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1.
The contested spaces of Cuban development: Post-socialism, post-colonialism and the geography of transition 总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1
Simon Reid-Henry 《Geoforum》2007,38(3):445-455
The experience of the (post)socialist South has been marginal to the study of transition, despite the many similarities between processes of transition and development. This paper tries to better understand this overlap by exploring some empirical and conceptual connections between processes of development and processes of transition in Cuba. In doing so it makes two sets of arguments. The first set of arguments concerns the nature of ‘transition’ itself. I use the ‘contested spaces’ of the Cuban (socialist) biotech sector, and specifically its attempts to attract foreign (capitalist) investment as a case study. As a high profile industry, biotechnology functioned in Cuba as a political space within which questions of transition and development could be reconfigured by blurring the boundaries between them. In turn, this has enabled the Cuban State to legitimise responses to transition that would otherwise have appeared contradictory. The second set of arguments try to explain how this was possible. I argue that the slippage between nationalist and socialist visions of development allowed biotechnology (as a specifically developmentalist project) to be variously understood as, for example, a post-colonial socialist, or anti-colonial nationalist project in ways that suited the needs of transition at any one time. Such recombinations in many ways account for the non-linear and reversible nature of transition in Cuba. I speculate as to whether Bruno Latour’s work on the way capitalist societies understand themselves to be ‘modern’, helps explain how, in (post)socialist countries, processees of transition can be shaped through different historical constructions of modernisation and development. 相似文献
2.
Steven Tufts 《Geoforum》2009,40(6):980-990
3.
Technical assistance (TA) has a long and varied history as a development practice. It initially emerged as a set of ‘hard’ programs, tools, and technologies delivered to developing countries by imported First World experts, typically in the agricultural and resource sectors. Later, in response to critical and antidevelopment theories, TA morphed into its ‘soft’ version, attempting to empower marginalized people in the Global South by delivering the know-how - often collaboratively generated - sufficient to produce forms of development ‘from below’. In spite of this shift in the politics and practices of TA, it remains susceptible to neoliberal styles of development that have proceeded apace with withdrawal of state institutions in the funding and operation of social and economic development programs, and with the concomitant rise of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).In this paper, we follow the operation of one TA program operated by an intermediary NGO in Oaxaca, Mexico. We find that the program intersects with neoliberalization in two prominent ways, relying on a form of governmentality that codifies and prescribes: (a) the social spaces of action and need, and (b) learning subjects deficient in entrepreneurial initiative and know-how. We conclude by commenting on the political economic conditions that continue to underwrite TA as a development practice in spite of a decade or more of criticism directed at it and we consider the possibilities for its subversion. 相似文献
4.
Tomasz Zarycki 《Geoforum》2007,38(3):485-493
There is currently a lively discussion on the role of historic memories and the re-visiting of historic legacies in post-communist countries. Using the example of Poland and its legacy of the tripartite division of the 19th century, this paper aims to illustrate how symbolic conflicts over identity politics and the interpretation of history may critically influence discourses on the debates on, and portrayals of, variations in regional development. The paper thus discusses the post-war history of Poland in the context of the so-called left-right political cleavage, and the varying related debates on the ‘quality’ of regional development as part of Poland’s post-communist restructuring. These discussions include varying projections of the nature and role of social capital and its relative ‘usefulness’ for a successful development Poland’s after communism. And there are clear political overtones to these contrasting portrayals of Poland’s history and its regionally varying legacy. Drawing on different definitions of the notion of social capital, the paper then discusses how different legacies, such as an introspective and extrovert outlook of population and institutions, and the degree of cohesion among them, circumscribes a region’s economic development prospects. 相似文献
5.
This paper uses evidence from focus groups in England to consider how consumers think about and, more importantly, distinguish foods by both primary and secondary qualities, using both their own judgement but also advice produced by various organisations acting as ‘knowledge intermediaries’, such as independent certification bodies. We thus consider the ‘sorting out’ that consumers do with food, particularly in developing typologies of ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’, and the cues on which they base these judgements, from the material immediacy of ‘mucky carrots’ to the abstract remoteness of organic certification. In particular, we problematise the ‘knowledge-fix’ that underlies attempts to provide knowledge to promote more sustainable and ethical consumption. This raises problems of how consumers give assurance schemes meaning, how ethical and sustainable schemes are subject to re-fetishization and how consumers tend towards increasing scepticism and distrust of such claims, thus making a ‘politics of reconnection’ far from easy. 相似文献
6.
With rising public awareness of climate change, celebrities have become an increasingly important community of non nation-state ‘actors’ influencing discourse and action, thereby comprising an emergent climate science-policy-celebrity complex. Some feel that these amplified and prominent voices contribute to greater public understanding of climate change science, as well as potentially catalyze climate policy cooperation. However, critics posit that increased involvement from the entertainment industry has not served to influence substantive long-term advancements in these arenas; rather, it has instead reduced the politics of climate change to the domain of fashion and fad, devoid of political and public saliency. Through tracking media coverage in Australia, Canada, the United States, and United Kingdom, we map out the terrain of a ‘Politicized Celebrity System’ in attempts to cut through dualistic characterizations of celebrity involvement in politics. We develop a classification system of the various types of climate change celebrity activities, and situate movements in contemporary consumer- and spectacle-driven carbon-based society. Through these analyses, we place dynamic and contested interactions in a spatially and temporally-sensitive ‘Cultural Circuits of Climate Change Celebrities’ model. In so doing, first we explore how these newly ‘authorized’ speakers and ‘experts’ might open up spaces in the public sphere and the science/policy nexus through ‘celebritization’ effects. Second, we examine how the celebrity as the ‘heroic individual’ seeking ‘conspicuous redemption’ may focus climate change actions through individualist frames. Overall, this paper explores potential promises, pitfalls and contradictions of this increasingly entrenched set of ‘agents’ in the cultural politics of climate change. Thus, as a form of climate change action, we consider whether it is more effective to ‘plant’ celebrities instead of trees. 相似文献
7.
Jonathan R. Lee Emrys Phillips Stephen J. Booth James Rose Hannah M. Jordan Steven M. Pawley Martin Warren Russell S. Lawley 《Proceedings of the Geologists' Association. Geologists' Association》2013
Recent investigations from modern environments demonstrate that many terminal moraines do not simply record a single glacial maximum, but instead reveal a complex oscillatory pattern of ice-marginal behaviour including polyphase retreat. Within this study, we examine the geomorphology, geology and internal structure of a terminal moraine complex – the ‘Cromer Ridge’ in north Norfolk to reconstruct patterns of ice-marginal behaviour. Previously, this landform was interpreted as the limit of a southern extension of the British Ice Sheet during a Middle Pleistocene glaciation. Evidence presented here reveals a more complicated pattern of ice-marginal behaviour with the ‘Cromer Ridge’ reinterpreted as a ‘complex’ comprising several ridge elements. We propose that the maximum ice extent lay further to the south, with the size and morphology of the largest ridge element (the ‘Cromer Ridge’ as previously defined) a facet of thrust-stacking at an ice-marginal still-stand. We recognise multiple oscillations of the ice-front recorded against a twelve-stage model for the decay of the southern margins of a fast-flowing lobe of North Sea ice. Changes in ice-marginal dynamics are identified by the superimposition and lateral and vertical evolution of glacitectonic styles. Differences between these various states, and switches between ‘shallow’ and ‘deep’ thin-skinned glacitectonics, are strongly influenced by sub-marginal and proglacial water availability. Examination of the evidence for the morphostratigraphic proposals for the glacitectonic assemblage, within the context of the above interpretation, suggests that many of the ‘glacigenic landforms’ are erosional and a MIS 12 age of formation is favoured although several anomalies remain to be explained. 相似文献
8.
Transaction links through cities: ‘decision cities’ and ‘service cities’ in outsourcing by leading Brazilian firms 总被引：2，自引：0，他引：2
Most world city studies focus on where the provision of advanced producer services takes place, but in this study the location of the service clients are also taken into account. Production-service transactions are identified as links between ‘service city’ and ‘decision city’ (client HQ) and classified as intra-city (where a firms uses local (same city) services) and inter-city which may be domestic or foreign depending on whether the client uses services in or out of the country. Sampling the leading firms in Brazil, 218 transaction links are described and analysed in terms of cities, firm sectors, ownership and market. The analyses are used to inform a rereading of gateway city functions that takes into account the concentration/dispersal nexus in economic globalization. Thus, whereas the dominance of Sao Paulo in the Brazilian economy is confirmed, this is not interpreted as a simple gateway function with this one city ‘articulating’ the national economy into the world economy. A much more complex situation is revealed with by-passing of the gateway also much in evidence. The conclusion is that this shows concentration and dispersion of economic activity happening simultaneously in Brazil. 相似文献
9.
Stephen Morse 《Geoforum》2005,36(5):625-640
Pressing global environmental problems highlight the need to develop tools to measure progress towards “sustainability.” However, some argue that any such attempt inevitably reflects the views of those creating such tools and only produce highly contested notions of “reality.” To explore this tension, we critically assesses the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI), a well-publicized product of the World Economic Forum that is designed to measure ‘sustainability’ by ranking nations on league tables based on extensive databases of environmental indicators. By recreating this index, and then using statistical tools (principal components analysis) to test relations between various components of the index, we challenge ways in which countries are ranked in the ESI. Based on this analysis, we suggest (1) that the approach taken to aggregate, interpret and present the ESI creates a misleading impression that Western countries are more sustainable than the developing world; (2) that unaccounted methodological biases allowed the authors of the ESI to over-generalize the relative ‘sustainability’ of different countries; and, (3) that this has resulted in simplistic conclusions on the relation between economic growth and environmental sustainability. This criticism should not be interpreted as a call for the abandonment of efforts to create standardized comparable data. Instead, this paper proposes that indicator selection and data collection should draw on a range of voices, including local stakeholders as well as international experts. We also propose that aggregating data into final league ranking tables is too prone to error and creates the illusion of absolute and categorical interpretations. 相似文献
10.
Anastasia Christou 《Geoforum》2010,41(4):638-646
This article presents research on second-generation Greek-Germans, both those living in diaspora, and those who have ‘returned’ to Greece. The research is multi-sited, with fieldwork in Berlin, Athens, central and northern Greece. After defining and problematising the notions of ‘second generation’ and ‘return’ - especially complex in this context - we focus on the second generation’s diasporic imaginings of ‘home’, particularly their experiences and narrative framings of landscape, space and place. In their narratives, participants ‘remember’ their parents’ narratives about the homeland, and narrate their own experiences of returning to the diasporic hearth. Contrasts are drawn across diverse diasporic landscape imaginings and experiences: between received diasporic memories and ‘pragmatic’ experiences; holiday visits and long-term return; urban, rural and other spaces; and different sites in the diaspora, such as the place of upbringing and the ancestral home. 相似文献
11.
Local food is championed as one alternative response to industrial systems of food production and supply. While advocacy for local food is high, there is a lack of empirical evidence about the actual shape and scale of such food supply chains, especially from a retail perspective. Using supply chain diagrams, this paper presents a summary of ‘new’ agro-food geographies for five different retail types—farm shops, butchers, caterers, specialist shops, supermarkets/department stores—that all source local food from suppliers in the Scottish-English borders. Presented as five separate ‘shopping trips’, the paper examines where, how and why retailers source local food. Results reveal the complex nature of local food systems, especially in terms of intra-sector competitive dynamics (with a notable tension between direct forms of retail and established (independent) retailers), links and overlaps with ‘normal’ food retail systems and elastic notions of the ‘local’. The paper also draws a key distinction between locally produced and locally supplied food products. 相似文献
12.
Tassilo Herrschel 《Geoforum》2007,38(3):469-484
This paper investigates the dual nature of regionalisation between imposed institutionalised territoriality and self-made ‘ad hoc’ collaborative regional arrangements between localities. This involves, as the paper sets out to show, different, but concurrent imagineerings of ‘regions’ to two audiences - within and without a defined region. They are applied to the same territory, albeit with different images and sets of actors for internal (local) and external (national/international) consumption. These developments are examined within the context of the ‘new regionalism’ debate, in particular the notion of a replacement of ‘old’ through ‘new’ regionalism as a sequence. This duality of region making challenges the frequently somewhat simplistic presumption of regions forming as one complete entity, ‘out there’ to compete on a global market. They also have to fight for their recognition internally, but with different arguments, rationales and policies. This means that the possibility of overlapping single purpose ad hoc formed regions, as postulated under the new regionalism, needs to take into account the likelihood of several meanings of one and the same territory. The examples demonstrate that the two possibilities overlap - multi-territoriality and multi-meanings of (new) regionalism. The paper uses the example of post-unification eastern Germany, where in 1990 a completely new set of traditional regions was established, implementing a 1960s-derived western German model. Since this common starting point, strong economic, cultural and geographic differences have emerged, leading not only to policy adjustments, but also changes to the understanding of regionalisation and regional policy, and the actors involved. 相似文献
13.
Quo vadis neoliberalism? The remaking of global capitalist governance after the Washington Consensus
The Washington Consensus, through which neoliberal global capitalist governance gained hegemony over the third world, entered a crisis in the late 1990s. Triggered by the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and by contestations of neoliberal governance from global civil society, two remakings of global capitalist governance can be identified: A ‘post-Washington consensus’ whose relation to neoliberalism is complex; and a ‘new development economics’ that advocates Keynesian principles. Irrespective of the trajectory of this emergent phase of re-regulation, particularly after the 2008 global finance crisis, these remakings can be conceptualized as supplements reinforcing an imaginary of capitalism as the solution to, rather than progenitor of, uneven development. Through discourses of capitalist development as a sequential trajectory to be followed by all countries, as flattening the world to enable catch-up by backward countries, and as incorporating socio-spatial difference via its commodification, this socio-spatial imaginary functions to legitimate expertise located in the first world, and global capitalist governance, irrespective of serial policy failures. 相似文献
14.
Marcus Power 《Geoforum》2009,40(1):14-24
One important (though often neglected) part of the ‘development business’ committed to principles of partnership is the Commonwealth, a voluntary association of 54 independent countries, almost all of which were formerly under British rule. This paper focuses on the Commonwealth’s contemporary sense of ‘responsibility’ for shaping African development through ‘partnership’ and by promoting ‘good governance’ and examines the particular example of Mozambique, which joined the Commonwealth in 1995. In exploring exactly what membership of this post-colonial ‘family’ has meant for Mozambique the paper explores the neocolonial paternalism and sense of trusteeship that the Commonwealth has articulated in its often very apolitical vision of African development which seems to lock the continent into a permanent stage of tutelage and to repetitively reduce Africa to a set of core deficiencies for which externally generated ‘solutions’ must be devised. More generally, the paper also examines the wider context of the Commonwealth’s involvement in Africa by looking at the connections it has made to British industry, British charities and the British Department for International Development (DFID). The paper concludes with an assessment of the ‘showcase’ potential of Mozambique and its importance to Commonwealth and DFID narrations of an African ‘success’ story of peace, stability and growth since the end of the country’s devastating civil war in 1992. 相似文献
15.
Jessica Dempsey 《Geoforum》2011,42(2):211-221
Environmental politics, argues French philosopher Bruno Latour, have been a ‘disappointment’. Rather than trying to bring environmental concerns into a political world split into two - between Nature/Science and politics/society - Latour argues that environmental movements ought to focus on destroying this two-house collective, and develop ‘an understanding of ecological crises that no longer uses nature to account for the tasks to be accomplished’. In this paper I put my research on the politics and science of the Great Bear Rainforest (GBR), a large tract of temperate rainforest on the central and north coast of British Columbia, into direct conversation with Latour’s arguments about science, epistemology and environmental politics. The GBR was a site of intense political struggle focused predominantly on the scale and scope of industrial forestry, a struggle which ‘ended’ in 2006 with what some call a historic compromise between some high-profile environmental groups, First Nations, the Provincial government, and the forest industry. This paper focuses on two interlinked questions: do the environmental organizations at the centre of the struggle demonstrate the maladies identified by Latour; are they too preoccupied with representing Nature through Science? And second, do these maladies help us explain or understand the politics over the GBR? Were the politics of the GBR limited by environmentalist invocations of a singular Nature through Science, what Latour calls ‘Naturpolitik’? The encounter between theory and practice leads to a more cautious and critical assessment of the environmental politics in the GBR, but also tempers Latour’s arguments. Environmentalists in the GBR do exhibit Latour’s maladies, but in tracing the Politics of Nature there, it seems that Naturpolitik is not as powerful as Latour argues. 相似文献
16.
David Crouch 《Geoforum》2003,34(3):395-408
In this paper we explore history and heritage mobilised to do service for marginalized interests. We discuss how resources, such as, place, texts, artefacts and practice are drawn upon to forward particular political interests. Touching on recent work in non-representational theory we suggest that more attention be paid to the micro-politics of doing and link more formal action to that of ‘everyday’ practice. The examples used show how particular actors draw on history and heritage to advance their positions and how their performances reinforce claims based on alternative practices. The examples used illustrate how this involves the notion of ‘reclaiming’ historical action, historical texts and historical place. In particular how this relates to land and specifically in this paper the metaphor, representation and practice of ‘digging’. 相似文献
17.
Eleanor Jupp 《Geoforum》2008,39(1):331-343
Initiatives around ‘public participation’ and ‘community involvement’ have become increasingly central to UK government policy programmes, particularly within interventions aimed at disadvantaged neighbourhoods. These initiatives have been the subject of extensive critical comment, essentially focusing on the ways in which power is often maintained by state agencies, whatever the surrounding rhetoric. This article attempts to consider what more productive forms of participation might feel like, through drawing on fieldwork with two small community groups on housing estates in Stoke-on-Trent, UK, to look at how and why they were able to generate successful participation in their activities. The importance of the small-scale interactions and feelings that made up their spaces of participation is explored. These can be characterised through ideas such as ‘feeling comfortable’, ‘feeling at home’, ‘helping out’ and ‘keeping going’, and involve everyday sociability and informal forms of volunteering. If government is serious about supporting political participation in such contexts it needs to consider how official projects might learn from these kinds of spaces. 相似文献
18.
Thomas MacMillan 《Geoforum》2003,34(2):187-201
Biotechnology regulation has been dogged by allegations of bias, usually phrased in terms of ‘conflicts of interest’. Social constructionist analyses of regulatory science have shown up serious epistemological difficulties with such ‘interest’ explanations of regulatory power, but in the process they have also destabilised the platforms such as ‘objectivity’, upon which critiques of regulatory bias are usually grounded. This paper argues that their critical impotence follows from not being constructivist enough. Building on Hajer’s notions of ‘story-lines’ and ‘discourse coalitions’, it argues that recovering the non-human, material components that construct regulation offers sufficiently firm ground for evaluating regulatory power even in the absence of the firm benchmarks assumed by interest accounts. The paper develops this approach by focusing on a single story-line, characterised as ‘scientism’, as it is deployed in the build up to a European Union (EU) ban on bovine somatotrophin, the first food-related product of the ‘new biotechnology’. The essay ends by discussing how far this retrospective analysis can help us to understand and intervene in the current and future EU regulation of biotechnology. 相似文献
19.
Though the concept of sustainable development originally included a clear social mandate, for two decades this human dimension has been neglected amidst abbreviated references to sustainability that have focused on bio-physical environmental issues, or been subsumed within a discourse that conflated ‘development’ and ‘economic growth’. The widespread failure of this approach to generate meaningful change has led to renewed interest in the concept of ‘social sustainability’ and aspects thereof. A review of the literature suggests, however, that it is a concept in chaos, and we argue that this severely compromises its importance and utility. The purpose of this paper is to examine this diverse literature so as to clarify what might be meant by the term social sustainability and highlight different ways in which it contributes to sustainable development more generally. We present a threefold schema comprising: (a) ‘development sustainability’ addressing basic needs, the creation of social capital, justice and so on; (b) ‘bridge sustainability’ concerning changes in behaviour so as to achieve bio-physical environmental goals and; (c) ‘maintenance sustainability’ referring to the preservation - or what can be sustained - of socio-cultural characteristics in the face of change, and the ways in which people actively embrace or resist those changes. We use this tripartite of social sustainabilities to explore ways in which contradictions and complements between them impede or promote sustainable development, and draw upon housing in urban areas as a means of explicating these ideas. 相似文献
20.
The provision of care is an increasingly pressing issue in the Global North. With an ageing population and policies encouraging women into the labour market, there is a growing need for workers to undertake paid caring. This poses important and urgent questions about the social organisation of labour markets. Care work typically is low paid and undertaken in precarious, informal, or temporary situations. Many posts are filled by economic migrants, raising concerns about a care deficit in sending countries. In this paper we examine the ‘caring work’ undertaken by migrant workers in a West London Hospital. We employ a twofold characterisation of caring work. Like other bottom-end service sector work, this work is characterised by the face-to-face ‘emotional labour’. However, it also requires ‘body work’: close and often intimate physical contact between carers and those they care for. We argue that both of these aspects are important in understanding how caring work is constructed as poorly regarded and low paid. We show how these features play out in particular ways for migrant workers employed in such caring work. 相似文献