The Idea of Socialism: From 1968 to the Present‐day Crisis

Abstract: In 2008 the 40th anniversary of that iconic year, 1968, was celebrated in the media in relation to student uprisings and cultural revolts, largely neglecting the very significant movements of workers and peasants who were challenging power structures around the world at that time. This omission reflects the failures of socialism in the twentieth century, which are explored in this essay. Beginning from a more complete picture of 1968, the essay examines the history of socialism, identifying the main sources of failure in its theory and practice, in particular that of the revolutionary left. If the failure lies in the elite character of socialist politics and its focus on distribution rather than production, it is to be remedied by a firm focus on the politics of the workplace and the goal of substantive equality. The concluding section reviews the prospects for such an alternative in the current circumstances of global crisis.     

THE IMPACT OF CRIME ON APARTMENT PRICES: EVIDENCE FROM STOCKHOLM,SWEDEN

This study uses data of about 9,000 apartment sales in Stockholm, Sweden, to assess the impact of crime on property prices. The study employs hedonic pricing modelling to estimate the impact of crime controlling for other factors (property and neighbourhood characteristics). Geographic Information System (GIS) is used to combine apartment sales by coordinates with offences, land use characteristics and demographic data of the population. The novelty of this research is threefold. First, it explores a set of land use attributes created by spatial techniques in GIS in combination with detailed geographical data in hedonic pricing modelling. Second, the effect of crime in neighbouring zones at one place can be measured by incorporating spatial lagged variables of offence rates into the model. Third, the study provides evidence of the impact of crime on housing prices in a capital city of a traditional welfare state, information otherwise lacking in the international literature. Our results indicate that apartment prices in a specific area are strongly affected by crime in its neighbouring zones, regardless of crime type. When offences were broken down by types, residential burglary, theft, vandalism, assault and robbery individually had a significant negative effect on property values. However, for residential burglary such an effect is not homogenous across space, and apartment prices in central areas are often less discounted by being exposed to crime than those in the city's outskirts.     

游客感知价值对TCM评估游憩价值影响的介入方式比较研究——以湖南张谷英村为例

游憩价值评估是识别旅游资源经济价值的重要手段.TCM作为传统评估方法,其评估结果的准确性受多种因素影响,其中游憩需求的影响因素对评估结果的影响是尚待解决的关键问题.游客感知价值是影响游憩需求的重要因素,考察其对评估结果的影响是提高评估结果精确性的一种有益尝试.本文以TCM的两种基本模型ZTCM和ITCM为基础,探索不同介入方式下感知价值对评估结果的影响机制.研究表明:感知价值作为自变量介入ZTCM模型后使人均消费者剩余下降了7.3%、游憩价值下降了4.4%,大于它作为中介变量介入ITCM模型后对评估结果的影响,说明感知价值主要通过与旅行花费共同作用对价值评估结果产生影响.这不仅揭示了游客感知价值影响的复杂性,更体现了游憩价值评估体系中考虑游憩需求影响因素的必要性.     

Connecting global health interventions and lived experiences: suspending ‘normality’ at funerals in rural Tanzania

In this paper, we use the funeral space and its liminal nature as a milieu for exploring how a ‘modern’ health intervention, the mosquito bednet, is negotiated by its recipients in relation to its (non)-usage in such spaces. With a focus on sleeping arrangements at funerals and drawing on empirical data from participants living in rural southern Tanzania, we discuss how the bednet is linked to the notion of being unsympathetic to the death. Viewed as a symbol of modernity and a reflection of wealth and individual pride, the bednet becomes physically and symbolically inappropriate in the more sacred, ‘in-between’ site of the funeral. We also uncover how risk perceptions regarding malaria transmission are re-cast in funeral spaces, with socio-cultural practices and health-related behaviours being simultaneously ‘risky’ for individual mourners and reinforcing in terms of group social cohesion. As individual mourners' concerns about malaria risks are suspended, notions of pain and discomfort come to the fore as part of the mourning process and respect for the deceased.     

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.     

Parading urban togetherness: a video record of Brussels' Zinneke Parade

This article introduces the concept of urban togetherness to parade research. We suggest that some parades are practices that establish urban relations and not community, carnival or consumerist relations. We develop this new perspective on the basis of a literature review and an analysis of a parade in Brussels, the Zinneke Parade. In the literature review, we distinguish between three existing perspectives on parades. Research has argued that parades serve to build community and claim identity, to suspend social positions and to enable tourist/consumerist relations. In our analysis, we focus on concrete features of the Zinneke Parade obtained through video recording showing the costumes and objects carried along, the rhythm and sounds, and the borders and interactions established during the parade. We argue that the Zinneke Parade should be understood as a form of urban togetherness in which participants and spectators are exposed to each other in a practice that does not necessarily lead to identification and shared meaning.     

水域景观美学价值评价理论研究

水域景观是自然风景的重要组成部分。美学价值是人类审美和水域景观联系的纽带。水域景观美学价值的评价是天然水资源成为景观水资源(旅游资源)的先决条件,美学价值的高低直接影响水域景观的观赏质量,它是水域景观旅游价值评价的重要内容。本文首先根据人类神经生理、心理学等学科的研究成果探讨人类审美的主观缘源;再重点剖析水域景观的美学特征;最后提出水域景观美学价值评价的理论。     

Informal markets and global value chains – the disembedding of Romanian dairy smallholders

The Romanian dairy-farming sector is marked by subsistence and semi-subsistence farms. Through consolidation in the retail and dairy sector, the price pressure has moved toward producers of raw milk. Through new European, national and private standards and global actors tapping into the Romanian market this development is reinforced. At the same time, the smallholders, formerly accepted to be acting on an informal level, cannot access their main distribution channels anymore. Additionally, through several legal constraints being developed since Romania’s accession to the European Union, the smallholders are neither able to issue invoices, nor to access certain subsidy programmes as they are not considered juridical persons. This article focuses on the consequences of this disembedding of farmers. The peasants are pushed toward informal activities or value chain positions, in which they do not have any bargaining power with the globally sourcing intermediaries they are supplying. The contemporary approaches of global value chains and global production networks build the theoretical framework for the study. Here it is argued that informal markets must be included into these approaches more concisely.     

对剩余价值范畴的重新界定

传统政治经济学对剩余价值范畴的定义在其存在的条件、来源和剩余价值的分配等方面均过于狭窄,且界定时采用了非经济的标准,这既有悖于马克思的有关论述,也与当前的实际情况不完全吻合.本文以马克思的有关经典论述为依据,并结合经济生活的实际,对传统剩余价值范畴进行深入思考,以澄清人们的模糊认识.     

比较视野下中国乡村认知的再辨析:当代价值与乡村复兴

本文首先探讨了西方社会对乡村认知转型的基本思潮,其演进脉络经历了生产主义、后生产主义和多功能乡村三个阶段。在此基础上,本文尝试建立了从主体和功能两个维度进行乡村认知的基本框架,并从历史视角对中国乡村的认知变迁进行了回溯。新中国成立以来,对于乡村的认知大致经历了牺牲型乡村和追赶型乡村两个阶段,直至城乡统筹的概念提出,才有一定的改变。本文提出了当前中国乡村的三重价值——乡村的农业价值、乡村的腹地价值和乡村的家园价值。基于这样的多元价值,尝试性地提出了"乡村复兴"的概念框架。