The Rescaling of the Chinese State and Sino-North Korean Relations: Beyond State-Centrism

While Beijing has repeatedly signed up to multilateral sanctions against North Korea, it is widely regarded as having failed to enforce them. Indeed, China’s deepening economic engagement with the country has led observers to debate the causes of this seemingly duplicitous approach. Constructivist and realist approaches have relied on state-centric frameworks that serve to reduce Sino-North Korean relations to the high politics of Beijing-Pyongyang diplomacy in the context of broader geopolitical dynamics. This article argues that such approaches pay insufficient attention to the profound rescaling of the Chinese state in recent years and the implications this process has for bilateral relations. This article sheds light on how Sino-North Korean relations are being driven by actors at multiple scales and by a multitude of objectives as a result of decentralisation and marketisation alongside increasing geographical unevenness within China and new challenges to continued capital accumulation. North Korea has come to play an increasingly important role in efforts to facilitate economic recovery in the northeastern border regions through serving as spatial fix for Chinese manufacturing capital. These new cross-border flows of capital and labour suggest an emerging pattern of Sino-North Korean relations that is by no means static but in considerable flux.     

Understanding the Relationship Between Relative Group Size and Hate Crime Rates: Linking Methods with Concepts

Abstract

In recent studies, Hipp et al. caution that the selection of the appropriate denominator in computing the rate of intra- and inter-group interactions is consequential for key findings. The present study builds on this work and examines whether adjusting for the structural opportunities for any type of interaction affects the observed relationship between hate crime rates and minority group size. We go beyond prior research by computing distinctive measures of anti-Black hate crime rates across US counties circa 2000. Our findings offer support for the power-differential hypothesis, revealing a negative effect of minority population size on crime motivated by bias. These results also underline the importance of the procedure developed by Hipp et al., showing that that the selection of the “baseline” for the computation of hate crime rates is critical for understanding the relationship between minority group size and crime motivated by bias.     

Economic Development,Change of Age Distribution,and Stream Analogy of Homicide and Suicide: A Cross-National Assessment

The current study tests the stream analogy of lethal violence, proposed by Unnithan et al. on a large sample of 124 nations. Spatial econometric regression models confirm that economic development decreases homicide rate and increases suicide–homicide ratio (SHR). The SHR developed by Unnithan et al. accounts for the impact of economic development better than original measure of suicide rate. The most important finding of the current investigation is that the increase in the population size of the elderly, consequent to economic development, is partially responsible for elevated suicide rates and SHRs.     

How Does Globalisation Affect Regional Inequality within A Developing Country? Evidence from China

Developing countries are increasingly concerned about effects of globalisation on regional inequality. This paper develops an empirical method for decomposing the contributions of two major driving forces of globalisation, foreign trade and foreign direct investment (FDI), on regional inequality and applies it to China. Even after controlling for many other factors, globalisation is still found to be an important factor contributing to the widening regional inequality. The paper ends by investigating the role of factor market segmentations in aggravating the distributional effect of changing regional comparative advantages in the process of globalisation.     

Sexual offenders’ treatment experience: a qualitative and quantitative investigation

Abstract

This research investigates the where and when of sexual assaults to determine what types of sexual crimes are committed at different time and place classifications. Exhaustive CHAID (chi-squared automatic interaction detection) analyses are conducted, examining factors associated with crimes that were committed indoors or outdoors, in private or public places, during the day or at night, and during the week or on the weekend. These methods are applied to a sample of 361 sexual crime events committed by 72 serial sex offenders. The results are strikingly different dependent on which spatial or temporal aspect of the crime is examined, which implies the complexity of sexual crime events and their situational components. This research brings to light possible policy implications with respect to situational crime prevention.     

Attitudes Toward “Fracking”: Perceived and Actual Geographic Proximity

Prior surveys have sought to gauge American public opinion toward shale gas development. Research on environmental hazards has produced conflicting findings related to the role of proximity in predicting attitudes. This study analyzes how perceived and actual proximity to active shale gas development in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas predicts individual preferences for moratoria. We implement a conditionally parametric probit, which accounts for geographic variation in coefficient values. Our results suggest that attitudes toward the potential benefits and risks associated with shale gas development play a larger and more consistent role in predicting preference for moratoria than proximity or other sociodemographic factors. Our methodology allows for inferences related to the extent of geographic variation in coefficient values. Our results indicate that the role of proximity in predicting preference for moratoria differs based on whether a respondent resides in an urban or rural area or within a shale play.     

Putting Equality in Place: The Normative Foundations of Geographic Equality of Opportunity

This article explores the normative principles underlying the geography of opportunity perspective and provides a justification for equalizing the geographic dimensions of economic opportunity. The article proposes a conception of geographic equality of opportunity (GEO) that provides an account of: (a) why geographic equality matters; (b) why opportunities are the appropriate currency of geographic equality; and (c) how the geographic distribution of resources and residential mobility relate to equality of opportunity. GEO requires that certain geographic resources be spatially uniform or equally accessible, and that any differences in economic outcomes be traceable to autonomous choices and not morally arbitrary conditions such as one’s race or birth location.     

Making space: an exchange about women and the performance of free noise

This article considers the spatial politics of contemporary performance spaces constructed through DIY, improvised noise scenes. Noise (as something performed) is often categorized as “experimental,” “free,” or “avant garde.” It carries associations of emancipation, eschewing as it does conventional musical training, and the constraints of formal compositional and linguistic expression. Unfolding as a debate between the two authors, this article reflects on the contributions post-structural feminist theory brings to an understanding of where and how women practitioners negotiate noise-performance spaces. By considering noise as a conceptual object as well as noise as sonic performance, and by reflecting on debates around radical democracy, the authors debate the issue of female-only performance spaces and their implications on what we can express and how we might be understood. This contribution seeks to initiate further debate on the inherent complexities of how women create and negotiate spaces of noise performance in the face of normative assumptions and associations that have simplified the debate – for example, that the loud, discordant, and arrhythmic is obnoxious, dangerous, and historically a masculine domain.     

空间正义视角下的邻避设施选址影响因素研究——基于24个案例的多值集定性比较分析

我国对邻避设施选址冲突的研究,主要聚焦公民权利、邻避过程、风险认知、补偿机制等某类因素探讨,基于空间正义视角的设施选址影响因素组合研究比较匮乏.从空间正义理论中提炼条件变量,运用多值集定性比较分析方法,对24个邻避设施选址案例开展研究发现,单因素变量均不足以单独促成邻避设施选址的公众态度;补偿机制并非在所有类型的邻避空...     

Interrogating sub-Saharan Africa's high economic growth rate and low poverty reduction rate: A poverty paradox?

Sub-Saharan Africa's (SSA) high economic growth coincides with an increase in the level of poverty. In a panel of 40 SSA countries over a 30-year period, while accounting for the potential spillover effect of poverty in the region. The study found that economic growth recorded over the years has not translated to poverty reduction, particularly, in resource-rich economies of SSA. The result also shows that income inequality worsens the effect of economic growth on poverty and that the poverty-reducing effectiveness of growth varies considerably across sectors, across space, and over time. The research findings suggest that governments across the region, particularly, in oil-exporting countries in SSA must diversify the economy away from oil (toward the service sector) to reduce poverty in the region.