Ambivalent greenings,collateral conservation: Negotiating ecology in a United Nations buffer zone

This article focuses on the politics of environmental conservation in the UN Buffer Zone (BZ) that divides the island of Cyprus. On the one hand, it underscores the unintended conservation benefits which resulted after the violent depopulation of the BZ. On the other hand, it shows how the protracted conflict and its transformation into a post-violent one, has ‘softened up’ the BZ, and gave rise to new demands for human access and land development. The BZ as a spatial legacy of the Cyprus conflict thus illustrates the paradoxes of conservation practices in unintended ecological zones, which we term collateral conservation. It also underscores the modi vivendi negotiated among a broadened range of actors in pursuit of rival anthropocentric or ecological goals.     

Region‐specific determinants of the foreign direct investment in China

This study revisits region‐specific determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Eastern, Central, and Western China using econometric and spatial analyses. It uses a data set covering 31 Chinese provinces and autonomous regions spanning the period 2005–15, together with panel data regression. Our statistical results show that in Eastern China, FDI is significantly associated with bilateral trade, orientation towards the service industry, industrialisation level, and availability of strategic assets in the region. In Central China, FDI is mainly pulled by availability of the domestic market and strategic assets in the region. In Western China, FDI inflows are mainly determined by natural resource endowment, industrialisation level, and regional innovation and production effectiveness in information and communication technology industries. Our analysis also reveals the impact of FDI in China's regional development and its capacity to hollow out the three Chinese macro‐regions. Our findings for China lead us to suggest that those governments seeking to attract FDI should not solely rely on it to facilitate local economic development and should make use of local circumstances in combination with FDI to boost their economies.     

基层党组织领导班子成员直接选举方式的实践与思考

近年来,基层党组织领导班子成员直接选举试点成为创新和发展党内民主的新亮点,引起党内外广泛关注。基层党组织领导班子成员直接选举试点的推行具有深刻复杂的背景和原因,归纳试点实践的基本做法、显著特点和现实价值,分析比较“公推直选”、“双推直选”和“无候选人直接选举”等多种直接选举模式的特征及区别,总结基层党组织领导班子成员直接选举试点的有益经验,对改革和完善党内选举制度具有深远的意义和启示。     

Russia’s Accession to the World Trade Organization

Two noted British economists survey a range of issues linked to Russia’s forthcoming accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its implications for the Russian economy. They describe the far-reaching commitments Russia has undertaken in the realm of tariffs, non-tariff barriers, and openness to inward investment, identifying factors that tend both to support and challenge realization of these commitments. They follow with a brief historical account of the reasons why the accession process for Russia was so protracted and an assessment of the likely medium- and long-term economic impacts of accession for the country as well as for its particular regions and social groups. The arguments suggest that the likely direct impacts of accession will overall be modest (at least over the near- to medium-term), and focused in spheres in which a foreign presence may enhance the productivity of Russian firms in the domestic market (e.g., business services). Potentially, more substantial indirect benefits will largely depend on the scale and seriousness of domestic reform policies launched in support of WTO compliance (i.e., effects of accession on Russia’s political economy). Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F130, F500, P330. 3 figures, 6 tables, 54 references.     

Regendering space and reconstructing identity: Bedouin women's translocal mobility into Israeli-Jewish institutions of higher education

This article offers a geographic perspective on the mutually constitutive relations between institutions of higher education and Bedouin women's gendered spaces, identities and roles. Situated beyond Bedouin women's permitted space and embedded in Israeli-Jewish space, institutions of higher education are sites of displacement that present Bedouin women students with new normative structures, social interactions and opportunities for academic learning. As such, they become a discursive arena for the articulation and reconstruction of their previously held conceptions and identities. Often the journey to institutions of higher education signifies for Bedouin women the first opportunity to venture out of their community. Traveling to the university as students, returning home as educated women and embarking on professional careers outside tribal neighborhoods and villages involves moving across and beyond different locales. Such translocal mobility necessitates constant negotiation between seemingly contradictory cultural constructs and the development of varied spatial bridging strategies. The article seeks to contribute to Bedouin gender studies by going beyond the functional role of higher education institutions as well as the gendered hierarchies of women's mobility, placing emphasis, instead, on the effects of socio-spatial contextuality that shapes Bedouin women's experiences.     

The effects of Class I and II sized bovids on macrofracture formation and tool displacement: Results of a trampling experiment in a southern African Stone Age context

Abstract

In this paper we follow from previous experiments that assessed the formation of macrofractures on hunting weapons and trampled tools, and present the results of a new trampling experiment. This new experiment examined the relationship between small bovid trampling and the formation of macrofracture types on replicated stone and bone tools. We also recorded the resulting displacement of the tools in order to assess the relationship between tool morphology and displacement. Three tool types with dimensions similar to southern African archaeological tools were used. The results suggest that small frequencies of certain impact macrofractures occur on tools subject to trampling forces. These frequencies are, however, lower than those generally recorded during hunting experiments. Tool morphologies and fracture combinations are also shown to be important variables in macrofracture analyses. These results contribute to a growing body of experimental data dealing with the relationship between postdepositional processes and macrofracture formation on artifacts.     

Public funding of culture in the Czech Republic since the fall of the iron curtain: contemporary dilemmas

The article deals with explicit cultural policy and its outcomes in the post-communist Czech Republic. In the first part, the authors look at the organisational and conceptual impact on culture of the transition from a centrally managed economy to a pluralist parliamentary democracy following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. The cultural sector experienced privatisation, property restitution, commercialisation, globalisation, decentralisation and devolution, as well as the emergence of the private sector and the non-governmental non-profit sector (NGO). Although the process of societal transformation is now complete, certain key issues of cultural policy remain unresolved. The authors focus on three contemporary issues in theatre, namely: political intervention in the management of public cultural institutions, the persistent debate on funding through grant systems and the lack of trust culture professionals have in the creators of cultural policy. As a result, even though after 1989 it was expected that the private or NGO sector would dominate in the area of culture, there still exists a relatively dense network of public cultural institutions (contributory organisations) characterised by a resistance to proposed organisational and funding changes.     

DISPLACEMENT-BASED SEISMIC ASSESSMENT OF REINFORCED CONCRETE BUILDINGS

Abstract

Seismic assessment of existing reinforced concrete frame and shear wall buildings is discussed. Building on an earlier preliminary assessment procedure incorporating aspects of capacity design into a systems approach for assessment, suggestions are made towards a displacement-based, rather than forced-based, approach to determining available seismic capacity. Based on results from recent experimental programs, procedures are proposed for assessing member strength including column and beam-column joint shear-strength, that result in less conservative estimates of performance than would result from application of existing code rules.     

SEISMIC TORSIONAL EFFECTS ON DUCTILE STRUCTURAL WALL SYSTEMS

With a distinct design rather than analysis-oriented approach, some torsional phenomena, arising during the elasto-plastic seismic response of building structures, are addressed. It is postulated that existing code recommendations, expressed only in terms of the properties of elastic structures, are largely irrelevant when the design needs to be based on ductile system behaviour. Torsional restraint provided by elastic elements of a system, is claimed to be the desirable property controlling the amplification of inelastic translatory deformations of critical elements by storey twist. With the identification of the sources of inelastic element deformations, a simple behaviour-based design strategy is proposed. This should ensure that the displacement ductility demand, expected to be imposed on the system, does not result in deformations that, as a consequence of storey twist, may exceed the displacement ductility capacity of critical elements.     

Globalizing China: The Rise of Mainland Firms in the Global Economy

Two economic geographers survey the changing trends of China's outward foreign direct investment. Based on materials derived from original field work as well as published studies, they shed light on the major mechanisms through which mainland China's leading firms have successfully ventured abroad, as evidenced by proposed or realized acquisitions of significant corporate entities in the United States, Africa, Europe, and elsewhere in Asia. The authors argue for a political-economy approach to understanding "globalizing China," a complex phenomenon whereby the Chinese state is strategically and intricately enmeshed with the corporate interests of its leading business firms. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F23, L21, L22, M16. 3 figures, 3 tables, 128 references.