Local Frontier Research Articles

Social Theater in the Crisis Time in Ukraine: A Sociological Perspective (on the Basis of Data from Kharkiv)

A variety of interactive theater techniques is widely used in work with marginalized groups, in social work, social pedagogy, and psychotherapy. The crisis in Ukraine, spawned by the abuse of power that led to the Euromaidan protests, the annexation of the Crimea, and military operations in Donbas, contributed to the growing popularity of social theater as a form of social activism. Social theater is characterized by the direct connection between a creative product and real-life events, the involvement of amateur performers, creation of plays based on the testimonies of real people, encouragement of the audience participation in the performance, financial independence, and the nonprofit status. Social theater is conceptualized through the distinction with traditional theater and identified with documentary drama. Unlike political theater, which focuses on criticizing the political system, social theater focuses on social contradictions and inequalities. This also distinguishes social theater from art therapy, where an individual is the object of influence. In sociology social theater is viewed from the perspective of social transformations. To analyze such processes of social transformation at the micro level, the article uses the concepts of emancipation and empowerment. The empirical basis of the article consists of interviews with participants of the forum theater and playback theater, conducted in Kharkiv in 2018. Kharkiv’s borders with both the Russian Federation and the territories that are not controlled by the Ukrainian government make it unique compared to other Ukrainian cities where social theater groups operate. In 2014 Kharkiv managed to avoid the fate of Donetsk and Luhans’k, which were occupied by separatists. In contrast to the complex structure of the local frontier identity, Kharkiv authorities traditionally attempt to impose strict control on public space, suppressing alternative views. The data presented in this article addresses the following questions: what topics performances of social theater in Kharkiv covered during the period under study, how individual transformations of participants take place in the emancipatory space of social theater, and how the distinctive features of social theater turn it into a place of empowerment. Article in English

Культурная память населения Липецкой области в условиях миграционных вызовов: мемориальный конфликт или мнемоническая адаптация?

В статье предпринимается попытка проанализировать конфликтогенный потенциал культурной памяти мигрантов и принимающего сообщества на территории Липецкой области в условиях интенсификации миграционных потоков и появления новых локальных фронтирных зон. Анализ опирается на социологическое исследование, проведённое среди мигрантов и «коренного» населения Липецкой области в 2017-2018 годах. Рассмотрение взаимодействий культурной памяти мигрантов и принимающего общества происходит через использование теоретических концептов «культурной диффузии» (и выделения нескольких её аспектов – когнитивного, языкового, ценностного и поведенческого) и «мнемонической адаптации», обоснованных в ходе реализации проекта «Культурная память России в ситуации глобальных миграционных вызовов: конфликты репрезентаций, риски забвения, стратегии трансформации».
 В ходе исследования выявлены противоречивые тенденции в миграционной ситуации в Липецкой области; тем не менее, в настоящее время и в долгосрочной перспективе культурная память обладает высоким конфликгогенным потенциалом. В когнитивном аспекте выявлен довольно высокий уровень этноцентризма как среди мигрантов, так и среди принимающего общества, что является значимым препятствием для мнемонической адаптации. Однако в языковом, ценностном и поведенческом аспектах выявлена высокая степень готовности к культурной диффузии. В целом, представители мигрантов демонстрируют большую открытость к новому культурному опыту, чем коренные липчане.

The Contribution of Educated Workers to Firms’ Efficiency Gains: The Key Role of Proximity to the ‘Local’ Frontier

Vandenbussche et al. (J Econ Growth 11(2):97–127, 2006) and Aghion et al. (in: Romer, Wolfers (eds) Brookings papers on economic activity: conference draft, Brookings, Washington, 2009) show that when economies operate close to the technological frontier, their ability to generate efficiency gains rests on the contribution of workers with advanced forms of education (i.e. tertiary). The contribution of this empirical paper is to revisit and improve the analysis of that assumption, in the context of firms located in advanced economics, assuming that what holds for OECD countries or US states should also be observed also at a more disaggregated level. To that end, we analyse a rich panel of Belgian firm-level data, covering the 2008–14 period. In the first step, we estimate each firm’s proximity to frontier using stochastic frontier methods. Step 2 consists in regressing each firm’s efficiency growth rate on (1) the share of workers by education attainment (2) its (initial) distance/proximity to the frontier and (3) (the main variable of interest) the interaction between (1) and (2), whose sign provides a direct test of the Vandenbussche/Aghion assumption. The main result of the paper supports the idea that the closer the firms are to what amounts to a local frontier; the more educated workers—in particular those with a master’s degree—matter for efficiency gains. The paper also shows that many of them are currently employed in firms that are distant from the efficiency frontier. Reallocating them would have a positive impact on overall efficiency.

What Is Literary Anthropology?Novel Approaches to Anthropology: Contributions to Literary Anthropology. By Marilyn Cohen, ed. New York: Lexington Books, 2013.

ways that assumptions about who the Ipili are, how they live and organize their social networks, and who, in different contexts, might be a legitimate personation of the leviathan. The intricacies of Ipili kinship, residence, intermarriage, and claims of descent defy bureaucratic attempts to limit or restrict workable definitions that fit neatly into contractual relations between a mining corporation and a group of “landowners.” Indeed, such are the complexities that “the Porgera case is one in which the ambiguity of the local resource frontier has created a discursive space for descent claims without creating a hegemonic account of what those descent groups are or how they operate” (115). In some respects, the Ipili appear more like another mythical monster—the many-headed hydra. Throughout the book, Golub uses the notion of feasibility as a way of exploring the possibilities and practicalities of the different agents and their projects in Porgera. In the final chapters he shifts his analysis of the problem of feasible identity to the national level, scrutinizing the myths of “the Melanesia Way,” the idealized rural villager, and the “grassroots” communities who live “traditionally.” Here the full force of his argument is expressed, for just as the Ipili pursue dreams of modernity and the transformation of their villagers into modern towns with urban-style housing and amenities, so too do other rural Papua New Guineans who hope that a gold mine might be established on their land. Environmental destruction, social discord, widespread corruption, and new inequalities have been the legacies of every mining project in Papua New Guinea to date. Mining companies don’t want to abandon mines so long as the shareholders are benefiting from the profits; more surprisingly, neither do local people want mines to close. They continue to hope that they will find some feasible way of gaining more of the spoils. Golub pronounces the Porgera experiment a failure and places his hope for the valley in the post-mine era. But after decades of waste dumping in the river, vast areas of land rendered unsuitable for farming, and thousands of migrants now settled in the valley, the prospects seem grim.

Liquor and Opium

This paper explores legal and illegal forms of trade along the China–Russia border in the Russian Far East in the early twentieth century as a case-study for understanding the relation between the state, regional economies and consumption desires.1 Mass consumption of illegally trafficked liquor and opium by frontier populations put China and Russia border officials into a difficult situation: Chinese authorities blamed the Russians for making opium-poppy planting possible on the Russian side; Russian officials in turn accused the Chinese authorities of provoking mass alcoholism and opium addiction among Russian settlers, which was viewed as a serious threat to Russia’s colonising project in the Far East. The article then shifts attention to the legal aspects of the ‘Liquor and Opium’ conflict resolution, not only on the local level but also involving central authorities. It also discusses the socio-economic context of such illegal forms of frontier economy and the symbiotic activity of border smugglers. Historical ethnography suggests that, despite the various prohibitions and official resolutions imposed, the authorities of both sides were aware of the fact that liquor and opium, which were objects of mass desire for Russians and Chinese respectively, had already made local border economies totally dependent on these products and interdependent on one another. Thus, paradoxically, strict adherence to the mutual official agreements would undermine local frontier economies.

Chronicles of the Cumberland Settlements, 1779-1796 by Paul Clements (review)

Reviewed by: Chronicles of the Cumberland Settlements, 1779-1796 by Paul Clements Kathryn E. Holland Braund Chronicles of the Cumberland Settlements, 1779-1796. By Paul Clements with maps by George M. Clements. Nashville, TN: Clearview Press, 2012. Xvi, 785 pp. $70.00. Nashville writer Paul Clements’ interest in local history began when, as a boy, he found an arrowhead in his driveway. As an adult, he set out to discover exactly what had happened in his own neighborhood and to figure out the precise places where they had taken place. His neck of the [End Page 194] woods is the Cumberland River basin, now known as Middle Tennessee, centered on Nashville. In the late eighteenth century, the area was a contested crossroads, with Creeks, Chickasaws, and Cherokees laying claim to region. It did not take long for settlers to move it, staking a claim to the rich land all the while ignoring Indian claims and setting off a cold war with those whose territory had been invaded. Focusing on what he terms a “cultural conflict,” Clements is especially interested in the “local frontier history” of the area—or rather, the attacks by various Indian tribes on the interlopers, who are his heroes. (xiii) Clements is untroubled by scholarly distinctions regarding frontiers, borderlands, and “middle grounds,” nor does he attempt to explain the more complex issues underlying native land claims and conflicts with Europeans. Rather than attempt a narrative account, Clements has arranged extracts from hundreds of manuscripts, published primary sources, and newspapers to “piece together a highly detailed historical mosaic of frontier times, using, as much as possible, the words of individuals who witnesses those times.” (xiv) He provides brief contextual introductions to the various parts, which are arranged by topic (“The Creeks and the English,” “The French and Indian War,”) and then by date, annually from 1780-1796, thereby chronicling the activities of such early Tennessee settlers as James Robertson and John Donelson. Alabama readers will be interested in material on the Creek Indians, especially those relating to Alexander McGillivray and the 1790 Treaty of New York, as well as details of conflicts with settlers in the Cumberland region. Like all editors, the author acknowledges “subjectivity” (xiv) in his selection of material. His selection hails mainly from fairly accessible works as well as some more difficult to locate sources for the average reader, including early newspaper reports, archival sources, and Lyman Draper’s manuscript collection. His emphasis on settler fortitude and bravery in the face of Indian attacks obscures the more complicated story he might have told. Likewise, he admits that he gives virtually no attention to the story of enslaved and free African Americans in the massive book. As such, those interesting in thrilling tales of raids and reprisals might gain something from lifting the heavy tome, but it presents an over-simplified view of conflict throughout the region as well as obscuring the complexity of the region’s economic and political development. But for those who seek assessable primary material, the book provides an entry in the region’s history. Unfortunately, the author did not adhere to modern documentary editing practices. He admits to “considerable editing, mostly in the form of resequencing and deletions—for reasons of clarity and focus.” (xiv) He suggests that readers consult the originals in order to “evaluate. . .[and] [End Page 195] determine what editing decisions were made.” It is possible for readers to eventually figure out where most of the edited pieces are located by unnumbered notes at the end of the volume. Clements engaged in an even more egregious practice in that he changed third person accounts, often written years after an event, into first person accounts, “changing ‘he’ or ‘they’ to ‘I’ or ‘we’” in complete violation of every standard of modern documentary editing and thereby presenting derivative material as if it were a first-person account. (xiv) Readers who miss this disclaimer in the introduction will certainly be mislead into thinking these are primary accounts unless they consult the unnumbered notes, where this is acknowledged. The book’s main redeeming feature is the author’s interest in fixing the locations of historic settlements and trails. The book contains a...

A copula‐based approach to the simultaneous estimation of group and meta‐frontiers by constrained maximum likelihood

Existing approaches to the meta‐frontier estimation consist of two stages where the estimates of the local frontier parameters obtained in the first step are used to estimate meta‐frontier parameters by means of a linear or quadratic minimisation procedure in the second. Since it was shown by Schmidt (Review of Economics and Statistics 58: 238) that the second step is equivalent to constrained maximisation of a likelihood function, we extend this idea and offer a copula‐based approach to the estimation of the parameters of both meta‐ and group frontiers in a one‐step setting. In this way, we ensure a single data‐generating mechanism for the estimated parameters, expand the set of potential meta‐frontiers and account for the fact that shocks to the individual production units may be correlated with shocks to the local technological environment as a whole. We apply our estimation methodology to a data set on the world agriculture and find that the deviations from the group frontiers are positively correlated with deviations from the meta‐frontier, which is a conclusion that is impossible to reach without accounting for stochastic dependence between the two deviation types represented by a copula.

Unequal benefits from internationalisation: regional technology differences in China

This paper highlights the consequences of internationalisation for innovation and technological capacities in China. By using a disaggregated dataset from the 31 provinces (1997–2007) and by constructing a local Chinese production frontier as a benchmark, the paper decomposes the labour productivity growth into three components: technological change, efficiency change and capital deepening. Simple regression analysis is applied to further investigate technology differences at the provincial level. In particular it is tested whether initially lagging Chinese provinces tend to grow faster than the provinces that were initially close to the research and production frontier. The results show that increases in technology resulted in a divergence in labour productivity, while increased capital deepening resulted in convergence in labour productivity across the Chinese provinces. The results also suggest that throughout 20 years the main sources for labour productivity growth has been capital deepening while technological progress and efficiency changes played a much less influential role for explaining differences at the provincial level.

LAS FRONTERAS EN UN CONTEXTO DE CAMBIOS: LA VIDA COTIDIANA EN CIUDADES GEMELAS-RIVERA (URUGUAY) Y SANT’ANA DO LIVRAMENTO (BRASIL)

The new ways of integration and the globalization process, represent a theoretic mark for a frontier space analysis in a context of changes as they were happening since the end of the XX century. The rescue of the local values could be an alternative, to introduce us into a global local dialectical evaluations from the community identity. Within this conception, we pretend to analyze the local frontier area or spaces (usually bi or even tri nationalities), with historical identities that link hybrid cultures, whose characteristics many times ,usually have not been recognized by any nation involved. Rivera-Livramento, two populations in a border mark (therefore twins cities), they aren’t an exception international case of frontiers, even for latinamerican situations. However there exist quite different realities, some times they are little populations, or marked by conflictive situations, or limited neighborhood links, or even because an ancestry and stronger influence of one city upon other. The research of the Uruguay and Brazil frontier, is spaciously and demographically comparable, although it belongs to different potentials political units. The real frontier region integration “in fact” has generated a particular borderer space, with similar common codes. This frontier space, of historical and deep relationships, of people making and living the present, and represent a history, goes beyond the limitations politically imposed, through own decisions. The every day practices break the abstract conceptions of the State, the Nation, the national culture, to make reappear the people, their duty and their every day and diary life. The language as a identity and/or a discrimination symbol. The national identity reinforcement is considered altogether, without looking the“others “ like strangers, although is true that exist some myths and stereotypes in that relation with the “ other”. The present work makes the people every day live, the realizations in that common two country space, the parents relationship dimension, solidarity, the exchanges, the perception of this people about the border space and the integrations within different scales.

Sustainable Development in Hong Kong: a Review of Policy, Practices in Building Design and Construction

Population wise, Hong Kong has too many people on too small a physical entity—1,075 square kilometers divided by as many as 240 no. Islands. Natural resources-wise, Hong Kong has too little to offer, as almost all its agricultural lands have been converted into building land, leaving no alternative but to import drinking water and daily supplies from across the Hong Kong-Mainland border on a daily basis. Insatiable demands for housing due to an ever-increasing population growth left the government with little options but to embark on an unprecedented urban form of hyper-density. In 1997, the Hong Kong government commissioned a study known as Sustainable Development for the 21st Century in Hong Kong (SUSDEV 21). The Study jump-started the city's participation in a worldwide endeavor to embrace sustainable development. The three years expedition guided the city through a world tour and studies on sustainable development from an international frontier, regional frontier, to a local frontier, and ended with a definition of sustainable development for Hong Kong, as well as a policy-making mechanism to achieve sustainability. Institutional efforts to promote sustainability has been complimented by efforts from professionals in the construction and building sector in an equally thorough and holistic manner, which include law-enforcers, developers, architects and builders. This paper presents a critical review and insight into recent works by each of the players mentioned in the text.

NMR of Electrocatalysts

It is now possible to investigate in detail metal/liquid interfaces by solid-state NMR under external potentiostatic control, in the presence of an electrolyte, by using the electrochemical NMR (EC NMR) technique. This permits the determination of the electronic properties of electrodes and of adsorbates as well as the study of the surface diffusion of adsorbates. The method also provides useful information on the dispersion of platinum fuel cell catalysts, on electrochemically generated sintering effects, and on the electronic effects caused by the presence of different surface adatoms. In general, EC NMR provides information on the following: (1) metal surface Ef LDOS, the chemical significance of which is that these describe the local frontier orbitals of the metal surface; (2) adsorbate structure/bonding details, such as 5σ and 2π* Ef LDOS, metal-surface bonding to atoms in the adsorbate, and even bond lengths; (3) rates and activation energies for surface diffusion; and (4) electrode potential effects on the electronic properties of the electrochemical interface, as seen by both metal and ligand NMR. We review here, therefore, the current status of the EC NMR technique, together with its applications to investigating the metal/electrolyte interface.

Colonial Era Paintings in the Rock Art of the South-Western Cape: Some Preliminary Observations

Rock paintings which include images of colonial material culture occur in the south-western Cape as elsewhere in southern Africa. Previous studies ofthe south-western Cape material have been descriptive and the imagery treated as colonial only in a very general sense. This paper attempts to situate colonial era rock art of the south-western Cape within a broad chronological framework of local rock painting and colonial history. It is argued that, unlike colo? nial era painting in some ofthe eastern parts ofthe country, the south-western Cape images were produced fairly late in the history ofthe local colonial frontier. A number of pieces of evidence lead us to infer non-literal levels of meaning for these paintings. Important precolonial elements are present and the paintings are thus presumed not to be merely de? scriptive of events that passed in the region. A substantial understanding of these aspects of the paintings, however, awaits more detailed study.