‘Symbols of Justice’: the Welsh Language Society's campaign for bilingual road signs in Wales, 1967–1980

In this paper we provide a critical evaluation of the campaign for bilingual road traffic signs in late 1960s and 1970s Wales, examining how Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society) came to see English language road signs as mundane, ubiquitous and oppressive symbols of anglicisation and of British/English government authority in Wales. We suggest a rethinking of Michael Billig's concept of ‘banal nationalism’, arguing that while English language road signs may appear as banal symbols and technologies of government authority and control, their banality is only ever experienced from particular perspectives by partial constituencies. For Welsh language campaigners, English language road signs were experienced and criticised as eruptive and disruptive symbols of oppression, rule and colonisation, and in the paper we trace the genesis of the bilingual road signs campaign, British government reactions to proposals for bilingual signs, and the shift in policy which followed the very public support of hundreds of respectable Welsh professionals for the campaign from December 1970. We conclude the paper by examining the work of the Welsh Office's Committee of Inquiry into Bilingual Traffic Signs (the Bowen Committee), and the subsequent disagreements between language campaigners, government scientists and politicians on the issue of language order. Throughout the paper we suggest that it was the ubiquity, functionality and materiality of road signs which made this one of the most effective campaigns carried out by the Welsh Language Society.     

公共考古学的多样性与非调和性

公共考古学英文作,或被译作公众考古学。在英文中,public所指并非汉语中的公众及其群体,而更与国家公共机构密切相关。从这层意思上来说,Public Archaeology译作公共考古学更为贴切。这一概念出现于上个世纪70年代初期的美英等发达国家,最初是与考古学科发展所带来的考古遗存和文化资源管理工作中所出现的紧急情况密切相关的。这种紧急状况表现在两个方面,第一是由学科专业化增强所带来的资料的保护和管理问题,第二是学术界对于大量的具有潜在价值的考古资源面临日益严重的破坏而自身却又缺乏足够的保护能力。就是说,文化遗产的管理和保护是公共考古学关注的焦点,甚至可以说,公共考古学就是文化遗产保护。业内人士对以往那种由专业学者和官员来"替"公众管理文化资源的模式进行反思,首先从理论上厘清了长期以来在文化遗产保护工作中对于公众角色的定位问题。这里的"公众"一词指的是一个多元的、但又不以考古研究为职业的人群。作为国家概念之外的一个具有批评性的实体,他们对文化遗产的参与权与解释权应得到充分尊重;考古学的公共方面多数是与文化、价值甚至经济利益冲突相关的,因此被有的学者称为"不谐调的遗产";考古学归根到底是阐释文化认同及其演变,因此不可避免地与政治脱不开干系。诸如此类,文化遗产管理与保护中所遇到的这类问题,都成了公众考古学研究的对象。经过30多年的发展,公众考古学现已发展成为当今考古学一个非常重要的分支学科。本文作为NickMerriman所主编的《公共考古学》一书的序言,对于公共考古学在西方的产生和发展做了系统论述,有利于我们对国外公共考古学的历史与现状的认识。     

'Respect the life of the countryside': the Country Code, government and the conduct of visitors to the countryside in post-war England and Wales

Geographers examining the spaces of government and governance, and in particular those drawing upon the writings of Michel Foucault on government and governmentality, have tended to overlook the importance of different media, technical devices and practices of self-government to specific rationalities and programmes of government. In this paper I argue that the materialities and immaterialities of many mundane media technologies, the way they articulate and translate particular programmes of government, and the way they instil practices of self-government in citizens, are important but frequently overlooked dimensions of the geographies of government. I focus on the codes of countryside conduct – The Country Code/Countryside Code – that have been published in England and Wales since 1951. I examine how the National Parks Commission, and subsequently the Countryside Commission and Countryside Agency, identified the potential strengths and limitations of using the Country Code booklet to govern the conduct of visitors to the countryside. The paper shows how the material form of the booklet and methods of distributing and promoting it were seen to matter, and examines how civil servants attempted to extend the 'reach' of the Code and articulate its message through a diverse range of media which entailed different kinds of performative encounters in different spaces.     

The Impact of Property Taxes and Property Tax Classification on Business Activity in the Chicago Metropolitan Area

The City of Chicago and the inner suburbs grew much more slowly than the outer suburbs in recent decades. In the central county of the metropolitan area, commercial and industrial property is "classified," in that it is assessed at a higher ratio of market value than residential property. Classification is not used in the surrounding suburban counties. The empirical analysis finds evidence consistent with the notion that property tax classification contributes to differential rates of economic growth. High property tax rates lead to significantly slower growth rates for employment, commercial property, and industrial property.     

Youth organizations and the reproduction of nationalism in Britain: the role of Urdd Gobaith Cymru

Youth organizations have long played significant roles in promoting particular forms of nationalism among young people in the UK. To date, however, academic studies of UK youth organizations have been Anglocentric, focusing on youth organizations associated with a hegemonic British state and imperial project. This paper seeks to show how youth organizations have also been used to promote alternative forms of nationalism in the UK, which have sought to challenge a British state and imperial project. Focusing explicitly on Wales, it examines how Urdd Gobaith Cymru – the Welsh League of Youth – has played a significant role over the past 90 years in promoting a Welsh and Welsh-speaking citizenship amongst Welsh youth. Drawing on documentary and archival research, the paper discusses how the organization has fostered particular practices and identities among its members and the way in which these have been challenged in recent years; most notably as a result of a decline in the numbers of Welsh speakers in Wales and changing configurations of the meanings of Welshness. The paper concludes by arguing for the need to take seriously the role played by youth organizations in helping to shape political geographies in a devolved Britain.     

Hot, banal and everyday nationalism: Bilingual road signs in Wales

The paper focuses on Billig's (Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage) notion of banal nationalism. While Billig's work is to be commended for demonstrating the way in which nationalism is an endemic political ideology in all states – and not merely an extreme or hot political ideology that is based upon “blood and belonging” (Ignatieff, M. (1993). Blood and belonging: Journeys into the new nationalism. London: BBC Books) – we suggest that his work tends, perhaps unwittingly, to reinforce an unwarranted separation of the banal and hot processes that reproduce nationalism. Some empirical work has implicitly and explicitly begun to question the distinction between banal and hotter forms of nationalism. We argue that one way in which such an agenda can be furthered is through a promotion of the idea of everyday nationalism, which combines banal and hot elements in more complex and contingent ways. We elaborate on the benefits of adopting such an approach through an empirical discussion of the campaign in favour of bilingual road signs in Wales between 1967 and 1975. We focus, first, on how monolingual English road signs were constructed by Welsh nationalists as part of an everyday landscape of oppression and, second, on the everyday politics of road signs within the spaces of government. We conclude the paper by reaffirming the need to move beyond notions of banal and hot nationalism and to focus on the everyday contexts within which nationalism is reproduced.     

COMPENSATION FOR COMMUTES IN THE LAND AND LABOR MARKETS: SOME EVIDENCE FROM THE TOKYO METROPOLITAN AREA*

ABSTRACT. Recent research suggests that in nonmonocentric cities compensation for commutes takes the form of both lower housing prices and higher wages. This paper develops a random utility model that predicts the probability of an actor choosing to commute between each residence and job in a metropolitan area conditional on the observed location of housing units and job sites. The model allows commuting time, origin-specific amenities, land prices, destination-specific amenities and wages to influence actors' choices. We estimate the model using maximum likelihood and generalized least squares techniques and data on commuting between each of 38 origin and 15 destination jurisdictions in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The empirical results show that, all else equal, a one percent increase in commuting time reduces the probability that a route (origin-destination combination) will be chosen by almost five percent. Origin-specific amenities are not completely capitalized into land prices and destination-specific amenities are not completely capitalized into wages. Desirable residential amenities include school quality and a low ratio of day to night population. Desirable workplace amenities include a large share of white collar jobs and a high density of employment.     

Scaling down or scaling up? Local actor decisions and the feasibility of decentralized environmental governance: a case of Páramo wetlands in Southern Ecuador

In Latin America and the Global South, policy-makers are adopting community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) principles for local governments. The idealized emphasis on ‘local’ collaborative approaches is known to neglect human geographic contexts and issues of capacity, power, and human drivers of change at larger scales. However, critiques lack empirical evidence of policy implementation decisions. How do local government and community actors choose to use decentralized environmental governance policies in relation to a threatened cultural and natural landscape across their jurisdictions? This question is explored in an ethnographic case of a high Andean wetland region in southern Ecuador by focusing on the context and micro-politics of two seemingly contradictory local government decisions: proposals to nationalize a local community protected area and to work with other local governments to construct a road across the wetlands that could threaten protected area status. When different sectors are devolved to different local actors without strong sub-state institutions for conflict management, decentralization may create incentives for conflict rather than conservation. Governance design depends on understanding how and why diverse local actors engage in boundary-spanning regional strategies, calling for additional contributions from political geographers.