Rural China in ruins: The rush to urbanize China's countryside is opening a moral battleground (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

China has officially become a predominantly urban country, with over 50% of the population now registered as urban residents. Its urbanization process has been described as the most managed in human history. The Chinese government manages the building of new cities, regulates the housing of displaced people and controls squatters. As an historically poorer area, the west of China has been the target of ongoing efforts at infrastructural development. Describing urbanization as managed however masks the conflicts and contradictions involved in a process which is far from smooth. Although villagers are usually seen to be largely the powerless victims of these initiatives, it is clear that many try to take advantage of the situation, while others are unable to do so. Based on recent fieldwork and eight years of visits to one village undergoing urbanization, this article looks at the complex dynamics involved and at the moral battleground which they lay bare.     

Transport Geography: A bit of a caveat here and there1

But you must also be aware of another distinct bias nearly all of the examples are from the United States, Canada, Britain and Sweden. Is it fair? Are the new ideas to be found almost exclusively in these four countries —what the French call les Anglo-Saxons. Is this where the explosion in modern geography started, and continues to gather its strength? Now I am probably going to make myself extremely unpopular around the world but I am going to answer Yes to those three questions with a bit of a caveat here and there—which is the Latin word for a loophole you can wriggle out of if you have to     

GAME THEORIES? SPATIAL DIVISIONS OF LABOUR AND RATIONAL CHOICE MARXISM

Criticisms of Spatial Divisions of Labour have argued that the model ultimately dissolves into empirical particularities so that its theoretical tenets and context have been neglected. This paper attempts to draw out these premises by comparing Spatial Divisions of Labour with rational choice Marxism. Rational choice Marxism has aimed to provide microfoundations for structural categories by analysing the strategic interactions of individual actors. The approach has been criticised for relying on a rational, utilitarian and individualistic theory of action and, therefore, for assuming the constitution of agents to be given. The spatial divisions of labour approach also involves a move towards the microscale and emphasises the importance of strategic relations. In this case, the specified actors are collective entities. Once again, the aims and interests of the actors appear to be predetermined so that the significance of their interactions is limited. In conclusion it is argued that studies of uneven development should pay greater attention to the historical constitution of agents within their institutional contexts.