Armenia in the Eurasian Economic Union: reasons for joining and its consequences

On 3 September 2013, the president of Armenia shifted the long-praised process of initialing political association and economic integration with the European Union and announced Armenia’s decision to join the Russia-led Customs Union and participate in the processes of formation of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). Practitioners and observers interpreted it either as a U-turn or as a surprise move mainly assuming that what happened was the result of Russian pressure on Armenia. However, when tensions and uncertainty eased, it became obvious that what happened was a result of complex reasons. Geopolitical constraints and socio-political problems that had accumulated in Armenia during recent years coincided with an assertive expansion of Russia’s foreign policy. This research provides a number of explanations for that political decision to understand the primary determinants of that move. It also examines the political and economic implications of Armenia’s membership of the EAEU.     

HOBY — AN EXCEPTIONAL EARLY ROMAN IRON AGE SITE IN THE WESTERN BALTIC REGION

Hoby on the island of Lolland in the western part of the Baltic Sea is strategically located in a coastal landscape offering abundant resources. In 1920, one of the most richly furnished so‐called “Lübsow type” graves dating to the first century AD was discovered at Hoby. The settlement associated with the grave was recognised in 1999. Excavations of the settlement between 2001 and 2016 have confirmed the central role of Hoby in the Iron Age society. The research has focused on the Iron Age population and the infrastructure on Lolland. The Iron Age open cultural landscape encompassed numerous settlements, richly furnished burials and fortifications, and has produced unique metal finds. The article presents a summary of investigation results.     

Devout Muslim masculinities: the moral geographies and everyday practices of being men in Turkey

While the academic focus on Muslim women’s dress and comportment has enriched our understanding of the multifaceted formation of pious femininities, there has been much less consideration of the embodied practices of Muslim men. What work does exist on Middle Eastern men’s piety, sexuality, and everyday conduct too often falls back on established categories, such as traditional, Western, or Islamic identities. Yet it is crucial not only to critically examine how we conceptualize masculinity in the Middle East, but also to recognize the political and cultural importance of how masculinities are enacted through everyday practices. In this article, we argue that questions of dress and bodily practice are relevant to an understanding of how young devout Muslim men navigate the complex spatiality of piety, morality, and masculinity in contemporary urban Turkey. Drawing on fieldwork with young devout men in Konya and Istanbul, we illustrate how multiple, competing devout Muslim masculinities participate in the production of uneven moral geographies in these two very different Turkish cities. Further, we find that the possibility of different ways to enact devout masculinity opens questions about the universality of Islamic knowledge and practice. We suggest that the embodied construction and regulation of the looking-desiring nexus tethers male sexual desire to the public performance of Islamic morality. Our intervention is thus to demonstrate how different versions of masculinity and Islamic piety striate the moral geographies of these two Turkish cities, and thereby to further recognition of the contingency and plurality of both masculinity and Islam.     

Trapped in clichés: masculinity,films and tourism in Iceland

When the Icelandic television series ‘Trapped’ was aired it instantly garnered worldwide attention. The main character, a rugged Icelandic man, is presented as being one with the harsh cold landscape. This article demonstrates how visual materials, like ‘Trapped,’ have become extremely important in the presentation of Iceland to the outside world, as well as working to present Iceland as a tourism destination. Furthermore, we evidence how ‘Trapped’ identifies with the Nordic noir genre. Our analysis shows that the series ‘Trapped’ and recent Icelandic films rest on the strong and entrenched association of Icelandicness with maleness, while also reflecting on existing stereotypes about Iceland and the Icelandic people as being exotic, both of which have become reanimated through the tourism industry. Thus, visual material such as ‘Trapped’ constitutes a part of, and becomes in and of itself symbolic of recurrent masculinity in Iceland. Our analysis emphasizes the importance of framing the ‘official’ production of locations as tourism destinations by both state and commercial industries in relation to other cultural productions that often also engage with mobile historical stereotyping and commercial attempts at nation branding.     

THE WORLD’S HIGHEST HYDROPOWER STATION GOES INTO PRODUCTION

<正>To those people living on the snowy plateau,this year's winter is no longer cold since a huge hydropower station went into production,providing power toward the electricity supply of Tibet.On November 23rd,2014,the Zangmu Hydropower Station,going through eight years'construction and being invested with a total 9.6 billion Yuan,was formally put into production.This     

Migration and the location of MNE activities: Evidence from Italian provinces

We investigate the migration-inward foreign direct investment (FDI) nexus in narrow geographies. A novel two-stage empirical strategy allows us to investigate the role of migration as a determinant of multinational enterprises (MNEs) location choices and unpick heterogeneity in foreign investors' preferences towards the presence of migrants in the host location. This allows us to shed light on the relative importance of the underlying mechanisms linking migration and inward FDI. Relying on 1113 greenfield investments by 895 MNEs in Italian NUTS3 regions over 2003–2015, we find that immigrants from the country of origin of the investor exert a positive but highly heterogeneous effect on MNE location choices. Investors are more sensitive to the presence of migrants from their country of origin when they lack experience in the destination country (first-time investors) and when their investments concern market-access or business-services (downstream) activities. This is consistent with the view that migrants act as information brokers that bridge the fixed costs of international business activities.     

Linguistic Imperialism and Minoan Archaeology (Greece)

This contribution to the debate about Anglo- and non-Anglo archaeologies briefly describes the issue from the point of view of Minoan Archaeology (Crete, Greece). The authors seek to problematise (English) language use within this discipline and highlight the complexity of archaeological discourses.

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Resumen Esta contribución a la discusión sobre arqueologías anglófonas y no anglófonas describe brevemente el asunto desde el punto de vista de la arqueología Minoica (Creta, Grecia). Los autores buscan a problematizar el idioma (en este caso el inglés) utilizado en esta disciplina y destacar la complejidad de los discursos arqueológicos.

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Résumé Cette contribution au débat entre archéologues anglophones et archéologues non-anglophones présente brièvement la question du point de vue de l’archéologie minoenne (Crète, Grèce). Les auteurs cherchent à problématiser l’utilisation de la langue (anglaise) dans le cadre de la discipline et à souligner la complexité du discourt archéologique.

     

Integrating human dimensions of Arctic palaeoenvironmental science: SEAD – the strategic environmental archaeology database

Environmental change has a human dimension, and has had so for at least the last 10 000 years. The prehistoric impact of people on the Arctic landscape has occasionally left visible traces, such as house and field structures. More often than not, however, the only evidence available is at the microscopic or geochemical level, such as fossil insect and seed assemblages or changes in the physical and chemical properties of soils and sediments. These records are the subject of SEAD, a multidisciplinary database and software project currently underway at Umeå University, Sweden, which aims to create an online database and set of tools for investigating these traces, as part of an international research infrastructure for palaeoecology and environmental archaeology.     

Cultural policies in cities of the ‘global South’: a multi-scalar approach

ABSTRACT

Building on the literature on global cities and on the worlding of cities, the articles in this special issue chart how cities outside Europe and North America try to reinvent and rescale themselves using culture. They suggest that the fabric of urban cultural policy is embedded in multi-scalar power dynamics. First, the contributions in this special issue reveal the importance of circulating standards across borders in structuring narratives about urban history, heritage and identity, in conjunction with local actors’ interests. Second, the diffusion of hegemonic cultural policy models such as the “creative city” leads to logics of exclusion, gentrification, and has been met with resistance, which suggest that these models can be to the detriment of local residents, despite the progressive values they are often claim to promote. Third, this special issue points to the need to rethink the politics of cultural policy mobility and offers conceptual tools such as vernacularization to make sense of the ways in which urban elites navigate, negotiate and take advantage of circulating cultural policy models.     

Inhabiting a risky earth: The Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2010 and its impacts (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland in 2010 caused havoc to global air traffic. This article examines that event by looking at theories of risk and culture. We demonstrate the fragility of today's mobilities, which depend on unpredictable nature as well as complex technological systems. A new type of risk was revealed by the eruption, which has since become a feature of cultural risk portfolios in contemporary society.