From Traditional Management to the New Management in British Local Government

The article outlines the assumptions on which traditional management in British local authorities was based. It argues the those assumptions were grounded in the conditions of the postwar period, but outlines developing critiques. In recent years societal changes and economic and financial pressures have challenged the basis of traditional management and reinforced the critiques. The legislative program of the Conservative Government on local government is presented as one response to the need to build a new management, with its own strengths and weaknesses.     

The Archaeology of the Plateau of Northwestern North America During the Late Prehistoric Period (3500–200 <Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">B.P.</Emphasis>): Evolution of Hunting and Gathering Societies

The Plateau of northwestern North America offers one of the world's most important records of hunter–gatherer cultural diversity and evolutionary process. During the late prehistoric period, Plateau hunter–gatherers participated in a wide variety of mobile and sedentary mobility regimes, maintained diets emphasizing anadromous fish, roots, and larger game animals, and held patterns of social organization spanning egalitarian through ranked societies. In this paper, we provide a broad overview of the final 3500 years of human occupation on the Plateau that includes two primary goals. First, we provide a new chronology of late prehistoric cultural change and stability that integrates data from the Northern or Canadian Plateau and the Southern or Columbia Plateau. Second, we offer new ideas concerning the emergence, dispersal, and diversification of Plateau hunting and gathering societies. We close with recommendations for Plateau archaeology in the 21st century.     

Heritage Beyond Borders: Australian Approaches to Extra-National Built Heritage

The rights of the state to protect heritage within its borders, to ratify international conventions and to cooperate in bilateral engagements have been foundational concepts of heritage governance. Extreme circumstances may result in an intervention by non-state parties, but in times of peace it is typically the state that prevails. Drawing from recent efforts (2000s) of the Australian Federal Government to create a ‘List of Overseas Places of Historic Significance to Australia’, this paper explores the complications that can arise from the privileging of state authority in current approaches to heritage. This serves as a point of departure for considering the more widely applicable contradictions, limitations and loopholes of a global approach that favours the ‘state’ and the ramifications this might have for heritage diplomacy.     

The Ambiguities of Homelessness Governance: Disentangling Care and Revanchism in the Neoliberalising City

Whilst “caring” responses to homelessness (e.g. shelters, drop-in centres) have been held up by some as a counter-current to the revanchist city, recent US studies highlight how the structural dynamics of neoliberalisation can implicate caring spaces in revanchist processes of discipline and spatial control. In this paper, we employ an assemblage approach to examine the intersections between care, revanchism and neoliberalisation in Brisbane, Australia. We extend the insights of recent studies by showing how the vulnerability of care to the revanchist pressures of neoliberalisation play out outside the US, despite the prominence of care rationalities and a milder revanchist politics. However, we also push beyond this insight to demonstrate the ongoing progressive potential of care in the neoliberalising city, despite its vulnerabilities to revanchism. Specifically, we highlight the capacity of housing-focused responses to homelessness to shield people from criminalisation and to prefigure and call-forth post-neoliberal practices and spaces.     

From Big Noise to Big Data: Toward the Verification of Large Data sets for Understanding Regional Retail Flows

There has been much excitement among quantitative geographers about newly available data sets, characterized by high volume, velocity, and variety. This phenomenon is often labeled as “Big Data” and has contributed to methodological and empirical advances, particularly in the areas of visualization and analysis of social networks. However, a fourth v—veracity (or lack thereof)—has been conspicuously lacking from the literature. This article sets out to test the potential for verifying large data sets. It does this by cross‐comparing three unrelated estimates of retail flows—human movements from home locations to shopping centers—derived from the following geo‐coded sources: (1) a major mobile telephone service provider; (2) a commercial consumer survey; and (3) geotagged Twitter messages. Three spatial interaction models also provided estimates of flow: constrained and unconstrained versions of the “gravity model” and the recently developed “radiation model.” We found positive relationships between all data‐based and theoretical sources of estimated retail flows. Based on the analysis, the mobile telephone data fitted the modeled flows and consumer survey data closely, while flows obtained directly from the Twitter data diverged from other sources. The research highlights the importance of verification in flow data derived from new sources and demonstrates methods for achieving this.     

Rumours of Angels: A Legend of the First World War

The present paper examines the origin and socio-historical context of the Angels of Mons, a belief-legend that was a source of inspiration for British civilians and troops serving on the Western Front during the war of 1914-8. I trace the source of the legend to a fictional story that was in itself inspired by traditions of supernatural intervention in battle that were of great antiquity. During 1915 two versions, one based upon fiction and the other created from the cauldron of rumour and popular belief, became combined and transformed during oral transmission into a belief-legend that continues to survive in English folklore. My conclusion is that the Angel of Mons can only be interpreted within the context of what Fussell describes as a world of reinvigorated myth that appeared in the midst of a war characterised by industrialism and materialism (Fussell 1975, 115).     

China's Cities: Tradition and change

Mark Elvin and G. William Skinner, eds. The Chinese City Between Two Worlds. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1974. xiii + 458 pp. Tables, maps, notes, character list, and index. $18.75.     

Iran as a ‘pariah’ nuclear aspirant

This article demonstrates that Iran conforms to Richard K. Betts' model of a ‘pariah’ nuclear aspirant, as its nuclear program is driven by a potent combination of security, normative and domestic political motivations. The regime's commitment to its nuclear program is influenced by Iran's long-standing sense of vulnerability to both regional and international adversaries, and an enduring sense of national humiliation at the hands of foreign powers, in parallel with a powerful belief in the superiority of Persian civilisation. This has resulted in the development of a narrative of ‘hyper-independence’ in Iran's foreign policy that simultaneously rejects political, cultural or economic dependence and emphasises ‘self-reliance’. The presumed security benefits that a nuclear weapons option provides are seen as ensuring Iranian ‘self-reliance’ and ‘independence’. This suggests that current strategies that focus exclusively on Iran's security motivations or on a heightened regime of sanctions are fundamentally flawed, as they fail to recognise the mutually reinforcing dynamic between Iran's security and normative/status-derived nuclear motivations.     

A new genus and species of Steninae from the late Eocene of France (Coleoptera,Staphylinidae)

Cai, C., Clarke, D.J., Huang, D. & Nel, A., 2014. A new genus and species of Steninae from the late Eocene of France (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae). Alcheringa 38, 557–562. ISSN 0311-5518.

A remarkable new genus and species of rove beetle, Eocenostenus fossilis gen. et sp. nov., is described and figured based on one well-preserved specimen from the late Eocene of Monteils (near Alès, Gard, France). Eocenostenus is definitively placed in the extant subfamily Steninae, based on the combination of dense and coarse body punctation, globular and protruding eyes, exposed and closely spaced antennal insertions on the vertex, and six visible abdominal terga. Eocenostenus differs from the two extant stenine genera Stenus and Dianous most notably in the structure of the prothorax, which is strongly transverse and with unusual anterolateral projections, and in the anteriorly placed antennal insertions. This new discovery highlights the palaeodiversity of a genus-poor subfamily and suggests that the early diversification of Steninae is probably complicated.

Chenyang Cai [caichenyang1988@163.com] and Diying Huang [dyhuang@nigpas.ac.cn], State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 39 East Beijing Rd., Nanjing 210008, PR China; Dave J Clarke [dclarke@fieldmuseum.org], Integrative Research Center, Field Museum of Natural History, 1400 S Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL 60605, USA; and André Nel [anel@mnhn.fr], Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Institut de Systématique, Evolution, Biodiversité, ISYEB, UMR 7205 CNRS UPMC EPHE, CP50, 45 rue Buffon, F-75005 Paris, France. Received 23.1.2014; revised 2.5.2014; accepted 12.5.2014.