THE ROLT MEMORIAL LECTURE 2011

Abstract

The Pawtucket Dam in Lowell is a key site in the interpretation of the city’s industrial heritage and a potent symbol of corporate determination to alter the natural environment for textile production and profit. It is both a certified National Landmark and the most dramatic feature of a National Park, the first one to be located in an American industrial city. Without a great dam at Pawtucket Falls, Lowell would never have become a renowned example of manufacturing prowess and attractive urban design. Every dam built across the Merrimack River since 1825 at that site has been controversial. They have blocked fish migrations, overflowed farmland, backed water into the wheelpits of upstream mills, halted log drives, and made floods more destructive. The existing Pawtucket Dam of 1847 and 1875 is now the focus of a heated debate between preservationists and a hydroelectric power company that wants to alter it.     

Accommodating ‘design’: introducing the Western concept into Soviet art theory in the 1950s–60s

This article investigates the background of Soviet industrial design in Soviet art theory. Instead of considering design's interconnection with technology and science, or with consumption and everyday life, the author traces its conceptualisation as a new artistic phenomenon. Using archival records of professional discussions, polemical articles in the art press and design projects, the author looks at how industrial design was incorporated into the Soviet order of things. She concludes that accommodation of the Western model was the way to reform the system of socialism from inside, typical for the Soviet intelligentsia of the 1960s.     

No Italian Stalingrads. The C.G.I.L. and the working class in the northern industrial heartlands, 1945-1955

ABSTRACT

This article challenges conventional wisdom on the northern Italian industrial heartlands during the first decade after the Second World War. For there still exists a certain mythology about the post-war proletarian north as a region that was both intensely political and united in purpose. What this article demonstrates is that the ‘industrial triangle’ of Genoa, Milan and Turin was far more divided than historians have assumed. By revisiting the manifold (wildcat) strikes, trade union demonstrations, and factory occupations of the early post-war years, it shows the industrial north to be divided along both social and geographical lines. In doing so, it sheds fresh light on the series of defeats that the main Italian trade union confederation (C.G.I.L.) suffered in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It argues that these defeats were due as much to the explicit politicization of labour struggles and their exclusive focus on the interests of skilled workers as to the hostile socio-political climate in which the C.G.I.L. had to operate.     

‘You Kick the Bucket; We Do the Rest!’: Jokes and the Culture of Reprinting in the Transatlantic Press

In December 1893 the Conservative candidate for Flintshire addressed an audience at Mold Constitutional Club. After he had finished attacking Gladstone and the local Liberal incumbent, he ended his speech with a joke. He advised the Conservative party to adopt, with regard to the government, the sign of an American undertaker: ‘You kick the bucket; we do the rest’. How did a sign belonging to a Nevadan undertaker become the subject of a joke told at a political meeting in North Wales? This unlikely question forms the basis of this article. Using new digital archives, it tracks the journey of the gag from its origins in New York, its travels around America, its trip across the Atlantic, its circulation throughout Britain and its eventual leap into political discourse. The article uses the joke to illuminate the workings of a broader culture of transatlantic reprinting. During the final quarter of the nineteenth century miscellaneous ‘snippets’ cut from the pages of the American press became a staple feature of Britain's bestselling newspapers and magazines. This article explores how these texts were imported, circulated and continually rewritten in dynamic partnership between authors, editors and their readers.     

‘What remains? An empty doll-case’: Deconstruction and Imagination in Victorian Narratives of Doll Production

Increasing interest in the Victorians' relationships with the material world has led many critics to turn to periodical publications and, in particular, to process articles and other forms of industrial writing as sources for new insight. This article contributes to this growing body of scholarship by examining narratives of doll production. Because dolls are objects that Victorians celebrated for their imaginative potential and that were often not intended to be treated as ordinary commodities, such narratives can shed light on the intricate relationships between materiality and the imagination. In revealing the process of production, these narratives deconstruct dolls, reducing them to a collection of material parts. By some accounts, these parts are brought to life through a specialized process of manufacture that dehumanizes the workers who make them and robs them of their imaginative agency. While this deconstructive exploration can be seen as an extension of the ‘melancholy and gloom’ that Baudelaire describes as the result of children's destructive compulsion to see the insides of their toys, it could also generate new imaginative possibilities. By inviting readers to behold commodities in a state of transformation, I argue, narratives of doll production demand a more imaginative attitude towards commodities as objects shaped by their material histories.     

SHAKING TABLE DYNAMICS: RESULTS FROM A TEST-ANALYSIS COMPARISON STUDY

This paper presents the results of a comprehensive comparison study between the analytically predicted and experimentally identified dynamics of the shaking table system built recently in the Structural Engineering Laboratory at Rice University in Houston, Texas. The primary objectives of the research presented here are two-fold: (1) to shed light into the dynamic performance of asmall-tc-medium size, uni-axial, servo-hydraulic, displacement-controlled shaking table system, and (2) to validate a linearised dynamic model of the system (in the form of the total shaking table transfer function) developed earlier by the authors from basic principles. The analytical model incorporates the inherent dynamic characteristics of the various components of the shaking table system (i.e. controller, servovalve, actuator, test specimen, and reaction mass) and their dynamic interaction.

The test-analysis correlation study performed over a wide range of operating and payload conditions provides useful information on the sensitivity of the shaking table transfer function to control gain parameters and how it can be used to tune the shaking table controller for optimum performance under various payload conditions. The good test-analysis correlation results obtained validate the analytical shaking table model, show its robustness, and provide keen insight into the underlying coupled dynamics of a shaking table system. In order to achieve this good test-analysis correlation, it was crucial to include a time delay in the analytical model of the shaking table system (innovative feature of the model to account for the time lag in the response of the servovalve-actuator system). The expected significant dynamic interaction between payload and shaking table is also confirmed by this study.     

上海创意产业园区的空间分异研究

创意产业园区是一种新的生产空间组织,90年代末以来在一些国际著名大都市中发展迅速。本文试图通过分析上海创意产业集聚园区的空间分布特点和形成机理,研究上海创意产业集聚的时空变化规律。研究表明,上海创意产业园区的分布具有以下两个特点:由黄浦江和内环线围合而成的半环状地带和苏州河沿岸地带,因传统的老工业区,老仓库、老厂房分布集中,伴随传统工业逐步迁出市区,这些旧城建筑为创意产业的发展提供了理想的地理空间;东北、西南地区是大学集中分布地带,是知识溢出的空间,知识型创意产业园区相对比较集中。上海创意产业集聚空间的规律,折射出上海创意产业发展的道路。     

济南高新技术开发区产业集群及其核心竞争力分析

济南高新技术开发区作为国家高新技术产业开发区之一,对山东经济发展起着重要作用。文章对济南高新技术产业区不同产权形式和不同行业类型企业的地位和贡献进行分析,并运用聚类分析方法开展了不同企业的绩效评价,为济南高新技术产业区产业集聚和核心竞争力的培育提供科学依据。同时,探讨了济南市高新技术产业开发区产业集群的形成、核心竞争能力培育的路径,提出了塑造具有创新与服务能力的企业家型政府、创建高新技术产业开发区集群支持网络、培养济南市高新技术产业开发区合作网络、凸显济南市高新技术产业开发区资源特色等战略对策。     

深圳市就业空间结构及其演变(2001-2004)

本文基于2001年基本单位普查和2004年经济普查数据,探讨深圳市就业空间结构的特征及演化趋势。研究表明,深圳市的就业空间结构存在就业密度下降、集聚程度不强、制造业占绝对地位、服务业郊区化等现象,而规划和市场是推动其演变的主要力量,在二者的共同作用下,深圳市就业空间结构将呈现以下的演变趋势:(1)从"带状组团式"向"网状组团式"转变;(2)制造业转型导致就业规模缩减;(3)服务业郊区化促进中心外围组团发展;(4)高端服务业集聚进一步增强。     

环渤海地区制造业地理集聚研究

运用区位商指数和基尼系数对环渤海地区两位数制造业20个行业1993-2007年的集聚水平进行测度。结果表明:10余年来环渤海地区20个主要制造业行业的地理集中程度在不断提高,绝大部分行业呈集聚加强趋势;制造业结构具有一定的相似性,各省(市)地方专业化产业趋同,比较优势和集聚经济没有起到应有的作用;环渤海地区工业化进程呈梯度分布,北京、天津已处于工业化的后期阶段,资本和技术密集型产业向内转移,河北、山东、辽宁仍处于工业化的中期阶段,劳动密集型行业具有较强的比较优势。