Clusters, Power and Place: Inequality and Local Growth in Time–Space

The argument of this paper is that a deeper appreciation of the nature of the power relationships between firms and the circuits of power that bind them together is key to understanding how clusters function — including how they might emerge and how they might decline. We begin to develop a conceptualization that allows us to generate a deeper understanding of the processes that enable the production and reproduction of enterprise clusters under some combinations of circumstances but not others. The sections of the paper explore: (1) concepts of power and circuits of power including their spatialities; (2) the temporarily stabilized relationships which occur in clusters of economic activity; (3) the openness and permeability of clusters as a way of understanding conditions that foster cluster growth; (4) a tentative integration of concepts. From this reading of the concepts of clustering and power we draw the conclusion that clusters are, at any particular point in time, temporary and transient conjunctures of interfirm relationships. They depend on specific circumstances in 'time–space' and, because of their very transience and specificity, those conditions might be very difficult if not impossible to create through the blunt instruments of policy.     

Writing in wartime China: Chongqing,Shanghai, and Southern Zhejiang

ABSTRACT

The outbreak of the full-scale Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) brought an end to the printing and publishing industry centered in Shanghai in the 1930s. Chongqing then emerged as a nerve center of information and opinion. Writers everywhere worked under wartime conditions of social dislocation, economic dependency, and political control. This article examines the writing and publishing of three notable pieces of work completed in wartime Chongqing, Shanghai, and southern Zhejiang, respectively. The article explores the context in which each work was written and then evaluates the broader significance of the texts with regard to a historical assessment of the Chinese intellectual experience during wartime.     

The road to normalization: The importance of the United Arab Emirates' neoliberal foreign policy in the normalization with Israel: 2004–2020

The article discusses the question of why and how the normalization between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel took place and managed to evolve into a peace agreement. It offers an additional explanation to the neorealists' scholarly and commonly accepted argument: that it was only the behavior of the revisionist state of Iran that was the motive for signing the peace agreement between the two states. Furthermore, the article argues that the normalization of relations began in 2004 and could have materialized owing to the UAE's neoliberal foreign policy of focusing on soft power cooperation. It suggests the UAE's internal interests of status, stability, and empowerment, which were incorporated in the Vision 2021 plan, were translated into a foreign policy of international cooperation rather than one of military involvement and alliances. The UAE's long-term strategy reveals a dual neorealist and neoliberal foreign policy with a tendency toward the latter. The neoliberal foreign policy of soft power cooperation attracted the UAE to Israel and, through these shared interests, built trust and eventually led to normalization between the two states. The study covers three periods of the UAE's foreign policy strategy during the development of the normalization process. It begins with the tension between the neoliberal and neorealist strategies from 2004 to 2009, then looks at the increase in tensions between 2010 and 2018, and ends with the focus on the neoliberal foreign policy strategy in 2019–2020.