Two systems in one country: the origin,functions, and mechanisms of the rural-urban dual system in China

ABSTRACT

This paper takes an interdisciplinary perspective to focus on the role played by the rural-urban dual system in China’s urbanization and migration. We explain its establishment in China in the 1950s and its genealogy in the industrialization strategy adopted in the USSR in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In the reform era, the system has been refashioned to suit a new set of demands of the state industrialization strategy to cater for the global economy. We analyze the mechanisms of the dual system, and how it has helped generate low-cost migrant labor for urban employers and siphon off revenues for urban governments by expropriating rural land. We also argue that there are fundamental differences between the dual system and the common “dualism,” based on the Lewis dual-sector model, as observed in many developing countries. The plight of children of migrants is used to illustrate the main points made in the paper. Our research challenges the prevailing perspectives in Chinese geography and urban studies, many of which are based on market-driven neoclassical economics or global neoliberalism, often ignoring China’s historical and institutional contexts.     

A CRISIS OF DEFINITION: CULTURE VERSUS INDUSTRY IN ODDA,NORWAY

This article addresses the influence of dominant and traditional ways of grasping the reality in social and economic processes of change. Our point of departure is how the perception of crisis in Odda, a small industrial community in Norway, influences the course of the process of change. The analysis focuses on a heated debate over the exploitation of a large site in the centre of Odda, left after the closure of the key factory. Rather than the economic and social consequences of the closure, the main challenge that arose from the crisis was related to the emergence of ambiguity in the local conceptual framework. Coming to terms with the situation stimulated various attempts to rearticulate the discourse of local development, with the result that industrial and culture‐based perspectives on development came into conflict. The economic crisis became a crisis of definition. In Odda, the industrial discourse finally domesticated the competing cultural discourse, ending years of conflict and inaction. In its explicit focus on the importance of local struggles and the way discourse structures such processes this story about recent developments in Odda complements literature on post‐industrial development.     

Agglomeration,foreign firms and firm exit in regions under transition: the increasing importance of related variety in Hungary

ABSTRACT

Related variety of economic activities is widely recognized to induce regional development; however, it is not clear how this mechanism takes place in regions that go through major structural and institutional transformation. Furthermore, foreign direct investment (FDI) is typically a major source of structural change in these areas; and we still need a better understanding on how foreign-owned (foreign) firms affect the dynamics of domestic-owned (domestic) companies. For these reasons we analyse firm-level exit in Hungarian city regions between 1996 and 2011, over the late post-socialist transition in manufacturing industries, focusing on the difference between foreign and domestic firms. Introducing ownership into the related variety calculation, we estimate the probability of firm exit with the region-level related variety calculated separately for foreign and domestic firms. Our results suggest that related variety of foreign firms decreases the probability of domestic firm exit earlier during the economic transition compared to the related variety of domestic firms. This finding supports the idea that FDI plays a formative role in regions under transition, and shows that domestic firms benefit from being in agglomerations where foreign firms are technologically related to each other.     

Operationalising memory and identity politics to influence public opinion of refugees: A snapshot from Poland

Using a politics of identity and memory approach, herein, we explore how political discourse plays out in practice and ‘in place’ when Poles were compelled to consider the introduction of visibly different persons, with different cultural characteristics, to their society. In 2017, and at the height of the "migrant/refugee crisis", we conducted 200 short interviews in Wrocław, Poland, to gauge and interpolate attitudes and opinions to refugees, in a context where the refugees had been strategically Othered, and constructed as a threat to Polish society. Our discussion focuses on how the strategic use and dissemination of threat and fear, in public discourse, was operationalised to disrupt steadfast notions of belonging to the Polish nation. By exploring belonging to the nation through a politics of identity and memory framework, we can better understand and provide contextual nuance to the import of maintaining ‘a [Polish] cultural sense of belonging’ (Brockmeier, 2002, p. 18). While in a Polish context, place-based and culturally historical narratives of conflict, territorial incursion, and occupation have framed threats to belonging in the past, the contemporary political exploitation of threat and its (re)production in public discourse is not only strongly exclusionary, but also denies the opportunity for Poles to know diversity as a felt experience reinforcing ideas of a ‘closed’ Poland. The contribution of this paper, then, is to demonstrate both the effectiveness of control of public discourse in a specific place and time, but to also elucidate the less often heard Eastern European states responses to the refugee crises.     

A Crisis of Urban Conservatism? Politics and Organisation in Edwardian Norwich

Writing in the mid 1990s, Ewen Green suggested that the Edwardian Conservative Party was locked in a crisis which, after 1910, was leading towards a disintegration of Unionism. Recent research has challenged this view, contending that at constituency level, Conservative activists and parties were recovering, rebuilding around issues such as Ireland, land reform and opposition to National Insurance. However, there are few studies of the causes and consequences of the crisis of Conservatism in urban constituencies or the extent to which the party may have been recovering by the outbreak of the Great War. This article considers these issues in the city of Norwich. It assesses the profile of activists; the fortunes of the Conservatives in the parliamentary election contests of the period, addressing the ways the party used a variety of candidates to attempt to attract popular support; and the particular issues of tariff reform and socialism, to determine the extent to which voters and activists were willing to accept protection as part of a broader defence against socialism. These national issues are contrasted with the performance of the party in municipal elections, considering the basis of the growing appeal they evidenced in council elections after 1906, along with the continuing emphasis on organisational weakness evidenced by party leaders. Overall, it suggests that, despite their municipal strength, the continued commitment of the local party to tariffs prevented them from challenging effectively for the constituency against a Liberal‐Labour alliance with a shared belief in free trade.     

‘Attaque and Break Through a Phalanx of Corruption . . . the Court Party!’ The Scottish Representative Peers' Election and the Opposition, 1733–5: Three New Division Lists of the House of Lords of 1735*

In the early 1730s, Archibald Campbell, the earl of Ilay, gained a dominant position in Scotland, and Sir Robert Walpole, the prime minister, entrusted him with the distribution of patronage there. Ilay took full advantage of this power, and controlled the votes of the financially weak Scottish peers in the election of 16 representative peers. The excise crisis of 1733–4, however, changed the political scene in Scotland. Although they had been chosen as supporters of the court party, some of the Squadrone Volante members (the duke of Montrose and the marquess of Tweeddale) and two courtiers (the earls of Marchmont and Stair) raised a standard of revolt against Walpole and Ilay. The Scottish opposition co‐operated with the English country party (‘the Patriots’) and such Scottish tories as the duke of Hamilton. In the 1734 peers' election they launched a challenge to the ministry, but the opposition was crushed by a bankrolled election campaign organised by the court party. Although the English and Scottish opposition petitioned in the house of lords to criticize the ‘undue practices’ of Walpole and Ilay at the election, the ministry was backed up by English and Scottish courtiers and bishops, and overwhelmed the opposition. Three new division lists related to the aftermath of the Scottish election shed much light upon the party alignment of the upper House in the middle of the 1730s.     

Pandemics,transformations and tourism: be careful what you wish for

Abstract

Disease outbreaks and pandemics have long played a role in societal and economic change. However, the nature of such change is selective, meaning that it is sometimes minimal and, at other times, and change or transformation may be unexpected, potentially even reinforcing contemporary paradigms. A comprehensive overview of pandemics and their effects is provided. This is used to help contextualise the COVID-19 pandemic, its impact on tourism and government, industry and consumer response. Drawing on the available literature, factors that will affect tourism and destination recovery are then identified. Some measures will continue or even expand present growth orientations in tourism while others may contribute to sustainability. It is concluded that that the selective nature of the effects of COVID-19 and the measures to contain it may lead to reorientation of tourism in some cases, but in others will contribute to policies reflecting the selfish nationalism of some countries. However, the response to planetary limits and sustainable tourism requires a global approach. Despite clear evidence of this necessity, the possibility for a comprehensive transformation of the tourism system remains extremely limited without a fundamental transformation of the entire planet.     

Covid-19 is an unnatural disaster: Hope in revelatory moments of crisis

Abstract

The unfolding COVID-19 pandemic has closed borders, grounded planes, quarantined more than half of the world’s population, triggered anxiety en masse, and shaken global capitalism to its core. Scholars of the political ecology of disasters have sought to denaturalize so-called “natural” disasters by demonstrating their uneven consequences. Work in the political ecology of health similarly accounts for how risk of illness and disease are socio-economically mediated. While this scholarship has demonstrated the need to contextualize the unequal fallout from ecological and health disasters in ways that reveal the festering wounds of structural inequality, we know much less about how hope is cultivated in moments of crisis. The current revelatory moment of the COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to find hope in the rubble through the deconstruction of framings of crisis as “error” and by homing in on the current and potential role of tourism to contribute to a more socially and environmentally just society. This reframing the pandemic as an "unnatural" disaster opens new debates at the intersection of tourism geographies and political ecologies of hope in revelatory moments of crisis.     

In Search of ‘Affectionate Regard’: American Merchant Lobbies and the State during the Atlantic Imperial Crisis*

This article revisits the politics of British merchants trading to North America in the period between 1763 and 1783. Their political success and failure in this critical period have been examined primarily in terms of their impact on the escalation of imperial crisis, with the day‐to‐day operation of merchant politics rarely taken into full account. This article takes an alternative approach of studying the political influence of merchants trading to North America within the context of their interaction with the state. By looking into the organisation, the process of lobbying, and the arguments that the merchants adopted, the article highlights how, in response to many sources of tension and uncertainty inherent within their relationship with the state, they demarcated their own areas of contribution to the shaping of commercial and colonial policy. Through the case study of merchants trading to North America, this article sheds further light on the necessity to understand the evolution of such modern political institutions as commercial lobbies in their specific economic and political contexts.     

Imperial Projections & Crisis: The Liberal International Order as a ‘Pseudo-Empire’

ABSTRACT

This article proposes that empire serves as a suitable framework for understanding how and why the liberal international order is exhibiting symptoms of ‘imperial overstretch’. Noting that many of its critics and opponents subscribe to a simplistic and yet powerful narrative that views liberal internationalism as a pseudo-imperial project, it shows that detractors tend to perceive democracy promotion and globalisation as the two main instruments of an order-building endeavour that is remoulding international structures along imperial lines to reflect liberal values and institutions. Within the transatlantic community, critics from the left resent liberal internationalism for its corporate greed, its imperialistic tendencies, wars of intervention, and the veneer of humanitarianism that disguises its ideology of a ‘civilising mission’. Critics from the right fear the erosion of national boundaries and the subversion of the nation-state as a result of mass migration, the dilution of national identities, and the constant meddling of supra-national organisations. Externally, the order is under attack by revisionist states, competitors, and violent non-state actors. Ideological incompatibility and differences in motives notwithstanding, these hostile forces are increasingly united in their struggle against the liberal order – with the risks of its possible disintegration all too familiar to the students of empire.