The Importance of Status: The US–ROK Alliance Cohesion and the First Korean Nuclear Crisis, 1993–94

The US–ROK alliance during the First Korean Nuclear Crisis provides the most likely case of high alliance cohesion. Curiously, however, instead of dancing to the American tune in their joint management of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) threat, the Republic of Korea (ROK) caused frequent policy collisions – supporting the US–DPRK negotiations at one point and opposing it at another – at the risk of jeopardizing its physical security. The main finding here is that the variations in the South Korean behavior were a function of their experience of status inconsistency. In particular, the ROK became compliant with the US–DPRK talks when it believed that its desired status marker of taking the leadership role in crisis management was within reach, and unyielding otherwise. These fluctuations ended up not only eroding the US–ROK alliance cohesion but also inhibiting a successful resolution of the crisis. All this bears directly on the fundamental question of whether international politics is to be understood in essentially realist terms.     

Operationalizing a contested concept: indicators of territorial cohesion

European territorial policies increasingly refer to broad goals such as sustainability, well-being and cohesion. For their operationalization as political goals, there is a need to create indicators. But how can an indicator be meaningful in relation to a complex concept that is not well defined? If the creation of an indicator is primarily aimed at quantifying a concept and making it more operational, in the case of a contested concept (such as territorial cohesion), the process of building indicators also helps stabilize it, allowing a potential decontestation. A participatory constructivist approach – as used by the ESPON project Indicators for Territorial Cohesion (INTERCO) – is considered to be the most suitable for building indicators of contested concepts. While ensuring computability of the indicators, it allows more flexibility and reconciles the different meanings of the concept in order to stabilize it. Ultimately, the validity of indicators of contested concepts lies in pragmatic criteria: usability, usefulness and use.     

Book reviews

In the context of a shift away from municipal multiculturalism towards community cohesion, and in the light of renewed debates around difference, national identity and Britishness, this article sets out a geographically informed theoretical framework which focuses upon the spatial (re)construction of racial and ethnic identities. The article develops the idea of the everyday as a way of viewing the spatially contingent, complex and negotiated state of inter-ethnic relations in a specific UK city. Not only does this reveal the manner in which strong and stubborn boundaries between social groups are entrenched through the (re)enforcement of spatialised relations of power, but also how accommodations across, between and within difference are realised. Through the employment of empirical material from Leicester, England, the article contends that everyday solidarities emerge from a number of intersecting spatial influences which do not equate to abstract or fixed versions of national belonging.     

A critical perspective on socially embedded cultural policy in France

This paper aims to show how in France, the synthesis of cultural policy and social concerns throws up a number of tensions and pitfalls. These tensions are perhaps most acute because these sorts of cultural policies are not merely about socio‐economic issues but are actually tied to France’s colonial legacy and the presence of a large and often marginalised population of migrants and their descendents. The pitfalls stem from the universalist starting point of French cultural policy, which, although designed to integrate “new” and migrant/postmigrant publics, emergent artists and cultural practices, seems to simultaneously marginalise them since it is already premised on a binary that opposes art as aesthetic expression and art as an expression of cultural (anthropological) identity or social cohesion.     

Competing discourses of territorial development: tensions between cities and regions as a result of the new regionalism

Competition between metropolitan areas and old regions is one of the most visible results of the ‘new regionalism’ policy in the EU. The aim of this paper is to explain the newly emerged tensions between the regions and the cities within the EU in the context of the ‘new regionalism’. The newly introduced ‘Integrated Territorial Investments’ (ITI), a potentially powerful instrument of the cohesion policy of the EU was presented as ‘a flexible mechanism for formulating integrated responses to diverse territorial needs’. However, this flexibility produced a competitive relationship between cities and regions in their chase for money. Based on interviews with sub-state officials, the study focuses on two countries: Czechia and Slovakia. They are both major recipients of EU structural funds and the ITI tool is being implemented in both of them, however with different outcomes. Three variables have been identified as major factors causing the tensions: insufficient administrative capacity, political challenges and lack of shared understanding of priorities of regional development among sub-state actors.     

Identifying high-status foods in the archeological record

More than providing simply nutritive value, food in human societies can be endowed with great social weight. Aspects of any given food system inform, and are informed by, a variety of social, economic, religious, historical, ecological, cultural, and political processes. Moreover, food systems are often intentionally designed and executed to communicate key aspects of a consumer’s identity including class or social status. The manipulation of food systems on the part of socio-political elites or high status individuals is but one example of this phenomenon, the appearance of which is a correlate of increased socio-political hierarchy. As food can come to be used by elites as a socio-political tool in stratified societies, the temptation to use archeologically recognizable differences in foodways as a means of understanding the origin, nature, and functioning of processes of stratification is strong. The obvious difficulty lies in developing theoretically informed methods that reckon food system differences in ways that enable scholars to identify those foods that may have been particularly imbued with social meaning. In this paper, we propose a metric for the identification of elite foods (or, indeed, socially valued foods) using the types of data typically available to archeologists. Based on these proposed criteria, we attempt to unravel the complex and politically charged food system of the stratified societies of the pre-Columbian Greater Antilles with an eye towards refining our understanding of the development and maintenance of prestige and institutionalized power therein.     

食与礼--浅谈商周礼制中心饮食因素

在人类文明体系中,饮食具有自然与文化双重属性.作为维持人自身生命存在的基本手段,世界各民族对饮食的关注概莫能外;同时,作为人类自然本能高度理性化发展的结果,饮食传统--食物、烹饪、饭桌上的礼节及人们关于饮食的概念,又是一个民族特殊历史经验与生存环境的产物,它构成了民族文化传统中最显著的象征符号.①就此而言,中国古代文化,尤其是居于核心地位的礼制文化,对食物与烹饪所具有的超乎寻常的专注,就不能仅视作自然现象或归诸偶然原因.②     

Change and Continuity: Networking,Newspaper, Kinships and Twentieth Century Elite Women

This article examines the juncture point between British-(Anglo)-American elite women in the first half of the twentieth century, their female networks and newspapers. It considers the maternal background, reconstructing biological and fictive kinships, to illustrate generational patterns leading to both female barrier-breaking in elite western institutions and clustering in the political and charitable work environments. The paper covers a century of adult female life using a central stem matrikin whose activities can be recovered through press-cuttings which chart change and continuity of values, confidence, identity and self-awareness through the range of kin based networks. It reconsiders the background to the 1970s breakthrough of women in leadership within elite political and charitable western institutions which has previously been considered as a result of effective equal opportunities combatting barriers rooted in male networking patterns. Finally, it reflects on the nature of the press as encountered by, used by and marginalising of elite women during the period.     

时空间行为视角下的城市社会融合研究

城市转型背景下的社会极化与社会融合问题是城市地理学研究的重要议题。国内外文献多关注社区尺度上的社会融合特征及其地理环境要素,由此形成了基于居住空间视角的社会融合研究传统。但这一研究视角过于静态和片面,难以在个体移动性不断提高、日常活动空间不断拓展的背景下深刻揭示社会融合的动态过程以及地理环境要素的微观影响机理。本文在对城市社会融合的国内外研究文献进行梳理的基础上,讨论基于居住空间视角的社会融合研究存在的不足,构建时空间行为视角下的城市社会融合研究理论框架。本文提出,从微观层面的个体移动性与时空行为约束的视角,能够基于个体日常活动—移动行为更准确地刻画个体社会交往的动态地理情境,并从居民日常生活的时空约束、公共接触潜力、时空间行为策略等方面来识别地理环境要素影响社会融合的过程与机制。在此基础上,本文展望城市社会融合研究的可能研究议题与方法论发展方向,有助于推进中国城市社会融合研究的多元化和人本化。     

Integration and the negotiation of ‘here’ and ‘there’: the case of British Arab activists

Immigrant-receiving societies are increasingly emphasizing the need for immigrants to integrate into mainstream life. In Britain, this trend has manifested itself in ‘social cohesion’ discourses and policies. Discussions about social cohesion have often focused on the residential patterns of immigrant and minority groups in British cities, with the assumption that residential patterns are an indication of social integration. Integration, however, is also a socio-political process by which dominant and subordinate groups negotiate the terms of social membership. We explore the ways in which British Arab activists conceptualize their membership in and responsibilities to their places of settlement; we also consider how they reconcile notions of integration with their connections to their places of origin. Our study participants speak of the need for immigrants to participate actively in their society of settlement, but they reject the idea that integration requires cultural conformity or exclusive loyalty to Britain. Their definition of integration as a dialogue between distinctive but equal groups sharing a given place provides a normative alternative to social cohesion discourses.