China's Shoe Manufacturing and the Wenzhou Model: Perspectives on the World's Leading Producer and Exporter of Footwear

A U.S.-based geographer and specialist on China advances his research on industrial districts and regional development by presenting a 2008 study of shoe manufacturing in Wenzhou (a major center in the world's largest footwear producing and exporting country). More specifically, the author examines how the model of economic development pioneered in Wenzhou (the Wenzhou model) has been transformed in an effort to meet the challenges posed by the global economy. He argues that the scaling up of Wenzhou's footwear industry, through the expansion of sales networks and factories across China and abroad, indicates that other adaptable city regions can overcome similar obstacles. The author challenges both the New Regionalism literature focused on local institutions and assets, as well as perspectives that overemphasize the benefits of globalization and global production networks. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O100, O140, O180. 2 figures, 3 tables, 60 references.     

城市职能演变的回顾与展望

全球化是当前世界发展的主流,全球化对城市的发展已经产生了深远的影响,一方面生产要素在城市之间的流动加强。另一方面城市主导权力扩大。加剧了城市之间的竞争。由此带来城市产业结构和产业布局的变化,促进了城市化、郊区化、绅士化等的发展。在此背景之下,全球城市在人类社会发展中的职能不断演变。其基本趋势是由生产性职能转向服务性职能。并且这种演变会伴随着全球信息化的发展逐步由多元服务向单一的人居服务发展。本在对全球城市职能演变简单回顾的基础上。根据全球化发展的趋势。探讨了全球化对城市职能演变的影响,并预测未来城市职能的变化趋势。     

世界史研究发展的当代背景

整体的“世界史”概念是在地区国别史研究的基础上逐步形成的,对“世界体系”认知的热情从来也没有像第二次世界大战以后这样高涨。这种学术现象的出现是以经济发展全球化、生活模式单一化、价值观念趋同的趋势为大背景的。可以认为,真正意义的世界史观念是全球经济一体化不断深化和不同文化交流日益频繁这一形势在历史研究领域引起的反应。作为全球化的逆向思维,强调对话反对对抗,强调联系和交流反对封锁,对各个民族原创文明的探讨成为文化知识界的共识。对多元文明,特别是不同文明之间“联系”的探讨是整体世界史研究发展的又一种深层动力。整体的宏观的世界史研究与地区国别史研究相辅相成、互相促进。现代科技水平和新科技观念迅猛发展,促进了地区国别史、专门史、断代史学者的交流,加强了世界各地学者之间的联系,打破了历史学和其他哲学社会科学学科、甚至自然科学学科之间的壁垒,交叉与对比研究为世界史研究的新发展开辟出无限广阔的空间。     

The Archaeology of Regions: From Discrete Analytical Toolkit to Ubiquitous Spatial Perspective

In the 1970s and 1980s, regional analysis was an influential part of archaeological research, providing a discrete set of geographical tools inspired by a processual epistemological and interpretive perspective. With the advent of new technologies, new methods, and new paradigms, archaeological research on regional space has undergone significant changes. This article reviews the state of regional archaeology, beginning with a consideration of its history and a discussion of the fundamental issues facing regional investigations before focusing on developments over the last several years. On one hand, the diversification of archaeological theory has created new paradigms for thinking about human relationships with one another and with the physical environment across regional space; in this regard, historical ecology, landscape archaeology, and evolutionary theory have been particularly influential in recent years. This has led to a corresponding diversification of the traditional methods of regional analysis. Most notably, the advent of powerful digital technologies has introduced new tools, especially those from the geographic information sciences, that build on the quantitative methods of past approaches. The investigation of regional data is no longer based on a discrete toolkit of simple mathematical and graphical procedures for representing spatial relationships. Instead, regional archaeology has matured into a diversity of multiscalar spatial and geostatistical techniques that inform many areas of archaeological inquiry.     

经济全球化背景下的中国政治发展战略

经济全球化已经成为当代世界的发展潮流,它不仅改变着整个世界经济和文化的格局,而且也深刻地影响着每一个国家的政治发展进程。在这一背蓄下,确定符合当代中国实际和发展阶段的政治发展战略,就是要在价值取向上发展社会主义民主政治,在发展模式上遵循渐进式发展。     

Information and Local Activism: The Case of Two County Instructors in Early Nineteenth-Century Fujian and Taiwan

This article examines the efforts of two county instructors (jiaoyu), Xie Jinluan and Zheng Jiancai, to bolster the security of the maritime frontier and stabilize local society in early 19th century Fujian and Taiwan. Occurring during the Jiaqing transition in which Chinese elites increasingly voiced concerns about problems afflicting the empire, Xie and Zheng waged an information campaign to lobby for local issues while embedded in county educational posts. Printing their treatises through their alma mater, the Aofeng Academy, Fuzhou’s premier educational institution that promoted a rigorous Neo-Confucian scholarly orientation, and using well-positioned Aofeng alumni to take their causes to Beijing, the instructors were able to make changes on the local level and provide Qing officials with a new source of “expert” local information that bypassed the regular bureaucracy. By producing information on themes of local governance and manipulating the elite network of the Aofeng Academy that connected Fujian to circles of power in Beijing, Xie and Zheng became models of local political action, influencing new generations of Fujianese scholars over the 19th century.     

Global finance and the German model: German corporations, market incentives, and the management of employer-sponsored pension institutions

Where there was a settled political geography of state power and responsibilities, the remarkable growth of global finance has put enormous pressure on national economic, political and social institutions. Furthermore, the looming crisis facing many continental European social security systems has raised many doubts about the long-term viability of the German model compared to its Anglo-American rivals. In this context, large German corporations have sought ways of sustaining their global competitiveness by, in part, restructuring their national and regional commitments. To illustrate, in this paper we concentrate on the nature and organization of German employer-sponsored pension institutions in relation to Anglo-American management practice. Two issues drive the analysis. One has to do with an emerging coalition between corporate management and shareholders with respect to the market value of the firm. The second issue has to do with the allocation of risk and uncertainty between the social partners when negotiating the financing and final value of promised retirement income. The institutional framework of collective decision-making common to many of Germany's largest firms is under pressure; three models of investment decision making relevant to pension assets and liabilities are used to illustrate this point. In doing so, we suggest that the German model is more fragile than commonly realized. We also suggest that Anglo-American management practices have penetrated and affected German corporate (national and regional) institutions and regulations. The social market lauded by advocates of stakeholder capitalism is changing rapidly, at least in the sphere of large firms and global finance.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Cyberspace: The World in WiresRob Kitchin
Mike Crang, Phil Crang and Jon May, (eds.) Virtual Geographies: Bodies, Space and Relations
Joanne P. Sharp, Paul Routledge, Chris Philo and Ronan Paddison, (eds.) Entanglements of Power: Geographies of domination/resistance
Steven Daniels, Humphrey Repton: Landscape Gardening and the Geography of Georgian England
David Harvey, Spaces of Hope
Robert J. Mayhew, Enlightenment geography: the political languages of British geography 1650-1850
Felix Driver, Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire
Eric Sheppard and Trevor Barnes, (eds.) A Companion to Economic Geography
Gordon L. Clark, Maryann P. Feldman and Meric S. Gertler, (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography     

COORDINATING EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE NETHERLANDS: A HOLISTIC QUANTITATIVE APPROACH TO THE ANALYSIS OF ICT‐RELATED AND OTHER WORK‐LIFE BALANCE STRATEGIES

Due to women's increased participation in the labour force, more and more family‐households are now juggling paid labour and care‐giving in space and time and do so in many different ways. Much research and policy about how households try to establish a satisfactory work‐life balance singles out particular coping strategies, such as telecommuting or the mobilizing of informal help by relatives or friends. While insightful, foregrounding single strategies may oversimplify the complex reality of everyday life, in which people often skilfully weave together multiple coping strategies. As well, advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) have further diversified the arsenal of possible coping strategies, but the academic literature has yet to verify whether ICT usage complements or substitutes the adoption of other coping strategies. Adopting a holistic quantitative approach this study assesses which combinations of coping strategies prevail and which role ICTs play in this regard among one‐ and dual‐earner households in the Utrecht–Amersfoort–Hilversum area of the Netherlands. We also examine systematic variations in strategy combination by socio‐demographics, ICT possession, affordability and skills, social network factors, employment and commute factors, spatial factors, lifestyle orientation and other factors. We identify several distinct combinations of strategies and find that ICT‐related strategies are frequently adopted by highly educated employed parents in the Netherlands attempting to achieve a satisfying work‐life balance and tend to complement other types of strategies. Which combinations of strategies have been adopted depends most strongly on the presence of young children, but also on employment factors and characteristics of the environment surrounding the dwelling and main workplace.