San Juan,the Fragile City: Finance Capital,Class, and the Making of Puerto Rico's Economic Crisis

This paper narrates Puerto Rico's fiscal and financial crisis through a reading of San Juan's urban landscape. We underscore the role of capital in the city, primarily embodied by the local capitalist class (the Criollo bloc) and foreign capitalists. Historically excluded from the manufacturing sector (dominated by US capitalists), the Criollo bloc accumulates its wealth by concentrating financial assets in the city. In times of crisis, the Criollo bloc resorts to the acquisition of new assets and asset exchange with foreign capitalists to remain solvent and provide short‐term solutions to the state's fiscal and financial limits. The survival of the local capitalist class, we demonstrate, is dependent on asset stripping. Drawing on Clyde Woods, we document how asset stripping unevenly redistributes wealth and risks along class and racial lines within a colonial economy. The finance capital/asset stripping basis of San Juan's economy renders it an extremely fragile city, we contend.     

Characterization of concrete from Roman buildings for public spectacles in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Emerita Augusta</Emphasis> (Mérida,Spain)

The aim of this work is to characterize the original concrete from Roman buildings for public spectacles, theatre and amphitheatre, from Emerita Augusta, Mérida, Spain. An advanced knowledge of the Roman concrete composition is required for a reliable restoration and preservation of these ancient monuments. The concrete was studied through mineralogical (optical polarized microscopy and X-ray diffraction) and petrophysical (bulk and real density, open porosity to water and Hg, mechanical strength and ultrasonic velocity) analyses. With this work, it is possible to fill the gap that exists in this field and the characterization of the materials used in the Roman concrete from these two buildings, never previously studied, despite the significance of this archaeological ensemble, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1993. The results allowed us to determine the composition of the Roman concrete and to infer the provenance of the aggregates used in these monuments.     

The church as colonist: the benedictine abbey of Lorsch and planned Waldhufen colonization in the Odenwald

It is still uncertain whether earlier Waldhufen row settlements with single strip farms in the west of Germany served as models for this type of village, so widely diffused in east central Europe from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. In the Odenwald hills Waldhufen settlements were introduced as early as the late eighth century when the imperial monastery of Lorsch started to colonize a royal forest donated by Charlemagne. At first the abbey founded a small Waldhufe for dependent peasants of the manorial villicatio system, but later an enlarged version of strip farms incorporating large portions of forest—the classical Waldhufe—was developed by economically more independent farmers. Also a systematic network of central places in the form of villicatio centres and castle settlements was established within the colonization area. From the Lorsch colonies the diffusion of the Waldhufen settlement model can be traced to the neighbouring Spessart and to the distant Black Forest through personal contacts of territorial lords with Lorsch. Similar connections to one of the leading colonists in the Frankenwald may have brought the idea even to the east central European Waldhufen region in the early twelfth century.     

Food for all: An agent-based model to explore the emergence and implications of cooperation for food storage

Abstract

A consistent access to food is paramount for humans at individual and group level. Besides providing the basic nutritional needs, access to food defines social structures and has stimulated innovation in food procurement, processing and storage. We focus on the social aspects of food storage, namely the role of cooperation for the emergence and maintenance of common stocks. Cooperative food stocks are examined here as a type of common-pool resource, where appropriators must cooperate to avoid shortage (i.e. the tragedy of commons). ‘Food for all’ is an agent-based model in which agents face the social dilemma of whether or not to store in a cooperative stock, adapting their strategies through a simple reinforcement learning mechanism. The model provides insights on the evolution of cooperation in terms of storage efficiency and considering the presence of social norms that regulate reciprocity. For cooperative food storage to emerge and be maintained, a significant dependency on the stored food and some degree of external pressure are needed. In fact, cooperative food storage emerges as the best performing strategy when facing environmental stress. Likewise, an intermediate control over reciprocity favours cooperation for food storage, suggesting that concepts of closed reciprocity are precursors to cooperative stocks, while excess control over reciprocity is detrimental for such institution.     

Peripheralization: Theoretical Concepts Explaining Socio-Spatial Inequalities

The current increase in socio-spatial inequalities in Europe has led to a revival of the terms “peripheralization” and “marginalization” in spatial research. In contrast to the geographical notion of a “periphery”, which is synonymous with distance to a centre and being situated on the fringes of a city, region or nation, research on “peripheralization” describes the production of peripheries through social relations and their spatial implications. The main part of the article provides a critical review of theoretical concepts which attempt to explain socio-spatial disparities between centralization and peripheralization processes. This includes theories of economic polarization, social inequality and political power. Building on this, a multidimensional concept of socio-spatial polarization is outlined, one which comprises processes of centralization and peripheralization in economic, social and political dimensions. Finally, implications are drawn for spatial planning regarding the polarization between metropolitan and non-metropolitan regions and areas for further research are highlighted.