Cultivating alternative spaces – Zagreb’s community gardens in transition: From socialist to post-socialist perspective

This paper provides an in-depth analysis of community gardens in a (post)socialist setting during a time of key changes in their perception and management. Community gardens in Zagreb emerged in two specific economic and socio-cultural contexts and a diachronous approach to the study of urban gardens offers a unique insight into differences and similarities reflecting and contrasting those periods. Semi-structured interviews and non-participatory observation were employed. Results show that community gardens in Zagreb are multilayered places which satisfy diverse needs of the urban residents, including home grown food, socializing, recreation, contact with the nature, and supplementation for low pensions. They can also be seen as examples of heterotopias or alternative spaces during both examined periods. In the socialist period they were secluded, private, pseudo-rural places in a semi-authoritarian, communal, and (supposedly) urban and industrial society. In post-socialist Zagreb, characterized by an uncontrolled and unplanned spatial context reliant on neoliberal market-oriented principles, social insensitivity and exclusion, the new gardens are depicted as beacons of communal involvement, grassroots movements, and the ability of citizens to stand together and make their voices heard.     

积极探索建立适应社会主义市场经济的地质矿产资源管理新体制

文章从适应社会主义市场经济要求出发,根据我国建立社会主义市场经济体制的理论和成功经验,论述了矿产资源管理方式转变的总体思路、要求、矿产资源管理新体制的构架和运行机制,论述了地方地矿行政管理的职能。     

The contested spaces of Cuban development: Post-socialism, post-colonialism and the geography of transition

The experience of the (post)socialist South has been marginal to the study of transition, despite the many similarities between processes of transition and development. This paper tries to better understand this overlap by exploring some empirical and conceptual connections between processes of development and processes of transition in Cuba. In doing so it makes two sets of arguments. The first set of arguments concerns the nature of ‘transition’ itself. I use the ‘contested spaces’ of the Cuban (socialist) biotech sector, and specifically its attempts to attract foreign (capitalist) investment as a case study. As a high profile industry, biotechnology functioned in Cuba as a political space within which questions of transition and development could be reconfigured by blurring the boundaries between them. In turn, this has enabled the Cuban State to legitimise responses to transition that would otherwise have appeared contradictory. The second set of arguments try to explain how this was possible. I argue that the slippage between nationalist and socialist visions of development allowed biotechnology (as a specifically developmentalist project) to be variously understood as, for example, a post-colonial socialist, or anti-colonial nationalist project in ways that suited the needs of transition at any one time. Such recombinations in many ways account for the non-linear and reversible nature of transition in Cuba. I speculate as to whether Bruno Latour’s work on the way capitalist societies understand themselves to be ‘modern’, helps explain how, in (post)socialist countries, processees of transition can be shaped through different historical constructions of modernisation and development.     

Complications for traditional land consolidation in Central Europe

An integral part of post-socialist transformation under the Washington Consensus has been the privatisation of previously state owned and/or co-operative farms. In many instances, there have been attempts at ‘turning back the clock’ to pre-War conditions, including land ownership structures. Frequently, the result has been the division of large, economically efficient units into numerous, small and economically barely viable private plots. Following accession to the European Union, these re-constituted peasant-scale structures pose a major challenge to the Union’s agricultural policy. As this paper demonstrates, a simple transfer of western European practices, such as land consolidation, is not possible. The particular legacies of the communist system have given land ownership particular values, legitimacy and personal identity, and emotional bonds. Simple technocratic solutions, as applied in the West earlier, are thus not feasible. Consequently, the paper points out, new forms and instruments of tackling disadvantageous agricultural structures need to be found.     

“三个代表”重要思想与党的改革精神

探讨“三个代表”重要思想与党的改革精神之内在联系 ,从“三个代表”的高度发扬改革精神 ,以改革精神落实“三个代表” ,对于推进党的建设和建设小康社会意义重大。中国特色社会主义事业是改革的事业 ,党的改革事业与党的改革精神密切联系 ,而“三个代表”重要思想使改革精神全面升华 ;发展先进生产力、发展先进文化和实现人民根本利益要求发扬改革精神 ,改革精神是“三个代表”重要思想的时代特质 ;“三个代表”重要思想与改革精神统一于党的事业发展 ,二者的根本要求是一致的。要围绕发展第一要务 ,发扬改革精神 ,落实“三个代表”。     

青年毛泽东世界观转变历程探微

在由资产阶级民主主义者转变为坚定的共产主义者的过程中毛泽东经历了前后相继的三种文化氛围 :190 2年入家乡私塾置身中国传统文化氛围 ;1910年入湘乡高等小学后受西方资产阶级文化熏陶 ;1918年 6月到北京后才开始接触到马克思主义 ,逐步完成世界观的转变。真正成为马克思主义者是在 192 0年下半年。     

新时代法治渔村建设的挑战与出路

渔村治理现代化作为实现乡村振兴战略的重要组成部分,因其自身固有的发展特征,亟须进行法治化改革。这既是对全面依法治国方略在渔村治理的落实,也同新时代乡村治理体系的基本逻辑相符合。因此,新时代法治渔村建设需要中国特色社会主义法治价值的指引,法治价值同时为推进新时代渔村治理法治化,为渔村的政治、经济、社会发展以及生态文明建设等提供了重要的思想基础。法治价值的适用同样对于促进渔村渔业的高质量发展和改善传统渔村经济落后的局面具有重要意义,有必要在中国特色社会主义法治价值的指引下,找到新时代渔村良法善治的有效路径。     

Land changes in Slovakia: Past processes and future directions

The aim of this study is to bring a unique overview of past, current and plausible future land use development in Slovakia. The study assessed land change processes and their spatial determinants related to the most significant socio-political periods that have shaped the former socialist country over the past 30 years, namely, socialism (1980–1990), postsocialism (1990–2000), EU accession (2000–2006), EU membership (2006–2012). Using boosted regression trees, the impact of different biophysical, socioeconomic, policy and distance-based factors was evaluated on land transitions, categorised as urbanisation, agricultural intensification and extensification, afforestation, deforestation and forest disturbance (natural and management-induced). Results show significant shifts in the landscape management associated with the institutional changes, especially in the postsocialist period.Agricultural intensification, which dominated the socialist period, was in subsequent periods substituted by afforestation and agricultural extensification. High relative annual rates of forest disturbance have dominated land-use change over the past 30 years, while deforestation was a minor land-use change during the late socialist period. Urbanisation has played a significant role and changed considerably through the studied periods: high urbanisation rates under socialism, a massive decline in the postsocialism and EU accession periods and increasingly high urbanisation rates during the EU membership period.Taking into account national and international (EU related) demands, we assessed land use development for 2040 within five different future land use scenarios. These scenarios were characterised as either extensions of current development trends, or as developments along axes that target globalisation or regionalisation, and more or less intervention. Results show that afforestation is by far the land-change process that will have the greatest impact on future Slovakian landscapes, mostly in rural areas. Among changes in agriculture, all scenarios uniformly suggest that extensification will exceed intensification mostly at the cost of arable land. In addition, urban areas will expand at the expense of arable land, particularly in the accessible city hinterlands.