Gender and food security in Bangladesh: the impact of climate change

Food security remains a critical global issue, made more difficult because of the rising world population, climate challenges affecting food production and a focus on market-based solutions that undermine subsistence production in vulnerable rural areas. Particularly affected are countries across Asia where poverty, hunger and malnourishment affect a significant proportion of the population. Drawing on Sen’s entitlement theory, we argue that a shift in focus from national food production to intra-household food access enables a critical reflection on consumption smoothing strategies adopted at this level. In particular, we draw attention to the tendency for women and girls to eat less as an intra-household adaptation strategy. We present findings from our research in rural areas of Bangladesh and note that adaptation strategies adopted by households in response to food insecurity. We note that strategies designed to address food insecurity must include gender mainstreaming to ensure that women and girls are not taking a disproportionate responsibility for intra-household food security.     

Tourism global production networks and uneven social upgrading in Kenya and Uganda

This paper addresses how the growth of tourism global production networks (GPNs) based in Kenya and Uganda created uneven social upgrading outcomes for workers and communities. A tourism GPN and social upgrading framework follows a global political economy approach to analyzing tourism development and labor in diverse tourism geographies. Two tourism GPNs are investigated: Mombasa, Kenya, and Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda. Four main findings emerge: (1) governance relationships between tour operator and accommodation firms directly impacted social upgrading outcomes for hotel workers and indirectly for excursion workers; (2) excursion workers and community members had precarious connections to tourism GPNs; (3) public governance and collective power were key components to social upgrading while supporting its unevenness; and (4) societal embeddedness constructions around gender and regional space influenced worker and community social upgrading potential. Social upgrading is shaped by a confluence of firm, institution, geography, and labor conditions that differentially materializes in specific tourism GPN arrangements.     

Ojakly: A Late Bronze Age mobile pastoralist site in the Murghab Region,Turkmenistan

Abstract

Excavations at Ojakly (site 1744) in the Murghab alluvial fan in Turkmenistan mark the first systematic collection of archaeological materials related to Bronze Age mobile pastoralists in the region, and the earliest evidence to date of their occupation patterns, subsistence practices, and ceramic production activities. Because the appearance of mobile pastoral groups in the Murghab during the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1950–1500 b.c.) is traditionally associated with significant changes in regional sociopolitical structures, these data are important for establishing local strategies of and the relationship between sedentary agricultural and mobile pastoral populations. Here, we present ceramic, faunal, archaeobotanical, and lithic data that force us to reconsider the traditional sedentary-mobile dichotomy. Specifically, we find that while the subsistence economies are distinct at urban and non-urban sites, the ceramic production and trade interactions are significantly intertwined and more complex than previously acknowledged for this time period. Additionally, the presence of a ceramic kiln at Ojakly (Turkmen for “place with kiln”) containing unfired ceramics of a type typically associated with sedentary farmers in the Bronze Age Murghab suggests the transfer of technical knowledge between groups who nevertheless maintained distinct material cultural identities. Ojakly provides important new data about coexisting economies in the Late Bronze Age Murghab that can productively unsettle traditional notions of dominance, control, and polarization in sedentary-mobile interactions.     

Metallurgical ceramics from Mayapán,Yucatán,Mexico

Recent excavations at the Postclassic (AD 1050–1440) Maya site of Mayapán, Mexico, have uncovered a variety of metal objects, metal production debris, and ceramic objects that appear to be linked to metallurgical activities at the site. Our present study investigates a corpus of small ceramic objects to determine if these objects was used in metallurgical processes such as lost-wax casting. A variety of analytical techniques was utilized, including x-ray fluorescence, electron probe, petrography, and reflected light microscopy. Metal residues were detected on the surfaces of several objects, and copper prills were identified within the ceramic fabric, suggesting that the ceramics were exposed to liquid metal during remelting and/or casting events. A comparison of the microstructures of these metallurgical ceramics to typical ceramics from Mayapán demonstrates that the fabrics are very different, and suggests that the metallurgical ceramics were specifically engineered to function in the high temperature environment required for metallurgy. The distribution of metal and metallurgical ceramics across the site of Mayapán suggests that metal production activities may have been more widely distributed and practiced than earlier thought.     

Sir Gawain and the green knight and the literary achievement of the north-west Midlands: the historical background

The author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the other verse in BLMS. Cotton Nero A x ranks with his contemporaries, Chaucer and Langland, as one of the three great Middle English poets. Whilst this anonymous master and associated writers have been confidently ascribed to the north-west Midlands in the reign of Richard II, the social context of this literary achievement is still inadequately understood. Drawing on wider research on the social history of the region, and focusing on the career of one identifiable Cheshire poet of Chaucer's generation, this paper attempts to show what factors made this superficially inauspicious milieu at all conducive to high cultural attainment.The basic argument is that the richness and sophistication of the best north-west Midlands work are only comprehensible in terms of the considerable social mobility evidenced amongst the local population in this period. Large numbers of men from Cheshire and its environs can be traced in all corners of England, seeking their fortunes as soldiers, lawyers, clerks and merchants. This was the vibrant world in which the Gawain-poet and his fellows found not only appreciative audiences and generous patronage but also the new cultural influences and the courtly sophistication which characterise their more polished pieces.It is no coincidence that the last years of Richard II's reign, which witnessed the composition of the verse of BL MS. Cotton Nero A x, also saw the fortunes of local careerists soar to their apogee. In addition to their solid achievements in the professions, men from almost every family in Cheshire were being recruited into the royal household from 1397 onwards. With his well attested taste for fine literature, and with his extravagant generosity towards his Cheshire retainers, it is clear that if an aristocratic patron for the Gawain-poet is pre-supposed there is no more credible candidate than Richard II himself.     

论磨制石器工业的资源问题

资源研究是新石器时代以降磨制石器工业研究的一个重要的环节。本文从可用性和可获得性两个方面来分析磨制石器资源的特点。在磨制石器的生产中,原料的大小和形状成为非常重要的原料选取的根据。资源研究的立足点应该是生产型遗址,从生产型遗址出发可以获得比较确信的资源产地信息。     

The Clean Energy Dilemma in Asia: Observations on Russia and China

Two American economic geographers and prominent specialists, respectively, in the energy industries and resources of Russia and related economic developments in China, evaluate and supplement the material presented in the preceding paper on the clean energy dilemma in Asia (Wilbanks, 2008). The paper covers changes in the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth globally as well as in Russia and China, Russian oil and gas exports to Asia (more specifically to China), the development of energy resources and production in China, and energy intensities in both countries.     

模块化视角下上海时尚产业发展路径研究

本文引入模块化相关理论并以此为理论基础考察了五大时尚之都(伦敦、米兰、巴黎、纽约和东京)的时尚产业及其模块化组织发展状况。通过调研所得资料提炼这些城市时尚产业的模块化发展要素及其作用机理,并总结其时尚产业模块化组织价值创新的发展路径。结合上海时尚产业的发展现状,对其具备的共同要素和特殊要素进行分析,说明在经过十余年的发展后,上海时尚产业在模块化进程中所处的阶段及其与时尚之都的差距。并以此为基础设计适合上海城市发展特点的时尚产业模块化发展路径。本文认为通过扶植创新要素、深化生产要素、提升消费要素、促进各个要素良性互动的措施,可以帮助上海时尚产业实现本土化和国际化的有效融合,进而实现其模块化组织价值创新。     

生产范式变革下集群企业的去地方化研究

在全球化和地方化共同作用下,经济活动的去地方化现象越来越受到关注。与一般的产业转移概念不同,去地方化着重强调企业受到某种作用脱离地方生产网络,进而对地方生产网络产生的影响。目前关于去地方化的研究多集中在欧美国家,且多是基于全球生产网络的视角,而由企业生产范式变革引起的去地方化没有得到应有重视。实际上,在中国沿海地区,集群内创新型企业进行生产范式变革,引起企业去地方化现象十分明显,对地方经济社会产生深刻影响。在此背景下,本文建立生产范式变革、组织协同与企业去地方化的理论架构,分别以东莞鞋业集群和华宏鞋业公司为例,分析鞋业集群和企业在生产范式变革下的去地方化现象,为地方政府更好地制定实施集群政策和产业转移提供理论依据。     

空间生产视角下的城中村物质空间与社会变迁——南京市江东村的实证研究

从空间生产理论的视角而言,城市空间是一种巨大的社会资源,因而也是一个社会关系的重组与社会秩序的建构过程。文章以南京市典型的城中村江东村为研究对象,对其空间生产的历史性变迁、社会关系的再生产、制造的新空间三个方面进行分析,透视在城市空间生产过程中对人群分层和环境的差异性制造,以及对村民社会生活和生产关系的改变。江东村最终被城市强力改造成为了中产阶层社区,代表着新的生产关系和社会结构的建立,其生产和塑造的不仅仅是空间,更是社会的新界限。