Regional urbanization and the selective growth of towns in North American regions

Despite the extensive discussion of urbanization in the North American past, the processes of selective growth among the various towns and cities, which comprise a regional urban system, remain obscured by the use of oversimplified explanations that neglect either functional and locational variations among the centres or the changing conditions of regional development. A generalized model of selective urban growth in newly settling regions is proposed which distinguishes three periods of development by characteristics of circulation and export activity. It emphasizes the changing implications of town locations (their nodality) as settlement expands and the bases of urban growth shift from commercial and local services to increasingly manufacturing. Discussion of the literature on regional urbanization, organized under five categories of traditional and more recent explanations of selective growth, not only points to the temporal and locational deficiencies which the model addresses, but also reveals the need for closer examination within a developmental framework of both the interdependencies of central place and mercantile bases of urban growth and the relationships between the emergence of manufacturing and city sizes.     

The State and the Left in modern France

French historians have recently begun to pursue the historyof left-wing politics in a manner which suggests that the Marxistframe of reference has begun to disappear, even in this fieldof history. The eminent historian and public intellectual PierreRosanvallon is leading the way in the field of political andintellectual history, through his sustained examination of theState and the ongoing debate about French democracy. The connectionbetween history and current political discourse is important,and it is significant that historians are attempting to revisecommon perceptions of the evolution of French political institutions.Wide areas of new research have been opened out and this articlehopes to offer some reflections on how these new approachesto French political history may be used in future research.     

Children, ‘healthy’ food,school and family: the ‘[n]ot really’ outcome of school food messages

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on a multi-method study with 50 families in Victoria, Australia. Primary school children were asked about food knowledge from school and whether they felt motivated to bring knowledge home. Generally, children and parents felt school food messages are unclear, contradictory and not relevant to them and this reduced the likelihood of messages coming home from school. We identify a critical difference in how families thought about healthy eating and food practices at home and the framework of school messages. Families focused on children’s eating in a pragmatic way, infused with nurturance as well as concern. We argue their practices can be viewed as a form of relational consumption (Lindsay and Maher 2013. Consuming Families: Buying, Making, Producing Family Life in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Routledge.) where food is part of the everyday exchange of love and care. A disjunction exists between familial relational approaches and the regulatory framework of school food messages that impacts how messages move between these spaces. Attention to relational aspects of food consumption at school might allow for a more valuable exchange between family and schools that supports family endeavours to feed children well.