SPACES OF ENCOUNTER–DISPLACEMENT: CONTEMPORARY LABOUR MIGRANTS' RETURN VISITS TO LATVIA

The context of this paper is return visits to the homeland of labour migrants in Europe. The paper draws on data from the author's ethnographic fieldwork on the island of Guernsey and in Latvia during 2010–2012. By theorizing the relevance which the research participants attached to the phenomenon of corporeal co‐presence in relation to these visits, the paper bridges a timegeographic perspective with phenomenological interpretations. It explains how actual experience during the return path is influenced by both past trajectories and future anticipation. Return visits are conceptualized as spaces of encounter‐displacement and illustrated through examples of sensory and emotional experiences of anticipating for the return, the actual travel, time spent in the home area, and departure. The paper suggests that a focus on the body scale can help researchers to gain important insights into how the path is shaped through the corporeal experiences and how it shapes interpretations about home and possible future orientations.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
M. Steiner (ed.), Clusters and Regional Specialisation. On Geography,Technology, and Networks
Denis J.B. Shaw, Russia in the Modern World. A New Geography
Ron Martin, Money and the Space Economy     

Assembling dams in Ghana: A genealogical inquiry into the fluidity of hydropolitics

The paper offers a geographical interpretation of the evolving technical, political, and economic intricacy of large dams. It incorporates existing hydropolitical scholarship and the notion of the Chinese Water Machine to reframe dams as assemblages built by specific political, financial and technical processes in particular socioenvironmental regions. The paper examines the continuity of hydropolitical relationships through a genealogical inquiry into the formulation and materialisation of Ghana's three dams: the Akosombo and Kpong dams built during the Cold War, backed by Western lenders and engineering companies; and the Bui dam commissioned in the 2010s, with support from China. Based on fieldwork in Ghana and China, as well as documentary evidence, the paper argues that the thinking, planning and building of dams interconnect the host regime and external techno-financial actors with their floating political-economic interests, but in a durable way. Sometimes, even if little concrete is actually poured, the symbolic power of dams endures, transforms, and at certain times and places expands, through events and discourses of national and international interest groups pursuing their own purposes, albeit with the replacement of influential individuals and powerful institutions, and regardless of the involvement of Western, Chinese and/or other actors. Ruptures exist but do not necessarily break the continuity of dam assemblages. The emergence of an opposition assemblage that battles against dams is a more recent complexity.     

BEYOND THE GPN–NEW REGIONALISM DIVIDE IN CHINA: RESTRUCTURING THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY,REMAKING THE WENZHOU MODEL

This article attempts to advance the research on industrial districts and regional development through a study of the restructuring of the clothing industry in Wenzhou Municipality, a regional driver of the Chinese economy. Wenzhou is known for the Wenzhou model of development traditionally centred on family‐owned small businesses embedded in local institutions. The clothing industry is one of the leading industries in Wenzhou, and a cluster with national significance has emerged, where most of the production components can be purchased locally. However, the industry has been scaled up nationally and internationally, with the expansion of sales networks and production facilities across China, and to a lesser extent, abroad. This restructuring has changed the endogenous nature of industrial clusters/districts. The restructuring challenges the orthodox notion of the Wenzhou model and the New Regionalism literature, particularly the orthodox notion of Marshallian industrial districts that overly emphasizes small firms and local assets, and the global production network perspective that highlights coupling with global lead firms in regional development.     

Playing with Fire: The 4th Duke of Hamilton's Jacobite Politics and the Union

James Hamilton, duke of Hamilton and the Scots jacobites are generally linked in analyses of the final years of the Scots polity. Indeed, Hamilton is often presented as the leader of the jacobite party in the Scottish parliament. Yet both contemporaries and historians have been unsure what to make of his on-again, off-again, conduct with respect to the exiled Stuarts and France. This has fuelled an ongoing debate about Hamilton's erratic and highly enigmatic behaviour during the winter of 1706–7, when the Union was passing the Scottish parliament. Was he genuinely opposing the Union? Was he duped by the court? Or was he, ‘bought and sold for English gold ’? This essay takes a fresh look at the duke and his part in the Union crisis in the light of new and previously underused jacobite sources with a view to better understanding Hamilton's aims, objectives, and influence with this crucial group. Only the jacobites and the Cameronians were potentially willing to take their opposition to the Union to God's Acre. But neither party immediately flew to arms in response to passage of a union they both believed was a betrayal of everything they held dear, and Hamilton was a major factor in their failure to do so. This essay thus takes a close look at the duke's part in preventing a major national uprising against the Union in the winter of 1706–7 and advances a new interpretation of his conduct and significance throughout the Union crisis.     

Island Biocultural Assemblages — The Case of Kinmen Island

ABSTRACT A growing mass of research contributes to our understanding of how biological and cultural diversity are related in complex and important ways. This paper presents an assembling process of biodiversity and cultural diversity on an island, Kin‐men (Quemoy), based on 1600 years of its environmental history. The study shows that the island's biocultural assemblages are a result both of external relations with the island's surrounding environment and internal relations within the island's changing human ecology. Distant political powers and economic forces are the two major external influences that have affected the flow of natural and cultural elements to and from the island, while ‘screening effects’ and ‘isolation effects’ are two factors that explain internal interactions. The island's biocultural assembling processes reveal that the openness of the island facilitates increase in the diversity of biocultural elements, while its less disturbed isolated condition fosters natural succession and co‐evolution. The study suggests that biocultural assemblages and the associated processes of co‐evolution and nature–society interactions are accomplished through the intermittent opportunities purposively provided by or inadvertently found in the openings and closures of boundaries, setting the scene for both boundary crossings and bounded shelter, by intent or chance.     

Robert d'Arbrissel: Aristocratic patronage and the question of heresy

Robert d'Arbrissel, first of the wandering preachers of the late eleventh century in northwestern France, often skirted the edges of heresy. Scholars have wondered what separated Robert from similar figures, such as Henry of Lausanne, who were in fact condemmed as heretics. Since Robert came from a modest family in a region of Brittany dominated by the Angevin counts, his career was always oriented towards Anjou. One possibility, then, is to examine Robert's career within the context of the Angevin nobility. His first patron, Bishop Silvester of Rennes, was a member of the count of Anjou's entourage, as were many other powerful figures who later supported him. Chief of these was Rainald, Lord of Craon. Under Reinald's patronage, Robert was able to establish the church of La Roë with the personal approval of Pope Urban. When Robert left to preach to crowds of followers, powerful Angevin churchmen recalled him to his duty. Once again it was the Angevin nobility, many related to the house of Craon, who provided Robert with the means to establish a monastery at Fontevraud. This establishment, backed by the Angevin nobility, kept Robert within the good graces of the Church.     

Charles of Anjou,Pope Gregory X and the crown of Jerusalem

This article seeks to dispel the popular myth that Pope Gregory X (1271–6) wanted to change the government of the kingdom of Jerusalem by putting Charles of Anjou on its throne through the purchase of the claim of Maria of Antioch. A study of the Angevin chancery records – little used by crusade historians – demonstrates that Charles had an interest and influence in the kingdom before Gregory became pope. An examination of Gregory's papal registers shows that he consistently treated Hugh of Lusignan as king of Jerusalem and that the pope had no desire for anything to disrupt the peace in Christendom that he deemed necessary for his crusade.     

Beautiful Geography: The Pictorial Maps of Ruth Taylor White

This paper explores the career of Ruth Taylor White, an American cartographic illustrator who published a significant number of pictorial maps from the 1920s into the 1940s. Taylor White’s ‘cartographs’ (as she called them) were characterized by her signature bobble-headed cartoon characters who romped through colourful, attractive landscapes. These visually rich and highly narrative maps simultaneously strove for accuracy and engaged in profound stereotyping with regard to culture, race, gender and class. They reveal not only the aesthetic and conceptual preferences of their maker but also the cultural biases of their middle-class, white American audience.     

Bureaucrats and managers,peasants and pastoralists,imperialists and traders: Research on the Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods in Mesopotamia

In recent decades the Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods of the fourth millennium B. C. in Mesopotamia have been the subject of considerable research by scholars of the ancient Near East. Interests in and interpretations of these periods have focused on their credentials as early states, urban societies, and the immediate antecedents of Sumerian civilization. In this overview, I first present a brief historical background on the study of these periods, followed by a critical review of recent approaches that have had significant impacts on current directions of research and understanding of the fourth millennium. Finally, I suggest some research avenues currently being tentatively explored that may be especially appropriate for developing further our understandings of these periods.