New towns — the Indian experience

Recent government policy has enacted significant changes in the approach to training both north and south of the Border. In April 1991 the establishment of Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, along with a network of Local Enterprise Companies, marked a shift in the direction to employer‐led and locally delivered training programmes. The importance of tourism to Scotland has attracted government attention and, in anticipation of the new training network, a Tourism Training Initiative has been set up to expand the take‐up of training opportunities. This area‐based approach is welcomed but it is argued that tourist businesses, especially the small accommodation sector, have particular characteristics that have made the uptake of training traditionally a low priority. The absence of consideration of these characteristics in the design of the new employment strategies is argued to be a significant weakness.     

Active citizenship and the governmentality of local lesbian and gay politics

This paper explores the relationship between new forms of speakability and continuing unthinkability in the context of British local government lesbian and gay work, particularly post-1997. The paper argues new municipal speech acts ushered in progressive modes of sexual citizenship; at the same time, local government's refusal to think hard, deeply or critically, limited the modes of active citizenship made possible. The paper addresses the easing out of active citizenship through an analysis of local government's self-care and its intensification of firewalls – firewalls which restricted the possibility of certain non-state forces guiding from ‘a distance’.     

地方媒体网站在新闻宣传中的优势和作用

媒体网站是新闻宣传的载体,在新闻宣传中发挥着十分重要的作用。在互联网领域,地方媒体网站与强势传统媒体相比,具有受众群体广泛、传媒成本低以及信息容量大、速度快、互动性强等优势。因此,充分拓展和发挥地方媒体网站的优势,对于保证主流声音占据网络的主导地位和正确的舆论导向具有重要意义。     

Comparative Seismic Risk Assessment of Basilica-type Churches

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the seismic risk assessment of a Basilica-type church according to the provisions of the Italian Guidelines. A comparison between the results obtained with local and global approaches is reported, based on a knowledge process aimed to characterize the geometric and mechanical parameters required for a reliable structural analysis. To perform the global analyses the finite element technique was employed, with proper assumptions to account for the nonlinear behavior of masonry. Illustrating a case study, the paper critically discusses about the employability of pushover analysis methods for the seismic assessment of basilica-type churches.     

Reconceptualising local labour markets in the context of cross-border and transnational labour flows: The Irish example

The increased prevalence of border-crossing labour of various types makes an uneasy juxtaposition of the ‘local’ and the ‘transnational’ or the ‘global’ and raises two classes of questions. These concern, firstly, the definition of the local in local labour markets and, secondly, the role of state borders in regulating and shaping flows of border-crossing workers. The paper begins to explore these issues. It questions the conceptualisation and definition of local labour markets and outlines a case for transnational labour and state borders to be included in their theorisation. Following this, drawing on studies of recruitment and interviews with labour market actors on both sides of the Irish border it discusses how state borders impact on different types of labour in different circumstances and outlines the paradoxical and sometimes contradictory nature of state borders in labour regulation and employers' strategies. It concludes by arguing that state borders might be moved from the edge of local labour market studies to a place much nearer their centre.     

四川方志所载节庆演剧史料辑考

明清以降,伴随着"湖广填四川"以及战争、商贸引起的文化迁移与交融,四川地区的演剧走向繁盛,形成了"无节不演戏"的局面。四川方志中记载了大量的节庆演剧史料。节庆演剧产生了五大中心,呈现出仪式向狂欢的蜕变过程,体现了移民文化的特点,并为川剧的最终形成奠定了基础。     

Carceral labour: Offshore work relations,conflicts and local participation in Ghana's oil and gas industry

Local participation is crucial for linking the oil and gas industry to broader economies. Direct employment in the oil and gas industry, albeit often on a limited scale remains critical for the transfer of expertise and know-how in many developing economies. Focusing on the social construction of carcerality – a set of spaces, practices and relationships, the paper examines the carceralities of non-prison places such as offshore oil and gas infrastructures. With emphasis on oil rigs and Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSOs) vessels, the paper highlights the complex labour relations, negotiations and conflicts in offshore working environment and its impacts on local content and participation in Ghana's oil and gas industry. The paper shows that carceral techniques operate to limit the potentiality of career progress. Offshore labour practices and relations show the new kinds of carceral spaces being created through offshore extraction, and sheds light on how these carceral spaces depotentialize the labour force and reinforce global political economic inequalities.     

Floods,communal conflict and the role of local state institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa

Does the occurrence of flood disaster increase the risk of communal conflict and if so, does trust in state political institutions mitigate the adverse effect? This study addresses these questions by studying the intervening effect of trust in local governmental institutions at a sub-national level. The effect of flood disasters on the risk of communal violence is expected to be contingent on peoples’ trust that local political structures are able to address potential disputes between groups. Violent conflicts, in that sense, are neither inevitable nor directly determined by the occurrence of disasters. They largely depend on the context of a given society and political response to these external shocks. To test this expectation, the study uses survey data on trust in local state institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa from the Afrobarometer (2005–2018), combined with geo-referenced communal conflict and flood data. In line with theoretical expectations, results suggest that flood disasters are associated with communal violence only for administrative districts that are governed by distrusted local state institutions. Conversely, flood disasters tend to be negatively associated with the risk of communal clashes in the presence of highly trusted local government councils and (especially) trusted judicial courts. Changing model specifications and estimation techniques produces similar results. An out-of-sample cross-validation also shows that accounting for political variables, in addition to flood disasters, improves the predictive performance of the model.