An Economy of Country Houses

This paper presents an economy of country houses with the ultimate aim of generating a framework for the evolution of country house management theory for the development of management practice and education. Whereas traditional management theory (for large entities) has evolved from the modern and narrow interpretation of economy, this paper employs the old but broader archaic form (oeconomy). This is a device that has previously been used both to generate an alternative understanding of organisations in general as well as for specific types of organisation. When combined with empirical data collected from a range of different country houses, an economy of country houses has emerged. This oeconomy is based on a number of core concepts, each of which has a number of key issues associated with it. The results show that this economy is quite unique, although there are some similarities with the economy of small businesses and the conflict approach of business management theory.     

Learning to design cultural districts and learning from designing them

Cultural districts are becoming an important field of study to promote a growing number of initiatives for local development. Despite substantial research in this field, knowledge gaps remain, especially with regard to initiatives at supra-urban level. Many policy-makers, funding agencies, local administrators and managers still face important design issues. This paper contributes to the developing body of theory on cultural districts in two ways. Firstly, focusing on concepts from complexity theory, it expands the debate on the conception of cultural districts as complex adaptive systems. Secondly, it highlights the dysfunctional tensions that can arise from conflicting ways of conceiving organizations, organizing and designing among ‘promoters’ and designers. We have been involved for three years in a large project aimed at designing a wide supra-urban cultural district in Italy, financed by a major banking foundation. Adopting an organizational perspective and through participative action research, we develop an explorative case study. Our core argument is that a linear, predictable and deterministic approach to analysis and design presents many limitations for such complex projects, offering learning opportunities from the design experience.     

Critical Assessment of Intensity Measures for Seismic Response of Italian RC Bridge Portfolios

The seismic assessment of a road network depends largely on the characterization of the fragility of its bridge components. The accuracy of bridge seismic demand estimates and the use of proper intensity measures (IM) will significantly influence such task. The available literature has mainly focused on buildings or a limited number of bridge configurations and IMs, which may not be representative for bridge portfolio assessment studies. In this paper, the correlation quality between a larger pool of traditional and innovative IMs and the nonlinear dynamic response of typical Italian RC bridges is investigated to identify the best-performing IMs.     

The World Bank–United States–Latin American Triangle: The Negotiations with Socialist Chile, 1970–1973

This paper sheds light on the largely unknown negotiations between Chile and the World Bank (WB) during the presidency of Salvador Allende (1970–1973). The prevalent understanding of the WB's involvement in Latin America portrays the Bank as a loyal ally of the U.S. government and as an institution with the power to impose its views on its borrowers. Yet, an in-depth analysis of previously unexamined primary sources demonstrates that rather than reflecting a dynamic in which the relationship was between Washington and the WB on the one hand, and Chile on the other hand, these relations constituted a WB–U.S.–Chile asymmetric triangle. Despite profound ideological discrepancies, multiple pressures, and constraints, Allende's government and the WB conducted high-ranking negotiations that challenged the U.S.-promoted economic embargo against Chile. The examination of this counterintuitive relationship sheds new light on Allende's positioning in the international arena and on the functioning of the World Bank, thereby providing a unique prism through which to reconsider dichotomist perceptions of the Cold War in Latin America.     

Sensitivity of bulk sedimentary stable carbon isotopes to prehistoric forest clearance and maize agriculture

The stable carbon isotope compositions (δ¹³C) of tropical lake sediments and soils have been used to reconstruct the occurrence of prehistoric maize cultivation and its relative importance through time. This study assesses some of the possible variables affecting the response of lake sediment bulk organic carbon isotope (δ¹³C_TOC) values to variations in the scale of prehistoric maize cultivation and the potential of this proxy to yield quantitative estimates of the scale of prehistoric maize agriculture in small tropical watersheds. High resolution analyses of δ¹³C_TOC values, maize pollen concentrations, and mineral influx were conducted on sediments deposited during a ∼220 year period of prehistoric maize agriculture in the watershed of Laguna Castilla, a small lake in the mid-elevations of the Cordillera Central, Dominican Republic. Close correspondence between δ¹³C_TOC values and maize pollen concentrations in the Laguna Castilla sediment record indicates a close relationship between the isotopic values and the scale of prehistoric maize cultivation. Correlations between the δ¹³C_TOC signature and mineral influx indicate that the isotope record is also sensitive to variations in allochthonous carbon delivery. This study establishes that sedimentary δ¹³C_TOC values can provide a highly sensitive proxy of the spatial scale of prehistoric maize agriculture in small tropical watersheds, but emphasizes the need for a better understanding of sediment dynamics and carbon cycling in anthropogenically modified landscapes before this proxy can be widely employed in diverse archaeological settings.     

The After School Routines of Literature-Devoted Urban Children

This paper discusses the out of school routines of a group of ‘literature-devoted’ children of the city of Madrid (Spain). The children and families were recruited for the study at a library, a children's bookstore and a puppet show in a park. Participants provided information on their weekly routines through several procedures: surveys, photographs of their daily lives, interviews based on the photographs and interviews with parents. We develop a spatially based model that allows us to identify four styles of activity in children's out of school lives: homebound children, non-scheduled children, outdoor and scheduled children, and fully scheduled children. Our results suggest that there is significant diversity in the ways in which children's after-school time is organized, even within a middle-class and socially homogeneous sample as the one in this study. Also, the range of activities our participants engage in seems to contradict current portraits of Western urban children's lives as constrained.     

Confusing the grid: spatiotemporalities,queer imaginaries,and movement

Mediating between queer theory's privileging of time as actor and geographic emphases on material spaces and identities, this article engages feminist geographies and the work of Deleuze and Guattari to understand the implications of time and space as imagined, or actors' spatiotemporal imaginaries. We draw on Massumi's metaphor of the ‘grid,’ which sediments ways of seeing self and other and logics for action and interaction. The grid incites imaginaries of time as active and space as passive, which evoke past, present, and future, offering coordinates for locating identities. Focusing on spatiotemporality, we conduct a discourse analysis of interviews with two Chilean lesbian-feminist activists, focusing on (1) overtly spatial and temporal dimensions (nation, region, history), (2) the constitution of lesbian space and identity (identity, visibility, consciousness, and community), and (3) oppositional entities that stabilize lesbian identity and space (men, gay men, feminists, universities, and queer). We demonstrate how the activists' imagining of Chile as a space with a linear history with a fixed past and present directs their actions to a particular future of pre-given positions. Nonetheless, we point to moments of disidentificatory movement that returns analytic attention to process, creation, and the open potentiality of movement. The politics of spatiotemporal imaginaries offers activists, geographers, and queer theorists ways of narrating sexualized subjects and politics that are not repetitive of identitarian debates, history as necessary sequence, or spaces as material.