Bringing globalization to the countryside: Special Economic Zones in India

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are important vectors of neoliberal globalization in India. Despite facing widespread resistance against the proposed land acquisition for these zones, they are still being promoted across the country. We argue that the wealth redistribution to the country's elites and the fractured resistance movements enable neoliberalism and its practices to grow in the countryside. Using a private sector SEZ in Gurgaon as a case study, this article explores how special economic zoning, as a neoliberal policy, has been implicated in the spatialized production of poverty. We also show that the main actors who promote neoliberalism in India (the state and the large‐scale urban private sector) have found a seemingly unlikely ally in rural India in the form of farmers with large landholdings, rural elites who are willing to let go of their land under certain conditions. The data for the article was collected in India in 2009–10.     

Recent Vertical Deformation in Mexicali Valley and its Relationship with Tectonics, Seismicity, and the Exploitation of the Cerro Prieto Geothermal Field, Mexico

—The interpretation of the results of regional and local leveling which began in 1977 in the Mexicali Valley and the local short profile precision leveling which started in 1994 are discussed. The relation of vertical deformations around the Cerro Prieto Geothermal Field (CPGF) and along the Imperial fault, with local tectonics and seismicity in the Mexicali Valley, is reviewed. Also the relation between vertical deformation and fluid operation in the CPGF is analyzed. The subsidence observed in the field seems to be induced by fluid extraction. The way in which fluid production influences surface changes along the Imperial fault is not clear. The possibility that seismicity is triggering subsidence in the area and vertical movement on the Imperial fault is discussed.     

Discontinuous Nature of the Lower Part of the South American Wadati-Benioff Zone in The Arica Elbow Region

The Arica Elbow region represents that part of Andean South America where the azimuth of the strike of the Peru-Chile trench changes from 150° to 190°. The area under study is roughly bounded by latitudes 17 °S and 23 °S, The shape of the Wadati-Benioff zone was studied in terms of the distribution of ISC hypocentres dated between 1964 and 1993. A system of 22 vertical cross-sections, perpendicular to the trench axis, and a map of epicentres was used to derive the detailed shape of the Wadati-Benioff zone of the presently descending slab. The distribution of earthquake foci indicates a fingerlike shape of the lower part of the Wadati-Benioff zone beneath the aseismic gap. The slab length shows small changes around 350 km in the northern sections, pronounced length oscillations between 350 and 750 km in the neighbouring central sections and a constant value of 650 km in the southern sections. The dip and thickness of the Wadati-Benioff zone are practically constant in all sections. Fault plane solutions, separated spatially into three zones, were used to estimate the state of stress in the slab.     

Stress Field Estimations for Colima Volcano, Mexico, Based on Seismic Data

 For first time, during 1991, seismic activity was recorded during an eruption at Colima volcano. We analyze these data to obtain a stress pattern using a composite focal mechanism technique. From the analysis of regional seismicity, the Tamazula Fault and the Armeria River appear as active features and the dip of the slab east of the Jalisco Block is approximately 12°. Southwest of Colima volcano a vertical alignment of seismic events was observed. We estimate five different composite focal mechanism solutions from our data set, which indicate a change of the stress field at the volcano after the 1991 eruption. These solutions suggest that the stress field in the volcanic edifice was controlled by stresses related to the emplacement of magma superimposed on the regional stress field. No evidence of active local faults in the volcanic edifice was found. We propose a model for the eruptive process that involves tilting of the volcanic edifice. Received: 15 October 1995 / Accepted: 26 October 1998     

Structural and kinematic analysis of the Corredoiras detachment: evidence for early Variscan synconvergent extension in the Ordenes Complex, NW Spain

 An important detachment is described in the allochthonous Ordenes Complex, in the NW Iberian Massif, and its meaning is related to the kinematics of contemporaneous convergent structures. The Corredoiras Detachment (CD) separates a hangingwall unit, characterised by a medium-pressure metamorphic gradient, from a footwall high-pressure and high-temperature unit and an underlying ophiolitic unit. An associated ductile shear zone, nearly 2000 m thick, developed in the lower part of the hangingwall unit, where the Corredoiras Orthogneiss, a Lower Ordovician metagranite, was progressively transformed into augengneisses, mylonitic and ultramylonitic gneisses. The attitude of the stretching and mineral lineation in the mylonites varies due to late refolding at map scale, but the sense of movement can be estimated, being roughly top to the SE. According to crosscutting relationships, the CD developed subsequent to the thrusting of the high-pressure/high-temperature unit onto the ophiolitic unit, and prior to younger extensional detachments, upright folding and strike-slip tectonics. The geometric relationships of the CD with the previous structures in the footwall unit, the subtractive character of the metamorphic gap between its hangingwall and footwall, and the available isotopic data suggest that the CD is an early Variscan, ductile extensional detachment, the movement of which was roughly simultaneous with the onset of thrusting of the allochthonous complexes over their relative autochthon. Received: 17 November 1998 / Accepted: 4 April 1999     

Crustal structure of the Alpine–Pannonian transition zone: a combined seismic and gravity study

 The crustal structure of the transition zone between the Eastern Alps and the western part of the Pannonian depression (Danube basin) is traditionally interpreted in terms of subvertical Tertiary strike-slip and normal faults separating different Alpine tectonic units. Reevaluation of approximately 4000-km-long hydrocarbon exploration reflection seismic sections and a few deep seismic profiles, together with data from approximately 300 wells, suggests a different structural model. It implies that extensional collapse of the Alpine orogene in the Middle Miocene was controlled by listric normal faults, which usually crosscut Alpine nappes at shallow levels, but at depth merge with overthrust planes separating the different Alpine units. The alternative structural model was tested along a transect across the Danube basin by gravity model calculations, and the results show that the model of low-angle extensional faulting is indeed viable. Regarding the whole lithosphere of the western Pannonian basin, gravity modelling indicates a remarkable asymmetry in the thickness minima of the attenuated crust and upper mantle. The approximately 160 km lateral offset between the two minima suggests that during the Miocene extension of the Pannonian basin detachment of the upper crust from the mantle lithosphere took place along a rheologically weak lower crust. Received: 13 July 1998 / Accepted: 18 March 1999     

Shortage in the midst of plenty: Labour strategies in four Central and Eastern European cities

Labour shortage was an integral feature of the communist system of economic management and one that seemed most unlikely to persist in the face of systemic transformation. A casual examination of the unemployment rates that have emerged throughout most of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) during the course of the past decade might suggest that this early assumption was correct. However, within the region the aggregate rate of joblessness, as well as the behaviour of national output, mask the fact that certain, major urban centres appear to have weathered well the storms caused by exposure to western markets and stringent fiscal and monetary policies. In these centres transformation has meant, to a greater or lesser degree, industrial modernisation and this begs the question of whether the human capital portfolios of the inherited labour force match up to the requirements of the new environment. This paper examines the meaning of the concept of labour shortage and presents the findings from a survey of employers in four leading cities of three major CEE economies designed to elicit if, and how, manpower requirements are being met in the present climate. The results indicate that, somewhat paradoxically, labour shortage persists in the more flexible markets of the post-communist era and that firms do not expect the situation to change radically in the near future. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Almadén mercury mining district, Spain

The Almadén district is the largest mercury concentration in the world, with a total content of about 250 000 t of mercury, nearly one third of the known total mercury resources of the Earth. Mercury has been exploited since the Celtic and Roman times, with peak production during the Renaissance and between 1939–1945. The district is hosted by a Paleozoic synclinorium overlying Precambrian rocks. The Paleozoic sequence comprises epicontinental quartz arenite rocks, including black shales and quartzites. Diatremes, alkaline lavas of different composition, and late tholeiitic diabases account for the Ordovician to Devonian magmatism. The tectonic setting of this complex suite corresponds to the intraplate type. The mercury deposits of Almadén can be classified into two main types: type 1, early stratiform type ores characterized by cinnabar deposition on the lower Silurian quartzites (Criadero quartzite; e.g. the Almadén and El Entredicho deposits), and type 2, late discordant orebodies (e.g. Las Cuevas), largely hosted or related to diatremes (the `frailesca rocks') of alkaline basaltic composition. In type 1 cinnabar was deposited during diagenesis, in relation to hydrothermal circulation driven by magmatic activity. Type 2 include a variety of deposits having in common the discordant character of the orebodies (e.g. veins, stockworks, massive replacements), and their wide dispersion along the stratigraphic column, i.e. from Lower Silurian (e.g. Nueva Concepción) to Upper Devonian (e.g. Corchuelo). Received: 23 October 1998 / Accepted: 4 January 1999