The Ethical Question in Postwar Central America and the Mutilated Good in Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s El Cojo Bueno

This article examines how the novel El cojo bueno (1996) by Guatemalan writer Rodrigo Rey Rosa posits an ethics that reconstellates the motifs and assumptions that have informed the revolutionary and transition-to-peace efforts of Central America. Through a careful reading of the text, I demonstrate how the novel pushes against the limits of the neoliberal ‘culture of peace’ and gives expression to an ethics that is attuned to the complex sociopolitical conditions of the postwar period. More specifically, I show how the novel develops a moral vision that registers but also resists the impunity, violence, and social disaffection that have devastated the region. The novel dramatizes what the moral life has come to mean in postwar Central America, namely, that it is a matter of grappling with the antinomies of freedom and unfreedom, of compassion and cold survivalism, and refusing to rest easy with either option. Ultimately, El cojo bueno marks a key moment when a new conception of ethics begins to take shape in postwar Central American literature.     

Costs and benefits of environmental change: tourism industry's responses in Arctic Finland

ABSTRACT

Recent research has focused on the impacts of environmental change to tourism. In particular, the perceived costs of climate change have been increasingly studied. However, the relationship between costs and benefits resulting from the changing environmental conditions for the industry has been less examined. This paper identifies the locally observed changes in the natural and socio-economic environments and aims to analyse the financial costs and benefits to tourism businesses in two tourism-dependent communities in northern Finland. The specific focus is on adaptation and adaptive management in a tourist destination scale. Adaption is understood as an investment creating not only implementation costs, but potentially also benefits for tourism operations. Research materials were collected among tourism and tourism-related businesses through 41 semi-structured thematic interviews. Results indicate that the evaluated benefits of environmental change seem to exceed those of costs. This conforms to the on-going discourse of climate change–tourism relations associated with the Arctic region where both awareness and vulnerability to change are considered relatively high but the level of responses, i.e. adaptation, low. These results can help to further identify the most vulnerable sectors in tourism and assist entrepreneurs preparing for environmental and climate change. However, the paper concludes that while global environmental change, with specific adaptive management strategies, may create local short-term direct benefits for the industry, a long-term sustainability of tourism in the Arctic calls for mitigation responses to climate change.     

Too precarious to be inclusive? Hotel maid employment in Spain

ABSTRACT

Hoteliers have steadily been able to reduce costs and increase employees’ workload as a result of mass unemployment sparked by the financial crisis, beginning in 2008, and associated legislative reforms by the Spanish government. Outsourcing has been hotels’ main instrument in this drive. Hotel chambermaids are among the groups most affected by this phenomenon. This article analyses the impacts of outsourcing on hotel maids’ working conditions, while questioning the possibilities for achieving inclusive tourism given the current outsourcing trend. It is based on 44 in-depth interviews with a range of informants, including 24 hotel maids who have experienced the process of outsourcing, in major Spanish tourism destinations. This study aims to understand the changes these workers have experienced and perceived in their working conditions. The research results highlight a marked deterioration in hotel maids’ working conditions in recent years, most notably involving (a) a reduction in their salary and the loss of professional categories, (b) work overload, (c) greater uncertainty in the duration of employment, timetables and work schedule, (d) de-professionalisation, (e) segmentation, division and an increase in competition between hotel staff, (f) the accentuation of health problems and (g) a decrease in the capacity of representation and the defence of workers’ collective interests.     

Sukli: uneven exchanges of care work of children left behind in Filipino transnational families

ABSTRACT

This article explores the complicated affective realities of children in the Philippines who engage in the labour of caring from the place of being ‘left behind’. I explore how children demonstrate care for their migrant mothers through various schooling tasks, undergirded by emotional dissonance, and often not through an idealized notion of love or tenderness. These acts demonstrate children allocate care work in transnational families in spite of complex emotional underpinnings I argue that the emotionality in those acts may be anger or frustration but children left behind are making sense of their labour through a culturally localized concept called sukli that connotes uneven exchange in care work to maintain the operations of a transnational family. The paper adds to our understanding of children’s affective experiences of migration within an Asian context.     

朝鲜古地图所见之清代中朝边界诸问题初探

朝鲜古地图中保存了清代中朝边界的诸多重要信息。通过对多种朝鲜古地图的解读,考察了其绘制方法与特点,重点分析了穆克登碑、图们江源、"间岛"及鸭绿江下游岛屿等边界地区在地图上的表现方式与变化轨迹。可以看出,朝鲜古地图在绘制方法受到了中国传统舆图的深刻影响,在内容上反映了绘制者对本国历史、地理状况的认知,也体现了其领土观念与"北拓传统"。     

博物馆经典藏品资源的文创产品开发——以曾侯乙编钟文创系列产品的开发为例

对博物馆经典藏品进行复制,或者萃取其文化元素开发衍生产品,一直为博物馆所重视。这类复制品从传播效应、经济效应、市场价值、文化价值和创意内涵诸方面都体现出"文创产品"的性质,应该纳入"文创产品"市场予以定位、规划。湖北省博物馆对馆藏经典藏品曾侯乙编钟开发了七大类百余个品种的文创系列产品,它们既体现了藏品原型的价值和精髓,也具有保护、研究和实用价值。目前我国博物馆文创事业还需要在经典藏品资源的研究、市场研发人才的培养、衍生品系列的完善、跨界同质资源的整合以及复制品制作单位资质的把控等方面加大推进的步伐。     

多类型微博舆情时空分布关系的差异性及其地理规则

以新浪微博转发行为作为舆情时空分布的研究对象,分别选取4·20雅安地震事件代表重大社会舆情、凤凰古城收费事件代表公众生活舆情、郭某某事件代表网络热点舆情3类案例,总结不同类型微博舆情的时空分布特征及差异性,进而透视客观存在的地理规则。研究发现：①3类舆情事件微博转发量的时间分布分别表现为：长尾型、山峰型、多个时间段上的波浪型。②与时间轴对应的空间分布呈等级结构,信息扩散节点城市等级（转发量）结构还会表现出一定的空间伸缩变形或与距离衰减形成叠加关系,3类事件分别表现为：延续传统规律的“始终金字塔”结构、在相对较长时间过程中具有范围伸缩的“始终金字塔”结构、距离衰减影响下的“始终金字塔”结构。城市规模效应主导和距离摩擦阻尼效应影响构成网络信息空间分布的基本地理规则。③微博舆情时空分布的差异性与事件类型有关,并与不同微博用户的作用有关。微博用户的不平衡区域分布和其跨区域流动对信息空间分布产生直接影响。     

山西古村镇类型及社会记忆符号系统研究

社会记忆是依附于社会群体产生的一种趋同性的社会文化符号。本研究利用结构主义符号学的分析方法,通过“要素体-因子层-属性脉”的三维层次构建社会记忆的符号系统,基于中国传统社会生产、生活方式的视角,从地脉、人脉、文脉的“三脉”属性对古村镇的类型及特征进行解读,发现：①“农”型古村镇社会记忆的宜农宜居、望族乡贤、天人合一的三脉属性符号特征明显;②“商”型古村镇具有对外通达的地脉记忆,精致讲究的文脉记忆和名商名士的人脉记忆;③“军”型古村镇的社会记忆在据险扼要、防御之上、将军传奇的三脉属性特征更加突出;④“工”型古村镇具有矿藏丰富、炉旺风顺、匠人传奇的特色社会记忆的符号特征。     

城市犯罪风险区位因子与风险地形分析——以武汉市主城区为例

从犯罪背景空间、场所空间、联接空间和聚集空间四个层次,构建城市犯罪风险区位因子体系。以武汉市主城区为研究区域,以立案判决的“两抢一盗”犯罪为数据源,综合运用空间句法、犯罪近重复分析和地理加权回归模型方法进行犯罪风险地形建模实证研究。结果表明,犯罪风险区位因子对犯罪空间分布的影响具有显著的空间异质性;依据多层次的犯罪风险区位因子体系及其对犯罪行为的影响机制,城市犯罪高风险区域可分为城市商业中心、火车站交通枢纽、城中村和城乡结合部等几大类型。基于犯罪地理学理论构建的犯罪风险区位因子体系模拟的犯罪风险地形对实际犯罪空间分布有良好的解释度,可为城市犯罪分布环境形成机制的研究提供相关借鉴。