Globalization of real estate markets in Central Europe

The process of globalization is increasing competition between urban areas for the attraction of investment. Within this context the paper initially highlights the impact of global change on city economies linking this to international investment within the real estate market. Factors influencing diversification strategies and international investment activity within property markets in central Europe are considered relative to a range of performance criteria. Office markets in Prague, Budapest and Warsaw are forwarded as case study examples to assess the degree of maturity that is occurring in these former socialist cities based on the activity of investors and end‐users including the extent to which there are dual markets operating for local and international actors.     

Book reviews

Sayyid Jamal ad‐Diin “al‐Afghani,” A Political Biography. By Nikki R. Keddie. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972. 496pp. $20.00

A Grammar of Southern Tati Dialects. By Ehsan Yar‐Shater. The Hague: Mouton, 1969. 277pp; two maps.     

Reviews

The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Order, and Societal Change in Shi'ite Iran from the Beginning to 1890 Said Amir Arjomand. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984. $24.00.

Bibliography on Qajar Persia Shoko Okazaki & Kinji Eura, eds. Osaka University of Foreign Studies, Japan, 1985, xvi, 163 pp.

The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 2, The Median and Achaemenian Periods Ilya Gershevitch, ed. Cambridge University Press, 1985, xv, 946 pp., 48 plates.

Shah of Shahs Ryszard Kapuscinski. Translated from Polish by William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska‐Brand. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, a Helen and Kurt Wolff book, 1982. $12.95.

The Iranian Revolution: Thanatos on a National Scale Gholam R. Afkhami. Washington, D.C.: The Middle East Institute, 1985. $24.95.

Shi'ism, Resistance, and Revolution Martin Kramer, ed. Boulder: Westview Press, 1987, x, 324 pp., index.

Labour Unions and Autocracy in Iran Habib Ladjevardi. Syracuse University Press, 1985, 328 pp., including appendices, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95

Iran: At War with History John W. Limbert. Boulder: Westview Press, 1987, xviii, 186 pp., index. $28.00.

Finding Hoseyn Colin MacKinnon. New York: Arbor House, 1986, 306 pp. $16.95 cloth.

An Introduction to Shi'i Islam, The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi'ism Moojan Momen. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985, xxii, 397 pp. 32 pages of halftones, three appendices, notes, and select bibliography. $25.00 (cloth).

Fundamentals of Islamic Thought: God, Man and the Universe Ayatullah Murtaza Mutahhari. Tr. R. Campbell. Ed. and intro. Hamid Algar. Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1985, 219 pp., index to p. 235. $19.95. Pb. $8.95.

Man and Islam Ali Shari'ati. Translated by Fatollah Marjani. Houston: Filing, 1981, xxi, 128 pp. $4.95.

A Manual of Classical Persian Prosody Finn Thiesen. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1982.

The Left in Contemporary Iran: Ideology, Organization and the Soviet Connection Sepehr Zabih. London: Croom Helm, 1986. 239 pp., including appendices, bibliography, index.     

Labour Geography of the National Question in Times of Decolonisation: Sharecropper Politics in Western Punjab,c. 1945–1953

This article examines the labour geographies of nationalism through sharecropper “articulations” of anti-colonialism. I study the Punjab Kisan (peasant) Committee at the eve and dawn of Pakistan’s independence from British colonialism. I analyse their actions and claims through newsletters, activist memoirs, and colonial reports. I situate them in relation to other social and political forces: the state, landlords, and Muslim nationalists. Whereas labour geography has often ignored nationalism, I outline an approach for the sub-field to address this gap. First, subaltern nationalisms re-articulate labour, land, gender, and religion in place-specific ways. Second, exclusionary and liberatory nationalisms are variegated responses to the dynamics of being integrated to an imperialist world-economy. This study found these multi-religious peasant committees articulated sovereignty over labour, land, and social reproduction with the national question. Further, this article contributes to the subaltern and labour historiography of Pakistan.     

ON BEING NOT EVEN ANYWHERE NEAR ‘THE PROJECT’: WAYS OF PUTTING OURSELVES IN THE PICTURE

This paper challenges current constructions of “the project” in radical geography by examining the phenomenon of “missing sisters.” We discuss the social construction of lesbians and disabled women as invisible “others” and how this is manifest in Geography. We argue that disabled women and lesbians have had their experiences and lives marginalized; both in the geographic literature and through practices of exclusion. We call for a reconstructed radical geography which includes lesbians and disabled women, on their own revolutionary terms, in the production of knowledge and in political practice. Such an inclusionary project will enrich our understanding of geographic processes and strengthen our efforts to build political strategies of resistance to contemporary forms of oppression and marginalization.