Chiefdoms and states in the Yuncheng Basin and the Chifeng region: A comparative analysis of settlement systems in North China

Regional settlement datasets for the Yuncheng Basin and the Chifeng region are re-analyzed for comparison so as to reconstruct differing patterns of community development at local and supra-local scales. A methodological implication of this reanalysis is that comparing settlement areas and surface artifact densities between projects requires special attention to how the data were recorded so as to put them on the same measurement scale. The analytical approaches originally taken to reconstructing community organization in the two regions, while differing in several respects, are shown to produce highly compatible results, permitting a comparison of the two trajectories with a sound empirical foundation. Neolithic settlement began much earlier in Chifeng, but rates of demographic and community growth were extremely slow. In Yuncheng, early village growth was much more dramatic. Multiple chiefly districts of modest size emerged in both regions, but those of Yuncheng, despite their shorter developmental trajectory, had substantially larger populations. Their central settlements, in particular, grew to be much larger than those in Chifeng and the special activities carried out at these centers differed between the two regions. A poorly understood, but not contemporaneous, demographic disruption punctuated both sequences. It was followed by the emergence of political integration on a much larger scale in the Yuncheng Basin, focused on a single settlement an order of magnitude larger than its predecessors. In Chifeng, regional population soared far beyond previous levels, but political integration remained persistently small in scale.     

The archaeological study of neighborhoods and districts in ancient cities

The spatial division of cities into residential zones is a universal feature of urban life from the earliest cities to the present. I propose a two-level classification of such zones that archaeologists can use to analyze preindustrial cities. Neighborhoods are small areas of intensive face-to-face social interaction, whereas districts are larger areas that serve as administrative units within cities. I review comparative historical data on neighborhoods and districts and outline archaeological methods for their identification and analysis. Illustrative cases are drawn from Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica, and I conclude with a review of the major top-down and bottom-up social forces that generate and shape neighborhoods and districts in preindustrial cities.     

Professionalising Teaching: enhancing the status of teaching,improving the experience of learning and supporting innovation in higher education

Extant literature on professions suggests that there is a readily recognisable set of characteristics of a profession, but this is a contested issue, particularly in the area of recognising the professionalism of those who teach and support learning in higher education. In the UK, the Institute for Learning and Teaching was set up as a result of the Dearing report to recognise the experience and expertise of those working in these areas. The ILT offers a model for professionalising teaching, to which continuous professional development (CPD) is key. Geographers and those who teach related subjects are already in the vanguard of this activity.     

西方国家社区玩耍与游憩观察系统方法的应用研究及启示

随着户外游憩研究的不断深入,获取有效游憩行为和环境信息的重要性突显,美国学者麦肯奇（McKenzie）研创出社区玩耍与游憩观察系统方法（System for Observing Play and Recreation in Communities,SOPARC）能够瞬时批量高效获取户外游憩活动信息,因而在西方游憩行为研究中逐步获得广泛运用。本文使用文献检索和文献分析法,通过查阅和分析近年西方学者对社区玩耍与游憩观察系统方法的主要应用成果,归纳出西方学者对SOPARC应用研究的热点。通过西方学者应用SOPARC方法研究的特点评述,提出该方法对我国研究的若干启示：SOPARC方法科学有效,能够为我国游憩研究提供技术支撑,但引入应用需要根据中国国情进行改进;SOPARC方法应用广泛,可主要用于游憩行为调查、游憩设施和环境规划及游憩地管理中。     

Regional Settlement Pattern Studies

This is a critical review of regional settlement pattern archaeology published in the last decade. The regional approach proves to be highly productive of new ideas and lasting results. Cultural resource/heritage databases are increasingly important. Notable advances have been made in regional studies of Paleolithic and Holocene foragers, the reciprocal relations between Neolithic communities and their regional societies, and in understanding states and empires. There are new research potentials in comparisons, macroregional analysis, long-term change, and alternative pathways. Research designs should specify systematic coverage at the regional scale and carry out spatial analysis in which social groups are the primary focus.     

De-centring the European union: policy diffusion among European regional organizations – a comment

Abstract

This article comments on the special issue from a political science perspective. It starts with an attempt at interpreting the contributions from a diffusion perspective. The articles show a sophisticated understanding of diffusion as “interdependent decision-making”, that is multi- rather than uni-directional, focuses on diffusion as a process (not an outcome), and takes a decidedly agency-centered view. The article then highlights some of the empirical findings in this special issue. This concerns, among others, the crucial role of the Council of Europe (CoE) as a laboratory for generating new policy ideas and an agenda-setter, as well as the equally important function of the various parliamentary assemblies as mechanisms by which policy ideas diffuse. At the same time, there is also a power story in this special issue. The EC ultimately dominates the processes in most policy areas. The article concludes with remarks on the fruitfulness of an interdisciplinary dialogue between historians and social scientists as documented by this special issue.     

Heritage builds communities: The application of heritage resources to the problems of social exclusion

Abstract

The concept of ‘social exclusion’ has become central to the UK government's political philosophy. The need to combat the causes and deal with the symptoms of ‘social exclusion’ has become vital to many policy initiatives. The use of heritage resources to help deal with social problems has been practised since the early years of the 19th century and can provide a community with a focus, identity and pride as well as making a contribution to regional economies. This paper traces the use of heritage resources in community regeneration programmes and demonstrates their lack of objectives and unplanned nature. A holistic multi‐agency approach is advocated to tackle social exclusion, with heritage playing a central role. Finally, the paper calls for research which will clarify the contribution that heritage resources can make and identify a framework within which heritage can realise its potential to build communities.     

Multiple connections in European co-operation: international organizations,policy ideas,practices and transfers 1967–92

Abstract

International organizations are ubiquitous in contemporary Europe and the wider world. This special issue takes a historical approach to exploring their relations with each other in Western Europe between 1967 and 1992. The authors seek to ‘provincialize’ and ‘de-centre’ the European Union’s role, exploring the interactions of its predecessors with other organizations like NATO, the OECD and the Council of Europe. This article develops the new historical-research agenda of co-operation and competition among IOs and their role in European co-operation. The first section discusses the limited existing work on such questions among historians and in adjacent disciplines. The second section introduces the five articles and their main arguments. The third section goes on to elaborate common findings, especially regarding what the authors call the vectors for the development of policy ideas and practices and their transfer across different institutional platforms.     

The Disappearing State and the Quasi‐Event of Immigration Control

Immigration enforcement by sheriffs and police can be characterized as a proliferation of quasi‐events which never quite rise to the status of an event. This poses distinct challenges for feminist‐inspired scholarship on the state which seeks to document, ethnographically, how the state goes about its business on the ground. In this article we draw on our fieldwork experience in North Carolina and Georgia on sheriffs’ and police departments’ use of traffic enforcement and policing roadblocks to scrutinize drivers for their legal status, and ask how our ethnographic approach to the problem of state power inevitably stumbles in relation to the ordinariness of these practices. We conclude that feminist scholarship committed to an ethnography of the state could do much more to think through the potentially aporetic quality of that which is our common object of research—the state in practice.     

Islamic Caliphate or nation state? Investigating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's imagined community

Through the lens of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Community concept, this paper examines how the selected community‐building theories are useful in understanding the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and its imagined community. Using four factors—language, education, power and history—derived from Anderson's Imagined Community concept, this paper applies theories of Modernism, Primordialism and Insurgency Governance to explain ISIL's imagined community. Specifically, our argument is threefold: (a) Anderson's Imagined Community concept and alternate theories of community building, although insightful, does an imperfect job at describing ISIL's Caliphate; (b) ISIL's group structure appears to transcend traditional and accepted notions of nations, nationalism and nation states; and (c) based on this reasoning, ISIL's Caliphate can be considered an outlier in community‐building literature analysed.