Breaking Out from Lock-In

2011 ◽  
pp. 713-726
Author(s):  
Gert-Jan Hospers
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Industrial Area ◽  
Regional Innovation ◽  
Environmental Technology ◽  
Industrial Areas ◽  
Innovation Strategies ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Lock In

This chapter discusses strategies aimed at regional-economic structural change in the German Ruhrgebiet. The Ruhrgebiet used to be the largest industrial area in Western-Europe. After the crisis in the coal and steel industry the region pursued re-industrialisation policies in the 1960s and 1970s. These attempts were largely unsuccesful. Therefore, since the 1980s the involved actors gradually adopted regional innovation strategies. Thus, they were able to break out from the region’s lock-in situation. The re-orientation of the Ruhrgebiet towards innovation based on the industries’ expertise and past (e.g. environmental technology, energy and industrial tourism) is more successful than its earlier re-industrialisation attempts. Also for other old industrial areas in Europe this kind of place-based renewal might be the future.

Breaking Out from Lock-In

2011 ◽  
pp. 43-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gert-Jan Hospers
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Industrial Area ◽  
Regional Innovation ◽  
Environmental Technology ◽  
Industrial Areas ◽  
Innovation Strategies ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Lock In

This chapter discusses strategies aimed at regional-economic structural change in the German Ruhrgebiet. The Ruhrgebiet used to be the largest industrial area in Western-Europe. After the crisis in the coal and steel industry the region pursued re-industrialisation policies in the 1960s and 1970s. These attempts were largely unsuccesful. Therefore, since the 1980s the involved actors gradually adopted regional innovation strategies. Thus, they were able to break out from the region’s lock-in situation. The re-orientation of the Ruhrgebiet towards innovation based on the industries’ expertise and past (e.g. environmental technology, energy and industrial tourism) is more successful than its earlier re-industrialisation attempts. Also for other old industrial areas in Europe this kind of place-based renewal might be the future.

Breaking Out from Lock-In

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 55-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gert-Jan Hospers
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Steel Industry ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Industrial Area ◽  
Regional Innovation ◽  
Environmental Technology ◽  
Innovation Strategies ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Lock In

This chapter discusses strategies aimed at regional-economic structural change in the German Ruhrgebiet. The Ruhrgebiet used to be the largest industrial area in Western-Europe. After the crisis in the coal and steel industry the region pursued re-industrialisation policies in the 1960s and 1970s. These attempts were largely unsuccesful. Therefore, since the 1980s the involved actors gradually adopted regional innovation strategies. Thus, they were able to break out from the region’s lock-in situation. The re-orientation of the Ruhrgebiet towards innovation based on the industries’ expertise and past (e.g. environmental technology, energy and industrial tourism) is more successful than its earlier re-industrialisation attempts. Also for other old industrial areas in Europe this kind of place-based renewal might be the future.

scholarly journals Resistance to Anti-Discrimination Law in Central and Eastern Europe–a Post-Communist Legacy?

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 627-656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Havelková
Keyword(s):  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Substantive Equality ◽  
Antidiscrimination Law ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Uk

AbstractPost-communist Central and Eastern European ('CEE') legislators and judges have been resistant to equality and antidiscrimination law. This Article argues that these negative attitudes can be explained in part by the specific trajectory that EAL has taken in CEE during and after state socialism, which has differed from Western Europe. In the UK/EU, the formal guarantees of equal treatment and prohibitions of discrimination of the 1960s and 1970s were complemented by a more substantive understanding of equality in the 1990s and 2000s. This development was reversed in CEE—substantive equality, of a certain kind, preceded rather than followed formal equality and antidiscrimination guarantees.The State Socialist concern with equality was real, and yet the project was incomplete in several significant ways. It saw only socio-economic, but not socio-cultural inequalities (relating to dignity, identity or diversity). It was transformative with regards to class, but not other discrimination grounds, especially not gender. While equality was a constitutionally enshrined principle, there was an absence of any corresponding enforceable antidiscrimination right. Finally, the emphasis on the “natural” differences between the sexes meant that sex/gender discrimination was not recognized as conflicting with women's constitutional equality guarantees.

Localising the Social: The Rediscovery of Urban Poverty in Western European ‘Affluent Societies’

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 555-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTIANE REINECKE
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Social Deprivation ◽  
Urban Poverty ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Urban Problem ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractConcentrating on the production of knowledge of poverty and homelessness, this article discusses how particular spatial settings influenced the construction of social problems in the 1960s and 1970s. Exploring the practices of three kinds of knowledge producers – social scientists in academic circles, ‘practitionerscumactivists’ engaging in advocacy research and experts in governmental committees – the analysis focuses on the early stages of a rediscovery of poverty in Western Europe as it was debated in international fora as well as in West Germany and France. It shows that the way in which poverty was represented as a new challenge to Western ‘affluent societies’ was in many respects an urban story, as the ongoing housing crisis and newly defined problem areas served as major points of reference for the revived interest in social deprivation. Moreover, urban actors – locally active NGOs and municipal authorities – played a preeminent role in launching debates on the apparent paradox of poverty in affluence. With their own work often grounded in particular urban problem zones, many contemporary observers tended to spatialise poverty. For them, poverty was bound to particular places; it was an exceptional sphere that helped generate a particular behaviour that made it difficult for ‘the poor’ to rise. While a growing part of the population had access to housing of a standard previously reserved to the middle class and had become able to choose where to live, life in peripheral shantytowns or dilapidated inner cities became the ultimate signifier of a social position beyond the established class structure.

scholarly journals Re-orienting the ‘West’? The Transnational Debate on the Status of the ‘West’ in the Debates among Islamist Intellectuals and Students from the 1970s to the Present

2009 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-47
Author(s):  
Farish A. Noor
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Developmental Model ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Muslim Identity ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Status ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The 1960S

This paper will look at the process of transnational transfer of ideas, beliefs and value-systems, with a special emphasis on the transfer of Islamist ideas and ideals through the vector of student movements and organisations that were set up in Western Europe and North America as well as the rise of a new generation of Islamist intellectuals in Malaysia in the late 1960s for whom the idea of the ‘West’ was turned on its head and re-cast in negative terms. It begins by looking at how the ‘West’ was initially cast in positive terms as the ideal developmental model by the first generation of post-colonial elites in Malaysia, and how – as a result of the crisis of governance and the gradual decline in popularity of the ruling political coalition – the ‘West’ was subsequently re-cast in negative terms by the Islamists of the 1960s and 1970s who sought instead to turn Malaysia into an Islamic society from below. As a consequence of this dialectical confrontation between the ruling statist elite and the nascent Islamist opposition in Malaysia, the idea of the ‘West’ has remained as the central constitutive Other to Islam and Muslim identity, and this would suggest that the Islamist project of the1970s to the present remains locked in a mode of oppositional dialectics that nonetheless requires the presence of the ‘West’ as its constitutive Other, be it in positive or negative terms.

Making a Rural Movement: The Farmers’ Union's Answer to a Changing Rural World in Flanders, from the 1960s to the 1970s

Rural History ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-249
Author(s):  
CHANTAL BISSCHOP
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Rapid Changes ◽  
Rural World ◽  
Cultural Goals ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
North Western

AbstractRecently, there has been growing interest in the emergence of rural movements in response to rapid changes in the post war countryside. However, little attention has been paid to the reaction of the old social movements to this transformation in rural society. In this paper, I concentrate on the reaction of the Boerenbond (Farmers’ Union) to the altering Flemish countryside in the 1960s and 1970s. The transformation of the Boerenbond in 1971 into a specialised agricultural organisation and a broader rural movement countered the rapid shrinking of the farm population and the strong specialising of modern farmers. Furthermore, by attracting non-farmers, the Boerenbond maintained its support in the countryside. A farmers’ union opening up to non-farming members in a society with emerging new social movements seems progressive at first glance. But the overall prevalence of agriculture in all stages of discussions and implementation is striking. Nevertheless, the emergence of a rural movement with new socio-cultural goals within an old, corporatist and Catholic farmers’ union suggests that this is a unique case in north-western Europe.

South Asia in the Great Divergence Debate

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaveh Yazdani
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Great Divergence ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

Since the seminal publication of Kenneth Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence (2000), there has been a continuing upsurge of writings on the possible reasons behind the rise of the West from a “global perspective.” Most of these studies focus on comparisons between Western Europe and China. Yet, in recent years works on India and the great divergence have followed suit, taking up research questions that have not been as prominent since the proliferation of debates on the subcontinent’s pre-colonial potentialities for capitalist development in the 1960s and 1970s. As of now, the paucity of quantitative data complicates endeavors to compare pre-colonial India with Europe and explore the underlying reasons behind the great divergence. Case studies examining the socio-economic history of a number of South Asian regions are still needed in order to conduct systematic comparisons between both advanced and underdeveloped regions of the subcontinent and those of Europe. The existing evidence, however, suggests that some of the "core areas" of 16th- to 18th-century India had more or less comparable levels of agricultural productivity, transport facilities (during the dry season), military capabilities in terms of ground forces (e.g., Mysore and the Marathas), commercial and manufacturing capacities (especially in textile, ship, and metal production), and social mobility of merchants (e.g., in Gujarat). Moreover, Indian rulers and artisans did not shy away from adopting European know-how (e.g., in weapon and ship production) when it redounded to their advantage. On the other hand, South Asia possessed some geo-climatic disadvantages vis-à-vis Western Europe that also impeded investments in infrastructure. India seems to have had a lower degree of consumer demand and lagged behind Western Europe in a number of fields such as mechanical engineering, the level of productive forces, higher education, circulation of useful knowledge, institutional efficiency, upper-class property rights, the nascent bourgeois class consciousness, and inter-communal and proto-national identity formations.

scholarly journals Union and Employer Confederation Views on Current Labour Relations in 21 Industrialized Nations

2005 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-60
Author(s):  
Richard B. Peterson ◽  
John Sargent
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Mail Survey ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Industrialized Nations ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Market Economics ◽  
Labour Management

This study reports the results of a cross-sectional mail survey sent to top officials of union and employer confederations in twenty-one industrialized market economics in Western Europe, North America, and Japan. The results regarding their assessment of the current labour relations situation in their own country show some significant differences related to employer vs. Union side and by economic groupings (EEU, EFTA, and other). We conclude that the relatively stable labour-management relationships during the 1960s and 1970s has apparently given way to greater divergence among the major industrial nations in recent years.

Resurrecting Che: radicalism, the transnational imagination, and the politics of heroes

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 506-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Prestholdt
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Political Iconography ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
Transnational Solidarity ◽  
Che Guevara

AbstractThis article explores the symbolic appeal of Che Guevara within radical Left circles of the 1960s and 1970s. Che's importance as a shared political reference offers a unique window on aspirational symbols and the desire for meaningful transnational solidarity. By tracing Che's resonance in Latin America, western Europe, the United States, and the Middle East, the article brings into conversation the study of post-war radicalism, political iconography, and the cognitive dimensions of interconnectivity. As a means of understanding Che's appeal to both protest movements and guerrilla organizations, the article develops the notion of a ‘transnational imagination’, or mode of perception that frames local circumstances in a world historical trajectory and thereby affects collective aspirations and actions.

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