The Romney Street Group: Its Origins and Influence--1916-1922

Contemporary historians tend to be drawn to study formal institutions,largely because they leave formal records. But as politicalscientists have long argued, informal networks can be of equalimportance and influence. Throughout the last century, dininggroups were amongst the most common of these networks; and theRomney Street Group, which has been existence in various guisessince 1917, is eminent amongst them. This article looks at themethodological problems of analysing such groups, as well asits early history. Amongst its early members were R.H. Tawneyand Tom Jones, symbolizing the link the group forged betweenthe liberal intellectuals behind The Athenaeum and Lloyd George'snewly formed Cabinet Secretariat. Its principal focus was thepostwar reconstruction of industrial and international relations.Although its immediate impact appears to have been small, itcontinued to keep reconstruction ideals alive, in general throughjournalism and the private contacts of its members and in particularthrough Tom Jones, who was successively the confidant of LloydGeorge and Baldwin.     

The Dualism of Urban Governance in Denmark

The article argues that the present Danish urban policy and urban democracy can be characterized by a striking duality and tension between: (1) Participatory empowering welfare oriented community strategies, which targets deprived districts and neighbourhoods, which are based on notions of the inclusive city. This trend is founded on priorities of radical democracy, social justice, inclusion and citizens empowerment; (2) Neo-elitist/corporative market driven strategic regional and global growth strategies, which are based on notions of the Entrepreneurial Globalized City and where urban policy becomes a question of facilitation of the “growth machine” and neo-liberalized urban authoritarianism. The article discusses dilemmas for overcoming the growing tension between elitist neo-corporate growth regimes, which are in operation via “Quangoes” and closed elite networks, and community empowerment and welfare oriented policy in the age of globalization. Taking the stand of community empowerment and welfare policy, the article conclusively discusses ways to shape a new inclusive politics of difference including using “positive selectivism” as part of an empowerment strategy.     

Announcing: The Janice Monk Lecture in Feminist Geography

In this brief announcement we have the pleasure of introducing the inaugural Janice Monk Lecture in Feminist Geography. The lecture will appear annually in the pages of Gender, Place and Culture. The first lecture, printed here, is by Ruth Fincher of the University of Melbourne. Her article is preceded by four papers that pay tribute to Jan Monk's academic achievements and her dedication to encouraging and guiding the careers of emerging scholars around the world.     

Religion and Politics in the Howard Decade

The interaction between religion and politics is varied, complex and often heated. It involves constitutional issues, voting behaviour, party composition and electoral competition, faith-based public administration, advocacy and lobbying by churches, mutual criticism by churches and the state, and the public presentation of religious values. This article is a comprehensive mapping and discussion of a range of the major religion and politics issues in Australia since the election of the Howard government in 1996. This has been a decade in which religion has had a higher political profile than at any time since the 1950s Labor Split. One feature has been the rise to prominence of Catholics in the Coalition parties, whereas they featured heavily on the other side during the Labor Split. It is a more intellectually interesting decade than the 1950s because the influence of religion has crossed denominational and faith boundaries from the mainstream Christian churches to the newer Evangelical Christian churches and to non-Christian religions such as Islam. The overall impact of religious intervention appears to have favoured the Coalition parties, but many unanswered questions remain about the motivation and impact of these developments, and there are numerous opportunities for further research.     

Representation and Recursion in the Archaeological Record

Living humans are unique among the animal kingdom with respect to their ability to externalize mental representations outside the brain through a variety of media and in a recursive or creative manner (i.e., generating a potentially infinite array of combinations). Earlier humans evolved two specialized organs—the hand and the vocal tract—as primary instruments for externalizing artificial or semantic representations. These organs and the externalized representations may have co-evolved with the Homo brain. The archaeological record yields examples of simple representations by 1.6 mya. More complex, hierarchical, and recursive forms are evident by roughly 0.25 mya. Complex and highly recursive representations in a wide range of media (including representations of representations in the form of visual art) emerge after 0.1 mya among anatomically modern humans.     

Land Absorption in U.S. Metropolitan Areas: Estimates and Projections from Regional Adjustment Models

This article adapts a regional adjustment model to estimate and project the spatial outcome of population and employment growth in U.S. metropolitan areas. The three-equation multiplicative model of population change, employment change, and land absorption is estimated using three-stage least squares to account for endogeneity among the dependent variables and contemporaneous correlation across the system of equations. In addition to the core model, alternative specifications are estimated, imposing the initial conditions of size, land availability, and economic structure. The stability of the solutions is then examined using reduced-form equations estimated via the seemingly unrelated regression equations approach. The results reveal substantive evidence that population and employment growth are jointly determined, of how the two affect the outcome of land development, and, perhaps most importantly, stable and fractionally reasonable estimates at projected equilibrium points. Lastly, the adapted model controlling for the initial condition of land availability is used to project patterns of land consumption at equilibrium in 50 rapid-growth metropolitan areas.     

Archaeomagnetic dating of Dogmersfield Park brick kiln (Southern England)

Archaeomagnetic dating of samples from a brick kiln discovered at Dogmersfield Park has been achieved using both field direction and intensity. Detailed rock-magnetic properties and microwave archaeointensities have already been studied and published elsewhere [Ll. Casas, J. Shaw, M. Gich, J.A. Share, High-quality microwave archaeointensity determinations from an early 18th century brick kiln, Geophys. J. Int. 161 (2005) 653–661]. The archaeomagnetic measurements were assigned time-probability distributions by comparing with predictions from a global model at the sampling site, this procedure suppresses errors arising from relocation to a common central reference location. All three probability distributions consistently indicate the same age (∼AD 1700). Once the probability distributions are combined a narrower probability distribution is obtained, stressing the importance of pursuing combined (directional and intensity) archaeomagnetic analyses. The inferred age is also highly consistent with available historical evidence.