PLACE AND SPACE IN CONTEMPORARY EUROPE: SOME LESSONS AND REFLECTIONS*

The “localities debate,” stimulated by the Economic and Social Research Council's “Changing Urban and Regional Systems” initiative, was conducted in the pages of Antipode and Society and Space at a length that showed scant regard for emerging environmental sensitivities. Much of it involved politically contentious claims and increasingly exhausted theory; it resolved very little and in that sense was little more than a storm in a pretty familiar pudding basin. A later flirtation with postmodernism simply pushed aside questions of explanation while raising the political stakes as celebration of the differences between places became the order of the day. Nonetheless, important issues emerge from or relate to that debate, and we draw on our experiences to comment on three of them: (i) agents, structures, the production of space and the material bases of place: some issues of theory; (ii) the production of places, people's attachment to place, and place-based political strategies: some issues of practice; (iii) localities, postmodernism and the difference that place makes: is the regressive turn to postmodernism as approach avoidable?     

BEYOND THE QUANTITATIVE CUL-DE-SAC: A QUALITATIVE PERSPECTIVE ON YOUTH EMPLOYMENT PROGRAMS*

There is a pressing need in the United States to develop effective programs that address youth unemployment and the transition from school to work. Based on work at 47 sites in 31 states, this paper reports on a policy evaluation strategy that heavily relied on qualitative research. On-site observers at each of these sites focused on key issues of program implementation, linkages to other agencies and organizations serving youth, and on the effectiveness of different program strategies for different target populations. The utility of qualitative analysis for in-depth assessments of these programs is stressed.     

The Model Arctic Council: Simulated Negotiations as Pedagogy and Embodied Diplomacy

This article draws on the perspectives of students and organizers involved in recent iterations of the Model Arctic Council (MAC), an experiential learning simulation designed to expand students’ knowledge and understanding of the Arctic and its governance. While much of the discourse related to simulations such as the MAC emphasizes its pedagogical and networking benefits, this article leverages participant-based ethnography to argue that the MAC also affects multi-track diplomatic outcomes in addition to serving as a site for diplomatic engagement. Applying an interpretive approach driven by the onset of practice-tracing in international relations, we demonstrate that the MAC both produces and constitutes diplomacy. Such a reimagination elevates the diplomacy of non-state actors and exposes false binaries between state diplomacy and non-state diplomacy.     

Has the euro sustainably increased home price co‐movement?

A low level of co‐movement between different euro country housing markets creates difficulties for the ECB in setting monetary policy. Such co‐movement across eurozone countries has been the subject of a number of studies, using different methodologies and finding mixed results. In this study, we use endogenous break methods to explicitly test for whether the introduction of the euro has changed home value co‐movement. We also employ informal correlation analysis. Endogenous break results indicate no sustainable increase in co‐movement attributable to the euro, whereas correlation analysis is suggestive of a decrease in synchronization since the currency's introduction.