明代地域商帮兴起的社会背景

In the mid-Ming Dynasty, the means of transportation were greatly improved; commodity production became more developed; silver was gradually monetized; commercial taxes became lighter; and social attitudes towards merchants changed. All these developments created a favorable environment for the formation of regional merchant groups. Meanwhile, social factors at the regional level—characteristics of local commodity production, favorable natural environment and production structures, as well as Ming government’s practice of border defense, border trade, foreign policy, local customs, and the interpretation of commercial activities of local people—all contributed to the emergence of merchant groups. Translated by Wu Yanhong from Tsinghua Daxue Xuebao 清华大学学报 (Journal of Tsinghua University), 2006, (5): 81–94     

Myth,Primogeniture and Long Distance Trade‐Friends in Northwest New Britain,Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT The origins of ceremonies for firstborn children and long distance trade networks are embedded in Bariai mythology and cosmology. Based on my ethnographic research and the ethnographic reportage contained in the Australian colonial Patrol Officers' Reports, this paper explores the pre‐ and post‐contact trade networks of Bariai parents as they pursue a reputation for ‘renown’ by entering into complex trade‐friendships (sobo) and exchanges for the necessary wealth to undertake one (of seventeen) firstborn ceremony, the mata pau or ‘new eye.’ My intent in this paper is to (1) reiterate that a people and their culture can only be understood within regional systems of relationships; (2) indicate the manner in which long distance trade‐friendships were created and maintained over a long period of time; (3) show how these socio‐economic institutions are embedded in Bariai cosmology and thus made meaningful; (4) attest to the vitality and importance of these systems despite the impact of modernity, missionization and money.     

NAFTA's Impact on Business Environmental Decision Making

Signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) liberalized trade policy and reduced tariffs between Mexico, the United States, and Canada, but activists opposed to the treaty predicted an environmental disaster. This article seeks to analyze the dynamics of environmental spending and changes in companies' profiles following NAFTA. Our results suggest that these predictions have not come true. Through an econometric model, we explore how 2,438 industries in the 1994–2002 period made environmental decisions and how much they spent on cleanup. Estimates were made with a dynamic panel model using the generalized method of moments (GMM) method. Our results suggest that environmental investment decisions depended on business size, their technological capabilities, sales performance, and the need to comply with the standards required by customers in the international market. The last section explores policies to improve compliance with Mexico's environmental regulations and to develop sustainable, eco‐friendly manufacturing.     

Balancing Costs and Benefits of Collaboration in an Ecology of Games

The growth of collaborative approaches to governance has resulted in increasingly complex policy and management landscapes, where actors are presented with ever‐increasing numbers of decision‐making venues they can participate in and actors they can collaborate with. Given that actors face constraints on their capacity to manage actor and venue relationships in such polycentric governance systems, we assume the marginal benefit of yet another relationship should begin to diminish at some level of engagement. Furthermore, we hypothesize that such capacity limitations are not static, but decrease as actors learn, develop skills, and formulate strategies for how to navigate complex polycentric systems more effectively. Drawing on the Ecology of Games framework, this article investigates two Swedish collaborative governance initiatives where a multitude of actors came together to address a range of different, but interrelated, policy issues and management tasks. The empirical findings suggest that actors’ capacities to successfully navigate polycentric governance arrangements increase as they gain experience and develop their networking skills. Our findings imply there is a need to balance increased complexity in polycentric systems with increased capacity, otherwise the overall effect of an ever‐increasing number of venues and actors could be collaborative fatigue and decreased abilities to address diverse governance challenges.     

The escape from famine in the Northern Netherlands: a reconsideration using the 1690s harvest failures and a broader Northwest European perspective

A long historiography has concluded that the Northern Netherlands was famine free by the seventeenth century. However, this view has been established on limited grain price data and an unclear chronology, lacking a broader comparative perspective, and relying heavily on the explanation that Amsterdam was the centre point of the international grain trade. Using newly compiled burials data for the Northern and Southern Netherlands and Northern France, and integrating these with rye prices, we confirm empirically that price spikes had reduced mortality effects in the Northern Netherlands compared to the Southern Netherlands and Northern France, though the escape was greater in the cities than the countryside. The only time in the period 1551–1699 that a strong and generalized association between price spikes and mortality occurred across wide areas of the Northern Netherlands was in the famine of 1556/7. However, the international grain trade cannot explain everything. Markets in the Northern Netherlands were no more effective at smoothing out food crises than in the Southern Netherlands or Northern France. We offer alternative explanations: the reduced role of famine-related diseases spread by warfare, and the interaction (especially in the cities) between wages and poor relief.     

The rise and ruin of a medieval port town: A reconsideration of the development of Julfar

Julfar was a major port town of the Persian Gulf during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries AD. A possession of the Hormuzi empire, it was a lucrative source of taxes and pearls, and a port of trade for northern Oman, tapping into maritime trading networks connecting the Middle East with Africa, India, Southeast Asia and China. The site is found north of modern Ras Al-Khaimah, UAE. Julfar Al-Nudud was previously considered to be a late suburb of an urban core, Julfar Al-Mataf, and is located on a creek opposite the latter. However, excavations in 2010 indicated that Al-Nudud was part of the original urban core, which had grown up on either side of the creek. Moreover, re-examination of previous work in Al-Mataf, where a large mosque and fortification were excavated (by British and French teams), shows that the two areas followed different trajectories. Significant occupation in Al-Nudud and southern Al-Mataf (revealed by previous Japanese excavations) ended before the start of the sixteenth century, while use of the mosque and fort in central Al-Mataf continued into the seventeenth century, albeit discontinuously. A revised concordance of the phases derived from the work of various archaeological teams is therefore proposed.     

The Trade of Traditional Chinese Medicine Materials in Hankou from 1872 to 1919

The inter-port trade of traditional Chinese medicinal (TCM) materials dominated business structure in Hankou in 1872 to 1919, while the transfer trade of TCM materials also played an important role. Before 1904, musk was the predominant trading medicinal material among all TCM materials traded in Hankou, followed by Rhus chinensis mill. In the modern times, Hankou ranked second only to Shanghai in China in terms of the trading volume of TCM materials, since Hankou enjoyed a pronounced growth momentum then. If we look at each TCM materials’ market size, trading routes, and trading volume among various inflow and outflow ports, we can see based on the Hankou TCM materials trading structure that although there were changes from 1872 to 1919, the TCM business network and market performances formed in Hankou since the Qing dynasty did not sustain any disastrous impact from national economic and social changes, and their original vitality had retained. This was primarily due to the huge market demand in modern Hankou, the TCM commodity characteristics and the developed domestic market trade network in modern China.     

Trade's Value: Relational Transactions in the Papua New Guinea Betel Nut Trade

The betel nut trade in Papua New Guinea is big business. Betel nut, a mild indigenous stimulant, is considered the ‘green gold of the grassroots’. It is the country's most significant domestic cash crop and, in terms of rural incomes, a rival to the dominant export cash crops. Its sale is an important livelihood strategy in both rural and urban areas, the most visible manifestation of a flourishing informal economy. In betel nut marketplaces money ‘flows’ and ‘overflows’, traders wield large wads of cash, and vast sums change hands. Whether seeking their fortunes or only tinned fish, people trade betel nut first and foremost to make money, but such interests in trade do not automatically displace other forms of value. This paper is concerned with marketplaces and trade in contemporary Papua New Guinea and what is conveyed in those transactions between buyer and seller. Against the often impersonal and utilitarian rendering of trade, this paper seeks to foreground the sociability of trade and the multiple forms of value that may be simultaneously attached to monetised market transactions. This is not to conceal the discrete, unenduring, and competitive dynamics of trade, which prominently feature in many betel nut transactions, but instead to examine an important dynamic often overlooked. Market transactions, far from being asocial, or even socially destructive, have the capacity to generate and sustain diverse social relations including those of kinship and friendship.     

First discovery of ancient soft‐stone (chlorite) vessel production in Arabia: Aqir al‐Shamoos (Oman)

Soft‐stone vessels are a prominent feature of ancient culture throughout south‐east Arabia and the Gulf. Chlorite and steatite occur naturally in the al‐Hajar Mountains of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman; but until now, apart from the discovery of a few unfinished pieces, ancient production of soft‐stone vessels had yet to be documented in Arabia. This paper reports the discovery and preliminary analysis of soft‐stone vessel production at the site of Aqir al‐Shamoos. At this small and secluded mountain village, a range of soft‐stone vessels that are well known in the south‐east Arabian Iron Age were produced on a scale far beyond what was needed for local consumption.     

The UNESCO Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions as a coordination framework to promote regulatory coherence in the creative economy

The present article aims to inquire about business convergence in creative industries from the perspective of cultural diversity. It is based on the premise that the recognition of the creative and innovative component of the so-called ‘creative industries’ or the ‘creative economy’ confirms the need for non-economic factors and particularly cultural concerns to be taken into account in regulatory efforts addressing those industries. It examines the way new technologies and business convergence may affect the ‘trade and culture debate’ vis-à-vis the World Trade Organization (WTO), and how the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (CDCE) may respond in a relevant manner to challenges brought therefrom. Despite its weakly binding language, the CDCE contains principles, objectives and rules that set a comprehensive framework for policy ‘related to the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions’ at the national, regional and international levels. A fundamental piece in such an approach is the explicit integration of cultural concerns into the concept of sustainable development. This article argues that the material and economic perspective adopted in the CDCE, based on the production and consumption of cultural goods and services, remains relevant and pertinent in the creative economy, despite business convergence. By prioritizing policy and regulatory coordination, it maintains that the main elements enshrined in the CDCE should be employed to contribute to greater coherence in view of the objective of promoting cultural diversity, including vis-à-vis the WTO and other international organizations, and puts forward potential paths for such coordination.