Geographie Economie Societe最新文献

This paper gives a brief but comprehensive overview of trends in Hungarian Economic Geography and Regional Science since the 1950's. It presents the main arguments and accords special attention to the debates of the last decade. These latter developments in Hungarian Regional Analyses are placed firmly within an international context.

From the sixties to the end of the century, the ideas of preservation and conservation of the ecological heritage have progressively evolved into the concept of sustainable development. Ecological groups, scientists, as well as ecologists have taken part in this evolution. An NGO, a non-profit-making association founded in 1964, better known under the name of its magazine, « Amenagement et Nature », occupies a particular niche. A series of meetings and conferences organized over two days by the association, in quiet places in the country, such as old abbeys, were attended by ecologists, architects, town planners, academics and teachers, biologists, zoologists, farmers and foresters, industrialists, geographers, ethologists, medical doctors and chemists, builders, civil servants, etc... Among the reports which followed, some were used by the government in determining environmental measures. The association took part in the international meeting in Stockholm in 1972. In the sixties and seventies, it organized exhibitions on environmental topics. The association was frequently commissioned by different government departments or official bodies to study specific problems of land management and preservation, and the way they were actually dealed with, in France and in some foreign countries. Founded in 1965, the magazine is still published by a former member of the organization and the founders hope that younger and efficient members will keep the spirit of the association and pursue its efforts to create links and establish cooperation between those who are in charge of development and all those, at all levels and in all human activities, who are concerned by environmental problems and sustainable development.

Improvements in the quality and delivery of those public services produced “en régie”, i.e. by local bureaucrats themselves, depends crucially on the establishment of a functioning dialogue between this latter group and the wider scientific community. Only in this way will it be possible to capitalise equally on theoretical knowledge and local experience and skills. A fruitful dialogue builds upon the recognition of a particular local setting as far as public services are concerned and should accord priority to the following themes and questions: How to conceive and design a planning project; how to create the financial tools necessary for urban planning projects; how to design marketing strategies to promote a particular area; how to identify those factor contributing to the success or failure of particular regions.

The choice of these extracts and of a return to the original German text for their translation was motivated by the consequences of certain cuts made in the most used English translation (including that of the foreword) and of explanatory notes of the translator C.J. Friedrich. They have, firstly, contributed to creating the neo-classical image of A. Weber, although the action of the latter belonged to the German Historical School and of its internal questioning led by the author's brother, M. Weber, or by his friend W. Sombart. They led, secondly, to ignoring the temporal continuity of A. Weber concerning industrial location. Although D. Gregory was one of the rare geographers to denounce the « interpretative violence » done to Weber’s work, he made a too simplistic reading of the path of the author, in terms of epistemological break. The choice of these texts can also be explained by the interest of the objective fixed by A. Weber for the development of a theory of industrial location : to try to link the abstract approach of the classical English economists and the more inductive approach of the historical economists, articulating economics and sociocultural aspects. The questions which are posed by the new economic geography on the condition of embeddedness of the economic in the social give topical significance to this procedure.