The great transition: The dynamics of market transitions and the case of Russia, 1991–1995

Theory and Society -     

The ‘Dutch’ in Colchester: The economic influence of an immigrant community in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries

In this paper the immigration of ‘Dutchmen’ into England is firstly placed within the context of immigration into this country in general, with particular reference to the movement of people in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries. The growth of the community in Colchester is described briefly, as is the economy and standing of the town itself, with particular reference to the decline of its staple textile manufacture in the sixteenth century. The position of the Dutch in the town, and the transformation and revival of cloth production which resulted from their arrival, are examined, as are both popular and official attitudes towards them. Finally, an attempt is made to assess the extent of the Dutch contribution to the economic and social well‐being of the town by an examination of developments within the English textile industry in general in this period.     

The Joy of Jiaozi Once the Stuff of Holidays, Stuffed Dumplings Now Everyday Fare

IN the northern part of China, people often say: "Dumplings are the best to eat." Indeed, because of its cold, arid climate, people spend the winters eating vegetables stored away in the fall. Jiaozi——Chinese dumplings——have become a specialty in the north. Dumplings are made by wrapping a dough around meat and vegetables. In the past, people ate dumplings only on festive occasions; now they have become common fare in the home, and several brands of frozen dumplings are available in stores. However, it is still the custom in     

Young,anchored and free? Examining the dynamics of early housing pathways in Australia

Young people are remaining in the parental home for longer, and returning there more often, before attaining residential independence. In Australia, these patterns have prompted concerns about a ‘boomerang generation’ whose housing aspirations and decisions have either been directly questioned, or viewed as symptomatic of broader affordability issues. Employing a longitudinal perspective, we argue that early residential pathways reflect a mix of stable and dynamic influences involving individuals, their families, and their broader relationships. Using data from a large cohort (n = 2082) of young Australians participating in the ‘Our Lives’ research project, we examine housing pathway formation between the ages of 12/13 and 21/22. Events such as parental union dissolution or partnership formation were found to encourage home leaving, whilst being employed at a younger age and having grown up rurally predicted both leaving and remaining out of home. Close, supportive relationships with family and friends served to ‘anchor’ respondents at home for longer, and parental socioeconomic resources enabled respondents to leave home and return if needed. The findings suggest that early residential independence reflects various factors, not all of which are in young people’s control, and some of which may hinder the longer term sustainability of their living arrangements.     

Rethinking the changing structures of rural local government – State power,rural politics and local political strategies?

There is a notable absence in contemporary rural studies – of both a theoretical and empirical nature – concerning the changing nature of rural local government. Despite the scale and significance of successive rounds of local government reorganisation in the UK, very little has been written on this topic from a rural perspective. Instead research on local political change has tended to concentrate on local governance and local partnerships – on the extra-governmental aspects of the governance system – rather than on local government itself. In contrast, this paper draws upon strategic-relational state theory to explore the changing structures and institutions of rural local government, and analyse how these can be related to the changing state strategies of those groups which are politically powerful in rural areas. In this respect, the paper draws on current and previous rounds of local government reorganisation to illustrate how new objects of governance, new state strategies and new hegemonic projects are emerging as a consequence of such restructuring processes.     

The Race to the Bottom of the Glass? Wine,Geography, and Globalization

The wine industry is becoming increasingly globalized as consumer demand, capital investment, and industry restructuring lead to higher volumes of trade, greater levels of multinational ownership, and the evolution of new networks of production and consumption that link the four corners of the world economy. While there are some tendencies towards increasingly homogenized and low-cost production, wine is an industry that exemplifies the complex and contradictory elements of globalization. This article outlines some key parameters of globalization drawing on empirical evidence from key cases. In particular, it focuses on the role of geography and how place and scale matter in production, marketing, and consumption. As globalization unfolds, restructuring in the wine industry is leading to the increased economic and social differentiation of rural space. The resultant geographies of place are influenced by a complex combination of local development history, national policy context, and the nature of the insertion of the given locality into global value chains for wine. As such, globalization has and will continue to produce increasingly complex and intricate geographies.

La industria del vino se ha venido globalizando cada vez más como una demanda del consumidor, inversión de capital y la restructuración de la industria da lugar a mayores volúmenes de comercio, mayores niveles de participación multinacional, y la evolución de nuevas redes de producción y consumo que unen las cuatro esquinas de la economía mundial. Mientras hay algunas tendencias hacia una producción cada vez más homogenizada y de bajo costo, el vino es una industria que ejemplifica los elementos complejos y contradictorios de la globalización. Este artículo subraya algunos parámetros claves de globalización sobre la base empírica de casos claves. Se enfoca particularmente en el rol de la geografía y cómo el lugar y la escala importan en la producción, mercadeo y consumo. A medida que la globalización evoluciona, la restructuración de la industria del vino da origen a un aumento en la diferenciación social y económica del espacio rural. Las geografías resultantes del lugar están influenciadas por una combinación compleja del desarrollo de la historia local, el contexto de la política nacional y la naturaleza de la inserción de la localidad dada, dentro de las redes del valor global para el vino. Como tal, la globalización ha producido y seguirá produciendo cada vez más complejas e intrincadas geografías.

葡萄酒产业正变得越来越全球化,消费需求、资本投入和产业结构重组都导致更高的贸易额、更扩大的跨国公司所有权以及连接世界经济各个角落的生产与消费新网络的演进。当存在日益同质化、低成本生产的一些趋势时,葡萄酒成为一种表征全球化复杂和矛盾要素的产业。本文通过引用来自关键案例的经验性证据来概括全球化的一些关键性参数。尤其是,本文关注地理扮演的角色以及地理位置和规模在生产、销售、消费中如何起作用。随着全球化的展开,葡萄酒产业的结构重组正导致乡村之间更大的经济和社会差异。其结果,一个地方的地理布局正受到当地发展的历史、国家政策背景以及特定地方纳入全球葡萄酒价值链的性质所形成复杂组合体的影响。因此,全球化已经并将继续产生更为错综复杂的地缘情况。

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More than profits? The contribution of the slave trade to the Dutch economy: assessing Fatah-Black and Van Rossum

We assess Fatah-Black and Van Rossum’s analysis of the Dutch slave trade by detailing six 1750s voyages of the Middelburg Commercial Company. The costs of transporting captives from Africa to Suriname are explored along with their relation to the Dutch economy. We also examine the implications of the concept ‘gross margin’, which is central to Fatah-Black and Van Rossum’s work. We find that, given the nature of the transport costs, the impact of the slave trade on the Dutch economy was minimal, and more generally that gross margin is not a useful measure for testing the Williams Thesis.     

Double emigration: geographical and cultural? The participation of Italian women in the German labour market

Already at the beginning of the fifties on the initiative of Italy, negotiations began between the Italian and German governments for the recruitment of migrant-workers, which ended in 1955 with a bilateral agreement between the two countries. Through this recruitment policy and because of the labour-market (Industry and Building) the Italian migration was composed prevalently of men. Female immigration happened in the setting of family reunification and less as an independent movement project. After years of stagnation of italian emigration in the eighties it may also be noted that, since the early nineties, there has been a revival of immigration to Germany. This and modernisation processes in Italy changed the gender composition of the Italian immigration flow to Germany: the distance between male and female immigration is decreasing. A peculiarity of the Italians in Germany is the low occupational participation of women in comparison with other women from EU countries. However, we could observe regional differences, which depend on the migration typologies and the dominating economic structure in the areas. The paper will analyse this different aspects (immigration-processes, migrant-typologies and labour-market participation) by female Italian migrants.     

Is the customer always right? Class,service and the production of distinction in Chinese department stores

This article argues that service interactions can serve as key sites for the recognition and performance of class distinctions in urban China. The author develops the concept of distinction work to describe service work in which a key part of the service interaction becomes the recognition of a customer’s class position. A contrast between working-class and luxury service environments in urban China demonstrates that distinction work becomes especially important when retailers compete over customers who themselves seek social distinction from their shopping experiences. This study links the study of service work and class while providing a better understanding of the evolving culture of inequality and emerging structure of entitlement in reform era China.

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Advocating rurality? The repositioning of rural local government

Since 1979 the local state in Britain has experienced a period of considerable restructuring in which the power of elected local government has been severely diminished. As a new system of local governance, characterized by self-organising networks transcending the state, private and voluntary sectors, has emerged, so elected local government has had to re-imagine its role. This paper suggests that one strategy that has been adopted has been to re-position local councils as ‘pressure groups’, lobbying external actors on behalf of local interests. Furthermore, it is argued that in rural areas the restructuring of the local state has coincided with a wider social and economic restructuring and hence an intensified contesting of rurality. As such, it is argued that rural local government has become concerned not only with advocating local interests, but with advocating particular discourses of rurality. These assertions are discussed in the context of a case study concerning strategic planning for housing development in the district of Taunton Deane in Somerset.     

The Uplands after neoliberalism? – The role of the small farm in rural sustainability

The modernist project foresaw no role for small farms, but this can no longer be regarded as axiomatic as neoliberalism enters what Peck et al. call its “zombie phase”. This paper asks what contribution small farms in the uplands can make to societies’ goals, what role they might play in the sustainability of rural communities in such regions, and how this contribution might be supported by state policies. In Scotland and in Norway these questions have recently been the subject of policy debates which appear to offer exceptions or alternatives to neoliberal universalism, and these are considered specifically in this paper. In each case support for small farms is seen as necessary to maintain ‘lights in the windows’ of remoter rural areas. Moreover, each highlights the vital role of the state in offering not only financial support but also in regulating land transfers and occupancy. It is argued that the dismantling of such regulatory powers depletes the state’s ability to manage the tensions between continuity and change which are at the heart of sustainable rural development. The paper concludes that small farms can persist and can contribute to rural sustainability in ways that have been infrequently recognised under neoliberalism.     

A Whig view of slavery,development and the world market∗

This essay offers an interpretation of an influential theory of the relation between slavery, national development, and international economics developed by the American Whig leader, H.C. Carey, over a period of years, but most fully expressed in a single text published in 1856. Although Carey was widely read at the time, his mode of opposition to slavery was unorthodox, and his political situation put him under certain rhetorical burdens. Consequently his text requires a close reading to be be understood.     

The impact of the agricultural industry on the rural economy — tracking the spatial distribution of the farm inputs and outputs

With all the uncertainty surrounding the future of the agricultural industry, it is important to gain some kind of insight into the economic impact the industry has on the rural economy, to enable the formation of the most appropriate rural policies. Using Farm Business Survey data, this study examines the spatial distribution of inputs and outputs from a sample of 52 farms in the Reading Province. The results show significant links between farms and their locality, especially for the smaller farm.     

Hidden losers? The impact of rural refugees and refugee programs on poorer hosts

Refugee relief organizations and refugee studies have refugees as their 1st concern and focus. Adverse impacts of refugees on hosts are relatively neglected. When impacts are considered, they are seen in terms of host country governments, economies, and services rather than people or different groups among host populations. In rural refugee-affected areas, the better-off and more visible hosts usually gain from the presence of refugees and from refugee programs. In contrast, the poorer among the hosts can be hidden losers. This is more so now than in the past, especially where land is scarce and labor relatively abundant. The poorer hosts can lose from competition for food, work, wages, services, and common property resources. Vulnerable hosts also lack refugees' option of sending their weaker dependents to camps and settlements. Development programs in refugee-affected areas and refugee studies will do a disservice if they neglect adverse effects of refugees on vulnerable hosts. These effects further strengthen the case for development to benefit the whole population in refugee-affected areas (author's).     

The Norm among the Exceptional? Experiences of Latino Students in Elite Institutions

This article examines Latino students’ experiences within two elite educational contexts: an elite liberal arts college and an elite law school. Drawing on combined data of 42 in‐depth interviews, we interrogate how elite institutional spaces reify and shape panethnic identities. In the face of marginalization in predominantly white, elite spaces Latino students strategically search for new community and comfort, which in turn influence how they perceive their identities, encouraging a broadening of boundaries to include both panethnic and minority alliances. By documenting the experiences of Latino students in two stages of the educational pipeline, we show how elite institutions influence identity talk lead students to cultivate a sense of shared fate with other Latino‐origin individuals and at times, people of color in general.     

The Feeble Strength of One? Interdependence, Strategic Interaction, and the Decentralization of Collective Bargaining

This paper contributes to research examining class formation processes among capitalists by analyzing the fracturing of multiemployer collective bargaining associations in the U.S. coal mining and steel industries. The paper evaluates three theories of bargaining decentralization and offers an alternative account. Analyzing both the earlier stability of multiemployer bargaining and its subsequent decline, the paper attributes decentralization to changes in relationships of interdependence and power among unionized firms. While broad processes of economic restructuring gave rise to these shifts, social processes involving conflict and negotiation determined the specific direction of institutional change.

The quality of work and the European economic crisis – the theme and the time: an introduction

The theme of the quality of work and working life has gone through ups and downs, recurrent references, at times only opportunistic, in the sociological literature. Our intention here is certainly not to go once again over the stages, both theoretical and empirical, at the international level, but above all european and italian, of this process.