Negotiated space: Tourists, pilgrims, and the Bahá’í terraced gardens in Haifa     

Jay D. Gatrell  Noga Collins-Kreiner 《Geoforum》2006,37(5):765-778

This paper explores the inherent contradiction and conceptual conflict that arises when sacred sites are marketed as secular for the purpose of promoting tourism. The question of conflict is further frustrated within the context of Israel’s contested religious landscape and Israeli policy. Using a Lefebvrian framework, the historical development of the Bahai Gardens in Haifa, Israel, the tourism board’s promotion of the site as Haifa’s primary tourist designation, and the distinct spatial practices that have been used by both constituencies are investigated. Further, the authors posit that the Bahai Gardens are multi-dimensional spaces characterized by two different socio-spatial processes and practices that co-exist—the tourist’s and the pilgrim’s. These practices transform the holy site into a secular shared community asset. The paper concludes with a discussion of the socio-spatial implications of the case and its broader implications concerning the globalization of tourism and the efficacy of developing “layered” Lefebvrian triad to try and avoid conflict.  相似文献   

Probing the (in)compatibilities of social theory and policy relevance in Piers Blaikie’s political ecology     

Roderick P. Neumann 《Geoforum》2008,39(2):728-735

One of Piers Blaikie’s most important contributions to the development of political ecology is his critique of land and resource conservation policy in the global South. In this paper I trace the development of Blaikie’s ideas about the policy relevance of political ecology, focusing particularly on the challenges posed by the introduction of poststructural social theory into the field. I begin by revisiting Blaikie’s earlier critiques of environment and development policy. This will provide the departure point to explore how his thinking on the relationship of theory and policy and of academic and development practices has evolved in subsequent writings. I have invented two personas, “early Blaikie” and “late Blaikie”, to facilitate this task. Second, I want to probe some of the challenges that late Blaikie presents for doing political ecology research, to some extent by pitting early Blaikie against late Blaikie and letting them hash it out. Third, I turn to my own and others’ research and consultation experiences as a way to examine the possibilities for reconciling theoretically driven critiques with policy relevant research.  相似文献   

Placing splintering urbanism: Introduction     

Olivier Coutard 《Geoforum》2008,(6):1815-1820

This paper introduces a collection of case studies aimed at “Placing Splintering Urbanism”, in reference to the thesis developed by Graham and Marvin [Graham, S., Marvin, S., 2001. Splintering Urbanism. Networked Infractructures, Technoloical Moblilities and the Urban condition. Routledge, London]. Whilst acknowledging the value of the thesis as an analytical framework in opening the way to innovative understandings of contemporary urban dynamics, the paper argues that, taken together, the articles in this themed issue seriously challenge the “splintering urbanism” thesis theoretically, empirically and methodologically. They question in particular the postulated universality of the “modern infrastructural ideal” and of “unbundling” and “bypass” processes — all of which are key elements in Graham and Marvin’s argument — as well as the assertion that reforms in infrastructure sectors should generally result in more discriminatory, socially regressive patterns of provision of essential services and more splintered urban spaces. Based on these fundamental critiques, the paper concludes that one cannot speak of “splintering urbanism in general” — i.e., as a global trend — in any meaningful analytical way.  相似文献   

Reading representations of women’s war experiences in the Changi Chapel and Museum, Singapore     

Hamzah Muzaini  B.S.A. Yeoh 《Geoforum》2005,36(4):465-476

In this paper, we highlight the way Singapore commemorates its involvement during the Second World War. After briefly tracing the genesis of war commemoration within the nation, we turn to one specific problematic--the gendered portrayals of the war within a particular war memorial in Singapore, the Changi Chapel and Museum. Through a reading of landscape texts, interviews with key figures, visitors and other ethnographic data, we explore the specific ways in which women have either been omitted or stereotypically represented within the site. We proceed to provide possible reasons for this, arguing how the male-centric focus of the site may be due to the perpetuation of hegemonic ideals of war as being a traditionally “male” terrain, and the fact that “silence” is often part of women’s approach to their war experiences. We also argue that gendered portrayals of the war within the site is also an unconscious product of the patriarchal nature of the Singapore state and nation-building endeavours that have placed limits on a more substantial inclusion of women’s stories vis-à-vis the men’s.  相似文献   

Should political ecology be Marxist? A case for Gramsci’s historical materialism     

Geoff Mann 《Geoforum》2009,40(3):335-344

This paper investigates some aspects of political ecology’s relation to Marxism, specifically its ties to Marxism’s “historical materialism”. I argue Gramsci is an essential feature in the reinvigoration of that relation, and that political ecology should be Marxist, if by Marxist we mean Gramscian. I focus on the concept of hegemony, arguing that Gramsci’s historical materialism, in contrast to the Engelsian tradition within which most materialism is snared, allows us to take account of both moments in Gramsci’s hegemony, the “economic” and the “ethicopolitical”.  相似文献   

State visions, landscape, and disease: Discovering malaria in Argentina, 1890-1920     

Eric D. Carter 《Geoforum》2008,39(1):278-293

Recently, geographers and other scholars have reappraised the state’s spatial properties, roles, and strategies. According to these interpretations, modern states seek to control their subjects and coordinate economic development through various “rational” and “scientific” strategies that involve the standardization, transformation, and bureaucratization of space, territory, and landscape. Through this process social relations are increasingly configured through state discourses and institutions. The role of public health institutions in the development of state spatialities has been relatively underappreciated. This paper explores the establishment and early action of a malaria control campaign in Northwest Argentina, in the early twentieth century. I make three arguments: first, in creating a malaria control program, the Argentine state did not merely respond to a given “social fact” but rather was the key participant in constructing the “malaria problem”. Second, in response to this problem the Argentine state created a new technical-administrative territory, “the malarious zone”, which encompassed several provinces and defined the federal government’s jurisdiction for public health action. Finally, state actors came to understand the malaria problem, and potential solutions to it, through specific “rational” practices of the modern state: surveying, mapping, measurement, and statistical compilation. In its early years, the malaria campaign did not so much control the disease itself, as much as establish control over the “malaria question”, making it indisputably a state project.  相似文献   

How “Water for All!” policy became hegemonic: The power of the World Bank and its transnational policy networks     

Michael Goldman 《Geoforum》2007,38(5):786-800

As recently as 1990, few people in the global South received their water from US or European water firms. But just 10 years later, more than 400 million people did, with that number predicted to increase to 1.2 billion people by 2015, transforming water in Africa, Asia, and Latin America into capitalized markets as precious, and war-provoking, as oil. This article explains how this new global water policy became constituted so quickly, dispersed so widely, with such profound institutional effects. It highlights the prominent role of transnational policy networks in linking environment and development NGOs and the so-called global water policy experts with Northern high-end service sectors, and the ways in which the World Bank facilitates their growth, authority, and efficacy. This phenomenon reflects the World Bank’s latest and perhaps most vulnerable development regime, which I call “green neoliberalism.”  相似文献   

How to speak for aquifers and people at the same time: Environmental justice and counter-network formation at a hazardous waste site     

Ryan Holifield 《Geoforum》2009,40(3):363-372

A common source of conflict at hazardous waste sites in the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program is the accuracy of scientific investigations and representations produced to inform cleanup decisions. Liable firms often produce these technical representations themselves, and communities surrounding sites frequently argue that such “voluntary” investigations are compromised by conflicts of interest. In order to challenge the representations of powerful firms, locally situated actors often develop trans-local connections with expertise and equipment concentrated at distant centers of calculation. Although some interpret the spatial politics of such connecting in terms of “jumping scales,” another important spatial dimension of this network construction is differential positioning. In a conflict over groundwater models at the St. Regis Superfund Site in Minnesota, the counter-network that emerged to challenge the owner’s representations of the site positioned some actors as “outsiders” and others as “insiders.” This differential positioning enabled the counter-network to balance the need to demonstrate the reliability and impartiality of its claims with the requirement to maintain its accountability to local public interests. I argue that these requirements result from the prevalent view of the science-policy interface, which assumes a rigid separation between science and politics. Nonetheless, the conflict over groundwater at St. Regis reveals how at the science-policy interface, speaking for things and speaking for people are thoroughly entangled.  相似文献   

An Apollonian appreciation of Google Earth     

Gwilym Eades 《Geoforum》2010,41(5):671-673

This short article reviews and critically appraises Kingsbury and Jones’ (2009)Geoforum article entitled “Walter Benjamin’s Dionysian Adventures on Google Earth”, and finds it lacking in several regards. First, the use of Nietzsche’s Dionysus/Apollo dichotomy is in fact a double binary, in which Apollonian logic is constructed as a binary within the dichotomy, while the Dionysian logic is ‘bacchanalian’. Second, Walter Benjamin as exemplar of Dionysian logic is shown to be problematic and more a distraction from the flawed Nietzschean logic than a useful construct in itself. Lastly, the educational potential of Google Earth is overlooked by Kingsbury and Jones, in their haste to see Google Earth through ‘Google goggles’, in which everything Google appears through Dionysian-tinted lenses.  相似文献   

A Janus-faced biodiversity change and the partiality of ecological knowledge in a world biodiversity hotspot in Ghana: Implications for biodiversity rehabilitation     

Louis Awanyo 《Geoforum》2007,38(4):739-751

The Gyamfiase-Adenya-Obom cluster of villages in the forest-savanna region of Ghana is located within one of Conservation International’s 34 “World Biodiversity Hotspots” of the most biodiversity-threatened regions of the world. In collaboration with local farmers in this area since 1993, the People, Land Management and Ecological Change Project in Ghana (PLEC-Ghana) has been working on promoting biodiversity rehabilitation to address problems of biodiversity change. This goal is expected to be achieved through agrobiodiversity or biodiversity-friendly agricultural practices. However, farmers’ employment of these practices has been lackluster, even while they acknowledge biodiversity changes, dominated by Chromolaena odorata and other herbaceous species, that are driving the decline in forests and their biodiversity. In interpreting the difficulties of biodiversity rehabilitation in Gyamfiase-Adenya-Obom, this study outlines the diverging ecological knowledge of non-residents/outsiders and local farmers about biodiversity change, which it describes as Janus-like with two diverging faces. One face of biodiversity change shows the detrimental impacts on biodiversity and its observers—non-residents/outsiders—insist on biodiversity rehabilitation that nurtures forests, and the growth and domination of tree species. The other face of biodiversity change shows its agronomic advantages and its observers—the local farmers—are skeptical of current biodiversity rehabilitation practices. Farmers see agronomic benefits in biodiversity change, in particular the benefit of faster soil regeneration within the predominant bush fallow system of farming. And as a result of this observation, farmers continue with practices that sustain a decline in forests and biodiversity. Based on social and ecological research that explores three biodiversity-friendly practices promoted by PLEC-Ghana (fallow management, mulching, and intensive weeding to protect tree seedlings), this article discusses the partiality of ecological perspectives that emphasize either face of biodiversity change but not both, and the implications for biodiversity rehabilitation.  相似文献   

Are people of Indian origin (PIO) “Indian”? A case study of South Africa     

Frederic Landy  Brij Maharaj 《Geoforum》2004,35(2):203-215

A necessary condition for a migration to be considered as a “diaspora” is the upholding of contacts in the land of origin in various forms, real or imaginary, material or cultural. This paper examines whether this is so in the case of Indian South Africans, most of whose ancestors came to the country as indentured labourers between 1860 and 1911. A key contention was that there could be some cultural and emotional factors partly explaining the economic relations and the geography of flows between the South Africans of Indian origin and India. However, this eventually proved to be wrong. This is all the more paradoxical since the “Indian” identity is still very alive in Durban. However, it is highly fragmented, according to the generations, the religions and the socio-economic classes. India is still a key referent, but “transcendentally”: either as a country which has only an abstract existence, which is spoken of, even dreamt of, without ever being visited; or it is visited but considered only as a whole, since the region of one’s ancestors is almost never at the forefront. Furthermore, the vulnerable situation of “Indians” within South African society does not encourage stronger relationships with India.  相似文献   

Governing minorities and development in Xishuangbanna, China: Akha and Dai rubber farmers as entrepreneurs   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Janet C. Sturgeon 《Geoforum》2010,41(2):318-73

In Xishuangbanna, southern Yunnan, Akha and Dai farmers, regarded in China as “backward”, passive recipients of state-led development, have been “getting rich” on rubber and expanding rubber cultivation into neighbouring Laos. State cash crop campaigns to raise minority farmers’ incomes inadvertently turned minority farmers into dynamic entrepreneurs. This paper builds on Vinay Gidwani’s use of development as a “regime of value” to raise social and economic value to analyze these unexpected results. Local state agents believe they are the agents of development, bringing modest social and economic improvements to minority farmers of obdurate backwardness. Minority farmers see themselves as improving their own incomes and “quality”, a term in China for social value, in an era when they are responsible for their own development. National development discourse encourages citizens to raise population quality by becoming entrepreneurial, a message heard by minority rubber farmers as well as urban elites. Through creative, post-Fordist production models and agile deployment of land, labour, and capital, minority farmers have achieved incomes that exceed those of workers on state rubber farms, large plantations whose Fordist production models are losing out in the uneven transition from a planned economy to a more capitalist market assemblage. Akha and Dai rubber farmers, the “backward” minorities on China’s periphery, have unexpectedly become the forerunners of flexible production arrangements that are prevailing in the arena opened up by China’s 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization.  相似文献   

Aggregating dispersed workers: Union organizing in the “care” industries     

Nari Rhee  Carol Zabin 《Geoforum》2009,(6):969-979

This paper analyzes recent union efforts to organize low-wage workers in the home- and community-based segments of homecare, childcare, and services to people with developmental disabilities in the US. In these sectors, consumer demand has combined with privatization to create an army of “flexible”, part-time, poverty-wage workers, most of them women, people of color, and immigrants. This workforce is profoundly fragmented due to the preponderance of small nonprofit employers, widespread self-employment, and spatially atomized labor performed within myriad private homes. However, service sector unions have adapted creatively to these opportunities and constraints by implementing two interlinked scale-jumping strategies to overcome care workers’ spatial and organizational atomization. One is state-by-state policy advocacy to raise labor (and service) standards industry-wide and to aggregate employment through various organizational and legal interventions. The other is coalition building with consumers and advocates at the local, state, and national level to generate essential political support for these measures. We find that the success of this strategy has been shaped in large part by the political landscape of region and the political economy of distinct care industry segments. Finally, the resulting care industry unionism constitutes a distinct strand of an emergent public services unionism—in which consumers and workers struggle to define care labor as a socially necessary public good, and workers pushed into the nebulous zone between state and market struggle to define themselves as public workers.  相似文献   

Tanzanite as conflict gem: Certifying a secure commodity chain in Tanzania     

Richard A. Schroeder 《Geoforum》2010,41(1):56-65

Shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the Wall Street Journal published an article claiming that al Qaeda sympathizers were using an obscure gemstone commodity known as tanzanite to raise funds for terrorist activities. Despite subsequent disclaimers by the US State Department, this allegation effectively marked tanzanite as a “conflict gem,” and set in motion a complex set of political maneuvers designed to rehabilitate the tanzanite industry’s reputation. This paper analyzes the immediate fallout from the Wall Street Journal article and the subsequent effects of anti-terrorist rhetoric on the tanzanite industry. I explore the origins of the “conflict gem” discourse and the political movement that has taken shape over the past decade to reform gemstone mining. Drawing on theories developed by critics of the fair trade movement, I examine a series of steps taken by the main corporate miner active in the tanzanite industry to re-brand and certify tanzanite as “conflict-free.” I underscore the degree to which these efforts have been inflected by new security provisions embodied in the USA Patriot Act.  相似文献   

The consolations of ‘neoliberalism’     

Clive Barnett 《Geoforum》2005,36(1):7-12

Recent work on neoliberalism has sought to reconcile a Marxist understanding of hegemony with poststructuralist ideas of discourse and governmentality derived from Foucault. This paper argues that this convergence cannot resolve the limitations of Marxist theories of contemporary socio-economic change, and nor do they do justice to the degree to which Foucault’s work might be thought of as a supplement to liberal political thought. The turn to Foucault highlights the difficulty that theories of hegemony have in accounting for the suturing together of top-down programmes with the activities of everyday life. However, the prevalent interpretation of governmentality only compounds this problem, by supposing that the implied subject-effects of programmes of rule are either automatically realised, or more or less successfully ‘contested’ and ‘resisted’. Theories of hegemony and of governmentality both assume that subject-formation works through a circular process of recognition and subjection. Both approaches therefore treat ‘the social’ as a residual effect of hegemonic projects and/or governmental rationalities. This means that neither approach can acknowledge the proactive role that long-term rhythms of socio-cultural change can play in reshaping formal practices of politics, policy, and administration. The instrumental use of notions of governmentality to sustain theories of neoliberalism and neoliberalization supports a two-dimensional understanding of political power—which is understood in terms of relations of imposition and resistance—and of geographical space—which is understood in terms of the diffusion and contingent combination of hegemonic projects. Theories of neoliberalism provide a consoling image of how the world works, and in their simplistic reiteration of the idea that liberalism privileges the market and individual self-interest, they provide little assistance in thinking about how best to balance equally compelling imperatives to respect pluralistic difference and enable effective collective action.  相似文献   

Oxygen self-diffusion “fast-paths” in titanite single crystals and a general method for deconvolving self-diffusion profiles with “tails”     

X.Y. Zhang  E.B. Watson 《Geochimica et cosmochimica acta》2007,71(6):1563-1573

Like most other minerals, titanite rarely if ever forms perfect crystals. In addition to the point defects that might affect lattice diffusion, there may be extended line- or planar defects along which fast diffusion could occur. During the course of an experimental study of oxygen lattice diffusion in titanite, we found that almost all of the ¹⁸O uptake profiles produced in natural titanite crystals departed from the complementary error function solution expected for simple lattice diffusion with a constant surface concentration. Instead, they exhibited “tails” extending deeper into the samples than expected for simple lattice diffusion. The purpose of this contribution is to report on these features—described as “fast-paths” for oxygen diffusion—and outline a method for coping with them in extracting information from diffusion profiles.For both dry and hydrothermal experiments in which the “fast paths” are observed, ¹⁸O was used as the diffusant. In dry experiments, the source material was ¹⁸O-enriched SiO₂ powder, while ¹⁸O-enriched water was used for the hydrothermal experiments. Diffusive uptake profiles of ¹⁸O were measured in all cases by nuclear reaction analysis (NRA) using the ¹⁸O (p,α)¹⁵N reaction [see Zhang X. Y., Cherniak D. J., and Watson E. B. (2006) Oxygen diffusion in titanite: lattice and fast-path diffusion in single crystals. Chem. Geol.235 105-123].In our experiments, different sizes of “tails” (with varying ¹⁸O concentrations) were observed. Theoretically, under the same temperature and pressure conditions, the sizes of tails should be affected by two factors: the diffusion duration and the defect density. For the same experiment duration, the higher the defect density, the larger the “tail”; for the same defect densities, the longer the diffusion duration, the larger the “tail.”The diffusion “tails” could be a result of either planar defects or one-dimensional “pipe” diffusion. AFM imaging of HF etched titanite surfaces confirmed that the etched features might be caused by either parallel planar defects or parallel pipe defects, but could not differentiate between these possibilities. Through theoretical calculations simulating the tailed diffusion profiles using reasonable assumptions of lattice diffusivities and fast-path diffusivities, and comparing these with tail features measured in our samples, it can be concluded that the “tails” observed in our experiments are caused by planar defects rather than pipe defects.A new method was developed for separating the “fast-path” contribution from the overall composite diffusion profile consisting of both “fast-path” and lattice diffusion. Through this process, the lattice diffusion coefficient could be determined, which is required to analyze the tail. The oxygen diffusion rates in the fast-paths were obtained by traditional graphical analysis methods, using the Whipple-Le Claire equation (for 2-D defects) assuming that the width of the fast-path is 1 nm. Two Arrhenius relations were obtained for the fast-path diffusion phenomenon, one for experiments under dry conditions, and the other for hydrothermal conditions: