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.     

Context and the role of policies to attract foreign R&D in Europe

This paper explores the effectiveness of policies ‘in’ attracting the foreign research and development (R&D) of multinational enterprises (MNEs) to specific countries in Europe. We develop a macroeconomic investigation covering 29 European countries during the period between 1990 and 2012 in order to address: (a) whether the provision of direct financial support for business R&D is effective for the attraction of foreign R&D; (b) whether direct support is more effective than indirect support for this purpose and (c) whether the link between direct financial support for business R&D and the foreign R&D of MNEs is conditioned by the context within which the support is provided. The results of the analysis show that, first, the provision of direct financial support is generally effective for the attraction of foreign R&D by MNEs. Second, direct support for business R&D is more effective for this purpose than indirect support. Third, the provision of direct financial support for business R&D yields greater returns in contexts that are more socio-economically suitable for knowledge-intensive, innovative activity.     

Historical Use of Metal Tie-Rods in the Italian Territory: Treatises,Essays, and Manuals through Four Centuries of History

The use of metal tie-rods in buildings is documented and visible in many Italian areas since the 15th century. This article refers to the study of treatises, manuals and essays from the 15th to the early 20th century, mainly in the Italian context with some exceptions of certain foreign texts that, due to their diffusion and importance, have greatly influenced the technical literature on the subject. Technology is an expression of the social, economic, cultural, political and juridical events of a country and, as such, is deeply linked to the times and territories in which it develops. However, it is also closely linked to the laws of nature and to forms of communication, therefore it is useful to compare, underlining the analogies and differences, the knowledge and the ways of the productive and technical process in a long-term analysis.     

Opportunities and competition in thick labor markets: Evidence from plant closures

Since Marshall (1890), it has been widely held in urban economic theory that cities insure workers against the risk of unemployment by offering a larger pool of potential jobs. Using a large administrative panel data set on workers displaced as a result of plant closures, we examine whether positive effects from a higher urban job density are offset by more intense competition between workers. When controlling for the sorting of workers between regions, we find robust evidence that the effect of job competition on unemployment duration exceeds that of job opportunities in absolute value. Our results put the idea of urban risk-sharing into perspective and provide an explanation for observed longer unemployment durations in cities.     

Troubled Traditions: Female Adaptive Education in British Colonial Africa

This article examines African female education reform between the wars as a conjuncture of transnational philanthropic initiatives and state and missionary objectives on the ground. Through a comparative treatment of four schools in West, East and South-Central Africa, it shows that the search to recover and re-create the authentic African subject was a gendered process that aimed to critique one brand of colonialism (settler and industrial capitalism) by bolstering another (indirect rule). The schools at Achimota (Gold Coast), Kabete (Kenya), Hope Fountain (Southern Rhodesia) and Mbereshi (Northern Rhodesia) all idealised women’s traditional education as the key to offsetting the dangers of modernisation and preserving the integrity of the social body, and ‘adapted’ their curricula accordingly to their perception of women’s normative economic and social roles. However, the internal contradictions of this project stymied any possibility of implementing it in a cohesive way, and even its advocates and architects were often forced to admit the limits of tradition as a coherent logic or redemptive force. The gendered contours of adaptation, therefore, showed the potential of education to destabilise as much as to reinforce the shifting paradigms of the colonial project.     

Nudges and the limits of appropriate interference: reading backwards from J.S. Mill’s harm principle to Jeremy Bentham’s indirect legislation

ABSTRACT

The starting point of the present paper is the nudge phenomenon. The most disturbing element of nudge is its potential for individual manipulation, that is, for relying on initiatives that go beyond the acceptable limits of interference in individual choice. This feature is not ignored by nudge advocates, who discuss it extensively to justify the overriding benefits of such initiatives. In this discussion, they acknowledge the seminal importance of J.S. Mill’s harm principle, which is introduced in On Liberty. Academics without hidden agendas must look into Mill’s theories from an intellectual history perspective and study to what extent Mill’s harm principle lends support to the interference of government and society in private lives. This paper first unveils some contradictions in the interpretation of Mill’s harm principle in order to show that it is an unlikely source of philosophical justification for nudge proponents. The paper argues further that Mill was familiar with Jeremy Bentham’s writings on indirect legislation, presented in the Traités de legislation civile et pénale. It pinpoints elements of indirect legislation that are discussed by Mill in On Liberty, without ever naming them as such. The paper contends that Mill’s presentation of the harm principle can be read as a discussion with Bentham in relation to the appropriate limits of government intervention in people’s lives. This double reading of Mill and Bentham through the lens of indirect legislation makes it possible to pinpoint the main differences between the authors as regards the appropriate degree of government interference. Bentham’s theories appear to be a more appropriate source of philosophical justification for the use of nudges than Mill’s harm principle.     

‘Prevention of evil,production of good’: Jeremy Bentham’s indirect legislation and its contribution to a new theory of prevention

ABSTRACT

This paper critically analyses current depictions of prevention and tries to offer a new theoretical reflection on the concept by reconstructing it on the basis of Jeremy Bentham’s writings on indirect legislation. It is my aim not only to explore Bentham’s concept of indirect legislation as an outstanding example of enlightened social/public policy, but also to show to what extent his thoughts might be a fruitful contribution to a necessary reconceptualization of current conceptions of prevention, which are heavily criticized by many scholars.     

Nudging Bentham: indirect legislation and (neo-)liberal politics

SUMMARY

The debates over Sunstein and Thaler’s Nudge oppose libertarianism and paternalism, or defend the authors’ proposed manipulation of individuals’ ‘choice architectures’ as a consistent system of libertarian paternalism. My essay looks beyond the terms of this debate and revisits Bentham’s ‘Indirect Legislation’ in order to excavate the issues raised by the deployment of technologies of behavioural economics in schemes of government. On the one hand, nudging is nothing other than a mild and carefully considered mode of indirect legislation, and the authors are right to join Bentham in pointing out that the landscape they seek to improve is always with us; we are always already governed and governing others, and we might as well govern and be governed better than we do/are. On the other hand, nudge-like innovations reveal the extent to which Bentham’s insights have been captured by a disciplinary orientation that removes its subjects from political space. Put differently, the issue with this kind of government is not that it interferes with our liberty so much as that it presumes our lack of political orientation and efficacy. Bentham’s liberal subjects inhabit a public and even republican space that Sunstein and Thaler’s neo-liberal subjects have long since abandoned.     

Tuvalu and Climate Change: Constructions of Environmental Displacement in The Sydney Morning Herald

Tuvalu, a place whose image in the ‘West’ is as a small island state, insignificant and remote on the world stage, is becoming remarkably prominent in connection with the contemporary issue of climate change‐related sea‐level rise. My aim in this paper is to advance understanding of the linkages between climate change and island places, by exploring the discursive negotiation of the identity of geographically distant islands and island peoples in the Australian news media. Specifically, I use discourse analytic methods to critically explore how, and to what effects, various representations of the Tuvaluan islands and people in an Australian broadsheet, the Sydney Morning Herald, emphasize difference between Australia and Tuvalu. My hypothesis is that implicating climate change in the identity of people and place can constitute Tuvaluans as .tragic victims. of environmental displacement, marginalizing discourses of adaptation for Tuvaluans and other inhabitants of low‐lying islands, and silencing alternative constructions of Tuvaluan identity that could emphasize resilience and resourcefulness. By drawing attention to the problematic ways that island identities are constituted in climate change discourse in the news media, I advocate a more critical approach to the production and consumption of representations of climate change.     

Resistance to alien rule in Taiwan and Korea†

ABSTRACT. Although alien rule is widely assumed to be illegitimate, nationalist resistance to it varies across time and space. This article explores why there was greater nationalist resistance to Japanese colonial rule in Korea than Taiwan from the turn of the twentieth century to the end of World War II. Resistance to alien rulers requires both a supply of participants in nationalist collective action and a demand for national self‐determination. The article assesses two principal propositions: (1) that the supply of participants increases to the degree that native elites are stripped of their traditional authority and offered few incentives to collaborate; and (2) that the demand for national self‐determination decreases to the degree that alien rule is fair and effective. A comparative analysis of the effects of Japanese alien rule in Taiwan and Korea suggests that nationalist resistance is greater in the earliest phases of occupation, that the greater native elites' opportunities, the weaker the resistance to alien rule; and that the fairer the governance, the weaker the resistance to alien rule.