The invasion complex: the abject other and spaces of violence

This article examines how the image of the refugee has been defined through the fear of the other, and how the mechanisms of detention have transformed the conditions of belonging. I examine the contemporary geopolitical forces propelling the rise of a new authoritarianism, growing border anxieties and hostility towards refugees, and argue that these emerging shifts provoke an urgent need for a new conceptual framework to understand the dynamics of contemporary global flows and concepts of belonging. I introduce what I call the ‘invasion complex’, a new conceptual hybrid that draws upon elements of psychoanalytic theory and complex systems theory, and Giorgio Agamben's analysis of sovereignty and ‘the camp’, to explain heightened border anxieties and the legitimization of violence towards the Other. I consider the value, applications and limitations of Agamben's analysis, and contend that both the state‐centric moral debate on the refugee crisis, and Agamben's method of privileging political agency in terms of sovereign power, tend to discount the role of complexity. Drawing on the Australian political and public discourse on refugees, and the 2001 Tampa crisis, I argue that the hostile reactions can be traced to a complex interplay between old phobias and new fantasies. I conclude by urging the need to move beyond nation state centric critiques of racism, and propose the development of a new paradigm — a potential politics that recognizes the complex dynamics of global flows, and which opens the way for a discourse of hope based on the rights of the human being, rather than the citizen.     

Studying Human Responses to Environmental Change: Trends and Trajectories of Archaeological Research

ABSTRACT

Environmental archaeological enquiry has a long and vibrant history. Many of the same questions have persisted in archaeological dialogues over the past century. In particular, the effects of environmental change on demographic patterns, health, and societal stability are among the most pervasive questions being addressed by anthropological research. These studies have limitations, however. For example, evaluations of the complex relationships between environmental variables and human responses are only just beginning to emerge in anthropological literature. This goal requires high-resolution paleoclimate datasets and the use of quantitative modelling rooted in evolutionary and complex systems theory. This paper serves as a broad review of advances in environmental archaeological enquiry associated with environmental change and human response. I argue that the future of archaeological questions concerning human-environmental connection requires a re-evaluation of causality and the incorporation of complex systems approaches to address human responses to external pressures.     

SITUATED KNOWLEDGE SPILLOVERS: A CASE STUDY OF INDUSTRY SPECIFICITY IN URBAN KNOWLEDGE SOURCING

Theorizing within the umbrella of evolutionary economic geography (EEG) has improved the understanding of how inter‐firm relatedness conditions knowledge spillovers, and how this affects the long‐term evolution of regions. Still, there are shortcomings in this approach associated with a quantitative and generic methodology, a static notion of relatedness, and a weakly developed policy and institutional perspective. In particular, there is a need for a better understanding of the mechanisms through which relatedness is developed and how policy affects existing and emerging relatedness. Certain mechanisms for knowledge transfer have been suggested, such as labour mobility, firm diversification, spin‐offs and social networks. But do the same mechanisms apply to all industries and in all territories, or are there specific mechanisms of knowledge sourcing at work in different contexts? To shed light on these questions, the article reports on a comparative case study of two knowledge‐intensive industries (life science and publishing) located in the Oslo metropolitan region. Based on a case study, the article suggests that both industries source knowledge through similar types of channels. However, despite similarities in how knowledge is accessed and absorbed in this diverse urban context, knowledge sourcing also seems to be conditioned by industry‐specific dynamics, policies and institutions.     

A place-based policy for promoting Industry 4.0: the case of the Castellon ceramic tile district

ABSTRACT

Digitization and its impact on regions and clusters remains overlooked in the literature, and constitute this present paper’s goal. How does an industrial district transit collectively to the adoption of new radical changes brought about by Industry 4.0? This study explores the role of collective actors and innovation platforms during the early stages of a pilot policy to stimulate a collective transition of an entire MID (Marshallian Industrial District) into Industry 4.0. We posit that institutional isomorphism and the existent social capital in MIDs is a double-sword phenomenon that can also positively constitute an enabler for fostering change on a collective-basis. Technology transitions, such as Industry 4.0, can be supported and led by collective actors that are central in facilitating the adoption of Industry 4.0 in MIDs, enticing innovative firms to engage in that transition, establishing, legitimizing, and embedding a new set of processes, practices and inter-firm arrangements for digitizing and then promoting imitation: the positive leverage of isomorphism. Thus, MID transition is facilitated through capitalizing on the MID logic of cooperation-competition and isomorphism, by developing and promoting a collective understanding of the new paradigm, building a supportive infrastructure, educating in the new technology and avoiding cognitive inertia.     

How Many Household Formation Systems Were There in Historic Europe? A View Across 256 Regions Using Partitioning Clustering Methods

Abstract

This paper reconsiders one of historical demography’s most pertinent research problems: the fiddly concept of historical household formation systems. Using a massive repository of historical census micro-data from the North Atlantic Population Project and the Mosaic project, the four markers of Hajnal’s household formation rules were operationalized for 256 regional rural populations from Catalonia in the west to central Siberia in the east, between 1700 and 1926. We then analyze these data using the Partitioning Around Medoids algorithm in order to empirically derive the “natural groups” based on the similarity and the dissimilarity of their household formation traits. Although regional differences between European household formation systems are readily identifiable, the two statistically most valid clustering solutions (k?=?2; k?=?4) provide a more complex picture of household formation regimes than Hajnal and his followers have been able to compile. Our finding that when regional populations cluster on similar household formation characteristics, they often come from both sides of Hajnal’s “imaginary line,” calls into question strict bipolar divisions of the continent. By and large, we show that the long-lived idea of two household formation systems in preindustrial Europe obscures considerable variability in historical family behavior, and therefore needs to be amended.     

基于SBAS-InSAR技术的庆阳北石窟寺区域稳定性监测与分析

区域稳定性监测是石窟寺长期保护的一项重要措施。本研究以庆阳北石窟寺所在区域为对象,基于2019年的15景Sentinel-1A卫星雷达影像,采用小基线集合成孔径雷达干涉测量(SBAS-InSAR)技术对研究区稳定性进行监测,获取了研究区雷达视线向形变速率及时序形变,分析了研究区形变的空间、时间分布规律及其原因。监测结果表明:北石窟寺所赋存的覆钟山山体整体稳定,存在微小形变,不存在潜在滑坡变形特征;研究区主要形变区沿河分布,蒲、茹两河交汇处形变最为明显;研究区时序形变呈现随季节变化的规律性,造成其规律性的原因为随季节变化的土壤侵蚀和董志塬固沟保塬项目的实施。该研究证明了InSAR技术在文物遗址区域稳定性监测的可行性,以及其在具有长期性、可靠性的优势,为石窟寺遗址长期预防性保护提供了新的思路和方法。     

CULTURAL ECONOMY AND THE CREATIVE FIELD OF THE CITY

I begin with a rough sketch of the incidence of the cultural economy in US cities today. I then offer a brief review of some theoretical approaches to the question of creativity, with special reference to issues of social and geographic context. The city is a powerful fountainhead of creativity, and an attempt is made to show how this can be understood in terms of a series of localized field effects. The creative field of the city is broken down (relative to the cultural economy) into four major components, namely, (a) intra‐urban webs of specialized and complementary producers, (b) the local labour market and the social networks that bind workers together in urban space, (c) the wider urban environment, including various sites of memory, leisure, and social reproduction, and (d) institutions of governance and collective action. I also briefly describe some of the path‐dependent dynamics of the creative field. The article ends with a reference to some issues of geographic scale. Here, I argue that the urban is but one (albeit important) spatial articulation of an overall creative field whose extent is ultimately nothing less than global.     

The environmental geopolitics of allocation: State power and institutional stability in Eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna management

Geopolitical contests over oceanic space and resources commonly manifest in inter-state resource management bodies. That ocean spaces and resources defy a territorial conception of the nation-state means that the environmental geopolitics that emerge are shaped by the nature of oceans and oceans resources. In this context, allocation is among the most pressing and contentious tasks that inter-state bodies managing transboundary resources face as they carve up and distribute access to valuable, shared resources. This paper examines the allocation of highly migratory, and highly valuable, Eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna to contribute to understanding of state power and institutional stability in transboundary resource management. Drawing on observation of an allocation negotiation and historical allocation patterns, the analysis animates and extends critical property scholarship to develop an environmental geopolitics of allocation. Findings reveal that states form, contest and maintain power by making claims based not only on rights, but also on duties that they perform to the benefit of other states in collective management. Powerful states also make concessions in the allocation process, giving up some historical rights in order to stabilize the multilateral body that enables their dominance in the fishery. Given new and renewed interest in managing shared species, spaces and resources in the oceans and beyond, viewing allocation through the lens of property reveals state power as expressed through a combination of rights and duties between states bound together in management by the materiality of transboundary and mobile natures.     

一“鲜”难求？地方流动对可持续饮食系统的影响机制

可持续饮食系统的研究愈发受人重视，当前从关系主义视角的研究，偏重于与食物前向关联的“身体”，忽视了与食物后向关联的“地方”。本文选择福建省罗源县为案例研究地，分析了20世纪90年代至今罗源饮食地理的变化情况，旨在探究地方流动对地方饮食系统的影响机制。研究发现，罗源从“海味、清鲜、笋糟、非标准”的闽菜系主导的地方饮食特征变为多元菜系并存的标准化饮食特点，原来日常生活中常见的“新鲜”变得一“鲜”难求。该变化是由工业化、城镇化造成的“去地化”结构性因素与乡贤回家投资、三峡移民饮食跨地方迁移等“再地化”因素共同影响形成的。本文提出地方饮食系统的可持续性取决于个体的差异化感知，不能用生产—消费饮食系统的可持续性来替代个体对“可持续”的具身感知认同。     

Place leadership and the challenge of transformation: policy platforms and innovation ecosystems in promotion of green growth

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we explore how place leadership aims at producing transformational changes in the context of green growth. We ask what the main leadership strategies are that key actors pursue to gain leverage in their efforts to boost green growth. We use the well-known categories of transactional and transformational leadership. The following are the main research questions: (a) What do place leaders do to boost green institutional paths? (b) How do they aim to amplify their limited power base? and (c) How do they amplify their ability to influence both place-based and placeless agents? We scrutinize these questions in the context of green path development in two Finnish regions. The empirical study follows a two parallel single case study design. The cases in this paper deal with the cleantech-related path development in the Tampere city-region and bioeconomy-related path development in Central Finland. The two case studies were carefully chosen to illustrate the two main green growth-related industries in two different Finnish regions. The empirical data was based on 30 interviews of the national and local/regional development agencies as well as from firms and research/educational organizations. Additionally, the written material from the Internet, relevant journals, related newspaper articles and respective policy documents were analysed.