Following the plot of Bengt Pohjanen's Meänmaa: narrativization as a process of creating regional identity

This paper discusses the artistic and cultural work of one minority author and regional activist, Bengt Pohjanen, and how it constitutes a means for mediating regional identity narratives, constructing Meänmaa, the region straddling the border between Sweden and Finland in the Tornio River Valley. We will approach narrativization as a creative social action, focusing on the performative, social and political aspects of regional stories, and by this means impugning the division between territorial, bounded, and networked, unbounded, conceptualizations of regions. We will follow the narrative plot of Bengt Pohjanen's Meänmaa, pointing out how an artistic and cultural region becomes part of our social reality and how regional consciousness and identity become established and constantly renegotiated within and across national borders.     

Narrative claims on regions: prospecting for spatial identities among social movements in Finland

Regions have been regarded as processes, artefacts and discourses, and recently as ‘brands’ that various stakeholders use in marketing. Discourses on institutional regions are typically promoted by media, governmental bodies and planning organizations that draw on reputed collective regional identities—the expressions of past and current social discourses and cultural practices. However, such institutional regional discourses are often incongruous to spatial imaginaries of everyday life. This article scrutinizes the meanings of spatial attachment to citizens and explores to what extent regional identities are meaningful in everyday life. To avoid biased assumptions, focus-group interviews were carried out within four Finnish provinces among the members of four social movements. The results show that provincial spaces are not actively thought-and-practiced. Spatial identities are rather structured around personal experiences that typically accumulate in several locales, since personal histories are increasingly characterized by mobility. This article also recognizes that the everyday meanings of a socially constructed region are often generationally read and combine different historical narratives.     

Universities in inclusive regional innovation systems: Academic engagement and uneven knowledge use in Brazil

The purpose of this paper is to spatially and regionally examine academic engagement within Brazil, identifying patterns. Moreover, our investigation can contribute to a better understanding of how knowledge can be turned into a tool to fight regional inequality. We depart from two hypotheses: first, universities situated in peripheral regions interact more with companies from relatively more dynamic regions, and second, in the absence of industrial knowledge demand, universities tend to collaborate more closely with a diverse range of stakeholders in the region. To evaluate these hypotheses and find empirical evidence, we consider 4497 research groups and 4603 nonacademic organizations as “nodes” connected by 8830 collaborations throughout all Brazilian regions. Social network tools are used to illustrate the spatial and regional dimensions of academic engagement more accurately. The results show that academic engagement is not regionally homogeneous, demonstrating essential differences regarding local nonacademic partnerships. Innovation policies, which encourage only university–firm interactions, perpetuate regional inequality.     

旅游产业集聚会影响地区收入差距吗？——基于中国省际面板数据的门槛回归分析

本文利用中国30个省市区1999年～2009年面板数据,分别从线性和非线性两个角度实证检验了旅游产业集聚对地区收入差距的影响,估计结果显示：一方面,旅游产业集聚对地区收入差距具有显著线性负向影响效应;另一方面,通过构建非线性面板门槛模型,进一步检验了旅游产业集聚对地区收入差距影响效应的门槛特征,具体而言,旅游产业集聚对地区收入差距负向影响效应不仅存在基于旅游产业集聚的单一门槛特征,而且也存在基于经济发展水平、基础设施建设与产业结构升级的三重门槛特征。     

WHEN ARTS MET MARKETING

This article argues that arts marketing theory is embedded in the existing context of the nonprofit arts sector – that is, Romantic belief in the universal value of the arts and producer authority over the consumer. As “a set of techniques” and “a decision‐making process”, marketing was able to sit comfortably in the nonprofit arts context during the 1970s and 1980s. However, recent recognition of marketing as “a management philosophy” has brought out incompatibilities between the customer orientation of the marketing notion and the Romantic view of artistic production. This article demonstrates that arts marketing writings embrace Romanticism through the following: generic marketing concept; relationship marketing approach; extended definition of the customer; extended definition of the product; and reduction of marketing to function. Such findings suggest that persistence of the existing belief system and the embeddedness of the market be considered when marketisation in the arts sector is analysed.     

Reimagining the City of Fire and Iron: A landscape archaeology of the Angkor-Period Industrial Complex of Preah Khan of Kompong Svay,Cambodia (ca. 9th to 13th centuries A.D.)

In the archaeological literature regional centers often receive far less attention than capital regions and the medieval Khmer Empire (ca. 9th to 15th centuries a.d.) is a classic case in point. At its height, the Khmer Empire stretched across much of mainland Southeast Asia, and it remains the most extensive dominion in the history of the region. To date, however, relatively little archaeological work has been completed outside of the capital of Angkor, and we have a limited understanding of the broader dynamics of the Empire. In this paper we begin to address this lacuna at the remote monumental complex of Preah Khan of Kompong Svay, the largest of all the Angkor-period regional centers. We describe the use of remote sensing and ground survey methods to produce the first comprehensive archaeological map of the site. The map data are used to evaluate conventional interpretations of the site as a major industrial complex, urban center and military outpost. The findings have implications for our understanding of early urbanism, industrial production and imperial expansion in the region.     

The World under the Stars: Astrological Geography and the Bologna 1477 Edition of Ptolemy’s Cosmographia

ABSTRACT

This article is a re-examination of the first complete printed edition of Ptolemy’s Cosmographia (Bologna, de Lapis, 1477), hitherto considered flawed and defective. An investigation of the status and priorities of the team of court astrologers responsible for this edition, and an examination of the alterations they made to Ptolemy’s maps, suggests that their aim was a redaction intentionally different from existing versions of the Geography. It is suggested that the editors sought to adjust the arrangement of provinces from that recommended in Ptolemy’s Geography (book VIII) to the astrological arrangement detailed in his Tetrabiblos (book II) and that they modified the content of the key regional maps accordingly. In this light, the Bologna 1477 edition underlines the importance of assessing the reception of Ptolemy’s geographical work against a cultural background in which astrology prevailed as an integrated system of knowledge, practices and beliefs.     

Morphological changes in domestic cattle in Gaul,from the second century BC to the fifth century AD: diversity of herds in the Seine valley (France) and northern Gaul

In Western Europe the transition from the Iron Age to the Roman period is the scene of a rapid economic and agro-pastoral evolution characterized in particular by a modification in the shape of the cattle. Understanding this phenomenon, its implementation mechanisms and development dynamics represents a major challenge in archaeozoology. In our study a local and regional approach of the evolution in cattle morphology is carried out first on the scale of the middle Seine valley, then of the northern Gaul. Its purpose is to observe and compare the evolution rates in domestic cattle between Middle La Tène and the fifth century AD, and with the help of a tight chronological and geographical grid, to estimate to what extent the shape of the cattle has been influenced by the indigenous cultures, the Roman economic pattern or even the environment. This osteometrical study is based on the Log Size Index method and on a measurement corpus of 12,969 bones collected on sites located on 117 communes in France (for most of them), Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The results we obtained show local specificities in terms of breeding methods and animal morphologies, observed on a very fine scale and taking place long before the Conquest. Moreover the growth patterns of the various herds happen to be different and to evolve under the impetus of the developing Roman economic pattern. This work thus points out an essential aspect of the agro-pastoral turmoil that took place in Gaul at the turning point of our era. The Roman pattern is not the cause of the morphological changes of the cattle, nor of the diversity in cattle shapes in Gaul, but it provokes a reshaping of the agricultural systems and a redefining of the breeding strategies which boost and completely change the cattle growth patterns.     

Australia and the challenges of order-building in the Indian Ocean region

This article considers the regional order-building challenges that Australia presently confronts in the Indian Ocean region (IOR). The author argues that while regional stability within the IOR constitutes an increasingly important Australian security interest, policy makers will struggle to translate the order-building strategies they have previously pursued in East Asia into an Indian Ocean context. In East Asia, Australia has historically pursued a ‘dual track’ order-building strategy centred on its participation in a US-dominated ‘hub and spokes’ alliance system alongside multilateral regional engagement. The absence of an equivalent alliance system or an established tradition of multilateral security diplomacy conversely precludes an extension of this strategy into the IOR. Growing tensions between the USA and China and between China and India, meanwhile, further complicate IOR security dynamics, while underscoring the urgent need for a more coherent approach to regional order-building. With these challenges in mind, the author concludes by proposing a range of bilateral, minilateral and multilateral initiatives that Australia should pursue to stimulate the emergence of a more cooperative IOR security environment.     

Coastal heritage in touristic regional identity narratives: a comparison between the Norwegian region Sørlandet and the Dutch Wadden Sea area

ABSTRACT

Heritage plays a central role in narratives of coastal regions that promote them as places of leisure. This paper compares this role of heritage in Sørlandet (Norway) and the Dutch Wadden Sea area. Both regions have rich and related cultural histories, but at the same time exhibit striking differences in the role of cultural heritage and other aspects of heritage in regional identity narratives that are aimed at attracting tourists. We conclude that while the narratives of Sørlandet affirm a romantic, picturesque image of pre-industrial, societies, those in the Dutch Wadden Sea area frame this region as a pristine and timeless wilderness, in which human history has no place.