Conveyor‐Belt Justice: Precarity,Access to Justice,and Uneven Geographies of Legal Aid in UK Asylum Appeals

Ongoing government funding cuts to British legal aid have resulted in the formation of legal deserts and uneven geographies of access to advice and legal representation. Asylum seekers, particularly those subjected to no‐choice dispersal throughout the UK for housing, are enduring the impact of these cuts directly. This paper explores the spatial and legal marginalisation of asylum seekers, drawing upon the findings of a three‐year study of the asylum appeals process. Already precarious, we analyse the manifold spatial marginalisation of dispersed asylum seekers from sources of legal advice and representation. We identify the frames of luck, uncertainty and dislocation as ways to further a spatially cognisant understanding of precarity, alongside identifying strategies employed to counter precarious positionalities.     

Long-Term Regional Landscape Change in the Northern Tequila Region of Jalisco,Mexico

The Tequila Valleys, in Jalisco, Mexico, are well-known in archaeology for an early complex society known as the Teuchitlán tradition (350 b.c.–a.d. 450/500), but later developments have received little attention. Here I report on the first systematic, full-coverage survey of the Tequila region north of the Tequila volcano. I explore the ways in which the societies that occupied this territory experienced sociopolitical change diachronically by investigating settlement scale, integration, complexity, and boundedness. Through the use of these core features, I analyze how each changed in varying ways, resulting in patterns that do not conform to static societal categories. Interestingly, there is no evidence that a large polity controlled the entire region at any point in the sequence. Results indicate a dynamic sociopolitical landscape that did not develop along any predetermined pathway.     

Village Layout and Social Experience: A Comparative Study from the Northeast Woodlands

This paper examines the spatial configuration of two early fourteenth-century Woodland villages—one composed of longhouses (Nodwell) and one a ring-shaped arrangement of oval huts (Fort Hill). The contrasting spatial layouts of these sites are explored from the perspective of social interaction stress in early villages. Visibility Graph Analysis, a technique for analyzing the relational order of visual fields, is used to measure the properties of spatial integration and control in these settlements over the course of their distinctive occupation histories. Results reveal “top-down” vs. “bottom-up” dispositions toward spatial order that influenced the routine use of settlement space, the nature of village growth, and arguably, long-term trajectories of community development in regional longhouse and ring-shaped traditions.     

《古代的交互作用:欧亚大陆的东部与西部》述评

最近 ,英国剑桥大学麦克唐纳研究所出版《古代的交互作用 :欧亚大陆的东部与西部》文集 ,它集中展示了欧亚大陆的考古及东西文化交流的最新成果。 1998年以来 ,剑桥大学举办了 3次大型国际会议 ,内容涉及欧亚大陆史前学、人类学、语言和文化。本书为 2 0 0 0年“史前后期欧亚草原的开发”会议文集。由著名考古学家伦福儒教授作序 ,收入不同国家学者的文章 2 1篇 ,全面介绍了欧亚草原新石器晚期至铁器时代初的考古发现和的研究成果 ;另有部分文章涉及该区域内的植物考古学与人种学的Y染色体DNA分析     

Complexity science and human geography

Complexity science has attracted considerable attention in a number of disciplines. However, this perspective on scientific understanding remains ill defined. In this paper, ideas and approaches from complexity science are reviewed. It appears that complexity science fundamentally is driven by ontological decisions on the part of the investigator. This is a result of the epistemological approach fundamental to complexity as it is currently studied, which is based on the construction of computer simulation models of reality. This methodology requires that researchers decide what exists and is important enough to represent in a simulation, and also what to leave out. Although this points to serious difficulties with complexity science, it is argued that the approach nevertheless has much to offer human geography. Drawing on complexity science, renewed engagements between physical and human geography, and between both and geographical information science seem possible, based on clearly shared concerns with the representation of geographical phenomena. In conclusion, it is suggested that seeing models as a source of geographical narratives may be a useful way to promote constructive engagement between different perspectives in the discipline.     

The Whereabouts of Power: Politics, Government and Space

Abstract In a world where it has become almost commonplace to talk about power as centralised or distributed, concentrated or diffuse, deterritorialized or dispersed even, it is all too easy to miss the diverse geographies of power that put us in place. The binary talk that forces us to choose between a centred or a decentred view of power, or to shuffle between them in an effort to blur clearly demarcated scales, leaves little room to move beyond defined distances and settled proximities in relation to the exercise of power. In this paper, a more spatially‐curious dialogue of power is opened up which foregrounds associational as well as instrumental forms of power which can make a difference to how we act politically.     

政治与法律的良性互动——英国法治道路成功的根本原因

政治和法律既相辅相成,又相反相克。二者关系结构的不同,直接影响着甚至决定着一个国家的法治文明进程。英国的法治道路是一条较为顺畅的成功之路,其成功的根本原因在于政治与法律之间建立和保持了一种良性互动关系。16世纪以前,适度强大的政治权威促成了英国法治传统的生成以及自治型、制度化普通法体系的建立和衡平法的产生。16～17世纪,借助于普通法制度积极有效的制衡作用,英国有幸绕过了绝对专制统治的历史弯路,先于其他各国跨入了现代法治社会。认真总结英国法治经验,对于当前我国的法治建设事业无疑是大有裨益的。