The Eco-museum: innovation that risks the future

Among the reasons for the development of the eco-museum concept, largely in France in the 1970s, was that of encouraging economic advance in areas which had suffered serious reverses of fortune. The paper examines the current position of some important early eco-museums, at Le Creusot (intended to assist development in a former industrial area) and two in the Cevennes (designed to stabilise the culture of a remote rural area). The relationship with the local people, one of the critical features of the eco-museum, may suffer severely as generational change occurs.The takeover of such developments by institutions for different purposes, or for the benefit of visitors rather than locals, can make them victims of their own success in stimulating economic growth, with the risk of consequent unintended shifts in society and economy.     

The Palestinian village of Ijzim during the 1948 war: Forming an anthropological history through villagers accounts and army documents

In the summer of 1948, following over six months of clashes, the Palestinian village of Ijzim was captured by Israeli troops and its inhabitants were uprooted and dispersed throughout the Middle East. Ijzim was one of roughly 400 Palestinian villages and towns that were depopulated during the 1948 war in Palestine. The combination of information gathered from Israeli army documents and the refugees' oral accounts, collected in Israel, Jordan and the Occupied Territories of the West Bank, yields a complex picture of the local guerilla fighting and the social conditions that influenced the final consequences. Two main arguments are presented along the historical recounting of the events. The one sets the microcosmos of one village in contrast to the macro picture of the war. The other highlights the uniqueness and contribution of oral histories as sources that reveal facets otherwise missing. 1     

The Egyptian “book of the two ways”

Abstract

Science and cartography have had an intimate history which has not been simply the creation of ever more accurate scientific maps but one in which science, cartography and the state have co‐produced the knowledge space that provides the conditions for the possibility of modern science and cartography. The central cartographic process is the assemblage of local knowledges and, as such, is a particular form of the assembly processes fundamental to science. The first attempts by the state to create a space within which to assemble cartographic knowledge were at the Casa da Mina and the Casa de la Contratación, and hence they can be described as the first scientific institutions in Europe. Their failure to create a knowledge space can be attributed to the nature of the portolan charts. The triangulation of France and the linking of the Greenwich and Paris Observatories established the kind of knowledge space that now constitutes the dominant form within which modem science and cartography are produced. However, resistance to the hegemony of modern scientific knowledge space remains possible through finding alternative ways of assembling local knowledge.     

论唐宋西南史志及其西部地理认识价值

唐代以前,内地对广袤的西南地区地理了解甚少,且在地域观念上充满陌生、神秘甚至恐怖感。唐宋时期,随着中央王朝对西南地区经略的加强与西部地理之学的兴盛,文人学者对西南地理风物的考察记述明显增多,出现了《蛮书》、《桂海虞衡志》、《岭外代答》、《入蜀记》,《吴船录》、《成都志》、《益部方物略记》等一大批地志名著。这批地志文献不仅在唐宋地理学史上有重要价值,更重要的是多角度对西南地区的物候生态、奇木珍果,金属矿藏、温泉盐井、奇禽异兽、瘿病瘴疫及其农田水利、民族风情等记载,为后世丰富对西南地区地情特色认识,了解与开发西南自然资源与人文地理资源提供了珍贵的历史文献。唐宋西南地志之学的兴盛,不仅标示着唐宋时期西南地区方志学进入了一个新的发展阶段,更重要的是表明内地对西部地区自然地理的认知较之前代有了长足的发展。     

略论文史研究中地方志的利用

地方志对于解决文史研究中的很多问题,诸如政治、经济事件的来龙去脉,历史人物生平活动,文学作品的系年等等,有着极重要的作用.以明代世庙大狱、明中期陕西盐政、明初陕西文学以及王安石文系年等问题为例,说明地方志在文史研究中的价值.     

Municipal Boundary Conflicts Between Jewish and Arab Local Authorities in Israel: Geography of Administration or Geopolitics?

Municipal boundaries shape the influence of local government on patterns of development and disparities. Based on a largely qualitative assessment of initiatives to change municipal boundaries of Arab localities in Israel between the 1960s and 2001, we aim to demonstrate the tension between geographical‐administrative considerations and political, particularly geopolitical, issues at two levels: Arab claims and central government decisions. We emphasize that municipal boundary conflicts provide broader insights on societal transformations and dilemmas, as well as influencing them. Growing activism of Arabs and trends of political decentralization led not only to class‐based demands, but also to ethno‐national‐based demands. In addition to development needs with an emphasis on equality, claims of Arab municipalities also reflect aspirations to reverse consequences of the 1948 war and to redefine the Jewish essence of the state. A major dilemma among Arabs is whether to emphasize geographic‐administrative justifications or to explicitly take the ethno‐national path. Among central government decision‐makers, an explicitly political discourse has apparently given way to a professional one, which faces dilemmas of incorporating unique political‐cultural attributes of Arabs in professional assessments, and balancing them with concerns of security and state identity. Whereas professional jargon is not value free and can mask political agendas, dialogues based on a professional jargon could lead to solutions in otherwise dead‐end political disputes, although such dialogues could gain momentum only if showing results.     

The spatial diffusion of party entrepreneurs in Swedish local politics

Theoretical expectations predict instances of party formation to be unusual. It is therefore puzzling that new ‘non-national’ parties became increasingly common in Swedish local councils between 1973 and 2002. This article sets out to answer why party formation became an increasingly popular strategy throughout these years. I show that previous research has not provided satisfactory answers, and argue that existing theories are of limited use explaining this development. It is suggested that a diffusion mechanism may explain why new parties became increasingly common in Swedish local councils. Theoretically, it is argued that an entrepreneur who creates a new party inspires potential entrepreneurs in neighboring municipalities to repeat this at later points in time. A geographical clustering of municipalities where these parties exist is therefore expected. Support is found for this assertion. The result is important since it outperforms the alternative ‘local contextual’, socioeconomic hypotheses previously tested in this empirical setting.     

Temporary organisations and spatial embeddedness of learning and knowledge creation

It is the overall aim of this article to investigate theoretically how spatial embeddedness of learning and knowledge creation might be challenged by alternative organisational forms (i.e. temporary organisations). The article presents development coalitions as an alternative to projects as a form of temporary organisation. They are potentially able to combine the promotion of radical change with collective and localised learning, thus eliminating some of the characteristic shortcomings of project organizations with regard to collective learning and transfer of knowledge.     

Local and more local: Impact of size and organization type of settlement units on candidacy

Following current debates on the study of the quality of local government, this article focuses on the effects of settlement unit size and organizational type on candidacy in local elections within the Czech Republic. Municipal size and institutional design are traditionally seen as important factors influencing political participation at the local level. However, citizens in differently defined settlement units included in a municipality are disadvantaged differently by these factors and thus, de-motivated to participate in politics. The unit of analysis within the article is a settlement unit within a municipality. The article uses Poisson regression to estimate the effect of the absolute and relative size of the settlement unit and different organizational types of settlement unit on the relative number of candidates in the unit. The analysis is based on data from 6,124 Czech municipalities over three sets of elections. The results of the analysis show that increasing absolute size and decreasing relative size of settlement unit have negative effects on the number of candidates in units. Also the institutionally disadvantaged units (defined by the location of the municipal office within the settlement unit) produce smaller number of candidates. The results show the importance of structural factors on the traditionally neglected type of political participation (candidacy) within this field. This allows the formulation of recommendations for local government reforms, not only in the Czech Republic, but also for amalgamated municipal systems.     

珠江三角洲镇域乡镇工业发展及其地方经济影响研究——以顺德市北窑镇为例

本文以珠江三洲为研究区域,以顺德市北窑镇为实例,就乡镇工业发展对一个镇域地方经济产生的影响进行了研究。认为在一些乡镇工业部门的发展过程中,可以作为一个"增长极",通过前后项生产联系有效地带动地方农业和第三产业的增长,从而形成地方的多种经济活动空间集聚体。因此,地方政府在选择其经济增长极时需对其与其它经济部门的前后项生产联系作周密的考察。