Reinterpreting Bretton Woods: International Development and the Neglected Origins of Embedded Liberalism

This article offers a reinterpretation of the origins of the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreements, one that is of particular significance to scholars of international development. Conventional wisdom holds that the Agreements were primarily a product of US–British negotiations between 1942 and 1944, in which little attention was paid to international development issues and the concerns of poorer countries. This article demonstrates that the innovative ‘embedded liberal’ vision of Bretton Woods was in fact first put forward in the context of US–Latin American financial relations in the 1938–42 period, and that this experience influenced the subsequent Bretton Woods negotiations. The analysis highlights that the architects of Bretton Woods did not ignore development issues but rather attempted to pioneer a new model for both North–North and North–South economic relations. If this has been subsequently overlooked by historians, it may be because this latter feature of Bretton Woods was quickly buried by US policy makers in the immediate post‐war years. This historical reinterpretation helps both to explain some important puzzles about the origins of the Bretton Woods Agreements and to shed new light on the place of international development issues in the evolution of the post‐war international economic order.     

Optimal Sampling Design for Variables with Varying Spatial Importance

It is often desirable to sample in those locations where uncertainty associated with a variable is highest. However, the importance of knowing the variable's value may vary across space. We are interested in the spatial distribution of Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), a measure of the signal strength from a cell tower received at a particular location. It is crucial to estimate RSSI values accurately in order to evaluate the effectiveness of mayday systems designed for rapid emergency notification following vehicle crashes. RSSI estimation is less important for locations where the probability of a crash is low and where the likelihood of call completion is either close to zero or one. We develop a method for augmenting an initial spatial sample of RSSI values to achieve a high‐precision estimate of the probability of call completion following a crash. We illustrate the approach using data on RSSI and vehicle crashes in Erie County, NY.     

A Negative Geography of Necessity

Abstract: One of the many unfortunate results of the long‐lived misconception that Marx was a “determinist” is a lack of engagement with his ideas of necessity and negation. Reading the Grundrisse's famous comments on the annihilation of space by time, I trace the Hegelian roots of these concepts to show that for both Marx ahd Hegel, negation is the very act of critique itself, and necessity is properly understood not as the force of history, but as the object of historical explanation–what makes things the way they are and not another. It is therefore crucial to critical geography's efforts to identify the possibilities for social change, for that analysis must be predicated on an understanding for how things have emerged in their present form, i.e. the one we have to work with. I argue that a negative geography of necessity is the essential basis for anything we might call a communist geography, a geography of “the real movement which abolishes the present state of things”.     

躺着逛加州

如果说加州拥有世界最美的海滩,很多人可能会不服气。但如果说加州是人最知道如何玩转自己的海滩资源,恐怕无数人会举双手赞成。沿着长长的海岸线走一遭,你常常可以看到当地人自得其乐地做着各式各样稀奇古怪的运动——卧式自行车就是其中的一种。     

"The City is Dead, Long Live the Net": Harnessing European Interurban Networks for a Neoliberal Agenda

A network discourse has emerged during the last two decades, representing networks as self–organizing, collaborative, nonhierarchical, flexible, and topological. Progressive scholars initially embraced networks as an alternative to markets and hierarchies; neoliberal thinkers and policymakers have reinterpreted them in order to serve a neoliberal agenda of enhanced economic competitiveness, a leaner and more efficient state, and a more flexible governance. The European Commission and the German state have initiated and financially supported interurban network programs, broadly framed within this neoliberal network discourse, despite their long traditions of regulated capitalism. Really existing interurban networks depart, however, from these discourses. Embedded within pre–existing processes of uneven development and hierarchical state structures, and exhibiting internal power hierarchies, really existing networks are created, regulated, and evaluated by state institutions, and often exclude institutions and members of civil society, making them effective channels for disseminating a neoliberal agenda. At the same time, they create new political spaces for cities to challenge existing state structures and relations and are of unequal potential benefit to participating cities, both of which may catalyze resistance to neoliberalization.