Operating anew: Queering GIS with good enough software

In the last decade, conversations around queering of GIScience emerged. Drawing on literature from feminist and queer critical GIS, with special attention to the under‐examined political economy of GIS, I suggest that the critical project of queering all of GIS, both GIScience and GISystems, requires not just recognition of the labour and lives of queers and research in geographies of sexualities. Based upon a queer feminist political economic critique and evidenced in my teaching critical GIS at two elite liberal arts colleges, I argue that the “status quo” between ESRI and geography as a field must be interrupted. Extending a critical GIS focus beyond data structures and data ethics, I argue that geographic researchers and instructors have a responsibility in queering our choice and production of software, algorithms, and code alike. I call this production and choice of democratic, accessible, and useful software by, for, and about the needs of its users, good enough software.     

Much Lost,Little Gained? Contemporary Trade Agreements in the Pacific Islands

At the close of the 20th century, it was increasingly clear that Pacific Island countries would struggle to remain competitive in international commodity and merchandise trade. As governments worldwide embraced free trade, many Island exporters looked set to be displaced by more efficient producers elsewhere. Island policymakers also faced pressure from more powerful states to renegotiate trading arrangements to bring them into alignment with the rules of the World Trade Organization. This article explains how Pacific Island countries responded to the overlapping challenges of globalization. It considers strategies pursued by Island states in negotiations with the European Union (EU), and with Australia and New Zealand. In both cases, Pacific Islands pressed for agreements that would take account of their unique trading circumstances, and arrangements that would allow more Pacific Islanders to work abroad. After nearly two decades of talks, however, final results proved disappointing. A proposed regional Economic Partnership Agreement with the EU was essentially abandoned, and a regional trade agreement with Australia and New Zealand was concluded without the signature of Fiji or Papua New Guinea – the two largest Pacific Island economies. Ultimately, contemporary trade agreements in the Pacific achieved little to ameliorate the competitive disadvantages Pacific Island states face participating in international trade.     

‘The apostle of free trade:’ Adam Smith and the nineteenth-century American trade debates

This paper examines the diversity of uses of Adam Smith’s ideas in nineteenth-century American debates about the tariff. Legislative debates about American trade policy ran almost uninterrupted from the 1820s to the end of the century; as a result, they provide an abundance of examples of the ways in which legislators marshaled economic ideas to shape political discourse and influence policy. Smith’s causal ideas about free trade and its effects were referenced in policymaking, and Smith’s intellectual authority was often invoked as a legitimating device for partisan ideology. These uses, I argue, contributed to the sloganizing of Smith as the ‘apostle of free trade’ and his enduring popularity as a political icon in American politics.     

The business case for a free trade agreement between the European Union and Australia

ABSTRACT

The free trade agreement (FTA) between Australia and the European Union holds the promise of strengthened political collaboration and increasing economic integration. Both Australia and the European Union note increasing bilateral trade and investment. Oftentimes, data does not take current trends in global-value-chain participation for intermediary goods and services movements into account. Behind this sit the cross-border strategies and activities of business entities, whether multinationals or large, small or medium-sized enterprises. This article provides an in-depth investigation of the premise stemming from an FTA for Australian business. What advantages can politics hope to support through a business perspective? What is the global-value-chain part of the story, and what are the business challenges ahead? How can economic policy help shape this FTA to foster a productive bilateral business environment in a geopolitical and geoeconomic context in which regionalisation has taken on new momentum? Specific focus is given to the analysis of the higher education sector and to agriculture. These are two of the leading sectors in this FTA debate. Generating business value means setting negotiation agendas to target tariff and non-tariff barriers to counterbalance ambiguity in the conditions that shape the global business environment.     

Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion: maritime England and the free seas debates

ABSTRACT

Attending to Poly-Olbion’s river dynamics, I argue that, implicitly opposing natural, inevitable unionization, Drayton demonstrates through visual and poetic means that any viable empire is forged by deliberate local choices about conjunction and affiliation. Further, I show that by reconfiguring Saxton’s maps, rejecting politically defined boundaries and perceptions, and situating three major rivers as the organizing features of the landscape and the empire, Drayton ultimately defines Britain as inherently and universally maritime. Moreover, linking Poly-Olbion to mare clausum and mare liberum debates, I reveal that Drayton situates the flow of self-aware rivers into the sea as an extension of Britain beyond its land boundaries. He thereby suggests that the eventual mixing of British waters with the larger oceans establishes the basis of Britain’s local and global maritime rights, linking regional autonomy and conjunction by choice with claims to both local offshore dominion and global freedom of navigation and trade.     

The economic impact of the Australia–US free trade agreement

The Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) came into effect in 2005. It was the second preferential trade agreement that Australia signed, after its agreement with Singapore, and marked a departure from the primacy of Australia's previous trade policy of unilateral and multilateral trade liberalisation toward preferential liberalisation. This paper assesses the economic effects of AUSFTA by applying the Productivity Commission's gravity model of trade from its Bilateral and Regional Trade Agreements review. The evidence reveals AUSFTA resulted in a fall in Australian and US trade with the rest of the world—that the agreement led to trade diversion. Estimates also show that AUSFTA is associated with a reduction in trade between Australia and the United States.     

ARRIVAL OF COURTLY LOVE: MOVING IN THE EMOTIONAL SPACE

Courtly love appeared in twelfth‐century Europe as a dissent from the emotional regime established by the Gregorian Reform, by setting the lady, instead of God, as the object of worship. From a game‐theory perspective, courtly love and hedonism correspond to Nash equilibria, in contrast to Christian marriage, whose stability is threatened by sex‐as‐appetite on one side and devotion to God on the other, and whose maintenance depends on moral control. The Church developed fear and shame, which are counter‐emotions to desire‐as‐appetite. Courtly love restored the thrill of forbidden adventure. It also shared traits common to innovations in the natural world: it added complexity (by increasing costs, emphasizing courtship, self‐restraint, and extremes of suffering); it was made possible by the plasticity of mating relationships; it introduced a small disorder in the ordered regime of Christian marriage; it demanded an adaptive effort, requiring the man to face ever more perilous trials and the woman to appear ever more attractive. Though obtained as a small deviation from the existing emotional regime, it had thoroughgoing and long‐lasting consequences for social control and for the political power of the Church. It also deeply modified the dynamic of longing in ego's representation. By taking the temporal form of a capture, it contrasts with twelfth‐century Bengal, where love was characterized by maintenance in an indefinitely repeating worship, by the absence of a here‐now versus target‐later dualism. It also contrasts with eleventh‐century Heian Japan, where love was intermingled with the melancholy of an impossible return, which is the antithesis of the concept of capture.     

The Effectiveness of Voluntary Environmental Programs—A Policy at a Crossroads?

Voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) have been used as a policy tool in the United States since the early 1990s and come in many forms. Early assessments of VEPs targeting changes in production processes showed that industrial participants improved their environmental performance and VEPs were celebrated as a viable alternative to more traditional regulation. Recent analyses using more sophisticated techniques, however, paint a less favorable picture. On the one hand, firms appear willing to sign up to VEPs, and in some cases, participants may be able to create a shield against future losses in shareholder value. On the other hand, these VEPs targeting production processes appear not to generate significant pollution abatement. The latter finding is particularly disturbing and this article discusses various explanations, including institutional failure and participant motivations. Future research needs to focus on understanding the firm motivation to invest in production‐related pollution abatement under a VEP. For policymakers, the research offers a warning on the limited impact to date of VEPs targeting production processes. However, the multitude of other VEPs, such as those which target new product development and changing market demands, merit a closer look to determine the overall potential of VEPs to engender positive environmental change.     

鸠·鸠杖·鸠车

鸠杖、鸠车在汉代甚为流行。对于这一文化现象,作者在对鸠的原始造型及其文化含义作简要分析的基础上,进一步剖析鸠杖、鸠车在汉代受到青眯的原因,指出鸠杖、鸠车流行于汉代是当时尊老爱幼之风甚盛的物质体现。     

上博简《诗论》“《汉广》之智”与《诗·汉广》篇探论——并论儒家情爱观的若干问题

上海博物馆藏战国楚竹书的第一部分,即《诗论》,其第10号简和第13号简都提到《汉广》一诗,并且进行了较多评析.这对于解决聚讼不已的《诗@汉广》的"游女"身份及诗旨等问题有很大启示.分析《汉广》诗意,可见诗人实在"不可得"与"不可能"之间犹豫徘徊.事物的"可能"与"不可能",并不受礼义界限的影响,而是基本上与礼义无关的事情.然而,事物的"可得"与"不可得"则是礼义影响的结果.《诗论》简,对于《汉广》一诗的评析在所有关于情爱诗篇的说解中显得尤为深刻而重要.孔子对于《汉广》的评析,与《韩诗外传》、《说苑》所记遇浣女事皆表明了孔子的情爱观.其情爱观的中心是赞成男女在礼义的范围内的情爱,提倡在可能的情况下对于爱情大胆追求,而不是对于男女情爱予以排诋.男女间必须授受不亲"],应当有一条不可逾越的鸿沟,这只是后儒之见,孔子之时尚未出现.