotiating legislative passage. Less understood is whether the Gillard government was able to keep its election promises given the constraints of minority government. This is an important empirical and normative question. In their most basic form elections are designed to allow the public to hold politicians and political parties to account for their past performance. Central to this is whether parties have fulfilled the promises they made at the previous election. But how do parties express election promises to citizens and are they likely to fulfil these promises? Does minority government status make a difference? We examine these questions in the first contemporary Australian study of promise fulfilment, examining promises made and promise fulfilment of the Gillard minority government (2010–2013). We adopt the methods of the Comparative Party Pledges Project (CPPP). Consistent with the international literature, we find that the Gillard government fulfilled most of its election promises suggesting minority government status did not have a large effect on promise fulfilment.     

Continuity or Discontinuity in the Recent History of the Australian Labor Party?

Recent characterisations of the Australian Labor Party as a ‘cartel party’ suggest that there was, after the 1970s, a fundamental discontinuity in Labor's history. We assess this contention not only in terms of the ALP's policies but also the mechanisms which link it with different classes and social groups: Labor's electoral support, membership and local branches, the backgrounds of the Party's parliamentarians and leaders, the role of trade unions inside the ALP, and its sources of funding. While there have been some quantitative changes in these characteristics, we conclude that Labor remains, on balance, a ‘capitalist workers party.’     

A comparative study of wall paintings at the Cypriot monastery of Christ Antiphonitis: one artist or two?

The central church of the monastery of Christ Antiphonitis near Kalogrea, within the district of Kyrenia in Cyprus, is decorated with wall paintings that date from the last decades of fifteenth century. Two large and elaborate scenes, the Last Judgement and the Root of Jesse, had been preserved in the church until the Turkish invasion (1974) after which they were cut into tetragonal pieces, separated, and sent by looters to Germany for selling at illicit markets. The German Police returned thirty-two of the pieces to the Archbishop Makarios Foundation in Nicosia.     

A progress review of entrepreneurship and regional development: What are the remaining gaps?

This study reviews the literature related to regional entrepreneurship. It identifies the main topical perspectives, advancements and shortcomings, discusses several research gaps and proposes ways forward. The literature review is based on 170 peer-reviewed articles in the leading journals of entrepreneurship and regional science. The findings reveal that major debates occur within the disciplines of regional economics, sociology and economic geography, but discussions across disciplines are scant. While regional economists tend to overlook the role of contextualized agency, and thus neglect processes that may influence entrepreneurs’ acting in distinctive localities, entrepreneurship scholars tend to overlook the role of the spatial and proximate contextual conditions in the entrepreneurial process. Future research should intensify its efforts on the interrelation between entrepreneurial agency and regional structuring in order to expand current understandings of which types of entrepreneurship prevail in different localities.     

Gastronomy or Geology? The Role of Nationalism in the Reconstruction of Nations

Abstract. This article considers the debate that has recently developed in studies of nationalism between those scholars who see the nation as a modern and constantly changing construction ex nihilo and those who see it as an immemorial, unchanging communal essence. It outlines the so-called ‘gastronomical’ and ‘geological’ metaphors of nation formation and suggests a synthetic model which balances the influence of the ethnic past and the impact of nationalist activity. It shows that the central question which has divided theorists of nationalism is the place of the past in the life of modern nations. The author recognises the role of nationalists in national mobilisation but stresses that nationalists are not social engineers or mere image makers as modernist and post-modernist accounts would have it, but rather social and political archaeologists whose activities consist in the rediscovery and reinterpretation of the ethnic past and through it the regeneration of their national community.     

One world? Many worlds? The place of regions in the study of international society

This article is a revised version of the 2006 Martin Wight Memorial Lecture and examines the placeof regional states‐systems or regional international societies within understandings of contemporary international society as whole. It addresses the relationship between the one world and the many worlds‐on one side, the one world of globalizing capitalism, of global security dynamics, of a global political system that, for many, revolves a single hegemonic power, of global institutions and global governance, and of the drive to develop and embed a global cosmopolitan ethic; and, on the other side, the extent to which regions and the regional level of practice and of analysis havebecome more firmly established as important elements of the architecture of world politics; and the extent to which a multiregional system of international relations may be emerging. The first section considers explanations of the place of regionalism in contemporary international society and the various ways in which the one world aff ects the many. The second section deals with how regionalism might best be studied. The final section analyses four ways in which regionalism may contribute to international order and global governance.