Explaining accommodation and resistance to demands for independence referendums in the UK and Spain

This article examines why the UK Government accepted the 2014 Scottish independence referendum while the Spanish Government opposes a similar referendum in Catalonia. Adopting a most similar research design, we argue that the variation is best explained by perceived political opportunities by the two ruling parties. These are embedded in different conceptions of the state and constitutional designs, mostly mononational in Spain and mostly plurinational in the UK but multiple and contested in both cases. In Spain, vote‐seeking calculations incentivise the Popular Party to oppose a referendum, while its mononational conception of the state and the Spanish constitutional design provide a further constraint and a discursive justification for their position. In the UK, David Cameron's accommodating position was based on the view that the Scottish referendum was low risk – as support for independence was minimal – with a high reward: the annihilation of the independence demand. The Conservatives have recently adopted a more restrictive position because seeming political advantage has changed. The findings suggest that independence referendums will continue to be rare events.     

Dealing with Timing and Synchronization in Opportunities for Joint Activity Participation. 公共活动参与机会中实时性与同步性处理

The ability of people to access opportunities offered by the built environment is circumscribed by various sets of space–time constraints, including the requirements to meet other persons at particular times and places to undertake activities together. While models of space–time accessibility recognize that joint activities may constrain the performance of activities in space and time, their specifications do not explicitly acknowledge the opportunities that individuals of a group have for joint activity participation. Therefore, this article focuses on joint activity participation and argues that collective activity decisions are the outcome of a complex process involving various aspects of timing, synchronization, and social hierarchy. The utility‐theoretic model proposed here quantifies the extent to which opportunities can be jointly accessed by a particular group of people within a specific time period. Central to the approach are three key variables: the attractiveness of an opportunity, the time available for activity participation, and the travel time to an activity location. Because of the multiperson character of joint activities, the determination of these variables is subject to individual preferences, privileges, and power differentials within a group. Specific attention is given to how time‐of‐day and synchronization effects influence the opportunities accessible to a group of individuals. The impact of these factors on joint accessibility is illustrated by a real‐world example of an everyday rendezvous scenario. The outcomes of a simulation exercise suggest that time‐of‐day and synchronization effects significantly affect the benefits that can be gained from opportunities for joint activities.     

The substance of sexual difference: change and persistence in representations of the body in eighteenth-century England

The claims of Thomas Laqueur for a shift from a one-sex to a two-sex model of sexual difference are incorporated into many recent histories of gender in England between 1650 and 1850. Yet the Laqueurian narrative is not supported by discussions of the substance of sexual difference in eighteenth-century erotic books. This article argues that different models of sexual difference were not mutually exclusive and did not change in linear fashion, but that the themes of sameness and difference were strategically deployed in the same period. Thus, there was an enduring synchronic diversity which undermines claims for linear transformation.     

The wives of the ‘first troubadour’, Duke William IX of Aquitaine

The sources which offer insights into the life of Duke William IX of Aquitaine, the ‘first troubadour’, are few and disparate in nature. This study focuses on the conclusions which have been drawn from Anglo-Norman chroniclers' accounts of his clashes with the Church, reportedly over the issue of his adultery, and on Latin poems in praise of the bishop who excommunicated William and whom the duke persecuted.While it is generally believed that the duke married twice, close investigation shows this to be based largely on an error in a nineteenth-century secondary source: it is probable that Philippa of Toulouse was William's only wife. A new reading is proposed of the major Latin verse-compositions referring to the duke's excommunication (1114-17) and it is suggested that the historical evidence concerning the Poitevin claim to the country of Toulouse does not match well with the notion that William attempted to repudiate his wife Philippa, on whom this claim depended.     

Contesting captive cetaceans: (il)legal spaces and the nature of dolphins in urban Singapore

Drawing on the debate over dolphin captivity in Singapore, we examine the ways in which human–animal relationships are contested. Departing from most animal geography studies which often focused on the conflictual spatial transgressions of animals into human spaces, we use the idea of ‘captivity’ as a heuristic to posit that human–animal relationships are necessarily moral, spatially enmeshed in contestations over what is (un)natural and increasingly entwined in legal geographies. While such an argument mirrors other sites of animal captivity (for example, zoos), dolphin captivity sits in a more ambiguous legal terrain than most other captive animals in zoos. Moreover, the very ‘nature’ of dolphins makes debates over their ‘authenticity’ ever more complex. The moralities of cetaceans are simultaneously underpinned by questions of the spatial (‘captive sites’ and ‘open seas’), the socio-cultural (‘charismatic animals’) and the legal (‘regulatory frameworks governing their welfare and whether they are endangered or not’). Hitherto, cetaceans are less researched (compared to terrestrial creatures) in animal geographies with even fewer studies focusing on cetacean captivity. We call for an expanded notion of ‘captivity’ that is relative, relational and non-absolute and underpinned by the notions of ‘nature’. In so doing, we align ourselves more with the anti-captivity camp.     

THE IMPACT OF SPECIFIC-SECTOR CHANGES IN EMPLOYMENT ON ECONOMIC GROWTH, LABOR MARKET PERFORMANCE AND MIGRATION

ABSTRACT.  It is common in empirical regional economics to use total employment as an explanatory variable while investigating issues such as the level and distribution of income and migration. This paper argues that sector-specific changes in employment and labor market performance can have different effects on economic growth, the collection of tax revenue, migration, and the level and distribution of household income. As such, it is important to model sectors separately. We find that expansions in employment opportunities for a high-wage sector such as computer manufacturing or bioengineering, a medium-wage sector manufacturing, and the lower-wage sector of retailing have differing economic consequences for a small city. We use a data intensive computable general equilibrium model to obtain these results.