Center-periphery Model Research Articles

Better Britons: Reproduction, National Identity, and the Afterlife of Empire by Nadine Attewell

Nadine Attewell. Better Britons: Reproduction, National Identity, and Afterlife of Empire. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. 324 pp. $65.00. On 12 March 2016, Leilani Muir died at her home in Devon, Alberta, leaving no heirs. Muir came to national attention in 1995, when she sued government of Alberta for wrongful sterilization, forcing Canadians to acknowledge extent to which state actively intervened in reproductive lives of its citizens. Muir herself was sterilized in 1959, and Alberta Sexual Sterilization Act was not repealed until 1972, nearly five years after young Pierre Elliot Trudeau uttered his famous phrase, which has since become an integral part of Canada's self-image as of liberal toleration: there's no place for state in bedrooms of nation (There's no place). The frightening durability of eugenicist policies within putatively advanced Western liberal democracies is occasion for Nadine Attewell's Better Britons, which in five chapters evaluates imbrication of reproductive crises in cultural and political responses to Britain's imperial future beginning at fin de siecle. At this time, serious conversations began about imperial decline. Duncan Bell's The Idea of Greater Britain (2007) describes how many were attracted by idea of uniting United Kingdom and its settler colonies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa into globe-spanning political community of Anglo-Saxons (see Bell). Better moves across this landscape--focusing mainly and New Zealand--reflecting on centrality of reproduction to settler and British projects of building (4). Skilfully weaving postcolonial with feminist, queer, and critical race theory, Attewell explains how decolonizing settler colonies felt a crisis of inheritance over shape of their postcolonial national identity. To understand that crisis, she assembles diversity of documents, including not only fiction and film but also official memoranda, speeches, photographs, and newspaper reports aimed at manufacturing better Britons worthy of inheriting postcolonial future. Chapter one identifies paradox: whilst fictions that explore eugenicist fantasies are still read--and read widely!--today for their prophetic relevance (36), contemporary state policies designed to manage reproduction are consigned to quiet section of history books. By returning literary texts to their historical contexts, Attewell brings key elements of both into sharper relief. Here attention rests upon Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), H.G. Wells's The Island of Dr Moreau (1896), and Eleanor Dark's Prelude to Christopher (1934). For Attewell what unites these texts is their shared interest in representing crises of reproduction both within colony and across empire in utopian form. In each, the voyage out, to an insular site marked out ... for colonization, occasions voyage in, to an insular site marked as metropolitan (37). This places Attewell's book within scholarship that resists centre-periphery model of imperialism and rather views Empire as circuit, across which ideas, commodities, and bodies traffic with increasing ungovernability. Chapter two examines specific reproductive project of early twentieth century. The White Australia policy encompassed attempts by nascent Australian state to manage its population biopolitically, through legislation like Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 and rhetoric of politicians like James Deakin, prime minister who believed his was animated by the desire that we should be one people, and remain one people, without admixture of other races (84). These are instances of conservative biopolitics--that is, attempts to manage gene pool by reducing intercourse between races. Attewell approaches White Australia quite differently, by focusing its radical counterpart: so-called breeding out colour project practised in Australia's frontier jurisdictions. …

Plasticity and the Global

The Problematic of GlobalIn face of persistent Euro-American slant of Film and Media Studies, task of globalizing discipline involves approaching its object of knowledge differently. There has to be a metatheoretical shift not only in constitution of theory, but also in organization of global.1 This essay will seek to identify and dislodge certain universalist preconceptions that underlie both concepts. Here I focus on global, but many of following observations are applicable to theory as well.What, where, when is the in film and media theory? For all its frequent invocations, it remains a notoriously contested and vacuous term, plagued by at least two major problems. The first one besets any totalizing concept: if global is understood to encompass our entire planet, it takes on a universalist ring. Structuralist approaches echoing World Systems Theory are insightful in their attention to global hegemony of certain industries and their international division of labor. But arguments about Americanization or McDonaldization of all culture, which raise charges of economic determinism, also lean toward an easy universalism. Claims about media structured by script of global capital, while compelling in their analytical rigor and empirical cogency, foreclose more nuanced explorations of cultural field. Studies of Bollywood and K-pop, only recently acknowledged as global culture industries, also face similar pitfalls, with further confusions about presumed timing: when did Indian cinema, for instance, turn global-in 1990s, right after World War II, or even before? The challenge, then, is one of conceptualizing spatiotemporal contours of global in a manner that registers its broader imaginative horizons while also grounding it in practices of local: a multilateral, fluid, and capacious articulation of global.A second problem stems from locating origins and cores of modern world in Europe and America. Once modernity is framed as an essentially Western phenomenon, any modern iteration of global must also spring from West. A handful of ascendant localisms-British, French, or German-usurp place of global, relegating vast segments of globe to proverbial boonies. Since latter's experiences do not match those at presumptive centers of modernity, they remain nonglobal, perpetually stunted locals. Thus French cinema, while no match for Hollywood at box office, claims preeminence within global art cinema; but cinema of Maghreb, even when made with French financing and screened at prominent film festivals, gains attention as a cultural curiosity with flavor. The challenge here is one of formulating a paradigm of global that does not remain beholden to certain hegemonic localisms, but embraces a multisited globalism. To indulge in a bit of productive tautology, at stake is a globalized sense of the global.The point of these observations is not to instigate a rehearsal of structuralist vs. culturalist debates of 1980s, or center-periphery models of 1970s, but to move beyond them. The approach I outline below is inspired as much by postcolonial critiques of globalization, stressing historical and cultural difference, as by ever-increasing significance of translocal linkages and commonalities. There is an ongoing truck between difference and sameness in folds of cultural interaction that has to be accounted for by any theory of global culture. One way to attend to this complex traffic is to track multiscalar and multipotent relationalities between local nodes that constitute global. Channeling resonance and discord, inducing amplification and erasure, these spatial contacts lead to a range of outcomes-collaboration, competition, neutral indifference. And under certain conditions, relationships might develop into genuine reciprocities: in normative anticipations of global-for instance, in theories of cosmopolitical-mutualities are taken to be ideal limit case. …

Jewish Literature / World Literature: Between the Local and the Transnational

In the past two decades, scholars of world literature and transnational literary studies have called for an overhaul of the national literature model, in favor of a model based on literature's movement beyond national boundaries. Yet across the spectrum of approaches, scholarship on world literature has focused on the languages of the metropolitan center while largely overlooking the literary cultures of the so-called peripheries. We examine Jewish literature as a transnational and multilingual body of writing whose networks of linguistic and cultural exchange provide a clear counterpoint to the center-periphery model of global literary circulation. Moreover, the essay offers one of the first comparative studies of Eastern European Jewish literature and Middle Eastern Jewish literature, furnishing new methodological tools for a comparative approach to Jewish literary culture.

Het beeld van Midden- en Oost-Europa in Nederlandse literaire non-fictie

Abstract Over the last 20 years, literary nonfiction has become increasingly popular among the Dutch reading public. Thanks to increasing sales, translations and literary awards the genre achieved a strong position in Dutch literature. This article analyzes the image of Central and Eastern European countries in Dutch literary nonfiction of the last ten years (2004-14). It searches for characteristics of an orientalist and balkanist discourse and the presence of the imagological centre-periphery model in the works of Geert Mak, Jelle Brandt Corstius, Olaf Koens, Joop Verstraten and Jan Brokken. Contemporary Dutch literary nonfiction contains a euro-orientalist discourse. Characteristics such as underdevelopment, hedonism, obscurity and authenticity are projected on Central and Eastern Europe, which is put in the periphery of Western Europe.

Kelet-Közép-Európa térszerkezeti képe

Tanulmányukban Kelet-Közép-Európa térszerkezeti képének felvázolására teszünk kísérletet. A tanulmány első részében elsőként három alapvető térszerkezet-felfogást írunk le, amelyekből a mennyiségi és minőségi jegyeket egyszerre ábrázoló módszert választunk elemzésünkhöz. Ezt követően a térszerkezet lehetséges alkotóelemeit (csomópont, tengely, zóna) tárgyaljuk, elméleti és gyakorlati oldalról, megalapozva a térségi vizsgálat szempontjait. A következő lépésben az európai térszerkezeti kettősséget (Banán vagy Szőlő) elemezzük, rámutatva a mennyiségi és a minőségi dimenzió ütközésére, valamint Kelet-Közép-Európa térszerkezeti pozícióját tárjuk fel: holdudvari szerepkör másodlagos, harmadlagos súlyú térszerkezeti elemekkel. A tanulmány második felében Kelet-Közép-Európa térszerkezeti ábráját alkotjuk meg, olyan módon, hogy egyrészt a gazdasági fejlettség és sűrűség regionális térképei alapján zónákat határozunk meg, másrészt a nagyvárosok kiemelése, kategorizálása alapján különböző típusú csomópontokat alkotunk, harmadrészt a közlekedési folyosókat tengelyekként rögzítjük, és végezetül mindezeket ábrára visszük.

Centres and Peripheries: Research Styles and Publication Patterns in ‘Top’USJournals and theirEuropean Alternatives, 1960–2010

AbstractIn view of recent literature, suggesting a growing international ascendancy ofUS‐style scholarship but also a decreasingUSdominance in journal publications,Iask two questions with regard to management and organization studies: (1) whether there has been an increasing convergence towardsUS‐style research; and (2) whether the purported decline in the relative amount ofUSpublications has been uniform across leading journals based in theUSAandEurope. In addressing these questions,Itake a historical perspective and draw upon the centre–periphery model of international scholarship, arguing that convergence or fragmentation in styles of research and variations in publication patterns have evolved through the interplay between processes of influence by the centre (i.e., theUSA) and imitative or competitive responses by the periphery. Empirically, the study spans the period 1960–2010 and is confined to ‘top’US‐based journals and their mainEuropean alternatives. The findings answer the first question with a ‘no, other than a greater tendency towards theUS‐style when educational or collaborative ties to theUSAare involved and by the recently emerging parts of the periphery’. The second question again is answered with a ‘no, the decline has been much less in “top”USjournals relative to the ones based inEurope’.

Conflicting claims in the eurozone? Austerity's myopia and the need for a European Federal Union in a post-Keynesian eurozone center–periphery model

In this paper we study the role of the eurozone’s institutional design in determining the sovereign debt crisis of the peripheral euro countries by means of a post-Keynesian euro- zone center–periphery model. Within this framework, three points are formally addressed: (1) the incomplete nature of the eurozone with respect to a fully fledged federal union has significantly contributed to generating diverging trends and conflicting claims between central and peripheral eurozone countries in the aftermath of the 2007–2008 financial meltdown; (2) center–periphery diverging trends may disappear and a systemic crisis may occur should financial turbulences deepen in big peripheral economies, possibly spreading to the center; and (3) fiscal austerity does not address the core problems of the eurozone. The creation of a European federal government, capable of implementing anti-cyclical fiscal policies through a federal budget, and of a government banker consti- tutes the most promising solution to stabilize the macroeconomic picture of peripheral countries and to tackle the crisis. The unlimited bond-buying program recently launched by the ECB is a positive albeit mild step in the right direction away from the extreme mon- etarism that has shaped eurozone institutions thus far.

Conflicting Claims in the Eurozone? Austerity's Myopic Logic and the Need for a European Federal Union in a Post-Keynesian Eurozone Center-Periphery Model

In this paper, we analyze the role of the current institutional setup of the eurozone in fostering the ongoing peripheral euro countries’ sovereign debt crisis. In line with Modern Money Theory, we stress that the lack of a federal European government running anticyclical fiscal policy, the loss of euro member-states’ monetary sovereignty, and the lack of a lender-of-last-resort central bank have significantly contributed to the generation, amplification, and protraction of the present crisis. In particular, we present a Post-Keynesian eurozone center-periphery model through which we show how, due to the incomplete nature of eurozone institutions with respect to a full-fledged federal union, diverging trends and conflicting claims have emerged between central and peripheral euro countries in the aftermath of the 2007-08 financial meltdown. We emphasize two points. (1) Diverging trends and conflicting claims among euro countries may represent decisive obstacles to the reform of the eurozone toward a complete federal entity. However, they may prove to be self-defeating in the long run should financial turbulences seriously deepen in large peripheral countries. (2) Austerity packages alone do not address the core problems of the eurozone. These packages would make sense only if they were included in a much wider reform agenda whose final purpose was the creation of a government banker and a federal European government that could run expansionary fiscal stances. In this sense, the unlimited bond-buying program recently launched by the European Central Bank is interpreted as a positive, albeit mild step in the right direction out of the extreme monetarism that has thus far shaped eurozone institutions.

The globalization of social sciences? Evidence from a quantitative analysis of 30 years of production, collaboration and citations in the social sciences (1980–2009)

This article addresses the issue of internationalization of social sciences by studying the evolution of production (of academic articles), collaboration and citations patterns among main world regions over the period 1980–2009 using the SSCI. The results confirm the centre–periphery model and indicate that the centrality of the two major regions that are North America and Europe is largely unchallenged, Europe having become more important and despite the growing development of Asian social sciences. The authors’ quantitative approach shows that the growing production in the social sciences but also the rise of international collaborations between regions have not led to a more homogeneous circulation of the knowledge produced by different regions, or to a substantial increase in the visibility of the contributions produced by peripheral regions. Social scientists from peripheral regions, while producing more papers in the core journals compiled by the SSCI, have a stronger tendency to cite journals from the two central regions, thus losing at least partially their more locally embedded references, and to collaborate more with western social scientists. In other words, the dynamic of internationalization of social science research may also lead to a phagocytosis of the periphery into the two major centers, which brings with it the danger of losing interest in the local objects specific to those peripheral regions.

Core–Periphery Relations in the European Union and the Role of Central Places in Europe with a Focus on Regional Policy in Britain and Germany

Core–periphery analysis is vital to an understanding of the European Union (EU) and regional development. The European Economic Community (EEC), which would eventually become the EU, was formed in 1957 in order to promote progressive economic integration. Recognizing that there were depressed regions within both peripheral and core nation-states, the EC adopted a programme with the goal of bringing those regions into convergence. Its programme is essentially a liberal centre–periphery model similar to the one proposed by Friedman. Many of the nation-states within the EC also have their own regional policies and programmes regarding intervention within their own spatial boundaries. To present an approach for comparison this article will focus on two examples of regional policy: Britain's attitude toward regional development in the North and the German programme for integrating East Germany.

Reconciliation as a Model of Mission

CHANGING WORLD, CHANGING MISSION As we stand at the end of a century and of a millennium, the surge of events sweeping over us has become nearly more than we can comprehend. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, who did not think that a new age of hope and dignity would not soon be upon us? Confident proclamations of a “new world order” and even the “end of history” were sounded. Futurologists like Alvin Toffler and John Naisbitt set forth visions of technological Gardens of Eden in which humanity would flourish and prosper. The dialectics of history seemed indeed to many to be in a penultimate phase, stretching toward a grand synthesis. But history in fact seldom proceeds so elegantly as history in theory. A global capitalist order has quickly succeeded the bipolar capitalistsocialist conflict that marked most of this century. It has, within a few years, reconfigured the economic map of the world. While enriching many, and creating new centers of wealth for the first time, it has also pushed the very poorest into even greater misery. The old economic system, which had inherited the center-periphery model of capital flow and production from the age of empire, was replaced with a polycentric model that distinguishes between those who are inside and part of the process from those who are excluded and forgotten. This new global economic system, a form of market capitalism, has carried with it a layer of homogenized hyperculture that has settled upon the many cultures where it now operates. The signifiers of this hyperculture are items of consumption: clothing, food, and entertainment. The global reach of this form of market capitalism is reinforced by a networked communication system that shrinks time and space; a single community of science and medicine and—increasingly—education. The grand uniformities of a globalized world are not the entire story, however. Precisely because of the polycentric character of this network—with its promise that new centers may begin anywhere—its

The gadzingo: towards a Karanga expansion matrix in 18th- and 19th-century southern Zimbabwe

The territorial boundaries of Zimbabwe's pre-colonial people have remained elusive to successive generations of political administrators and scholars alike. The lack of appreciation of the material, physical and symbolic attributes informing local principles of territoriality has condemned any analysis of these African boundaries to exercises in futility. This paper discusses the explicit details of a formula used to define these concepts amongst the Karanga of southern Zimbabwe in a specific time context that gave rise to a political culture based on an elaboration of established centre–periphery models. The gadzingo was not only a formula of expansion and fragmentation from central cores, but also a cohesive element facilitating the existence of discrete political entities that can be positively and physically identified in the historical record.

A Geografia da indústria de lanifícios na União Europeia

THE GEOGRAPHY OF WOOL TEXTILES IN THE EU - In the wool textiles, unlike cotton, the competition comes mainly from other industrialised countries. The textile specificity, normally produced in small quantities, incorporating design and frequently adapted to fashion, prevents mass consumption. On the other hand the need of qualified and skilled workforce prevents the relocation to countries that can only offer low wages. Thus the EU maintains its world leading position as wool textile producer, the dominant role belonging to Italy, Germany and France. Another important feature is specialisation of these countries in a specific segment of the wool "filière". In the last years the flows of wool products among the EU countries has been growing and theystill trade mostly among them. Consequentely, the productive space has become more cohesive with a simultaneous reinforcement of the centre-periphery model.

Consuming digital technologies and making home

Recognizing digital technology's dislocating impact on home, this paper focuses on an underrepresented consumer, the female head-of-household. This interpretive research study of army men's wives elucidates three issues: the digital home's structure, technology's roles, and women's technology consumption. First, the study introduces the center–periphery model of home. Second, the results go beyond technology's tool role to building a support system. Finally, this study sheds light on the neglected area of women's play with digital technology.

Del distrito industrial al distrito rural: implicaciones teóricas para el desarrollo territorial

As opposed to the traditional Marshallian Industrial District, the Rural District becomes a new concept for territorial development thanks to the qualitative changes of population occurring since 1970 in developed countries and since 1980 in Spain and Castilla-La Mancha. The urban areas are decreasing in importance and the urban hierarchy and center-periphery relations evolved into less hierarchic and multipolar relations. Rural-rural movements occurred in rural environments, from minor cores to region cores and/or higher populated cores as a reproduction of a center-periphery model at rural territorial level.

Территориальные различия инновационного развития Швеции, Финляндии и Северо-Западного федерального округа РФ

This article considers the innovative component of the economies of Sweden, Finland, and the Norethwestern federal district (NWFD) of the Russian Federation. The authors present the results of a comparative analysis of research and technological potential of the regions and their administrative-territorial units in terms of innovative activity development. For the first time, the index of integral assessment of research and technological potential of the NWFD has been calculated in comparison to Sweden and Finland. The NWFD is proved to lag behind Sweden and Finland in terms of innovative development indices; however, the NWFD shows an increase in such indices in catches up in terms of individual indices (mobile communication density and Internet access availability). The authors offer sketch maps showing similarities in the character of territorial differentiation of innovative processes in the NEFD, Sweden, and Finland (which corresponds to the centre-periphery model).

Hoe literair internationalisme organiseren? - De ‘vervlochten’ geschiedenis van de Belgische PEN-club (1922-1931)

Hoe literair internationalisme organiseren? - De ‘vervlochten’ geschiedenis van de Belgische PEN-club (1922-1931)

Análisis de la convergencia en productividad agraria en las regiones europeas

In this paper, we intend to analyze the regional convergence of the agricultural sector in Europe. More specifically, we want to show the relevance of the agricultural sector in explaining territorial inequalities within the European Union. For that purpose, we will analyze the evolution of inequality and convergence in European agriculture by using data on Gross Value Added per employee in the period spanning from 1985 to 1997. Empirical results provide evidence of the existence of absolute convergence among regional agricultural sectors. However, we have found empirical evidence of the existence of several stationary states due to the specific peculiarities of each economy. This result can be interpreted in terms of the existence of convergence clubs and center-periphery models. Moreover, we show that the CAP is a relevant variable in explaining convergence through the protection of Mediterranean and Continental products. We have found that physical capital and infrastructure, as well as accumulation of capital, are the primary sources of convergence. This result is compatible with a neoclassical model in which convergence is due to decreasing returns of physical capital, whilst also showing the importance of the territorial dimension of public investment.

Inequalities and crossings: Literacy and the spaces-in-between

Debates on literacy inequalities have been powerfully advanced through Jan Blommaert's work, which demonstrates the ways in which discourse forms can lose function as they are moved into different environments. Looking through a south-north lens, Blommaert maps this feature of loss of function against world wide inequalities conceptualised through the centre-periphery models outlined in world systems theory. This paper presents work that I have done over a number of years on the concept of recontextualisation, examining at a micro-level (rather than a transnational level) examples of everyday print and digital texts which people produce and interpret as part of processes in workplaces and development projects in New Zealand and South Africa. The research then explores what happens to the fit between form and function when these particular texts are projected across contexts in the sequences of events necessary to ‘make things happen’. I explore the implications of this shift in terms of the unit of analysis, questioning how the concepts of literacy events and practices, so central to the New Literacy Studies (NLS), can account for such shifting. I identify the resources that actors have access to and draw on in each event in these sequences, and in their ability to project beyond the local, looking more closely at the materiality of literacy. As people and/or their texts are recontextualised as part of such meaning-making trajectories, time and space become important dimensions of analysis: I explore the levels at which time and space can be analysed in these crossings, treating these levels as forms of scaling. The multi-sited, micro-ethnographic work involved in tracing these trajectories shows that function can be lost, but it can also be sustained and/or gained. The paper suggests that a shift is needed from the focus (evident in much research and teaching in language and literacy studies) on the production and interpretation of meanings within contexts towards a focus on the projection of meanings across contexts. This shift of focus can contribute to new understandings of the placedness of resources for meaning making, the notion of capabilities and the understanding of literacy inequalities.

Трансформация Мира: История xix Века. Главы из Книги

Трансформация Мира: История xix Века. Главы из Книги