A baffling experience: Technology transfer,Anglo-American nuclear relations,and the development of the gas centrifuge 1964-70*

The development of the gas centrifuge in the 1960s revolutionized the production of enriched uranium. More simple and efficient than gaseous diffusion, the centrifuge offered countries a means of producing enriched uranium independently of America. For Britain, the centrifuge possessed political as well as economic advantage. It provided the opportunity for Britain to share nuclear knowledge with its European partners, so improving the prospect of successful admission to the European Common Market. In Washington, the prospect of a joint European centrifuge project received an ambivalent response. The State Department, keen to foster a strong Europe as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism, welcomed collaboration. In contrast, the Atomic Energy Commission, charged with maintaining US nuclear security, sought to block the venture on the grounds that it infringed US law. This paper reviews this debate, examining Anglo-American nuclear relations in the context of Britain's entry into the European Common Market. It argues that Britain was determined to establish a purely European solution to the question of uranium supply even if this led to a breach in Anglo-American relations.     

Preparing for change: acid rain,climate change,and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), 1972–1990s

Abstract

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) was created in 1972 as a nonprofit research organization, funded primarily by the US electric power industry. Managing a broad public-private collaborative research program, EPRI was to prepare the industry for change by addressing major issues related to electric power production. Among other things, EPRI initiated an ambitious environmental research program in relation to acid rain and, later, climate change. Partly in consequence of the lessons learned in acid rain research, EPRI’s Environment Division around 1990 developed grand plans to show industry leadership on how to address climate change. However, as this article shows, EPRI gradually realized that natural science research alone was not an adequate response to environmental and social changes. Two vocabularies for change resulted: one in which change would be addressed by means of assessments in which future developments in the nature-society-technology system could be delineated, predicted, and ameliorated, and one in which change was essentially unpredictable and potentially dangerous.     

'Walking the walk and talking the talk': Bodies,conversation, gender and power in higher education in England

Combinations of speaking, listening and bodily behaviour have been neglected in accounts of the operation of power. Although often described as fluid and interactionally produced, power has been the subject of few empirically based analyses at micro-interactional scales. Drawing on interviews with undergraduates and extracts from teaching interactions at higher education institutions in England, this article focuses on talk as a situated practice. It describes how verbal and bodily behaviours together are fundamentally involved in the enactment of instructor and student roles and power relations, and the collective interactional (re)production of teaching spaces. It discusses two broad types of teaching interaction in terms of gendered differences in the structure of talk, drawing attention to how these are shaped by differences in how instructors enact power. I suggest that men may routinely engage in conversations with 'feminine' structures in teaching spaces without this compromising heterosexual masculinity, and present reasons why it may be more likely that women be problematized for using 'masculine' verbal styles. I also argue that rather than simply being inscribed on to instructors' bodies in ways that accord with the hegemonic discourses of gender, authority and respect have to continually be earned from students, and verbal behaviour is deeply involved in this process. It is not enough to 'walk the walk', instructors must also 'talk the talk', in ways that students deem legitimate.     

Tutoring Relevant Geography: A People's Geography Project initiative

UK geography departments are now reaching the stage where, in light of social change and growing competition for students, the need to offer a degree programme that is relevant to the needs and expectations of students is a real urgency. Drawing on the People's Geography Project, an initiative from the USA, this paper details the experiences of the author in teaching relevant geography in first-year undergraduate tutorials. The paper contends that by providing an opportunity for students to engage in contentious debate and to adopt a political position, students are encouraged to approach issues from a critical geographical perspective, demonstrate the relevance of a geographical perspective in contemporary issues, recognise the conflicting interests from competing discourses and reach a possible, just solution to social problems. This paper reports on the choice of topics, the forum of debate and assessment through alternative coursework styles, and it analyses the learning of both geographical and transferable skills through a People's Geography tutorial programme. The degree of relevance perceived by both the students and the tutor is evaluated, and suggestions are made for further development of a People's Geography approach.     

The Formation of Large-scale Collaborative Resource Management Institutions: Clarifying the Roles of Stakeholders, Science, and Institutions

This article explores the emergence of collaborative institutional arrangements for managing natural resources in large-scale and complex resource settings, among numerous political jurisdictions and stakeholders. It examines four regional institutions in the United States: the Northwest Power and Conservation Council's Fish and Wildlife Program, the Chesapeake Bay Program, the CALFED Bay-Delta Program, and the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. While a wealth of literature has looked at the emergence of smaller-scale resource management institutions, and some literature has begun to look at the characteristics and successes of these regional institutions, theory is lacking to explain the formation of these regional institutions. We first introduce three relevant streams of literature—on common pool resources management, on policy entrepreneurs and social capital, and on science and information in policy change—to frame our analysis. The comparisons of the cases point to the importance of integrating key insights from the literature for understanding the formation of collaborative resource governance. We emphasize how science, leadership, and prior organizational experience interact in facilitating institutional change, particularly in the process of raising awareness about resource management problems. In tracing the formation of these institutions, we also identify how external institutional triggers can help spur collaborative governance.     

从"开门通商"到"厚集洋债,以均势力"—徐世昌与东北外交策略的变化

在东北实行均势外交 ,打破日俄垄断地位 ,是清政府的基本方针。东三省改制前后 ,均势外交策略经历了由全面引进外资的“开门通商”之策 ,到将精力全部集中到以铁路外债为核心的“厚集洋债 ,以均势力”的转变。徐世昌作为东三省首任总督 ,在这种转变中 ,很无奈地担任了执行者和过渡者的角色。     

Imported machines in the garden: the kyŏngun’gi (power tiller) and agricultural mechanization in South Korea

The power tiller was central to the modernization of agricultural practices in East Asia during the latter part of the twentieth century. The small-scale, two-wheeled, walking-type power tiller was adapted from the European garden tractors by Japanese farmer-inventors in the 1920s, and then imported to South Korea in the early 1960s. This article traces the global technology circuit for power tillers, as well as their troublesome entry into the South Korean socioeconomic landscape in the 1960s and 1970s. Once the South Korean manufacturing industry for power tillers established itself, the agricultural machine was embroiled in a controversial political debate over landownership structures, which had profound implications for the very place of agriculture in modern South Korea. In the process of this extended debate, the social meaning of the power tiller itself went through significant change.     

Afghanistan's energy sociotechnical imaginaries: Alternative visions in a conflict zone

Imaginaries are understood to be both discursive and cognitive constructs that shape behaviour, policies, and institutions – but how do longstanding imaginaries evolve in new circumstances, and how do they interact with existing power structures in changed circumstances? Drawing on conceptions of discursive power, this paper investigates the interplay of power with both new and old imaginaries in the case of Afghanistan, specifically regarding alternative energy futures. Employing an interpretive approach, we draw on document analysis and semi-structured interviews with elite stakeholders and policy observers, to provide an account of the relations between alternative energy futures imaginaries and political power. We demonstrate, how certain discursive practices are made possible, authorised and articulated through imaginative geographies. Critically, the government-advocated imaginary of Afghanistan as an energy corridor and hence an energy importer both represents the views of several powerful interests and concurs with the long-held idea of Afghanistan as a buffer state. In this way, political path dependencies are reinforced through a supportive imaginary, just as the dominant imaginary is itself reinforced by the main stakeholders. While in line with our interpretive epistemology we do not make claims for the specific configuration of imaginaries being generalisable elsewhere, we do find the general theoretical approach useful for understanding discursive aspects of conflict zone politics, particularly vis-à-vis energy system trajectories.     

Archaeological Investigations of York South Motive Power Depot

ABSTRACT

Results of a study of the southern portion of the railway lands adjacent to York Station are considered. An early straight shed and a rare combination of three roundhouses, variously built by the Great North of England Railway, the York and North Midland Railway and the North Eastern Railway at the York South Motive Power Depot, were investigated and preserved in situ beneath the new rail operating centre, the largest in the country. Originally constructed between 1841 and 1864, these remarkable engine sheds remained in railway use for up to 120 years. Documentary and archaeological evidence is considered and placed within a wider context to explain how these buildings were adapted as their functions evolved. This allows us to understand how the sheds remained in operation after comparable structures at other depots became obsolete.     

Ungovernability and ungovernable life in Palestine

This paper elaborates the notion of ungovernability as an irresolvable condition of living. It begins by identifying three distinct modes of ungovernability in current geographical work on Palestine: ungovernability as a failure to govern; as a rationale for governing; and as a technique of governing. To this we develop a further conceptualisation of ungovernability as a condition of living that, firstly, remains irreducible to the strategic domain of governing. Secondly, we argue, by drawing on prevalent geographical work on vulnerability and woundedness, that ungovernability constitutes an irresolvable origin of governing that, on the one hand, makes governing incapable of sustaining what it claims for itself, while on the other, names the starting point of a critical analysis of power. By placing the irresolvable ungovernability at the centre of analysis we offer, through examples drawn from our fieldwork in Palestine, an approach that does not reduce life at the outset to cycles of domination-resistance but instead approaches life and its spaces through those ways they remain irreducible to, and thus ungovernable for various forms of governing.