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1.
The point of departure for this article is the contemporary tendency towards localisation of politics in the context of neo-liberal globalisation. Mediated through institutional reforms, political discourses and localised struggles, this localisation of politics produce new and transformed local political spaces. The purpose of the article is to examine the capacity of popular movements to use and transform such political spaces within the South African housing sector. This analysis is done through a combination of conceptual examination of political space and actor capacity and a concrete case study of the political strategies and capacities of The South African Homeless People’s Federation. The article argues that the Federation has utilised political relations at different scales to mobilise resources such as land and subsidies for housing for its members. It has also influenced the formulation of housing policies through its discourses and practical experiences with people-driven housing processes. In consequence the Federation’s ability to function as a civil/political movement has granted them a certain capacity to participate in the complicated process of turning de jure rights to adequate shelter into de facto rights for the urban poor as citizens of a democratic South Africa.  相似文献   

2.
Farhana Sultana 《Geoforum》2011,42(2):163-172
This article argues that resource access, use, control, ownership and conflict are not only mediated through social relations of power, but also through emotional geographies where gendered subjectivities and embodied emotions constitute how nature-society relations are lived and experienced on a daily basis. By engaging the insights from feminist political ecology literatures and emotional geographies literatures, the article demonstrates that resource struggles and conflicts are not just material challenges but emotional ones, which are mediated through bodies, spaces and emotions. Such a focus fleshes out the complexities, entanglements and messy relations that constitute political ecologies of resources management, where practices and processes are negotiated through constructions of gender, embodiments, and emotions. Abstractions of ‘resource struggles’ and ‘resource conflicts’ are thereby grounded in embodied emotional geographies of places, peoples, and resources, enabling us to better understand the ways resources and emotions come to matter in everyday survival struggles. This framing can enrich feminist political ecology theorizations and texture our understandings of commonly-used terms such as access, use, control, conflict and struggles vis-à-vis natural resources in any context. In other words, we are better able to conceptualize and explain how and why people access, use, and struggle over resources the ways they do. A case study of drinking water contamination from Bangladesh is used to develop the theoretical arguments in contributing to existing debates in (feminist) political ecologies.  相似文献   

3.
Jane Tooke 《Geoforum》2000,31(4):567-574
Institutions are objects of study that raise questions about the relationship between continuity and change. Employment is changing and for this reason it presents an opportunity to explore how it is that paid work might be thought of as an institutional ‘space’ that is made up of enduring and shifting power relations. This paper views institutions through a lens of ‘power-geometries’, that is, as complex webs of relations of domination and subordination (Massey, D., 1992. New Left Review 196, 65–84). The paper illustrates these power-geometries by exploring employment in local authority cleansing depots in South East England. I concentrate on how the inequity of employment relations enables the institutionalisation of work practices. Employment relations were found to have shifted to different degrees according to the particular geographies and histories of labour markets, employer strategies, local politics and worker solidarities. Despite these variations the asymmetry of employment relations is seen to have endured. I conclude by arguing that whilst power-geometries are not fixed, when ‘institutionalised’ they are not easily changed during ‘everyday’ interaction.  相似文献   

4.
Chih Yuan Woon 《Geoforum》2011,42(3):285-296
Geographers’ interest in the productive intersections between fear and issues of (counter)terrorism has flourished in recent years. These studies have been important in their critical analyses of geopolitical relations by exposing how fear has been driving unjust policies and violent initiatives. However, I suggest that these lines of inquiries often neglect the localized playing out of fears, particularly how such sentiments can potentially stimulate actions and affect the practices and progress of politics at different geographical scales.This paper addresses the aforementioned lacuna by scrutinizing how fear is bounded up with the geographical extension of the US-led ‘war on terror’ to the Philippines in the post 9/11 era. I argue that the framings of terrorism in the country have allowed the government to manipulate fear to justify destructive strategies for the eradication of imminent ‘threats’. However such initiatives are not only counterproductive to rooting out the sources of terror but also aid in the (re)production of violence. Not assuming the inevitability of such elegaic outcomes, I showcase the efforts of the Philippines communist ‘rebel’ group, Rebulusyonaryong Partido ng Manggagawa ng Mindanao (RPM-M), in repudiating official terrorism discourse by emphasising instead issues of state-induced vulnerability and marginalization. This in turn allows fear to be transformed into other modalities of emotions that are central to the formation of coalitional resistances to the arbitrary effects of state violence and its vicissitudes.By illuminating the constitution of (non)violence through emotions, there is an inherent wish to disrupt the natural conjoining of fear, terror and violence dominating contemporary geopolitical imaginations. Crucially, the implications of emotions for the thinking and doing of nonviolence augments a concrete pathway for operationalising a radical praxis of peace and justice that explicitly eschews a resort to force.  相似文献   

5.
This paper argues that, given the rapid growth in the middle classes across the Global South, debates about ethical consumption need to be reconfigured to admit these middle classes, not as a problem but as a possibility. It establishes the potential to constitute Southern consumption as a surface of mobilisation for ethical consumption and, through working from the specificities of the South in Bangladesh, demonstrates how within-South framings unsettle and challenge existing North–South understandings of ethical consumption. The paper makes three specific contributions. (1) It shows how North–South conceptual understandings of ethical consumption as political consumption might be reworked to admit the South. (2) Through an examination of the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh it demonstrates the absence of a politics of consumer responsibility amongst the Bangladeshi middle classes, and suggests how a politics of responsibility might be forged, through paying attention to Southern brands and supply chains. (3) Through an examination of the Aarong retail brand of the corporate NGO BRAC, the paper shows that ethical consumption exists in Bangladesh, not as ethical consumption but as ordinary consumption with ethical effects. The paper concludes by considering the wider implications of these findings for furthering academic and practitioner debate.  相似文献   

6.
Lawrence D. Berg 《Geoforum》2004,35(5):553-558
This paper provides an analysis of the scale politics involved in the production of social-scientific geographic knowledge. I argue that critical Geographers need to acknowledge that ideas do not circulate unfettered or limited solely by their intellectual value. Instead, we must understand that some ideas are `attached' intimately to the places in which they originate while others circulate freely without attachment to specific places. Through such simple (dis)locations, geographic ideas get inserted into spaces of academic knowledge production that are shot through with scale politics. Ironically, such scalar processes produce a simple, transparent, abstract and hierarchical space of knowledge production that elides the complex spatial relations that we as geographers are supposed to be so interested in understanding.  相似文献   

7.
Laïla Smith 《Geoforum》2008,39(1):236-251
This article presents a case study of the World Bank’s relationship with South Africa to argue that the Bank uses its knowledge brokering role as a device to facilitate the development of a lending relationship with countries that may initially be reluctant to enter into this kind of engagement. This article reviews the World Bank’s 10-year effort to develop a lending relationship with South Africa. The Bank inserted itself into the country in the early 1990s at the outset of its democratic transformation. Throughout the decade, South Africa acceded to the Bank’s policy interventions through technical assistance rather than through a concerted lending programme. In doing so, South Africa internalized the Bank’s market-driven political economy framework underlying its technical assistance programme. The country’s application of the Bank’s knowledge has had questionable outcomes for its development agenda. While the Bank’s ‘expert’ interventions may have offered valuable technical insights, it neglected the politics of distribution that are embedded in a more localized knowledge formation process. The result has led to the instrumentalization of local governance and undermined the engagement of civil society actors in the construction of a democratic state at the local level.  相似文献   

8.
Michael Woods 《GeoJournal》2011,76(4):365-381
This paper examines the local politics through which the reconstitution of rural localities under globalization is advanced and contested, with particular reference to the impact of international amenity migration. It contends that as globalization proceeds not by domination but by hybridization and negotiation, local politics is critical as the sphere in which the outcomes of globalization processes are interpreted and contested. The paper examines the case study of Queenstown Lakes district in South Island, New Zealand, as a locality that has experienced significant transformation through engagement with globalization processes. These include high levels of international amenity in-migration, substantial overseas investment in property, commerce and construction projects, and an increasing volume of international tourists. Collectively, these processes have contributed to rapid population growth and intensive pressure for the development of rural land in the area. As detailed in the paper, land use planning became the dominant issue in local politics, with conflict between groups informed by ‘boosterist’ and ‘environmentalist’ stand-points, as well as the ‘aspirational ruralism’ of amenity in-migrants. Although locally-grounded, the conflict engaged trans-local actors and networks and transgressed space and scale, thus becoming itself an expression of globalization.  相似文献   

9.
Basak Tanulku 《Geoforum》2012,43(3):518-528
The growing research on gated communities has largely regarded them as isolated and isolating places, rather than considering residents’ relations with other spaces and communities. This paper seeks to examine these external contacts through exploring the ways in which gated communities establish relations with local political actors. This is done through an examination of two gated communities in Gokturk and Omerli, Istanbul, and an analysis of the differences between them. On the basis of semi-structured in-depth interviews with residents and locals, the paper demonstrates how gated communities engage with the outside world in contrasting ways. By focusing on the conflict between Islamist and secular people, the paper also argues that gated communities are active urban agents, establishing interdependent relations with local political actors which can change urban space and politics.  相似文献   

10.
As fundamental as emotions may be in our experiences with wildlife, very little research addresses this topic. The following paper provides insight into the emotional responses of conservation volunteers participating on conservation holidays through four ethnographic case-studies. Six common emotional responses were identified: anguish, disappointment, frustration, exhilaration, awe and compassion. These emotional highs and lows shaped the volunteer experience, as the realities of wildlife conservation in South Africa upset the culturally constructed, emotionally appealing vision of African wilderness that the volunteers expected. While the positive emotions associated with idealised expectations of African wildlife provide an ideal basis upon which to commercialise nature conservation, they generate a series of tensions in practice. The paper makes an important empirical contribution to current debates surrounding the economic exploitation of affect, showing how emotions underpin the commercialisation of conservation, both through the configuration of the volunteers’ wildlife experiences and the scope of conservation that is practised.  相似文献   

11.
Party politics are generally absent from urban governance or urban politics theories or debates, or present only anecdotally or as a ‘black box’, whilst they are more and more described, especially in Cities of the South, as central to urban societies, access to resources and social dynamics. This paper attempts, through the case of the role of the ANC in civil society in Johannesburg, to uncover the place and the role of political parties in urban governance. It first argues that the party local branch is often crucial as a platform of mobilization, expression and debates around local needs, being more structured and able to access channels of decision than other civil society organizations or local government participatory structures. However, its strong embededness in urban local societies also means a form of social control restricting the ability of civil society to revolt and challenge urban policies more radically.  相似文献   

12.
On the basis of a 2008 survey conducted in the Msunduzi municipality in the KwaZulu-Natal province, the paper begins an exploration of the character of popular politics and citizenship in South Africa. Embracing a ‘citizen-centred’ methodology informed by participation literatures, and sensibilities to the ‘work in progress’ character of African cities from urban studies debates, the paper interrogates the mainstream liberal-participatory model of citizenship in South Africa, and the critiques of current South African politics informed by these notions, specifically the ‘racial census’ and ‘dominant party syndrome’ analyses. Taken together these views can be read as characterising South African politics as a game for individual citizens governed by liberal rules, but played by racial and/or partisan groups in exclusionary ways, thus distorting liberal democratic mechanisms of representation and accountability. The paper also examines evidence for an alternative class-based analysis of one aspect of citizenship, namely, protest against poor local governance.The paper looks to unpack this ‘liberal model versus racialised communitarian practice’ imaginary by, on the one hand, demonstrating the ways in which citizenship is not racialised, or is asymmetrically racialised. Indeed, other than party allegiances and trust in key offices, very little by way of what citizens do, believe or think of themselves follows discrete racial lines. Similar points hold for partisanship too. On the other hand, the paper does not redeem the liberal-democratic model as there is also evidence of trust in government when it is not deserved based on performance, but more importantly, evidence that citizens embrace ‘informal’ means to secure their rights. A good example of this is protestors who are also more likely to vote than non-protestors. Taken together, these findings affirm both the way in which the racial and partisan legacy of the past is being undone by new institutions and practices, and suggest the complex intersection of these with networks of personal relations which characterise the local politics of most African cities.  相似文献   

13.
Laurent Fourchard 《Geoforum》2012,43(2):199-206
Despite a long academic debate on the patrimonial dimension of the state in Africa and a more recent interest in African political parties, the effect of patronage and party politics on governability in Africa’s cities remains poorly addressed in the academic literature. This includes the case in South Africa when one looks at the security sector, which to a certain extent, looks like a depoliticised field of expertise. Popular claims for security seem to be a side issue in the literature on social movements, while vigilante specialists and policing experts do not place party politics at the core of security issue challenges, especially in poor townships. The provision of security in poor neighbourhoods is an important resource in the struggle for political support however. This is examined through two case studies in Cape Town Coloured townships, considering the role played by political leaders, NGO leaders and key officials in grassroots mobilisations for security. These mobilisations are not only about politicking however; ‘ordinary members’ of local security organisations also get involved for motivations, which have nothing to do with confrontational party politics. These different agendas between ordinary members and local leaders cannot be read as the manifestation of a fundamental opposition between the popular classes and a westernised elite as suggested by Charterjee. It reveals instead prevalent and ambivalent relationships between partisan politics and popular mobilisations for security in a context of high insecurity.  相似文献   

14.
Since the 1990s, transboundary water management has come to play a key role both in global environmental politics debates and in the shaping of international development policies, specifically in the Global South. As a consequence, a growing body of literature in the framework of critical hydropolitics has emerged reflecting on the role that power, discourses, and strategies play in shaping transboundary water policies and in influencing riparian relations. The focus on a state-centric perspective, however, often has led to neglect of the role of international development actors in shaping these policies. Through a critical application of the Circle of Hydro-Hegemony (CHH) and ethnographic qualitative field research in borderlands, this contribution aims to analyse how the establishment of a development initiative known as the Chu-Talas Commission, supported by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and other donors, has influenced and shaped transboundary water politics in the Talas waterscape, which is shared by Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The evidence shows that despite the international narration of the Chu-Talas Commission as a success story for water cooperation in Central Asia, Kazakhstan, through the deployment of both material and bargaining power strategies, has been able to shape UNECE development policies in its favour, impose its agenda on Kyrgyzstan, and emerge as the basin hydro-hegemon.  相似文献   

15.
This paper asks how contending political leaders legitimize their authority in a competitive authoritarian regime. It contends that ‘legitimization through patronage’ is an important means of convincing the public of the rightfulness of a leader’s authority when ‘ideology-based normative legitimacy’ is declining and the formal electoral route is not available. Drawing on an understanding of legitimacy that accounts for leaders’ strategies and public receptions, the paper seeks to explore the moral norms and values on the basis of which followers evaluate leaders’ performance. Drawing on anthropological studies of patronage in South Asia not only helps to transcend an exclusively instrumental understanding of patronage by stressing its moral dimension but also complements comparative politics’ focus on the national level by studying the everyday processes through which political leaders’ legitimacy is locally constructed and contested in patronage relations. Evidence from Darjeeling in northern West Bengal/India (where the State’s preferential treatment of a regional party claiming leadership of a movement for regional autonomy has contributed to the establishment of a dominant party regime) highlights patronage’s potential as a legitimating strategy – but it also reveals its practical limits. While the establishment of resource monopolies over developmental funding helped leaders of the ruling party to “feed” their support networks and foster reputations as selfless “social workers”, differing bases for the evaluation of leaders, the growing expectations of followers, and dependence on external patronage resources limited the long-term success of patronage as a legitimating strategy. This, in turn, enabled the State to curtail demands for autonomy by controlling regional elite construction.  相似文献   

16.
In recent years, many geographers have examined the ways that the production of nature has changed as a result of neoliberal practices. In this paper we examine a conflict in South Korea that started when some Chinese-cabbage seeds were affected by a virus, causing crop failure. This failure came shortly after liberalization in the Korean seed industry led to foreign ownership of the firm that sold the seed. We focus in particular on the farmers’ creative political responses - and their subsequent defeat in court. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s insights on politics, science, and law, we examine how the seed failure came to be evaluated through scientific and legal practices. We argue that the adjudication of the truth of the seed failure through science and law reveals how socionatures are contested under prevailing hegemonic conditions. These conditions are both general and specific: although law and science are relatively hegemonic spheres of truth-production in all capitalist societies, the ways that the seeds were disputed and evaluated were distinctly Korean.  相似文献   

17.
Sean Carter   《Geoforum》2007,38(6):1102-1112
This paper provides an account of the humanitarian interventions enacted by the Croatian–American diaspora during the secessionist conflicts in Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Whilst undeniably an act of generosity towards ‘distant strangers’, actions such as these also represent a much more complex reality – they are an outcome of a complex set of relations and processes, in which the ethical choices of individuals become bound up with nationalist ideologies, geopolitical questions and, crucially, knowledge and understanding of distant events. In particular, this paper considers the ways in which generosity is mobilised through the framing of Balkan geopolitics through diasporic media. In so doing, it becomes possible to deepen the dialogue between work on geography and ethics on the one hand, and critical geopolitics on the other. In particular, the paper argues that due attention needs to be paid to the ways in which such ‘networks of concern’ are constructed in a variety of banal and mundane ways.  相似文献   

18.
This paper engages with the material geographies of political conflict. It applies the concerns of actor-network theory around the entangled character of material/social relations to the geographies of subaltern politics. It explores how interconnected strikes of riverside labourers and sailors in the London and Newcastle Port Strikes of 1768 contested the terms on which materials were enrolled into mercantile capitalist networks. The dynamic geographies of these strikes are used to unsettle constructions of subaltern spaces of politics as bounded and localised. The paper then demonstrates how labourers crafted multiple antagonisms through negotiating their location in materially heterogeneous networks. It uses this concern with contested material geographies to engage with the entangled construction of political identities. The paper concludes that interrogating the materialities of political conflict does not just add a neglected technical dimension to the study of political activity; it provides considerable resources for engaging with the inventiveness of subaltern political activity and agency [Barry, A., Political Machines: Governing A Technological Society, Continuum Publications, London, 2001].  相似文献   

19.
This paper examines recent trends in tourism in the South Pacific islands and looks in particular at the way in which airline links between markets and destinations are forged, maintained and developed through time. Geography, politics and organisational dynamics combine to present island nations in the South Pacific with numerous dilemmas. The interdependencies between tourism and aviation cannot be over-stressed. Tourism is no panacea to cure the economic problems of Pacific island microstates, but tourism and aviation are complementary industries which offer better prospects than standing in the dole queue for aid. Given the right political and managerial climate, there is a chance to trade with dignity.  相似文献   

20.
Cheryl McEwan 《Geoforum》2003,34(4):469-481
This paper considers the ongoing political transformations in South Africa in the context of debates about good governance and participatory democracy. It first appraises the current transformations of local government in South Africa, focusing specifically on relationships between gender equality and citizenship on the one hand, and local government policy, legislation, and community participation on the other, and then explores meanings of participation and how they inform approaches towards local socio-economic development. The findings of primary research conducted with civil society organisations and black women in communities in the Cape Town metropolitan area are explored through three interrelated themes. First, the model of structured participation that is central to South Africa’s democratic transformation is assessed from the perspective of black women. Second, cultures of alienation, both within local governance structures and amongst black women and the extent to which recent restructuring is combating or contributing to these are explored. Third, how participation policies are dealing with conflict within and between target groups are analysed, whether stakeholder group politics obliterate important differences in interests and whether alternative structures might be more effective in terms of women’s participation and empowerment. Finally, the findings are interpreted in relation to theoretical concepts of good governance and participatory democracy, and the potential and problems of realising South Africa’s transformation process toward developmental local government are assessed.  相似文献   

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