REGIONAL TRAJECTORIES OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE IN CANADIAN MANUFACTURING

Techniques of production were measured for 18 manufacturing industries across 6 regions of Canada between 1961 and 1988. In any given year, production technology, measured by a pair of capital and labour input coefficients, varies markedly over space. The relative positions of regions in a two-dimensional technology-space appears consistent across industries. With industry-mix effects removed, multivariate analysis of variance confirms that regional differences in production techniques are significant. Further investigation reveals that spatial variations in techniques of production persist over time. These findings support the claims of evolutionary theorists, demonstrating that in Canadian manufacturing industries regions tend to move along distinct trajectories of technological change.
On a mesuré les techniques de production dans 18 industries manufacturières de 6 régions du Canada au cours de la période 1961-88. La technologie de production, mesurée par deux coefficients des entrées du capital et du travail, diffère considérablement d'une région à l'autre à une année donnée. Les positions relatives des régions par rapport aux deux dimensions espace-technologie se maintiennent dans toutes les industries. Si on écarte les effets de la composition industrielle, l'analyse de variance à plusieurs variables démontre qu'il existe d'importantes différences régionales en techniques de production. L'analyse complémentaire révèle que les variations spatiales des techniques de production persistent à travers le temps. Ces résultats confirment la position des théoriciens évolutionnistes à l'effet que dans les industries manufacturières canadiennes, les régions ont tendance à suivre des trajectoires distinctes de changements technologiques.     

RECENT ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE IN THE SOUTHWESTERN CANADIAN PLAINS

This paper examines 20th-century environmental change in the subhumid southwestern Canadian Plains, specifically in relation to the dominant agricultural landscape and to the climate of the past millennium as reconstructed from proxy data. Anthropogenic landscape change in the last century has been dominated by the conversion of grasslands to ranchland and cropland. This has heightened landscape vulnerability to climatic fluctuations, especially drought. Instrumental climate records, extending back to the 1880s, highlight the variability of precipitation in this region. Proxy environmental records, derived from lake cores and tree-ring analysis, extend this picture into the last millennium and show that drought has been a recurring theme of the Prairie climate. Tree-ring records suggest that some droughts in the last millennium may have exceeded in severity any in the instrumental record. The sustainability of Prairie agriculture depends on adaptation to the amplitudes of climatic change and variability evident in these proxy records. Dans cet article nous examinons les changements environnementaux qui sont survenus pendant le 20^ème siècle dans les plaines canadiennes sèches du sud-ouest, spécifiquement par rapport au paysage agricole dominant et au climat du dernier millénaire qui a été déterminéà partir de données de procuration. La transformation des prairies en ranchland et cropland est le changement du paysage le plus important dont l'homme est responsable, pour le dernier siècle. À cause de ce changement, le paysage est plus vulnérable aux fluctuations climatiques - à la sécheresse en particulier. Les enregistrements instrumentaux de climat, qui reculent jusqu'aux années 1880, mettent en évidence la variabilité des précipitations dans cette région. Les enregistrements environnementaux de procuration, dérivés d'échantillons pris dans les lacs et de la dendroanalyse, étendent cette image dans le dernier millénaire et prouvent que le thème de la sécheresse est apparu souvent dans les analyses du climat du prairie. Les enregistrements de boucles d'arbre suggèrent que, dans le dernier millénaire il y avait des sécheresses qui étaient peut-être si sévères que les instruments n'ont pas pu les enregistrer. Si l'agriculture veut survivre comme entreprise dans les prairies, il faudra qu'elle s'adapte aux amplitudes de changement et de variabilité du climat qui ont été constatées dans les données de procuration.     

Spatial Variations,Contextual and Social Structural Influences on Voting for the ALP at the 1996 Federal Election: Conclusions from Multilevel Analyses

Multilevel modelling of individual survey data from the 1996 Australian Election Study and aggregate contextual Census data is used to investigate the extent of spatial variations in voting at the 1996 election, and to examine potential explanations for the variations. The size of the variations was about the same as at the 1993 election, and was again mainly at the divisional rather than the state level. However, unlike in 1993, only a small amount of the variations could be explained by differences in the individual sociodemographic compositions of the areas, suggesting that local influences were more important in 1996 than 1993. The most significant change in the effect of the individual-level variables between the two elections was that the influence of being personally unemployed completely changed direction (working against the ALP in 1996, whereas it had favoured it in 1993), although the estimated strengths of several others also changed. I suggest that the concentration of the 1993 election on the 'Fightback' package might be the main cause of many of these differences. The nature of the main contextual influences is similar to those at the 1993 election, involving an urban-rural effect, a local economic effect and an ethnic effect, confirming that these are more than short-term factors. However, there also remain somewhat larger unexplained local influences than in 1993. Detailed investigation of the ethnic contextual effect suggests the presence of a specifically anti-Asian influence.     

Maps Narratives and Trails: Performativity,Hodology and Distributed Knowledges in Complex Adaptive Systems – an Approach to Emergent Mapping

If maps are conceived as representations of reality or as spatially referenced data assemblages, a dilemma is raised by the nature of Indigenous knowledge traditions and multiple ontologies. How can differing knowledge traditions, differing ways of mapping be enabled to work together without subsumption into one common or universal ontology? The paper explores one way of handling this dilemma by reconceiving mapping and knowing performatively and hodologically. It is argued that one way in which differing knowledge traditions can interact and be mutually interrogated is by creating a database structured as distributed knowledge and emulating a complex adaptive system. Through focusing on the encounters, tensions and cooperations between traditions and utilising the concept of cognitive trails‐ the creation of knowledge by movement through the natural and intellectual environment – the socially distributed performative dimensions of differing modes of spatially organised knowledges can then be held in a dialogical tension that enables emergent mapping.     

Tomboy Tales: The rural,nature and the gender of childhood

By following and connecting certain well-trodden routes through constructions of childhood, it is possible to arrive at a point at which the 'natural' gender of childhood is apparently male. This is indicated by the fact that girls are often termed 'tomboys' in both popular and lay discourses, even when they are partaking in what are seen to be the purest, most ideal childhoods which are present in notions of country childhood idylls. Children, nature, and the countryside as surrogate nature, are all seen as innocent, and thus notions of idyllic 'natural' country childhoods become a powerful force. Heavily influenced by romantic constructions of, and connections between, childhood, nature and the countryside, such views, it will be shown, leave little space for girl children to adopt female identities. The author suggests that this ideal association of male children and nature, and the accompanying notion that it is the development of female sexuality which in particular marks a departure from the natural state of childhood, and thus ends childhood, merits consideration. This is particularly so in the contexts of various discourses, such as romanticism, feminism and ecofeminism, which have explored links between the female and the natural. The aim is not to challenge these constructions and theorisations of gender and nature directly, but rather to show how the introduction of the notion of childhood might cross-cut, problematise and even illuminate them to some degree.