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In this paper, I propose a new way of defining sport that I call a 'core-periphery' model. According to a core-periphery model, sport comes in degrees – what I refer to as 'sport-likeness' – and the aim of the philosopher of sport is to chart those dimensions along which an activity can be more or less a sport. By introducing the concept of sport-likeness, the core-periphery model complicates the picture of what is or is not a sport and encourages philosophers interested in defining sport to engage with the social sciences in exploring the extension of the term sport in common usage. In this paper I present the results of a small survey about attitudes to sport, and use it to illustrate how a core-periphery definition of sport would proceed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Core–periphery detection aims to separate the nodes of a complex network into two subsets: a core that is densely connected to the entire network and a periphery that is densely connected to the core but sparsely connected internally. The definition of core–periphery structure in multiplex networks that record different types of interactions between the same set of nodes on different layers is non-trivial since a node may belong to the core in some layers and to the periphery in others. We propose a nonlinear spectral method for multiplex networks that simultaneously optimizes a node and a layer coreness vector by maximizing a suitable non-convex homogeneous objective function by a provably convergent alternating fixed-point iteration. We derive a quantitative measure for the quality of a given multiplex core–periphery structure that allows the determination of the optimal core size. Numerical experiments on synthetic and real-world networks illustrate that our approach is robust against noisy layers and significantly outperforms baseline methods while improving the latter with our novel optimized layer coreness weights. As the runtime of our method depends linearly on the number of edges of the network, it is scalable to large-scale multiplex networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study deals with the issue of core–periphery relations in the European Union, investigating its patterns in relation to the participation of Central and Eastern European (CEE) member states in European Territorial Cooperation (ETC) programmes between 2007 and 2020. Core–periphery patterns do exist in the European space, where besides the North‐Western core ('Core'), there are two distinct peripheries, CEE and Southern Europe. The peripheral position is reflected in the weak performance of CEE in European‐wide RDI networks subsidised by the EU. On the basis of the KEEP database, the study analyses the signs of core–periphery relations by identifying whether there is asymmetry in the participation of CEE and Core countries in cooperation projects under the transnational (INTERREG B) and interregional (INTERREG C) strands (together, TI) of ETC. The findings of the study show that there is a significant difference in the forms of involvement of actors from North‐Western Europe and CEE in the TI programmes. Actors from CEE countries are very motivated to become involved in TI projects. However, they are significantly underrepresented in lead partner positions, especially in funding. The study's results suggest that participation activity patterns are significantly asymmetric in TI programmes, showing signs of a core–periphery dynamic even in such place‐based, cohesion‐oriented programmes. The consequence is that the articulation of geographic characteristics, special needs and issues associated with CEE is limited as they play a rather adaptive and imitating role in those territorial cooperation programmes that are influential in discourses and policies about territorial development in the European arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominance of modern rationality in knowledge production implies that the distribution of intellectual capital highly depends on the capacity to gather representative data and generate generalizable theses. Furthermore, as research becomes more formalized and dominated by large funding schemes, intellectual capital allocation is increasingly associated with high economic, labor force and institutional power. This phenomenon has consequences at the global level. As the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has documented, there are significant disparities between countries in research capacities, with a marked difference between "core" countries with semi-monopolies over sanctioned knowledge production and "peripheral" states primarily used as data mines. The core–periphery divide in research capacity brings about what decolonial theorists call knowledge abysses: the widespread idea that core countries are the ultimate knowledge producers and thus the legitimate guides in humanity's road to "progress." In that context, the democratization of knowledge and the prevention of neo-colonial dynamics require the development of cheaper and more accessible ways of collecting representative data. In this article, we make a call for innovations in methods that can serve to overcome this, and we illustrate possible avenues for achieving sound research without incurring high financial costs by describing and discussing our experiences in researching narco-violence in Colombia and prostitution in Russia with what we call the "taxi method." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis paper examines the nexus between Nigeria’s foreign policy and glocalisation. Glocalisation is an emerging concept in foreign policy discourse, with the sole intent of forging a synergy between globalisation, global governance, and local relations, hinging on domestic peculiarities. As it were, foreign policy has largely projected the interest of the ruling class and other private interests rather than the greater good regardless of the gains for the ruling elites, as posited by Jeremy Bentham. The concentric model was the theoretical framework used by the study to explain the levels of relation from the core to the periphery, a globalised foreign policy to a glocalised foreign policy. Qualitative research methods were adopted for this study, using secondary sources of data collection, and textual analysis. While little or no attention has been paid to glocalisation efforts in foreign policy discourse in Africa, it has been on the table of discussion for the western world, notwithstanding the current level of development occasioned by diplomatic relations worldwide. Progressively, within foreign policy discourses, the need to glocalise foreign policy cannot be overemphasised, as it marks the beginning of real polity as explained by Aristotle, as against simply focusing on the localisation of globalisation.

Most tourism research examines peripheral areas as destinations that are often exploited by the dominant, urban core. Little, if any research has considered peripheral areas as potential source markets. Yet, in Australia, some 30% of the population live outside of major urban centres. This study determined that residents of regional centres and rural communities have as much interest in travel as their urban cousins, have similar attitudes to and motivations for travel and moreover travel at the same level of propensity and intensity. Differences are noted in destination choice, though, suggesting an opportunity exists to better market a wider variety of tourism products in peripheral areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing attention is being paid towards the influence of regional contexts on innovation activities within regional development studies. Some of the literature in economic geography tends to consider the various peripheral areas as being homogenous and partly characterized by their remote location, weak innovation inputs and lack of knowledge exchange. This paper questions this approach by examining the role of innovation activities in peripheral regions. We offer a detailed and multifaceted taxonomy of the Norwegian economic regions. From an empirical viewpoint, the adoption of cluster analysis and a broad set of innovation, economic and territorial indicators allowed us to provide a nuanced picture of the current fabric of Norwegian innovation and economic-production. With the benefit of insights from relevant strands of literature (e.g. regional development, innovation systems and multi-scalar innovation networks), the case of Norway presented in our paper contributes to the scholarly debate on the role of structural preconditions for the innovation of firms in diverse peripheral areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to measure whether the regions lagging behind in the European knowledge field could get closer to the core of the Framework Programmes’ (FP) R&D network.

ABSTRACTThis article provides new insights into the relationship between industrialization and new forms of post-industrial development. Adopting a historical sensibility, it frames the contemporary development of the local economy of the city of Siracusa, in south-east Sicily, in an evolutionary historical perspective. The article focuses on the recent process of touristification of the city and surrounding area, analysing this process in connection with the industrialization and growth-pole strategy implemented in south-east Sicily in the post-war period. Emphasis is placed on the narratives that have been mobilized to justify different forms of development in the area, focusing in particular on the recurrent representation of the area as a periphery. Pointing out the selective use of visions of the past in post-industrial development strategies, the authors highlight how an uncomfortable industrial past has been removed from the main narratives to envision the city of Siracusa as moving towards a new phase of capitalist development. Finally, the article provides novel insights into the critical literature on tourism, showing that tourism, narrated and promoted as a sustainable and eco-compatible alternative to industrialization in Siracusa, can in fact produce highly negative impacts on the local environment and communities.

The core‐periphery hypothesis predicts niche cores should be associated with greater survivorship, reproductive output and population performance rates than marginal habitats at niche edges. However, there is very little empirical evidence of whether niche centrality influences population trends in animals. Using the Cape mountain zebra (Equus zebra zebra) as a model system, we evaluated whether niche centrality is associated with population trends, resource availability and diet across a core‐periphery gradient. Population growth rates and density progressively declined towards niche peripheries. Niche peripheries were resource‐poor and Cape mountain zebra consumed more phylogenetically diverse diets dominated by non‐grass families. In core habitats they consumed grass‐rich diets and female reproductive success was higher. This combination of spatial niche modelling and functional ecology provides a novel evaluation of how bottom‐up resource limitation can shape species distributions, population resilience and range change and can guide conservation management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article provides new insights into the relationship between industrialization and new forms of post-industrial development. Adopting a historical sensibility, it frames the contemporary development of the local economy of the city of Siracusa, in south-east Sicily, in an evolutionary historical perspective. The article focuses on the recent process of touristification of the city and surrounding area, analysing this process in connection with the industrialization and growth-pole strategy implemented in south-east Sicily in the post-war period. Emphasis is placed on the narratives that have been mobilized to justify different forms of development in the area, focusing in particular on the recurrent representation of the area as a periphery. Pointing out the selective use of visions of the past in post-industrial development strategies, the authors highlight how an uncomfortable industrial past has been removed from the main narratives to envision the city of Siracusa as moving towards a new phase of capitalist development. Finally, the article provides novel insights into the critical literature on tourism, showing that tourism, narrated and promoted as a sustainable and eco-compatible alternative to industrialization in Siracusa, can in fact produce highly negative impacts on the local environment and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working memory (WM) describes the dynamic process of maintenance and manipulation of information over a certain time delay. Neuronally, WM recruits a distributed network of cortical regions like the visual and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex as well as the subcortical hippocampus. How the input dynamics and subsequent neural dynamics impact WM remains unclear though. To answer this question, we combined the analysis of behavioral WM capacity with measuring neural dynamics through task-related power spectrum changes, e.g., median frequency (MF) in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We show that the processing of the input dynamics, e.g., the task structure's specific timescale, leads to changes in the unimodal visual cortex's corresponding timescale which also relates to working memory capacity. While the more transmodal hippocampus relates to working memory capacity through its balance across multiple timescales or frequencies. In conclusion, we here show the relevance of both input dynamics and different neural timescales for WM capacity in uni – and transmodal regions like visual cortex and hippocampus for the subject's WM performance.

This exploratory study presents Greenland as a case of a peripheral destination that complicates and contradicts global definitions of sustainable tourism. Using empirical data that consists of 39 semi-structured interviews, the author employs an inductive approach to discuss the conceptualisation of sustainable tourism according to local stakeholders in Greenland. The key points of conflict surrounding sustainable tourism in Greenland are identified and discussed, with a focus on how local stakeholders contradict each other, and on how the debates prevalent at the local scale can inform tourism development in other peripheral places. The paper contributes to academic literature by offering a deeper understanding of how core-periphery dynamics can influence perceptions of and priorities for sustainable tourism in peripheral places. It benefits the industry by exposing the main debates around the issue of sustainable tourism in Greenland, which can be used to inform the nation's tourism development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A widely held view in economics and comparative capitalism states that the crisis in the eurozone was a crisis of labour cost competitiveness. This view maintains that a divergence in unit labour costs engendered a cleavage between the euro area's core and periphery. Critics have disputed this and drawn attention to export specialisation, along with global competition, rather than intra-European competition. To make progress on this agenda, this article focuses on structures of production as a source of crisis vulnerability. It advances the notion that countries have unique forms of articulation within global capitalism, and that this matters to understanding national crisis trajectories. Focussing on the Portuguese case, the article scrutinises the interactions between export specialisation, global competition and industrial decline. The article shows that Portugal's current account deficit developed within a context of industrial change and deindustrialisation, which was facilitated competition from China and Eastern Europe. By stressing industrial patterns and global competition, the article provides a more concrete analysis of production than most accounts of the eurozone crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unemployment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is of the utmost importance for governing bodies worldwide. Its constant increase during the last months is subject of major concern for both citizens and policy makers, as individuals might experience increased feelings of job insecurity due to the pandemic context and to the latest developments on the job market. Job insecurity refers to a perceived threat to the continuity and stability of employment as it is currently experienced and has a negative impact on the individuals' quality of life. Many researches have linked job insecurity with low levels of well-being and high levels of stress, as well as local or national measures taken in job creation and job retention. Aside from individual factors, there are other critical influences that should be considered in order to better understand the dynamics of job insecurity against the COVID-19 pandemic. Such influences can come from regional features such as spatial, economic, or demographic characteristics, like gender, age, or education. The aim of the paper is to identify and spatially represent the variations and evolution of job insecurity during the on-going pandemic. Our analyses are based on the PsyCorona database (15.311 participants), a study with self-reported data deployed in countries all around the world, that monitored various psychological variables during the first pandemic waves. For the purpose of this research, data related to the first wave (March-July 2020) was selected. In order to get a better understanding of the spatial distribution of self-reported job insecurity, we chose to focus on eight European countries (France, Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Greece, Romania, Spain, and Italy). Respondents from Western Europe countries expressed lower scores on self-reported job insecurity and less variance over time while those from Southern and Eastern Europe displayed higher scores for job insecurity and more variance. Moreover, we found that the higher the overall job insecurity is perceived in a country, the higher the discrepancies between age, gender, and education categories tend to be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates on island tourism have challenged the inevitability of underdevelopment in peripheral islands. A paradox of geopolitical dependency but optimal autonomy has been proposed where tourism can create a 'virtuous periphery syndrome'. This study used a dependency theory lens and a core‐periphery framework to analyse stakeholders' perspectives on this, in two Mediterranean archipelagos. The most peripheral islands experienced the highest levels of environmental protection and lowest levels of development, which can be favourable for the development of tourism, but this was perceived as being constrained by dependent relationships. Problematic core‐periphery relations dominated tourism development in both archipelagos. Tourism can provide opportunities for island empowerment but local understanding of this must be developed for optimal autonomy through tourism to be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid development of the Internet industry and the emergence of new business models have reshaped the spatial structure and spatial relationships of cities.The development of Internet enterprises has profoundly reshaped the established venture capital network by establishing investment departments and expanding the ecosystem in the form of venture capital.As venture capital and the Internet industry are mutually attractive and highly geographically coupled, the analysis of the structure and location of the venture capital network of Internet enterprises has become an important foundation for the development of the regional "new economy".This paper examined the spatial dynamics and location selection mechanism of venture capital activities of Chinese Internet companies by constructing a factor flow network, using spatial analysis, network analysis, and negative binomial regression models.The study demonstrated that venture capital investment in Chinese Internet enterprises has developed rapidly over the past 20 years in three phases: initial development from 2001 to 2012, rapid development from 2013 to 2016, and adjustment development from 2017 to 2019, with Internet venture capital showing the characteristics of cumulative development.Compared with traditional venture capital activities, the location choice of Internet venture capital is more concentrated, with a high concentration in a few major cities in the eastern region of China.The three major regions of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, and Pearl River Delta are the main places of occurrence and association of Internet venture capital activities in China, with a significant tendency of localization of venture capital.The cumulative development of corporate venture capital and the spatial evolution of both investors and financiers have contributed to the formation of a 'core-periphery' structure of the venture capital network.In addition, an assessment of the network density of the cities where the investment and financing occurs showed that the current Internet investment and financing network is still in its developmental stage, and most of the cities are not directly connected, showing a sparse matrix.Three time windows (2012, 2015, and 2017) were selected to analyze the location selection factors of Chinese Internet venture capital in different development periods in terms of enterprise growth environment, investment proximity, and transportation accessibility.The results showed that marketization, policy guidance, investment proximity, and spatial proximity were the main forces shaping the spatial pattern of Internet venture capital activities and had different degrees of influence on the various stages of Internet industry development.This study facilitates an in-depth examination of the spatial distribution characteristics of venture capital activities in the Internet economy and provides a detailed empirical basis for understanding the changes in venture capital investments in Internet enterprises and their locational influences.

This article analyzes the representations of rural and urban cultural landscapes in the primary educational tool during Israel's formative decades – Mikraot Israel readers – in an attempt to provide a better understanding of the overt and tacit messages intended for the target audience. By way of doing so, the article proceeds along two main axes: a) The ideological tension between frontier/periphery and the centre/city; and b) A historic-chronological exploration of the different representations throughout Israel's history. Finally, the article compares between original and translated literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we argue that offline inequalities, such as core–periphery relations of the music industry, are reproduced by streaming platforms. First, we offer an overview of the reproduction of inequalities and core–periphery dynamics in the music industry. Then we illustrate this through a small-scale network analysis case study of Hungarian metal bands' connections on Spotify. We show that the primary determinant of a given band's international connectedness in Spotify's algorithmic ecosystem is their international label connections. Bands on international labels have more reciprocal international connections and are more likely to be recommended based on actual genre similarity. However, bands signed with local labels or self-published tend to have domestic connections and to be paired with other artists by Spotify's recommendation system according to their country of origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Core-periphery models are a commonly used and powerful tool in network analysis which allow researchers to identify a set of highly influential members (the core) based on the structure of the network. However, there is no standard method for core identification. Worse yet, for researchers in fields such as economics, existing methods often do not allow for researchers to make meaningful inferences from core-periphery analyses. This paper introduces a new method using integer programming to identify the core of a weighted network with either symmetric or asymmetric relationships and without the aid of any a priori assumptions. The integer program maximizes the weighted influence of the members of the core while imposing a set of user-parameterized connectivity constraints, both within the core and between the core and the periphery. As a result, this model generalizes previous concepts of the core of a network, i.e., an idealized core, through the flexibility created by the two connectivity parameters. These parameters give researchers the freedom to apply discipline specific theory to core-periphery analyses. This approach also offers drastically improved handling of directed data compared to existing methods of core-periphery analysis. An algorithm which converts the initially non-linear integer program into a linear integer programming approach is presented, and several examples are studied using this method to demonstrate its efficacy including a data set of international collaborations in academic publications and a data set of US railway shipments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different types of corporate ownership may affect the environment among firms and could influence the decisions of new entities in the region. This study determines the role of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in hindering new foreign manufacturing firms in the Yangtze River delta (YRD). The negative binomial regression is used for city-sector level data and the following points summarize the results: Firstly, the unique privileges that SOEs enjoy alongside governmental support create difficulties for foreign firms trying to establish themselves near existing SOEs. Secondly, although core cities are more attractive to foreign firms than peripheral cities, the role of core-periphery reveals that, in spite of all the regional advantages core cities could offer, whenever the share of SOEs is higher, the core-periphery system will have an adverse impact on new foreign firms. In other words, government preference for SOEs can suppress the attraction of foreign startups. However, after 2008, the governmental authorities finally succeeded in implementing their promising policy of fair treatment and competition in only the core cities.

We propose a mechanism based on regional inequality in economic activity to explain the heterogeneity in the spread of COVID-19 and test it using data from India. Contagion is expected to spread at a higher rate in regions characterized by greater movement of goods and services. We argue that mobility is higher in regions with greater degree of intra-regional inequality in economic activity. Such regions are usually characterized by a core-periphery economic structure in which the periphery is dependent on the core for the supply of jobs, goods, and services. Such dependence leads to a greater degree of mobility between the core and periphery, which in turn leads to higher rate of contagion. Using nightlight data to measure regional inequality, we find evidence in support of our hypothesis. Using mobility data, we provide direct evidence in support of our proposed channel; the positive relationship between regional inequality and COVID-19 infection is driven by mobility. Our findings suggest that policy responses to contain COVID-19 contagion need to be heterogeneous across India, where the priority areas can be chosen ex ante based on a regional inequality-based criterion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid development of the Internet industry and the emergence of new business models have reshaped the spatial structure and spatial relationships of cities. The development of Internet enterprises has profoundly reshaped the established venture capital network by establishing investment departments and expanding the ecosystem in the form of venture capital. As venture capital and the Internet industry are mutually attractive and highly geographically coupled, the analysis of the structure and location of the venture capital network of Internet enterprises has become an important foundation for the development of the regional "new economy". This paper examined the spatial dynamics and location selection mechanism of venture capital activities of Chinese Internet companies by constructing a factor flow network, using spatial analysis, network analysis, and negative binomial regression models. The study demonstrated that venture capital investment in Chinese Internet enterprises has developed rapidly over the past 20 years in three phases: initial development from 2001 to 2012, rapid development from 2013 to 2016, and adjustment development from 2017 to 2019, with Internet venture capital showing the characteristics of cumulative development. Compared with traditional venture capital activities, the location choice of Internet venture capital is more concentrated, with a high concentration in a few major cities in the eastern region of China. The three major regions of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, and Pearl River Delta are the main places of occurrence and association of Internet venture capital activities in China, with a significant tendency of localization of venture capital. The cumulative development of corporate venture capital and the spatial evolution of both investors and financiers have contributed to the formation of a 'core-periphery' structure of the venture capital network. In addition, an assessment of the network density of the cities where the investment and financing occurs showed that the current Internet investment and financing network is still in its developmental stage, and most of the cities are not directly connected, showing a sparse matrix. Three time windows (2012, 2015, and 2017) were selected to analyze the location selection factors of Chinese Internet venture capital in different development periods in terms of enterprise growth environment, investment proximity, and transportation accessibility. The results showed that marketization, policy guidance, investment proximity, and spatial proximity were the main forces shaping the spatial pattern of Internet venture capital activities and had different degrees of influence on the various stages of Internet industry development. This study facilitates an in-depth examination of the spatial distribution characteristics of venture capital activities in the Internet economy and provides a detailed empirical basis for understanding the changes in venture capital investments in Internet enterprises and their locational influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: aDNA; core-periphery; ethics; pace; space EN aDNA core-periphery ethics pace space 417 422 6 02/16/23 20230301 NES 230301 INTRODUCTION Ancient DNA (aDNA) research is characterized by asymmetric relationships between disciplines, institutions, and countries - "core-peripheral" (Argüelles et al., [2]) or Global North and South (Haelewaters et al., [18]). These unbalanced conditions promote a situation in which research teams from the periphery are dismissed and excluded by the accelerated workflow of the core I big labs i in aDNA research and a lack of understanding of the diversity and processes of the academic landscape in the periphery. There is still space for (self)reflection, and also for expanding the discourse(s) on ethics, practice, and scientific structure of aDNA research and its relations to the pace of the practice of the periphery. The pace and space of aDNA/AHR work practice is increasingly becoming a concern among peripheral researchers and stakeholders. [Extracted from the article]

The current study investigates the impact of the high-speed railway's operation on the coordinated economic development of "core–periphery" cities using the multi-period difference-in-difference (DID) model. Data on 270 prefecture-level cities in China were collected for empirical analysis of collected data. The findings demonstrate that the high-speed railway's operation has widened the economic development gap between core and peripheral cities and restrained the coordinated growth of the urban economy. The heterogeneity analysis found that the "siphon effect" of the high-speed railway's operation in core cities is only effective within the distance of "one-hour metropolitan area". Moreover, it is found that the high-speed railway has a threshold effect based on the size of cities. It depicts that the core cities in the high-speed railway network play a "siphon effect" and "diffusion effect" on large size cities and small (or medium) size cities, respectively, which is manifested as a suppression and promotion effect on the coordinated development of the urban economy. Furthermore, it is found that that technological innovation and economic agglomeration are two significant intermediary paths of high-speed railway opening that affect the level of "core–periphery" city economics coordination; however, technological innovation's role as an intermediary has a stronger masking effect than economic agglomeration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The competitiveness of financial centres increasingly hinges on their capability at brokering financial flows. Though existing studies have paid attention to the rise and fall of some financial brokerage cities (FBCs), less is known about how such dynamics of FBCs have been shaped by the structure of financial networks and the interactions among FBCs. Taking China's financial network as an example, we consider not only the interactions between FBCs but also their multiple brokerage roles. Empirical analyses confirm that a city's brokerage dynamics are neither independent nor can be portrayed as a linear trajectory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a complex network, the core component with interesting structures is usually hidden within noninformative connections. The noises and bias introduced by the noninformative component can obscure the salient structure and limit many network modeling procedures' effectiveness. This paper introduces a novel core–periphery model for the noninformative periphery structure of networks without imposing a specific form of the core. We propose spectral algorithms for core identification for general downstream network analysis tasks under the model. The algorithms enjoy strong performance guarantees and are scalable for large networks. We evaluate the methods by extensive simulation studies demonstrating advantages over multiple traditional core–periphery methods. The methods are also used to extract the core structure from a citation network, which results in a more interpretable hierarchical community detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electoral volatility is understood in the literature as a sign of political instability, weakening social cohesion and the declining influences of existing political parties which threatens the healthy functioning of representative democracy. In this paper, using the Pedersen Index we measure electoral volatility in Hungary at the settlement level between the last three parliamentary elections (2010, 2014 and 2018), with special attention to the geographical aspects of the phenomenon. According to our preliminary assumptions those social groups switch their votes frequently who are marginalised, therefore, the level of volatility may reflect peripheriality. Our results show that high volatility can be detected in the two opposite sides of the settlement hierarchy in Hungary: in bigger cities and smaller villages, but for very different reasons. This study gives evidence that electoral volatility can also be considered as a possible indicator in the delimitation and classification of peripheral areas and settlements. The paper aimed to contribute to the understanding of cleavage formation at the regional level by adding a spatial perspective while connecting the socioeconomic profile of the voting population and electoral volatility.

In this paper we suggest that far too often economic geographic theory has been based on simple core-periphery dualism that mask the reality of creative work in rural or peripheral areas. We take a relational approach and suggest that being on the periphery does not necessarily mean isolation from the centre nor does it mean relegation to lower levels of professional and creative possibilities. The study examines a sample of female contemporary visual artists in the rural Swedish region of Värmland and suggests that affordability and work-life balance are the essential reasons for the locational choices of these peripheral artists. Once settled they employ two strategic coping mechanisms: embracing the creative possibilities of being on the edge; active creation of network spaces and relations. We suggest that for creative workers' binary spatial divisions are not appropriate and that more nuanced relational geographies support both rural and individual creative careers. In particular, we emphasise one such binary: the presumption that whilst urban creativity is collective, rural creativity is individual and lacking the benefits of closeness and agglomeration. Rather than the dualism presented in the creativity literature, we suggest that the case exposes the importance of thinking relational, spatially and temporarily in terms of project and career life cycles. These artists are not making black or white choices between the social city and the isolated rural but attempting to mix the advantages of both together through translocal processes and networks. • We draw attention to how peripheral settings give female professional artists space for their working lives. • Locating to the periphery does not imply a divide between the core and periphery. • Professional cultural careers and creativity are possible in the rural and periphery. • Female professional artists use translocal spaces and practices to aid creativity and make connections to sectoral cores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union's relative disregard for the economic, geopolitical and climatic concerns of its peripheral Eastern countries has contributed to making the war in Ukraine possible. Its consequences are now returning in the form of energy dependence and economic instability on the Union as a whole and the risk of economic crisis and deindustrialisation. This should prompt a re-assessment of the EU's strategy towards its eastern neighbours, particularly in the energy and climate policy field. This evaluation starts from the issue of control over cheap energy as a key material foundation of state and interstate power. On this basis, we analyse the struggle between Russia and the European core states over Ukraine in terms of the ability to extract an economic surplus through the unequal exchange of energy. The current escalation should be understood as an attempt by the Russian petrostate to preserve the economic basis of its regime, which is threatened by the prospect of a low-carbon transition in Europe. We conclude that a massive acceleration of the transition away from fossil fuels is the key to economic, geopolitical and climate stabilisation, highlighting possible policy instruments the EU could use to secure its production system and protect citizens' security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1917, the Bolsheviks took power in Russia under the banner of equality. Within the city, their aspiration to eliminate the core‐periphery sociospatial disparities resulted in dividing Moscow's privileged historic centre among its peripheral districts. This attempt to design districts of similar socio‐economic composition was short‐lived. Already in the 1930s, corresponding with the rise of the Stalinist state, the city centre partially re‐appeared in the form of the newly established smaller sectorial districts that were eliminated only after Stalin's death. Utilizing previously classified archival data of the 1939 population census, this paper sheds light on the sociospatial differentiation of Stalinist Moscow by comparing its central districts to the rest of the city as well as to the Bolshevik zoning of the 1920s. This analysis posits that the Bolshevik ideal of territorial equality was not achieved: politically, ethnically and socially, Stalinist Moscow in the late 1930s remained spatially unequal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different types of corporate ownership may affect the environment among firms and could influence the decisions of new entities in the region. This study determines the role of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in hindering new foreign manufacturing firms in the Yangtze River delta (YRD). The negative binomial regression is used for city-sector level data and the following points summarize the results: Firstly, the unique privileges that SOEs enjoy alongside governmental support create difficulties for foreign firms trying to establish themselves near existing SOEs. Secondly, although core cities are more attractive to foreign firms than peripheral cities, the role of core-periphery reveals that, in spite of all the regional advantages core cities could offer, whenever the share of SOEs is higher, the core-periphery system will have an adverse impact on new foreign firms. In other words, government preference for SOEs can suppress the attraction of foreign startups. However, after 2008, the governmental authorities finally succeeded in implementing their promising policy of fair treatment and competition in only the core cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]