EMPIRICAL IMPLICATIONS OF ADVANCES IN CANONICAL THEORY*

Canonical correlation has seen growing acceptance in geographical research as a tool for analysing the interrelationships between two sets of variables.¹ It provides a natural extension to the multivariate case of simple correlation analysis introduced into the discipline in the fifties for measuring the degree of areal association between two individual variables.² It has also proved valuable for forging a link between traditional geographic variables measuring the attributes of places and those indicating interactions among them.³ Recently, major developments in canonical theory have occurred which provide two major benefits for geographical research.⁴ First, asymmetrical regression relationships in addition to symmetrical correlation relationships between two variable sets can be determined. Researchers can use canonical regression to examine the degree to which one variable set is capable of predicting the other, in addition to canonical correlation which examines the symmetrical interrelationships between the two.⁵ Secondly, much improved methods are available for measuring the number, strength, and nature of the interrelationships between the two variable sets, and for assessing the adequacy of the canonical model in general.⁸ The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of these developments and, more particularly, to explore their implications for the validity of empirical results obtained in earlier applications of canonical analysis. This is not intended as a criticism of these studies but rather as an attempt to further our understanding of spatial structure and process through re-examination of existing data in the light of refined techniques.     

Does Anyone Want the Displaced Persons?

Book reviwed in this article:
Arieh J. Kochavi, Post–Holocaust Politics: Britain, the United States, and Jewish Refugees, 1945–1948     

Implementing Cleaner Production Programmes in Changzhou and Nantong,Jiangsu Province

Cleaner Production (CP) has been advocated worldwide as a strategy for companies to obtain environmental and economic benefits simultaneously. This analysis of how city‐level CP programmes were implemented in Changzhou and Nantong (Jiangsu Province, China) finds that both cities failed to meet the Province's targets to implement CP at all large‐ and medium‐sized companies by the end of 2000. Ineffective vertical control, weak inter‐agency co‐ordination, and lack of alignment between CP requirements and the core missions and operating procedures of implementing agencies have impeded CP implementation in the two cities. The relatively few successful CP outcomes at companies are based on the professionalism and skills of individual implementing agents. However, successes that rely exclusively on individual agents may not last, and thus institutional changes will be needed if the government's CP programmes are to lead to broader CP adoption.     

Land and society in early Canada and South Africa

The rural societies of early Canada and South Africa overwhelmingly comprised independent families on their own land and, in comparison with their European antecedents, were strikingly egalitarian and homogeneous. The transformation and simplification of European society in early Canada and South Africa was not the result of fragmentation—the isolation of particular elements of the European whole in remote new settings. Rather, these two colonial societies were common products of the introduction of European assumptions about family and land into settings where land was cheap and markets for farm produce were poor. Taken together these factors are sufficient to explain the general character of rural society in early Canada and most of early South Africa.