Why does child trafficking policy need to be reformed? The moral economy of children's movement in Benin and Ethiopia

This paper challenges policy discourses that frame children's independent movement as intrinsically exploitative and threatening to their development. Drawing on research with children and adults in Benin and Ethiopia, two countries caught up in current efforts to eradicate child migration and the trafficking with which it has become associated, the paper critiques assumptions about children's vulnerability and physical dependence and contests the idea that appropriate childhood is necessarily fixed spatially within stable family structures. It, thus, situates children's migration within socio-cultural and economic contexts and suggests that it should be understood as part of a moral economy that confounds simplistic paradigms that conflate migration with trafficking. Policy suggestions are offered for how best to secure children's well-being through acknowledgement of the important relationship between mobility and child maturation.     

Masculinity and domesticity in 1930s South Wales: did unemployment change the domestic division of labour?

This article examines masculinity in an area suffering from sustained high unemployment and unremitting hardship during the 1930s: the South Wales coalfield had some of the highest rates of male unemployment and the lowest participation rates of married women in paid employment in Britain. Particular attention is drawn to power relations between husband and wife by looking at the domestic division of labour and whether male unemployment affected the split in domestic responsibilities. Personal testimonies are used to assess how men filled their time whilst unemployed and the meanings they attached to their activities and relationships. It will be shown that some unemployed men engaged more in the home and that many men were able to maintain existing power relations with their wives by finding or creating alternative manual work and maintaining an elastic relationship with the home by continuing to spend the majority of their time in the company of other men.     

By Any Means Necessary: Urban Regeneration and the “State of Exception” in Glasgow's Commonwealth Games 2014

When compulsory purchase for urban regeneration is combined with a sporting mega‐event, we have an archetypal example of what Giorgio Agamben called the “state of exception”. Through a study of compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) on the site of the Athletes' Village for Glasgow's 2014 Commonwealth Games, we expose CPOs as a classed tool mobilised to violently displace working class neighbourhoods. In doing so, we show how a fictionalised mantra of “necessity” combines neoliberal growth logics with their obscene underside—a stigmatisation logic that demonises poor urban neighbourhoods. CPOs can be used progressively, for example to abrogate the power of slum landlords for social democratic ends, yet with the increasing urbanisation of capital they more often target marginalised neighbourhoods in the pursuit of land and property valorisation. The growing use of CPOs as an exceptional measure in urbanisation, we argue, requires urgent attention in urban political struggles and policy practice.     

Market Creation by Leninist Means: The Regulation of Financial Services in the People’s Republic of China

Abstract

Within the process of China’s transition from a centrally-administered to a more market-oriented economy, financial services have played a very special role, but in a counter-intuitive way: what looks like Western market economics turns out to be a Leninist regulatory model. Even as international financial service providers and regulatory communities are invited to play a role in the creation of a Chinese market in financial services, the Communist Party has strengthened its control of top personnel, the judiciary and the media. The reform of the central bank and the establishment of technically independent regulatory agencies seemed to have taken China down the path of OECD economies. The model of a very specific post-regulatory state with Chinese characteristics, however, has not fully incorporated the notion of private authority. Such an acceptance would pose a threat to the CCP monopoly on political power. The attempt to use only semi-private organisations to develop financial markets undermines the long-term stability of the political and economic order.     

Nature-Society Interactions in the Pacific Islands

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on nature—society interactions in the Pacific Islands before European contact about 200 years ago. It argues that the character of early interactions was decided by both the nature of a particular island environment and the intentions of the human settlers. Throughout the pre‐European contact human history of the Pacific Islands, environmental changes of extraneous cause have been the main control of societal and cultural change. This environmental determinist view is defended using many examples. The contrary (and more popular) cultural determinist view of societal change in the Pacific Islands is shown to be based on largely spurious data and argument. A key example discussed is the ‘AD 1300 Event’, a time of rapid temperature and sea‐level fall which had severe, abrupt and enduring effects on Pacific Island societies. It is important to acknowledge the role of environmental change in cultural transformation in this region.     

Editorial: Two Years at the Top

The results of the ISI 2005 Journal Citation Reports, releasedin June 2006, are once again extremely encouraging for the Journal.As shown in Table 1, on the basis of the citation ‘impactfactor’ rankings, Journal of Economic Geography retainedboth its No. 1 position in geography (out of 38 geography journalscovered by the SSCI) and No. 3 position in economics (out of175 journals covered by the SSCI). The Journal's impact factorincreased marginally to 3.22, indicating that articles publishedin the Journal in 2003 and 2004 were cited on average more thanthree times each in 2005 and, in geography, the gap betweenthe Journal and its major competitors widened slightly. Papersfrom these years achieving significantly higher levels of citationthan the Journal's average in 2005 included Martin and Sunley     

古代近东小雕像的彩绘和彩绘工艺，公元前3000年到古波斯阿契美尼德王朝（公元前330年）

青铜时代的公元前3000年到希腊文化占统治地位的古波斯阿契美尼德王朝末期（公元前330年）。本文关注于人体的三维表现。同时会展示一些相关的动物形象。不同于古代希腊雕像,还没有开展对古代美索布达米亚雕塑彩绘颜料的化学分析工作。因此我将工作重点放在至今可见的彩色上。不同于秦俑,还没有古代美索布达米亚雕塑重建的例子。你可以看到大约公元2世纪女神伊施塔形象,这不是雕像,只是两维形象,在文中介绍了其彩绘重构工作。这将给你古代近东艺术彩绘的初始印象。     

State Collapse as Business: The Role of Conflict Trade and the Emerging Control Agenda

This article examines the role played by conflict trade in the process of state collapse. Conflict trade is defined here as the trade in non–military goods such as diamonds, timber and drugs that finances war. Such trade includes both the export and import of goods to a war zone as well as extra–territorial trade undertaken by supporters of a warring faction. It is argued that the decline of superpower military aid coupled with the broader effects of centre–periphery exploitation mediated through a neo–liberal and western imposed version of globalization has meant such trade has a particular salience both in contemporary conflict and the process of state collapse. Equally, though, the reliance of warring factions on conflict trade means they are also susceptible to changes in the market for their goods, creating a vulnerability that can (and to some extent has been) exploited to promote peace. The emerging control agenda on conflict trade is currently characterized by a number of problems — most notably, the risk that the control of conflict trade might become a substitute for action on arms exports; that international action has largely been undertaken within an inappropriate statist paradigm; that control has sometimes taken second place to economic or strategic interests and that policy has become hostage to a ‘drugs and thugs’ agenda which risks undermining its effectiveness.