Failing to live up to the promise: the politics of equal pay in ‘new’ workplace and industrial relations institutions

Workplace and industrial relations regulations are key sites for policy intervention to address Australia's gender pay gap, which, at 15.3 per cent, is almost as large as it was in 1997. In both the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) and the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (Cth) the goal of equal pay has a more central place than it did in predecessor legislation. In particular, the Fair Work Act has the potential to deliver more gender-equitable wage structures through addressing systemic gender-based undervaluation at the industry level. Adopting a feminist institutional approach this article examines equal pay policy in the operations of workplace and industrial relations regulation to ask why, despite some recent successes, this potential appears unlikely to be realised.     

When regional innovation policies meet policy rationales and evidence: a plea for policy analysis

In spite of recent advancements regarding regional innovation policy rationales and evidence, there are few analyses about the actual features of existing regional innovation policies. Nevertheless, a policy analysis perspective is important in order to recognize their distinctive patterns across regions, and to understand how rationales and evidence can be translated into policy-making. To this purpose, this paper develops a framework to study the extent to which regional innovation policies have changed during the past few years. Since the mid-2000s, there has been an important development of innovation policy rationales, advocating for more specialization; likewise, greater data availability at the regional level has allowed more sophisticated assessment of innovation performance. Finally, the crisis since 2008 has had ravaging effects in some regions, with job losses and severe economic sluggishness. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect transforming dynamics in regional innovation policies. Against this backdrop, the paper compares the institutional frameworks and budgetary priorities of four Spanish regions during the period 2001–2014: Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia and Andalusia. In so doing, it aims at studying the extent to which regional governments have readily addressed past and new challenges related to their regional innovation system, and if so, how.     

Geographies of temporary markets: an anatomy of the Canton Fair

While recent research on temporary clusters and temporary markets has emphasized the knowledge generation processes associated with trade fairs, little is known about the knowledge exchanges that are embedded in market relations at these events. This paper uses the case of the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, the largest trade fair in China, to illustrate that such events do not operate as a single market, but that they generate multiple dynamic market configurations, which entail different flows of knowledge, goods and people. In a typical case study, four types of market configurations are identified that simultaneously develop at this event. The findings contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of market relations, knowledge and transactions in temporary spatial settings.     

Public policies and cluster life cycles: insights from the Basque Country experience

ABSTRACT

This paper contributes to the study of the role of public policies in the origins and evolution of clusters. Building on the existing literature, we set up a taxonomy of nine public policies that may have an impact on the emergence and evolution of clusters. Based on in-depth case studies of six clusters of the Basque Country, particularly representative of the industrial history of the region, we analyse the relevance of the different types of policies both in the emergence and evolution of clusters over time. In agreement with cluster literature, the paper concludes that public policies seem to have played only an indirect role across clusters and over their life cycles. Moreover, it points to the necessity of taking history and context into account, as most of the important policy measures highlighted by cluster literature today do not fit well with the previous policy and economic context. Finally, it also concludes that for cluster policies to be effective, the stages of the life cycle should be taken into consideration.     

记新发现的《故大唐董府君墓志铭》

20 0 0年下半年 ,《故大唐董府君墓志铭》出土于河北省威县梨园屯乡鸭窝村一墓中 ,原墓葬已遭破坏 ,伴出器物或毁坏或流失。墓志所记祖孙三代均于史无传。志文大量用典 ,文风雍容典雅、含蓄婉转。其特殊用词如“铣柯”、“丽逋”等为辞书所失载 ,亦为专门研究墓志词语著作所不及。志文刻写于唐代字样学著作《干禄字书》以前或同时 ,对于考察当时的民间用字状况极有价值。墓志为词汇学、文字学等研究提供了新的材料     

《雪国》的复调倾向说

川端康成《雪国》表层故事的禅佛意识和虚无主义情调具有明显的消极颓废色彩,只有当表层故事之后潜故事投射到表层,大大改变了表层故事的形态,所谓虚无和死亡之美的审美形态才臻于完整。在驹子潜在视角与形式叙述者、岛村的视角对抗中,潜故事逐渐浮现;此时由于驹子潜在视角是价值独立的,故《雪国》叙事结构又有复调的特征。     

会展与酒店效益及配置关系研究--以中国出口商品交易会(广交会)为例

本文以中国出口商品交易会(广交会)为案例,剖析会展业对城市酒店业的空间结构影响、效益带动作用以及参展人员对酒店的行为偏好,探讨其与城市酒店配置的关系。研究表明,广交会对广州酒店业意义深远,不仅在广交会展馆附近形成了广州星级酒店的空间聚集带,而且提升了广州酒店业整体经济效益。研究还显示酒店受益幅度遵从距离衰减规律;参展人员对高中档酒店需求旺、其中五星级和三星级酒店更受青睐;国内外参展商的住宿需求偏好各异;高档酒店集聚了主要的利润等。这些特征对研究城市会展与酒店配置的关系提供了重要依据。     

The Chinon chart

The trial of the Templars between 1307 and 1312 was marked by a battle of political wills between King Philip IV on the one hand and Pope Clement V on the other. After the French Templars had been taken into royal custody in October 1307, Clement quickly realised that he could have no influence on the outcome until he could gain access to the Templars themselves, especially the leaders. In June 1308, at Poitiers, after a long struggle, he finally achieved his goal, hearing the confessions of 72 selected Templars, whom he then absolved. However, the king still retained the leaders, holding them at Chinon castle rather than allowing them to appear before the papal Curia. Eventually, in late August 1308, a papal commission did hear the leaders, although until now the evidence for this was indirect, contained in a letter preserved in the French Chancery. The recent discovery of the papal documents containing the record of these hearings, which culminated in the absolution of the leaders, places them in a completely new light and suggests that the views of Clement V and other principals in the trial need to be radically reappraised.     

从广交会看两岸的经贸关系(1957-1991年)

广交会是大陆开展对台经贸工作的平台之一。创办之初,广交会主要通过在香港的台湾办庄和台商开展工作。20世纪60年代末70年代初,通过海外侨商开展对台经贸工作。改革开放后,大陆积极发展对台贸易,台商间接参与广交会。1987年,台湾开放民众到大陆探亲,为台商直接参与广交会创造了条件。总结广交会台商工作的政策沿革和实践发展的历史经验,对当前推进两岸经贸交流、完成祖国统一大业有借鉴意义。     

Mothers and others in Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls

This essay responds to critical assertions that the absence of functional maternity in Edna O'Brien's famous 1960 novel The Country Girls reflects O'Brien's frustration with the cloying myth of ‘Ireland-as-motherland’. While I agree that O'Brien centrally considers the imbrication of femininity with nationality in a culturally conservative post-independence Ireland and enumerates the devastating lived effects of this discourse on Irish women, I argue that The Country Girls offers a potentially productive step beyond lamentation or complaint: namely, a nascent transnational poetics. I contend that the novel hinges on a character heretofore neglected by the criticism – Caithleen Brady's Austrian landlady, Joanna – and suggest that O'Brien slyly positions Joanna as Caithleen's potential surrogate mother, framing a ‘foreigner’ as a source of subversive family ties. Joanna's presence, I believe, indicates an effort on O'Brien's part to negotiate a political response to both gendered oppression and literary parochialism (the much-remarked climate of censorship that marked the newly independent Ireland's intellectual culture): the notion that community and security might be transformatively relocated in strategic ‘translocal’ networks rather than within the confines of the nation-state. Joanna signifies O'Brien's look beyond Mother Ireland – a desire to open the country to both global feminisms and transnational textualities.