Benevolent hegemon,neighborhood bully,or regional security provider? Russia’s efforts to promote regional integration after the 2013–2014 Ukraine crisis

Russia has tried to use economic incentives and shared historical and cultural legacies to entice post-Soviet states to join its regional integration efforts. The Ukraine crisis exposed the weaknesses of this strategy, forcing Russia to fall back on coercive means to keep Kiev from moving closer to the West. Having realized the limits of its economic and soft power, will Russia now try to coerce post-Soviet states back into its sphere of influence? Fears of such an outcome overestimate Russia’s ability to use coercion and underestimate post-Soviet states capacity to resist. Rather than emerging as a regional bully, Russia is trying to push Eurasian integration forward by becoming a regional security provider. The article relates these efforts to the larger literature on regional integration and security hierarchies – bridging the two bodies of theory by arguing that regional leaders can use the provision of security to promote economic integration. Despite initial signs of success, we believe that the new strategy will ultimately fail. Eurasian integration will continue to stagnate as long as Russia’s economic and soft power remain weak because Russia will be unable to address the economic and social problems that are at the root of the region’s security problems.     

Financialization of hotel corporations in Spain

One of the cutting-edge topics being currently debated in social sciences is the impact of financialization on corporations and on different geographical contexts. Surprisingly enough, there have been very few studies that have explicitly dealt with this issue within tourism studies. In this paper, the issue of financialization within tourism is addressed through an analysis of hotel corporations. Taking a case-study approach, it is argued that Spanish hotel chains are increasingly becoming financialized since a minimization of the impact of global financial crisis on these corporations is urgently required. The argument is not that hotel corporations’ financialization is necessarily new, but rather that the impact of the global financial crisis has led to an intensification of this very process. Taking as case studies the three largest Spanish hotel corporations (Meliá Hotels International, NH Hoteles and Grupo Barceló), the current crisis-led hotel financialization is dealt through four interrelated spheres: (1) built environment (hotel buildings property becoming controlled by financial funds), (2) actors (emergence of new agents as a result of hotel corporations intertwining with financial corporations), (3) hotel profit extraction (reliance on the secondary circuit of capital), (4) financial engineering instruments (forms of fictitious capital that are new in the context of hotel corporations). The article shows how the process of financialization of hotel corporations illustrates broad trends of both financialization and capital accumulation. Specifically, the main findings are on one hand, that financialization not only fixes capital on the ground, but also creates liquidity. On the other hand, that the selling of property titles is an increasing profit niche with differentiated geographical locations. The last significant finding is that financialization helps to improve profitability of non-financia corporations such as hotel chains.     

Transnational practices and language maintenance: Spanish and Zapoteco in California

The theoretical framework of transnationalism has become more prominent within migration studies, examining how (im)migrants maintain connections with communities in their homeland (Sánchez, P. 2007a. “Cultural Authenticity and Transnational Latina Youth: Constructing a Meta-narrative Across Borders.” Linguistics and Education 18: 258–282). Children's identities are also affected by maintaining ties to their parents’ homeland through language. In California, a group of (im)migrants from Mexico, of Zapotec-speaking backgrounds, were among the families who wanted their children to maintain their Spanish language by enrolling in a dual immersion school. Although California has exhibited anti-immigrant rhetoric and legislated against bilingual education, some programs supporting heritage language maintenance continue to exist. This article presents interview data from 10 students who attended this school and their parents. Students maintained transnational and intergenerational ties to their families and communities in both Mexico and southern California through the maintenance of Spanish, but a subset of students who spoke Zapoteco as a heritage language also valued this language and used it as social capital.     

东亚经济危机与东亚发展模式新探

本文从三个方面论述了东亚经济发展模式。首先,从历史的角度分析了东亚经济发展模式的产生、特点及其局限性。然后,进一步指出在经济全球化和信息化加速发展新的历史条件下,东亚发展模式已不能适应时代发展的要求,东亚发展模式与这次东亚经济危机存在着内在的必然的联系。最后,对东亚经济发展模式的发展与变革提出了自己的观点。     

1797-1800年美国与法国准战争探析

18世纪晚期,美国为维护海上权益与地缘安全,加剧了与英法之间的矛盾。美国在《杰伊条约》中对英国的让步,换取到美英之间十年的和睦,却导致美法关系紧张,美国与法国从同盟走向准战争状态。最终美法危机得以和平解决,但这场准战争深深影响了美国早期的内政和外交。     

WHO SUFFERED FROM THE CRISIS OF HISTORICISM? A DUTCH EXAMPLE

Was the crisis of historicism an exclusively German affair? Or was it a “narrowly academic crisis,” as is sometimes assumed? Answering both questions in the negative, this paper argues that crises of historicism affected not merely intellectual elites, but even working‐class people, not only in Germany, but also in the Netherlands. With an elaborated case study, the article shows that Dutch “neo‐Calvinist” Protestants from the 1930s onward experienced their own crisis of historicism. For a variety of reasons, this religious subgroup came to experience a collapse of its “historicist” worldview. Following recent German scholarship, the paper argues that this historicism was not a matter of Rankean historical methods, but of “historical identifications,” or modes of identity formation in which historical narratives played crucial roles. Based on this Dutch case study, then, the article develops two arguments. In a quantitative mode, it argues that more and different people suffered from the crisis of historicism than is usually assumed. In addition, it offers a qualitative argument: that the crisis was located especially among groups that derived their identity from “historical identifications.” Those who suffered most from the crisis of historicism were those who understood themselves as embedded in narratives that connected past, present, and future in such a way as to offer identity in historical terms.     

金融危机对青海地方税收的影响及对策

由美国次贷危机引发的全球金融危机,给我国经济发展带来了一定影响,进而对地方税收也产生了较大影响。本文结合青海实际,首先分析了金融危机背景下青海地方税收呈现的主要特点;进而从不同角度深入分析了影响青海地方税收增减的主要因素;最后提出了金融危机背景下促进青海地方税收增长的路径选择等。     

试析民国初期华侨双重国籍的负面影响——以简照南恢复国籍案为例

五四抵制日货运动中,英美烟草公司利用中国国内的抵制日货运动,趁机揭露和指责简照南加入日本籍、南洋兄弟烟草公司是日资公司。南洋兄弟烟草公司因此遭受中国民众排斥,并被农商部吊销了执照。为摆脱危机,简照南和南洋烟草公司展开了一场以挽救其中国国籍为核心的行动,并获得国内诸多团体及华侨的支持。简氏复籍终获成功,南洋烟草公司也得以恢复注册为国货公司。此案揭示,在民族主义运动中,国籍、国货身份成为重要标识,双重国籍致使国民身份模糊,有时会带来很大负面影响。     

Shifting Narratives: Modern Chinese History since the Economic Reform and a Critique of Popular Opinion

When discussing the trans-formative shifts having occurred in the field of Chinese modern history following the economic reforms, one cannot avoid mention of the “revolutionary history paradigm,” the “paradigm of modernization” as well as the “postmodern paradigm.” According to popular belief, the course of development taken by the academic world during the past forty years was marked by a series of transformations: First was the progressive replacement of the “revolutionary history paradigm” by that of the “paradigm of modernization”; following that was the rise of the “postmodern paradigm” and the challenging of its predecessor. This set of divisions, though logically clear and succinct, cannot possibly conform to the realities of history in all of its complexness. While academic circles in the 1980’s were largely concerned with the issues of “what exactly is the historical driving force of Marxism” and “who are the revolutionary class,” the notion of the “paradigm of modernization” was rather a product of the conservative historical viewpoint and its rise during the late 1990’s. In this sense, then, the latter cannot possibly embody the former. On the surface of things, though the “postmodern paradigm” appears to refuse the narrative of revolutionary history, it in fact shares deeper connections with Chinese revolutionary thought at its roots. In short, then, these trans-formative shifts in modern Chinese history are not a simple “exchange” whereby one paradigm transfers into the next, but are rather a process of incessant and interconnected change.     

安邦彦围贵阳城明政府解围后的善后措施

明朝后期,随着专制统治的日渐腐败,明王朝阶级矛盾、民族矛盾、中央与地方矛盾日益尖锐,天启二年终于酿成贵州地区的安邦彦反明事件。贵州宣慰同知安邦彦挟其侄贵州宣慰使安位起兵反明,率土司军队包围贵阳城。由于明政府推行＂重辽轻黔＂的战略,对安氏反明事件重视不够,导致安氏包围贵阳城达十月之久。1622年12月明朝调集大军驰援解围,使贵阳城终得保全。