To the market and back: Housing policy and state housing in New Zealand

Housing policy in New Zealand has traditionally been characterised by significant market intervention in support of home ownership and a residual state housing rental sector. Within the context of dramatic social welfare reforms in the 1990s, a set of radical housing reforms was introduced that profoundly transformed the role of the state in the housing system. Key elements of the reforms included the creation of a profit-oriented company to manage state rentals, a move to market rents in the state sector and the introduction of an accommodation supplement. This paper examines the underlying rationale and impacts of the reforms focusing on issues of privatisation, tenant turnover, affordability and tenant protest. Having examined the ongoing problems engendered by these reforms the paper reviews more recent political and legislative reforms that were sought to reassert the state's traditional position within the New Zealand housing market. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Industrialisation in Fiji: Industrial structure and organisation

This paper analyses the significance, structure, and organisation of the manufacturing sector in Fiji, drawing on the author's earlier much larger study of industrialisation in Fiji. The latest Fijian census of industrial production (1984) and the author's 1983 survey of manufacturers in Fiji provide the main statistical basis of the study, which shows that the manufacturing sector is a moderately important component of the Fijian economy. It is dominated by resource industries, particularly food processing, but a wide range of manufacturing activities have, nonetheless, developed. There is a substantial number of small manufacturing establishments with a few large establishments, the latter, however, making an overwhelmingly important contribution to employment, gross output and value added. The market structure in the manufacturing sector is dominated by monopolies and oligopolies resulting from Fiji's small domestic market and its import substitution industrialisation strategy. There is an absence of informal sector activities in Fijian manufacturing, most firms being incorporated companies. The state has a major role as a direct producer in Fijian manufacturing. There are bound to be major changes in the manufacturing sector due to Fiji's current political crisis, but this paper does not address these because of the recency of the events and the consequent unavailability of relevant data.     

Geological and environmental management of ceramic clay quarries: a review

This paper shows a contribution to the knowledge of the geological management of ceramic raw material. We have mainly focussed on the clays with a ceramic interest. The article begins with an introduction to the mineralogical determining factor of the ceramic sector. Then, it shows a development of the main steps that take place in the geological prospecting and it concludes with the criteria that must be followed when selecting the outcrops: geographical and environmental conditions, (1) legislation, (2) market and technology, (3) mineralogical and technological characterisation and (4) geological and mining characterisation.     

The actualization of neoliberal space and the loss of housing affordability in Santa Monica,California

This paper reveals the contingent aspect associated with the actualization of a neoliberal space. The paper examines the material, institutional, and economic conditions necessary for a neoliberal agenda to transform its urban policy objectives into a material reality. The study follows changes in housing conditions in Santa Monica, California from 1990 to 2008. During this period, the confluence of three sets of events led to the actualization of a neoliberal space. First, housing damage from the 1994 Northridge earthquake removed “dead capital” from the housing sector. Second, subsequent administrative actions at the local level and more importantly deregulation legislation at the state level eliminated rent control regulations and created market incentives that favored upscale development. Finally, the state’s economic recovery generated a substantial flow of private investments into the real estate market. These combined factors led not only to the dismantling of affordable housing in Santa Monica, but also to the erosion of residents’ and local authorities’ ability to manage housing choices and, consequently, to a historic restructuring of Santa Monica’s physical and social space. These changes had a disproportionately and negative effect on low-income and minority renters.     

Profit,reputation and ‘doing the right thing’: Convention theory and the problem of food waste in the UK retail sector

In 2014, Tesco – one of the world’s largest food retailers – revealed that it had generated almost 57,000 tonnes of food waste in its UK operations over the previous twelve-month period. This shocking statistic added to existing evidence of a significant environmental and social problem in the UK and across the world. This paper utilises convention theory to examine the role of major retailers in the context of this global problem and assesses their motivations for acting on food waste. Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders (including major retailers), the analysis investigates their main justifications for action on food waste. It finds that retailers mostly appealed to three conventions or ‘orders of worth’ (civic, market and opinion) and used these as a basis for their commitment to food waste reduction. We argue that the combination of these different justifications is feasible and necessary in the context of the retail sector but that they may also lead to some unintended consequences (in the retail sector and beyond). Crucially, we demonstrate how the dilution of civic justifications (by their financial and reputational counterparts) might produce negative outcomes and inaction as retailers attempt to adhere to the so-called ‘food waste hierarchy’. The paper highlights the continuing significance of convention theory as a framework for analysing possible responses to the social and environmental challenges confronting global agro-food systems.     

‘Marketing quality’ in the food sector: Towards a critical engagement with the ‘quality turn’ in wine

Our review explores the role of quality conventions that have emerged since the 'quality turn' in the food sector. By examining how the 'quality turn' contributes to transforming the wine sector, it asks whether the labeling systems seek to certify the quality of productive practices (informative function) or are intended to create imaginaries of quality as a differentiated business market strategy (symbolic function). After discussing relevant literature in geography and related fields, this review uses two emblematic examples from the wine sector to argue for the need to move beyond the marketing of quality to deepen the analysis and understanding of quality. This analytic insight questions the viability and usefulness of quality conventions aimed at differentiation, territorial development, with a focus on markets with high added value, and argues for the need to open new lines of research and policy in this sphere.     

The social construction of the service sector: institutional structures and labour market outcomes

I argue that the characterisation of the lower end of the service sector as innately poorly paid, casualised and unorganised confuses cause and effect. It describes the effects of an institutional vacuum that allows this sector to suffer severe wage competition, which results in low wages and poor working conditions. There is nothing innate in the lower end of the service sector that makes these jobs poorly paid except the lack of institutions, such as unions and the state, structuring this segment of the labour market. Pay and working conditions vary within the sector and between specific locations, and depend on institutions, or the lack of institutions, to structure the local labour market. I use the case of hotel employees and restaurant employees in Las Vegas to show that not only can high union densities affect wages and other measurable benefits but a strategically unionised labour market also can transform the structure of the labour market itself.     

Gramsci in green: Neoliberal hegemony through urban forestry and the potential for a political ecology of praxis

The US Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources coordinate the distribution of urban forestry grants to nonprofits and citizen groups. These granting agencies increased state funding during a period of neoliberal, fiscal austerity in order to channel ecosystem services provided by urban forests. Increased funding is an instance of rollout neoliberalism whereby the fiscally austere state builds market capacity to harness these services as part of an ecologically modernist agenda. A Gramscian perspective and data gathered from 20 in-depth interviews with foresters are used in this paper to theorize how rollout policy is deployed through urban forestry to extend market hegemony to new geographies. This is anything but a smooth process because the public’s perception of urban trees is highly varied. State bureaucracies must build civil sector capacity to educate people about the ecosystem services trees provide as market commodities. In doing so the state’s market-oriented regulatory legitimacy is consolidated through the apparently benign act of promoting urban forestry. This dialectical process limits participation in urban forestry because markets are inherently selective. Yet it potentially gives rise to an alternative political ecology of praxis beyond market ideology when grant recipients participate in the production of urban ecology and recognize their relationship with nature.     

Agriculture in Eastern Europe: Communism, the transition and the future

The paper summarises the East European experience with socialist agriculture and notes that while production often failed to meet plan targets (thereby giving the impression of a sector in crisis), there was steady growth based on substantial investments in buildings, machinery, fertilisers and irrigation systems which provided food for the population at affordable prices. The increased spending power of higher salaries during the 1970s and 1980s also drew a positive response from agriculture in the context of significant reforms which, unintentionally, contributed to the demise of the communist system in 1988–1990. Transition to a market economy has cast agriculture into a state of great uncertainty through restitution and the end of price controls, combined with the disruption of trade contacts with the Former Soviet Union. Falling real wages have reduced demand while the overtures being made to the European Union (with its substantial food surpluses) suggest that reduced agricultural output may be a permanent reality. In this case the thrust of rural development will have to give more attention to the quality of the environment and the provision of alternative employments for country dwellers. It remains to be seen how far small family holdings can be maintained in the context of farm diversification and pluriactivity.     

Agriculture,sustainability and the imperatives of policy reform

Agriculture stands alone among resource sectors in Western industrialized countries as having the fastest growth in production/productivity during post-war years. Yet that growth in productivity and accompanying high levels of sufficiency has been at the expense of such goals as adequate income, community stability and resource/environmental conservation. In the process, agriculture has mimicked trends in the economy as a whole through increased segmentation and differentiation, throughput of non-renewable resources and divergence of natural and economic processes. Within the context of prevailing policies and market forces in OECD countries in general and Canada in particular, this paper evaluates the problems facing the sector and the nature of the trade-offs being made in the pursuit of high-input agriculture. It is argued that, while agri-business and market forces are generally responsible for a weakening of the links between environment and economy, numerous market distortions, precipitated by agricultural policy, do much the same. To achieve a better balance among the production and consumption functions of the land and to achieve an approach to future agricultural production which is sustainable will require changes in many of the rules, standards and conventions influencing the growth of food and fibre. From a policy perspective, the main task ahead is to redesign and implement programs which will encourage new ‘opportunity sets’ for the economic and competitive viability of the farmer and agricultural system, while at the same time meeting the nutritional needs of society and ensuring the protection of important environmental services and amenity values.     

No longer working for the state: residual state sector versus private sector

The paper is concerned with decreasing state ownership in post-communist Eastern Europe and a concomitant decline in the proportion employed in the state sector. Many individuals have shifted into private sector employment, self-employment or unemployment. The literature on sectoral shifts in employment in Eastern Europe is summarised, and from this it is argued that there will be a growing differentiation between private sector employees and state sector employees in economic, social and political terms. Data is then analysed based on a survey in 1995 of around 1000 households in each of four cities – Budapest, Prague, Warsaw and Krakow. Similar patterns emerged in the four cities. Consistent differences in working conditions and rewards are already evident between the self-employed, private sector and state sector. These conflicting economic interests are reflected in contrasting attitudes to the economy and polity amongst those employed in different sectors. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Private agri-food governance and greenhouse gas abatement: Constructing a corporate carbon economy

Private sector actors are playing an increasingly significant role in the definition and governance of ‘sustainable’ agri-food practices. Yet, to date little attention has been paid by social scientists to how greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are addressed as part of private agri-food governance arrangements. This paper examines how private actors within agri-food supply chains respond to emerging pressure for measures to reduce GHG emissions from agriculture. Drawing upon the Anglo-Foucauldian governmentality literature, we introduce the notion of the corporate carbon economy to conceptualise the practical techniques that enable private agri-food actors to make GHG emissions thinkable and governable in the context of existing market, regulatory, and supply chain pressures. Using a case study of the Australian dairy industry, we argue that private agri-food actors utilise a range of techniques that enable them to respond to existing government environmental regulations, balance current market pressures with future supply chain requirements, and demonstrate improved eco-efficiency along food supply chains. These techniques – which include environmental self-assessment instruments, tools for measuring GHG emissions, and sustainability reporting – have little direct relevance to the ‘international climate regime’ of carbon trading, and carbon markets more broadly, yet individually and in combination they are crucial in enacting an alternative regime of GHG governance. In concluding, we contend that the growing use of sustainability metrics by international food companies is likely to have the most powerful implications for GHG governance in the agri-food sector, with potentially far-reaching consequences for how future action on climate change is rendered thinkable and practicable.     

Changes in Hungary's agrarian sector with special reference to the northern hill region

The Hungarian agriculture and food industry has changed greatly since 1989 and this sector is now in crisis. This essay will present an overview of the most important economic and social problems which are partly the heritage of the socialist system, but which also stem from the change in the political system. It will also deal with the specific problems of the transition in the northern hill region of Nógrad where the physical conditions for agriculture are relatively unfavourable. In 1970s and 1980s state farms and cooperatives tried to compensate for the low demand for labour in agriculture by setting up subsidiary enterprises, which in many cases were the only source of local jobs. Many other people in the rural areas commuted to work in factories in the towns as industry and construction became the largest sector in the county's economy (41.3 percent in 1990 compared with 19.8 in agriculture). However, many of the former commuters are now unemployed and the cooperatives have withdrawn from subsidiary enterprises. So while an unstable situation has developed in Hungarian agriculture generally, through changes in structure and ownership, the problems faced by the less-developed agrarian regions of northern Hungary have been accentuated. Further research is needed to explore the real nature of the crisis in order to make provision for remedial action that best meets the local situation.     

Risk perception,crop protection and plant disease in the UK wheat sector

While plant diseases have been the subject of scientific research, little is known about the perceptions of key actors towards plant disease risk within specific food sectors. Drawing on concepts of risk and uncertainty, and using in-depth interviews, this paper examines the ways in which endemic plant disease risks in the UK wheat sector are perceived and managed by key ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’ businesses, as well as by farmers and agronomists. A majority of interviewees feel that plant disease is a controllable risk and one that rests mainly at the point of production (i.e. with farmers) within the wheat sector. This assumed ‘control’ is based mainly around the availability of plant protection products (e.g. fungicides) which reduce the sense of risk attributable to outbreaks of plant disease. As a consequence, there can be a tendency to grow higher-yielding wheat varieties that are less disease-resistant. The potential banning of certain fungicides under EU legislation and climate change are perceived future threats that could increase uncertainty and change the balance between ‘control’ and ‘resistance’, the latter through the use of more disease-resistant wheat varieties. Further research is needed on the perceived impacts of plant diseases and on how different wheat sector actors will contribute to the future control of plant diseases and the development of more integrated systems of plant disease management.     

Back to the Future? Reflections on past reforms and future prospects for health services in New Zealand

In 1991 the New Zealand health system began to experience what has been termed the `turbulent decade'. Without health sector consultation or public mandate, an era of imposed market oriented reforms began. These changed the overall culture of health care delivery and the expectations of New Zealanders regarding the role of the state in the provision of welfare. In retrospect the ideologically driven imposition of the market-oriented reforms was not an exercise of bold leadership but one of political arrogance and rejection of established community values. Within the community, the neoliberal experiment heightened income and health inequalities, created a loss of social cohesion and generally provoked feelings of powerlessness. In the health sector, the reforms polarised clinical and commercial cultures and changed the geography of health care delivery. This occurred not only because place was de-emphasised, but also because decentralisation of purchasing created four health systems with widely divergent contracting arrangements and standards of care. The lessons of the health reforms have been painful, and must not be lost. A fundamental lesson is that market approaches to the delivery of health care have major limitations and that the ultimate goal of a health system should be the equitable, effective and efficient provision of care, not the profitable sale of commodities. Since 1997 there has been a retreat from the market, although it is not clear whether recent policy developments represent a new or distinctive `third way' or a pragmatic `pick and mix', combining the best from the market and the managerialism first introduced by Labour in the 1980s. Quite clearly, the experiment with the market was not sustainable. Whether this will also be true of the more recent and pragmatic `pick and mix' approach of the `third way' to health care reform is uncertain. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Water Cycle Analysis of Social and Economic System in Tarim River Basin

Water cycle includes natural water circulation and social economic system water cycle. The concept of virtual water provides a new method and means for studying social water circulation. This paper is based on the theory of water circulation in social and economic system, using input-output analysis method quantitatively describes the Tarim River basin of social water cycle paths and analysis of water resources management in Tarim River basin sustainable development process of the key issues. The results show that the main sectors of virtual water export in the Tarim River Basin are agriculture, petroleum, natural gas and food industry. Agricultural water accounts for more than 98% of total water consumption, most of which is transferred to the food and textile industries, and the food industry export water from the agricultural sector. Shandong Province is the largest virtual water transport area in the Tarim River Basin. The main sector of virtual water input in the Tarim River Basin is the metallurgical industry. Finally, in view of the problems arising from the inter-industrial and inter-regional social water circulation in the Tarim River basin, the paper puts forward the ways and strategies of regulating agricultural and industrial water use in the Tarim River Basin.     

Environmental Economics and the Mining Industry: Monetary benefits of an abandoned quarry rehabilitation in Greece

During the last decades legislative actions on environmental issues have dramatically increased all over the world. The impacts of environmental legislation on the mining sector are quite significant. Although an extensive list of legislation exists, this paper focuses on an issue that currently has a significant influence on the mining industry: natural resource damage assessment and, in particular, the valuation of non-market goods. Therefore, the basic elements of the most important valuation methods are outlined and a demonstrative example is presented, in the context of appraising a reclamation scheme of an abandoned quarry site. The analysis is fairly general, and it does not intend to comprise either a complete introduction to environmental economics or a comprehensive presentation of valuation techniques. Still, it provides an idea of how these methods can be applied to mining issues. Further, the findings may prove useful to practitioners and mining managers, providing information about the monetary benefits of mined land reclamation that could contribute to sound decision- and policy-making.     

论化学矿产资源开发中存在的矛盾与待解决的问题

人口、资源、环境是国际社会所面临的重要问题。资源的合理配置是２１世纪可持续发展的一个关键问题。化学矿产与其它矿产资源一样,形势严峻。在开发利用过程中存在着资源短缺与资源浪费、国家和地区、当前和长远、开采与保护、开发与环境污染等５个矛盾。要实施可持续发展战略,必须正确处理这些矛盾。急待解决的主要问题有：提高国民素质和全社会节约意识、确实贯彻矿产保护法、加强矿产基地建设、提高机械化程度、适应市场化经济、稳定地质科研队伍等。     

论我国矿业权市场主体缺位

国有地勘企业在矿业权市场中应占有绝对主体地位,应该是不争的事实.但在实际工作中国有地勘企业并没有真正进入矿业权市场中占有主体位置.造成矿业权市场主体缺位的原因是多方面的,主要是国有地勘企业体制问题,国家政策问题以及矿业权市场和国有地勘企业本身的问题.文章通过对矿业权市场主体缺位表现、原因和危害的分析,提出适合国有地勘企业发展的措施与建议.     

我国水资源法律保护现状与对策研究

水资源是人类赖以生存和发展最为重要的自然资源之一。当前,我国水资源保护工作虽然取得了一定成效,但也存在不少亟待解决的问题。针对我国水资源的立法保护、执法保护、司法保护方面的实际情况,对我国水资源法律保护现状与存在的主要问题进行综合分析,并从立法、执法、司法三个方面提出对策建议。对改善我国水资源法律保护工作现状,逐步完善我国水资源法律体系和科学的管理体制建设具有一定的指导意义。