Language of Lullabies: The Russification and De-Russification of the Baltic States

This article argues that the laws for promotion of the national languages are a legitimate means for the Baltic states to establish their cultural independence from Russia and the former Soviet Union

A review of the world's soil museums and exhibitions

The soil science community needs to communicate about soils and the use of soil information to various audiences, especially to the general public and public authorities. In this global review article, we synthesis information pertaining to museums solely dedicated to soils or which contain a permanent exhibition on soils. We identified 38 soil museums specifically dedicated to soils, 34 permanent soil exhibitions, and 32 collections about soils that are accessible by appointment. We evaluate the growth of the number of museums since the early 1900s, their geographical distribution, their contents, and their attendance. The number of museums has been continuously growing since the early 1900s. A noticeable increase was observed from 2015 to 2019. Europe (in a geographical sense), Eastern and South-East Asia have the highest concentration of soil museums and permanent exhibitions related to soils. Most of the museums' attendance ranged from 1000 to 10,000 visitors per year. Russia has the largest number of soil monoliths exhibited across the world's museums, whereas the ISRIC-World Soil Museum has the richest and the most diverse collection of soil monoliths. Museums, collections, and exhibitions of soil play an important role in educating the population about this finite natural resource that maintains life on the planet, and for this reason, they must be increasingly supported, extended, and protected

A Rural-Urban Divide? Reassessing Voting in Chinese Villagers’ Committee and Residents’ Committee Elections

[[abstract]]While Chinese scholars, media, and writers have long reported a noteworthy rural-urban difference in political participation, the meaning of this divergence to China’s local democracy remains underexplored. This paper explores the different patterns of electoral participation between rural and urban residents. I argue that the rural zeal in elections is due to VC governments’ strong capacity to mobilize loyalists to vote in state-controlled elections, while voter apathy in urban elections is resulted from the RC governments’ lack of the equivalent power to cultivate loyalist voters. Using Chinese General Social Survey 2013 to test the argument, I find evidence that shows that in VC elections rural people are more likely to vote in state-controlled elections than are urban residents. In addition, villagers’ electoral participation has nothing to do with their democratic consciousness but is significantly associated with Party membership. In contrast, urban turnout is highly correlated with democratic consciousness but not Party membership.[[notice]]補正完