Industrial development in small islands economies. A comparative study of Mauritius and La Reunion growth performances

Small islands economic development may follow different pathways, according to the particular combination of growth mechanisms. A comparative study of the long term growth in Mauritius and in La Reunion, two islands with strong historical, sociological and cultural links, shows that they are engaged in two different process of industrialization. La Reunion has

Industrial development in small islands economies. A comparative study of Mauritius and La Reunion growth performances

Small islands economic development may follow different pathways, according to the particular combination of growth mechanisms. A comparative study of the long term growth in Mauritius and in La Reunion, two islands with strong historical, sociological and cultural links, shows that they are engaged in two different process of industrialization. La Reunion ha

An ontology to semantically declare and describe functions

Applications built on top of the Semantic Web are emerging as a novel solution in different areas, such as decision making and route planning. However, to connect results of these solutions -i.e., the semantically annotated data - with real-world applications, this semantic data needs to be connected to actionable events. A lot of work has been done (both semantically as non-semantically) to describe and define Web services, but there is still a gap on a more abstract level, i.e., describing interfaces independent of the technology used. In this paper, we present a data model, specification, and ontology to semantically declare and describe functions independently of the used technology. This way, we can declare and use actionable events in semantic applications, without restricting ourselves to programming language-dependent implementations. The ontology allows for extensions, and is proposed as a possible solution for semantic applications in various domains

Insularity and Urban Hierarchies : the Case of La Reunion

Modern urban landscapes are characterized by the progressive separation of the location of jobs, houses and amenities, which inexorably leads to the increase of urban travel and transit. This is the beginning point for some recent research programs in regional economics (Krugman, 1991 ; Glaeser, 1992 ; Henderson, 1997 ; Gabaix, 1999 ; Dobkins et Ioannides, 2000) which adopt a new line of reasoning based on the study of the commuting trips that characterise contemporary urban life. Different aspects of these trips, such as the volume, the pathways and the travel modes of the commuters, are examined with regard to mass transport, local public services and the increasing diversification of rural and urban amenities. This allows one to explore some original aspects of the recent transformations in both modern cities organisation and regional urban hierarchies and, by the way, identify institutional and policy responses to new urban problems such as traffic congestion or residential segregation (Brueckner, Thisse and Zenou, 2002 ; Mauer and Ott, 1999). However, instead of trying to define a general households’ residential model, it seems then more appropriate to investigate the relationship between a given urban organisation and its regional macro-economic environment (Gabaix, 1999 ; Axtell and Florida, 2000). This point of view defend the hypothesis of a principle of structural dependence involving the action of long-term macroeconomic effects on the puzzling geometry of an urban economy (Marsili and Zhang, 1998 ; Simpson, 2000). By studying the case of La Reunion, this paper aims to study how insularity affects the locational choices of firms and households and their impact on regional urban hierarchies.

Taking pleasure seriously: the political significance of subcultural practice

This paper demonstrates that subcultural theory continues to provide a relevant and useful analysis of youth leisure practices and their political significance in contemporary society. It achieves this by analysing the theoretical antecedents to both subcultural theory and the post-subcultural theory that followed it. It is argued that the post-subcultural turn to studying affects and everyday lives resonates deeply with the Gramscian perspective informing subcultural theory. It is thus possible to interpret post-subculturalism as augmenting rather than negating its predecessor. Deploying an analysis that combines these perspectives allows for an account of contemporary youth leisure practices that demonstrates a number of different forms of politics explicated within the paper: a politics of identity and becoming; a politics of defiance; a politics of affective solidarity and a politics of different experience. Whilst not articulated or necessarily conscious, there is a proto-politics to youth leisure that precludes it from being dismissed as entirely empty, hedonistic and consumerist. This paper demonstrates how the lens of post-subculturalism focuses on the affective spaces where this politics is most apparent and provides a means of updating subcultural theory to understand contemporary youth practices