The autonomous world reversed: comparing liberal policy and autonomy in the performing arts

Comparative studies of cultural policy commonly emphasize the way in which states treat the autonomy of the arts. Such studies often claim that liberal states promote autonomy, while social democratic states promote more external, instrumental values, such as solidarity, universalism and equality. This article challenges this conception by claiming that in actual cultural policy-making it is in fact the other way around. Based on a comparative study of theater policy in England, Norway and the Netherlands, I find that the focus on artistic autonomy is surprisingly absent in the liberal state of England, compared to what it is in the social democratic state of Norway. Conversely, English theaters are more obliged to work for, and with, the citizens and the community than theaters in Norway are. In the Netherlands, where recent development in general policy has headed in a liberal direction, artistic autonomy actually appears to be increasingly challenged.     

复杂情境中的日常活动可视化与应用研究

时间地理学以时空路径为代表的符号系统由于具备抽象、简明、直观等特点,在地理学及其他社会科学领域得到了广泛传播与应用。随着GIS与地理可视化技术的不断进步、高精度时空行为数据的批量生产等,真实地理环境中个体时空运动轨迹的三维可视化技术也在不断进步。信息化社会的到来与城市社会转型等使得现代社会中的人类日常活动变得十分复杂,时间地理学由于直观刻画时空间中人类活动的时空连续性与复杂情境性而备受关注。本文首先界定了人类日常活动复杂情境的分析维度,包括日常情境、企划情境、地理情境、社会情境、技术情境等,并在此基础上将绝对时空间坐标系下的时空路径拓展到相对时空观下多维活动序列的可视化表达。其次,简单说明Daily life与VISUAL-Time PAc TS/energy use等可视化工具,介绍时空路径在复杂情境性下的可视化、模式挖掘及个案分析。最后,案例分析个体与群体尺度上活动情境可视化方法在家庭成员间分工与互动、日常活动模式差异与家庭能源消耗差异等方面的应用。     

THE LOGIC OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF RURAL POLITICS: POLITICAL DISCOURSES ON RURALITY IN NORWAY

Two competing discourses emerge from a careful reading of parliamentary debates in Norway on rural development. One regards rural values as intrinsic, while the other regards the rural as an actor in a play about economic growth. The 'growth' discourse has economic growth as its nodal point and fo-cuses on the freedom of an individual to establish a business wherever he or she wishes, and to migrate to any preferred destination. The 'intrinsic value' discourse places the value of rural settlements and cultures as its nodal point and focuses on allegedly forced migration, a nature-based economy, and local freedom of action. During the neoliberal period, starting about 1980 the strength of the intrinsic value discourse has been increasingly displaced by the growth discourse. The latter seems to match general social changes such as neoliberalism and globalization more than the former. However, analysing the fight between these two discourses is not exhaustive. A broader analytic perspective is needed if we want to understand the logic of how the meaning of rurality comes about. The meaning of rurality in Norwegian politics is made through the way the competing discourses link up to 'nondiscursive' topics that originate and evolve outside the discourses on Norwegian rural politics. We claim that topics which include economic safety and national identity/nation-state are more or less fundamental to understanding the logic of the production of the concrete discourses of rurality in Norwegian politics. We provide evidence that rural change is contingent not only on the meaning-making process in parliamentary debates, but on the way truth claims made by politicians are linked to general national and global issues.     

Creativity,Culture and Urban Strategies: A Fallacy in Cultural Urban Strategies

Two fields of knowledge have been of special importance for the emergence of culture-led urban planning in Norwegian cities: one concerns the understanding of the potential of culture as an economic driving force in urban regeneration, while the other focuses on the emergence of the concept of the “creative class” and has drawn attention to the importance of competence and creativity in urban development. Despite clear connections between the two fields, it may appear that false connections have been made in regeneration strategies in a number of cities. Based on analyses of the culture-led urban strategy of Kristiansand, a small Norwegian city, these knowledge fields are discussed and it is claimed that there seems to be a fallacy in how they are treated in the culture-led urban strategy. The fallacy concerns the way that creativity is equated with culture and further how theories about the emergence of the creative class are equated with a culture industry approach to urban planning. Questions are raised about the potential of culture industry strategies and it is argued that the potential for growth in small cities may not be as great as the public debate and research conducted in large metropolises might suggest.     

Abortion law reforms in Colombia and Nicaragua: issue networks and opportunity contexts

This article analyses two instances of abortion law reform in Latin America. In 2006, after a decades-long impasse, the highly controversial issue of abortion came to dominate the political agenda when Colombia liberalized its abortion law and Nicaragua adopted a total ban on abortion. The article analyses the central actors in the reform processes, their strategies and the opportunity contexts. Drawing on Htun's (2003) framework, it examines why these processes concluded with opposing legislative outcomes. The authors argue for the need to understand the state as a non-unitary site of politics and policy, and for judicial processes to be seen as a key variable in facilitating gender policy reforms in Latin America. In addition, they argue that ‘windows of opportunity’ such as the timing of elections can be critically important in legislative change processes.     

Oral/Past Culture and Modern Technical Means in the Literature of the Twentieth Century in Greenland

Abstract

The present article takes as its starting point a short story from 2001 and relates it to the development of the Greenlandic literature in the twentieth century. The Greenlandic literature evolved around 1900 and mirrors the socio-political trends and the stages of nation building through the twentieth century. The overall tendencies of the century start with a striving towards more knowledge of and competence in European culture (including technical know-how) before 1950. Then a feeling of overwhelming impact from Danish culture followed during the Danification policy of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and this resulted in a protest movement in the 1960s and 1970s and Home Rule from 1979. However, if we read the literature in details and supplement it with the contemporary newspapers a much more diverse picture of an appropriation process (i.e. a conscious adaptation of selective parts of the impact from outside) emerges. The present article focuses on how these sources give us glimpses of an ongoing debate already in the first half of the twentieth century i.e. in colonial times: the Greenlandic population was not just passively under colonial domination. The history of the twentieth century is the history about a fairly well functioning appropriation of technical means and cultural impact from outside up till 1950, and then – after three decades of heavy modernization and Danification –-a process from 1979 on towards more and more agency in a “ glocalized” Greenland.     

Determination of the noun in Biblical Hebrew

The two comprehensive reference grammars for Biblical Hebrew, Gesenius/Kautzsch and Joüon/Muraoka, in addition to the more or less generally accepted categories of use of the definite article, make use of a category which they describe as not having to do with definiteness in the sense that we know it. In this category they group the instances of use of the article that do not seem to fit into the generally accepted categories, instances where the Hebrew definite article, in German and English respectively, is said to be expressed by an indefinite article. In the present article, I analyse the 67 examples given to substantiate the existence of the proposed category. I argue that this category probably does not exist and I contend that most of the examples, when carefully analysed, are examples of regular article usage. When the nouns in question are perceived as nondetermined and translated as such, it is because we are not sufficiently familiar with ancient Hebrew language and culture and hence do not possess the contextual information the articles refer to.