THE "CREATIVE CLASS" IN THE UK: AN INITIAL ANALYSIS

Richard Florida argues that regional economic outcomes are tied to the underlying conditions that facilitate creativity and diversity. Thus the Creative Class thesis suggests that the ability to attract creativity and to be open to diverse groups of people of different ethnic, racial and lifestyle groups provides distinct advantages to regions in generating innovations, growing and attracting high‐technology industries, and spurring economic growth. In this paper we investigate the extent to which there might be similar processes concerning the relationship between creativity, human capital, and high‐technology industries at work in the UK as in North America. The approach taken is broadly sympathetic to the Creative Class thesis; critical perspectives and reservations from the literature are introduced as appropriate research is focused around the three principal research questions: Where is the creative class located in the UK? What is the impact of quality of place upon this dispersion? What is the connection between the location of the creative class and inequalities in technical and economic outcomes within the UK? To this end, the creative class and its subgroups are defined and identified. We then construct quality of place indicators relating to tolerance, diversity, creativity and cultural opportunity. To these are added measures of public provision and social cohesion. Data are analysed by means of correlations and regression. In general we find that, although the distribution of the creative class is uneven and complex, our results are consistent with the findings of the North American research with the notable exception of technology‐based employment growth. Finally, priorities for further research are discussed. The need to further investigate causality, variations within the creative class itself, and the potential role of qualitative data in this are highlighted, as is the potential fate of “non‐creative” workers and places.     

Book reviews

CHINA

EDWARD FRIEDMAN and BARRETT L. McCORMICK, eds. What if China Doesn't Democratize? Implications for War and Peace. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2000. 376 pp. Index, introduction, notes, tables. US$69.95, hardcover; US$26.95, paper.

SHAOHUA HU. Explaining Chinese Democratization. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2000. 194 pp. Acknowledgments, introduction, bibliography, index. US$62.50, hardcover.

S. A. SMITH. A Road is Made: Communism in Shanghai 1920–1927. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000. x, 315 pp. £45.00, hardcover.

MARAM EPSTEIN. Competing Discourses: orthodoxy, Authenticity, and Engendered Meanings in Late Imperial Chinese Fiction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard East Asian Monographs, no. 197, 2002. xii, 353 pp. US$39.50, hardcover.

JAPAN, KOREA

BRIAN J. McVEIGH. Wearing Ideology: state, Schooling and Self‐Presentation in Japan. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000. 231 pp. Illustrations, introduction, notes, appendices, bibliography, index. US$65.00 cloth; US$19.50 paper.

ALISON McQUEEN TOKITA. Kiyomoto‐bushi. Narrative Music of the Kabuki Theatre Sen Studien zur Traditionellen Musik Japans Bd. 8. Basel. London: Barenreiter Kassel, 1999. 400pp. Preface, foreword, Japanese and English abstracts, introduction, photographs, illustrations, appendices. DM68.00, hardcover.

BERT EDSTROM (ed). The Japanese and Europe: images and Perceptions. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000. 283 pp. £45.00, hardcover.

SOUTH, WEST & CENTRAL ASIA

SIRI GAMAGE and I. B. WATSON (eds). Conflict and Community in Contemporary Sri Lanka: “Pearl of the East” or the “Island of Tears”. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1999. 355 pp. Rs495, hardcover; Rs295, paper.

RANABIR SAMADDAR. The Marginal Nation: transborder Migration from Bangladesh to West Bengal. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1999. 228 pp. Rs 325.

GENERAL ASIA

DAVID WALKER. Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia 1850–1939. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1999. 312 pp. $29.95, paper.

J. S. EADES, TOM GILL and HARUMI BEFU (eds). Globalization and Social Change in Contemporary Japan. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2000. viii, 295 pp. A$39.95/US$26.00, paper.

YAMAMOTO YOSHINOBU (ed). Globalism, Regionalism & Nationalism. Asia in Search of its Role in the 21st Century. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. xi, 260 pp. £14.99/US$34.95, paper.

DONALD DENOON. Getting Under the Skin: the Bougainville Copper Agreement and the Creation of the Panguna Mine. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2000. vii, 264 pp. Maps, bibliography, appendices, index. A$39.95, hardcover.

JOANNE R. BAUER and DANIEL A. BELL (eds). The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xii, 394 pp. Notes, index. £40.00, hardcover; £14.95, paper.

ANNE‐MARIE HILSDON, MARTHA MACINTYRE, VERA MACKIE and MAILA STIVENS (eds). Human Rights and Gender Politics: Asia‐Pacific Perspectives. London: Routledge, 2000. ix, 240 pages. Notes, index. £60.00, hardcover.     

Book reviews

CHINA

NI ZHEN. Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy: the Genesis of China's Fifth Generation, trans. Chris Berry. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. 234 pp. US$54.95, hardcover; US$18.95, paper.

CHUNHOU ZHANG and C. EDWIN VAUGHAN. Mao Zedong as Poet and Revolutionary Leader: social and Historical Perspectives. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2002. x, 140 pp. US$60.00, hardcover.

SUSAN BLUM and LIONEL JENSEN (eds). China off Center: mapping the Margins of the Middle Kingdom. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2002. Maps, photographs. 400 pp. US$165.00, hardcover; US$64.95, paper.

JIE TANG and ANTHONYWARD. The Changing Face of Chinese Management. London: Routledge, 2003. Tables, figures, bibliography, index. 234 pp. A$66.00, paper.

FRANK DIKÖTTER. Crime, Punishment, and the Prison in Modern China, 1895–1949. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 264 pp. US$38.00, hardcover.

JAPAN AND KOREA

BOB JOHNSTONE. We Were Burning: Japanese Entrepreneurs and the Forging of the Electronic Age. New York: Basic Books, 1999. xxiii, 422 pp. US$27.50, hardcover.

ANDREW C. ROSS. A Vision Betrayed: the Jesuits in Japan and China, 1542–1742. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994. xvii, 207 pp. US$30.45, hardcover.

SOUTH, WEST & CENTRAL ASIA

PREMA CLARKE. Teaching and Learning: the Culture of Pedagogy. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2001. 223 pp. Rs 450, hardcover; Rs 250, paper.

ROBERT DELIEGE. The Untouchables of India. Oxford and New York: Berg, 1999. xiii, 229 pp. Tables, bibliography. £42.00, US$65.00, hardcover; £14.99, paper.

BINA GUPTA (ed). The Empirical and the Transcendental: a Fusion of Horizons. Lanham, Boulder, New York and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. 284 pp. US$69.00, hardcover; US$24.95, paper.

JYOTSNA AGNIHOTRI GUPTA. New Reproductive Technologies, Women's Health and Autonomy: freedom or Dependency ? New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000. 704 pp. Rs 775, hardcover.

PRADEEP BARUA. The Army Officer Corps and Military Modernisation in Later Colonial India. Hull: The University of Hull Press, 1999. iii, 234 pp. Illustrations, introduction, notes, bibliography, index. No price given, paper.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

KEES VAN DIJK. A Country in Despair. Indonesia between 1997 and 2000. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2001. viii, 621 pp. Plates, index. 31.80 Euros, paper.

CHEAH BOON KHENG. Malaysia: the Making of a Nation. Singapore: ISEAS, 2002. xviii, 264 pp. No price given, paper.

ROBERT L. WINZELER (ed). Indigenous Peoples and the State: politics, Land, and Ethnicity in the Malayan Peninsula and Borneo. New Haven, CT: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies Monograph 46, 1997. xii, 316 pp.

ANDREA WHITTAKER (ed). Women's Health in Mainland Southeast Asia. New York, London and Oxford: The Haworth Medical Press, 2002. 128 pp. No price given, paper.

JAN BREMAN and GUNAWAN WIRADI. Good Times and Bad Times in Rural Java: case Study of Socio‐economic Dynamics in Two Villages towards the End of the Twentieth Century. Leiden: Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal‐, Land‐en Volkenkunde No. 195, KITLV Press, 2002. viii, 330 pp. Maps, tables, photos, glossary, index. US$33.00, paper.

WILLIAM CASE. Politics in Southeast Asia: democracy or Less. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2002. x, 318 pp. £60.00, hardcover; £17.99, paper.

ANDREW McWILLIAM. Paths of Origin, Gates of Life: a Study of Place and Precedence in Southwest Timor. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002. xvi, 331 pp. Figures, maps, plates, orthography, glossary, bibliography, index. US$40.00, paper.

PATRICIA M. PELLY. Postcolonial Vietnam: new Histories of the National Past. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. 344 pp. US$19.95, paper.

SALLY ANN NESS. Where Asia Smiles: an Ethnography of Philippine Tourism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. xvii, 300 pp. 4 maps, 11 photographs, notes, references, index. US$55.00, hardcover; US$24.95, paper.

GENERAL ASIA

JOHN KELLY and MARTHA KAPLAN. Represented Communities: Fiji and World Decolonization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. vii, 243 pp. US$40.00, hardcover; US$18.00, paper.     

Accounting for Temporal Demand Variations in Retail Location Models

This article develops and calibrates a spatial interaction model (SIM) incorporating additional temporal characteristics of consumer demand for the U.K. grocery market. SIMs have been routinely used by the retail sector for location modeling and revenue prediction and have a good record of success, especially in the supermarket/hypermarket sector. However, greater planning controls and a more competitive trading environment in recent years has forced retailers to look to new markets. This has meant a greater focus on the convenience market which creates new challenges for retail location models. In this article, we present a custom built SIM for the grocery market in West Yorkshire incorporating trading and consumer data provided by a major U.K. retailer. We show that this model works well for supermarkets and hypermarkets but poorly for convenience stores. We then build a series of new demand layers taking into account the spatial distributions of demand at the time of day that consumers are likely to use grocery stores. These new demand layers include workplace populations, university student populations and secondary school children. When these demand layers are added to the models, we see a very promising increase in the accuracy of the revenue forecasts.     

Baghla, Ghanja and Kotia: Distinguishing the Baghla from the Suri Ghanja and the Indian Kotia

The western-Indian-Ocean ship-types known as baghla s, ghanja s and kotia s, and previously thought to have been differentiated only by detail of decoration, are shown to have significant morphological and structural differences. Some of those differences are attributed to the different technologies or traditions of shipbuilding found in Arabia, Persia and India.
© 2006 The Author     

Interventions in the political geography of ‘libertarian paternalism’

Contributions from political, health and economic geography, social policy and environmental policy studies are brought together here in order to examine the implications of a ‘libertarian paternalist’ political ‘project’ which seeks to react in pragmatic and ideological terms to the excesses and limitations of neoliberalism in liberal democratic contexts. The authors explore the contemporary relevance and historical antecedents of so-called ‘nudge’ tactics of governing, and draw attention to the political geographies encountered in this popular political programme in specific cases.     

Stonehenge rhyolitic bluestone sources and the application of zircon chemistry as a new tool for provenancing rhyolitic lithics

The source of the bluestones at Stonehenge has long been debated, and while there is general consensus that the so-called spotted dolerites are derived from a relatively small number of outcrops exposed in the highest parts of Mynydd Preseli, in southwest Wales the source of the rhyolitic component has attracted relatively little detailed attention. This is largely because unlike the uniqueness of the spots in the coarser grained doleritic rocks, the rhyolites are fine-grained in character and lack any obvious distinctiveness, especially in hand specimen. This makes their provenancing difficult. A recent study, however, suggested that there was a close lithological similarity between the informally-termed ‘rhyolite with fabric’ bluestone component and rhyolitic rocks from the Ordovician Fishguard Volcanic Group exposed in the Pont Saeson area of north Pembrokeshire. This study aims to see if the chemistry of zircons, which are present in both sets of samples, could be used to support the petrographical association. Analyses for certain high field strength elements (including the rare earth elements) obtained by LA-ICP-MS showed that indeed the analyses were nearly identical when compared using a range of statistical approaches, including similarity coefficients, statistical distance, and principal component analysis, while showing clear differences to sample sets which had no reason to be correlated with the Pont Saeson samples. There are two important conclusions arising from this study. Firstly, the identification of the Pont Saeson source of the ‘rhyolite with fabric’ bluestone from outcrops in low ground to the north of the Mynydd Preseli will without doubt lead to fresh debates about the mechanisms of transport of this component of the bluestones to the Stonehenge site. Secondly, the chemistry of zircons may well prove to have a wider application in the provenancing of fine-grained rhyolitic rocks which have an archaeological context.     

High‐resolution geospatial surveying techniques provide new insights into rock‐art landscapes at Shuwaymis,Saudi Arabia

Many parts of the Arabian Peninsula contain rock art that has received minimal archaeological attention or has not yet been thoroughly surveyed. In 2001 an extensive rock‐art complex called Shuwaymis, Ha'il Province, Saudi Arabia was brought to the attention of the Saudi General Commission for Tourism and Antiquities. This paper sets out the results of the first high‐resolution geospatial mapping and recording of rock art at this remote site. The research saw the innovative use of a differential GPS to record rock‐art panels to within 5 mm of accuracy at the site of Shuwaymis‐2, the first time that such technology has been used to record rock art in the Arabian Peninsula. With such technology it was possible to show which of eighty‐three late prehistoric rock‐art panels surveyed were in their original position and which had fallen, and to demonstrate that there was spatial homogeneity of rock‐art styles and composition across the site. The mapping recorded multiple panels of cattle, ibex, equid, large cat and other animals. The depictions of lions and cattle in particular indicate that the rock art must have been engraved no later than the early Holocene humid phase (c.10–6 ka BP).     

A strontium and oxygen isotope assessment of a possible fourth century immigrant population in a Hampshire cemetery,southern England

The aim of the project was to test the hypothesis, using oxygen and strontium isotopes, that a group of burials in the Late Roman cemetery of Lankhills, Winchester, southern England, were migrants from the Danube region of central Europe. The method assumes that the oxygen isotope composition of immigrants from this locale would be significantly more depleted that any one British origin and that the restricted range in Sr isotope compositions produced by chalk in the overlying biosphere of southern England would discriminate between the local population and settlers from elsewhere. As a control for the immigrant group a sample of Romano-British individuals were examined to provide a comparative data set. The results showed that the majority of the individuals used to define the “local” control group plotted in a restricted field of strontium and oxygen isotope composition that was consistent with the values expected for the Hampshire area of southern England. By contrast, the “exotic”, putatively immigrant population generated a much more dispersed field including four with δ¹⁸O drinking water values of −10‰ or less, which supports a non-British origin for these individuals. The study shows that the archaeological data suggesting that there is an exotic population buried at the Lankhills cemetery is generally supported by the isotope work, although the “exotic” group appears to a rather dispersed set of individuals rather than a single population from a restricted overseas location.