Competition and Efficiency in a Spatial Setting

In this paper our primary concern is with a spatial model of competing firms in a regional industry. The firms are producing for an extraregional market and are located so as to gain exclusive access to a dispersed raw-material input. After outlining the form of the industry long-run average cost curve, we specify the equilibrium outcome, both for the individual firm and the regional industry. We demonstrate that the industry long-run supply curve does not coincide with the industry long-run average cost curve. We further show that the outcome in the spatial model results from the separation of firms, each firm having its own domain, part or all of which becomes its supply area.     

Parents and children in Second World War Germany: an inter-generational perspective on wartime separation

This article discusses how the relationship between parents and their children were affected by the second world war in Germany. With fathers away from home for often as long as a decade, many children grew up without a father being physically present. The current historiography suggests that wartime separation caused a crisis in the family. But did the prolonged periods of time apart and the separate experiences of husbands at the Front and wives and children at home really destabilize family relationships? This article questions such a picture of families in ruin. It argues that family relationships were far more resilient in the face of wartime separation than has previously been credited. Indeed, it reveals the importance of children in keeping mothers and fathers focused on getting through the war. It further contends that, even from afar, fathers continued to play an important role in their children’s lives. And this in turn revises our understanding of the situation facing reuniting families.     

‘That awful place was home’:1 Reflections on the Contested Meanings of craig dunain asylum

The paper explores a particular Scottish asylum geography (Craig Dunain Hospital near Inverness) as a meaningful social space. Drawing on archival evidence and combined with contemporary patient and staff voices, the contested meanings of this institution are discussed. In particular, patient narratives reveal both positive and negative assessments of internal and external asylum spaces. Changing feelings about the asylum are argued to be related to matters of geography, and are conceived in terms of distance from and proximity to the institution.     

Social geographies of rural mental health: experiencing inclusions and exclusions

A dominant urban focus in previous research on the social geographies of mental health has obscured the experiences of people with mental health problems living in rural localities. Critiquing this urban focus, we report on research conducted in the rural and remote Scottish Highlands. Evidence derived from in-depth interviews with over 100 users of psychiatric services in the Highlands is deployed to investigate the complex socio-spatial dynamics of inclusion and exclusion experienced by these users on a daily basis. A discussion of the explanations that users themselves offer of their experiences is accompanied by a theoretical framing of these issues pivoting on relations of proximity–distance and intimacy–repulsion.