The limits of ‘Rational’ planning: A study of the politics of coastal mineral extraction

This paper is a critical analysis of the rational model in planning. As political science and theory have contributed little to the environmental debate, natural resources problems have often been misunderstood as technical instead of political in every sense. The ‘implementation gap’, or the failure of plans and policies to produce intended outcomes, is blamed on problems of process. Solutions are sought in improved institutional arrangements and rational techniques. Yet there are significant political, administrative and technical/scientific constraints to rational planning and implementation. This is illustrated by an assessment of the British planning system in regulating mineral development in coastal areas. A brief case study examines the 30-year attempt of Dorset County officials to phase out beach gravel extractions from the internationally significant Chesil Beach coast. The analysis reveals that a decision which is ‘rational’ from a planning point of view has been influenced by the exercise of political discretion, scientific uncertainty and an administrative legacy of multiple and overlapping jurisdictions.     

Conservation and development 2.0: Intensifications and disjunctures in the politics of online ‘do-good’ platforms

An increasing amount of interactive ‘2.0’ crowdsourcing platforms raise awareness and funds for conservation and development projects worldwide. By enabling two-way online collaboration and communication, these ‘conservation and development 2.0’ platforms hoped to provide new impetus and popular legitimacy for conservation and development initiatives in the face of budget cuts and general criticism of the ‘formal’ aid sector after the financial crisis. This paper presents the case of the flagship ‘elephant corridor’ project on the Dutch pifworld.com platform to investigate whether and how the ‘2.0’ element has changed conservation and development in line with these expectations. The paper describes and analyses online and offline dynamics of the project and shows that while online excitement about the project remained high, the concomitant conservation and development promises and imaginations ill related to offline local realities. This rather ‘traditional’ conservation and development disjuncture, however, needs to be understood against the system peculiarities of the politics of online ‘do-good’ 2.0 platforms. The paper concludes that as these peculiarities are significantly intensifying and changing conservation and development dynamics, they do not elude familiar (1.0) disjunctures and might even obscure these further from sight.     

Geo-information tools for participatory spatial planning: Fulfilling the criteria for ‘good’ governance?

The last few decades have seen increasing attempts to foster ‘collaborative’ and ‘participatory’ approaches to spatial planning and decision-making, with a more sophisticated conceptualisation of the contested term, participation. Participatory, ‘bottom-up’ geo-information technologies have been concurrently developing and these are expected to strengthen participatory spatial planning; important among these has been the transformation of conventional mapping and GIS tools into Participatory GIS (PGIS). In this paper we explore the potential contributions of participatory geo-information tools towards participatory spatial planning, in terms of the principles and criteria of good governance. We discuss five fundamental principles of ‘good’ governance: accountability, legitimacy, respect, equity, and competence, and the potential of geo-information tools to contribute to, and detract from, such principles; although we focus especially on participation and the recognition and validation of local knowledge. We derive criteria for the five principles, and we identify a range of evaluation questions which can be operationalised so as to interrogate the criteria for judging the contribution of participatory tools and participatory spatial planning activities. We conclude by summarily assessing the potentials of participatory geo-information tools, particularly participatory mobile GIS, participatory 3-dimensional modelling, and visualisation features in PGIS.     

From ‘criminals of the earth’ to ‘stewards of the environment’: The social and environmental justice of Fair Trade gold

The recent emergence of the Fairtrade certification of gold in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa promises a radical new direction for the environmental governance of artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). In doing so, it aims to tackle the longstanding environment and development challenges of the sector which mainstream policy has failed to alleviate. The move towards more responsible ASM practices is premised on the strategic deployment of a Fair Trade discourse that argues for its operators to be recognized not as criminals, but as valued and formalized parts of their broader economies. It is argued in this paper that this development intervention should be read within a social and environmental justice framework, one which directly answers the call from political geography for ‘compelling accounts’ of positive representations of the sector.Through a discourse analysis of 10 years of media reports, interviews and recorded life histories of key ASM and Fair Trade stakeholders in Tanzania, it shows how three strands of justice (conceptualized in terms of fairer distribution, procedure and recognition) are articulated by the Fair Trade gold movement and critically assesses the politics behind such a deliberate strategy. In particular, it argues that recognition is a key part of justice that has been underplayed by erstwhile analyses of Fair Trade. Through a case study of Tanzania, it is concluded that although significant progress has been made in terms of arguing for greater recognition for ASM operators, there remains a need to better link discourse with practice in establishing greater distributional justice.     

Curating the quest for ‘good food’: The practices,spatial dynamics and influence of food-related curation in Sweden

What is ‘good food’? Is it fair trade, local, organic or ethically produced? With an ever-expanding array of products and ‘qualities’ to consider, consumers in the global North may find it increasingly difficult and time-consuming to make the ‘right’ choices. As a result, a range of intermediaries, including food apps and collective buying groups, are emerging to support and influence people with their food choices. While intermediation refers to all activities linking producers and consumers, this paper narrows the focus and considers one important, yet poorly understood, intermediary function within the food marketplace: ‘curation’. Although the concept of curation has long been associated with museums and art worlds, curatorial practices are evolving in the contemporary marketplace and are performed by a growing range of actors operating in physical, temporary and virtual spaces. Rather than acting as brokers or gatekeepers, curators interpret, translate and shape the marketplace by sorting, organising, evaluating and ascribing value(s) to specific products. They also offer general and personalised recommendations to consumers. Although the literature on local food privileges the direct relations between producers and consumers, this paper considers the important role of intermediaries. Drawing on interviews and participant observation in Sweden it contributes to the existing literature on curation by examining the spatial dynamics and nature of curatorial practices, the motivations behind them and the values they create for consumers. The findings demonstrate that a range of activities can be understood as curation and that in order to nuance and extend existing conceptualisations of curation a wider and more dynamic range of actors (food apps), spaces (blogs) and values such as inspiration, convenience and sense of community need to be considered.     

(Re-)negotiating access: The politics of researching skills and knowledge for ‘sustainable communities’

The last decade has witnessed a surge of interest in ‘sustainable communities’ within the UK. This has stimulated a plethora of research aimed at acquiring a better understanding of what ‘sustainable communities’ might look like and how they can be achieved. However, this has not been accompanied by a reflection and interrogation of the actual processes, challenges and politics of doing ‘sustainable communities’ research. This paper addresses this gap by highlighting the importance of paying attention to the on-going process of negotiating access when carrying out sustainability research at the community level. We draw on a recent study of skills and knowledge for ‘sustainable communities’ in Stroud Gloucestershire, UK, to illustrate the importance of sensitivity to social relationships throughout and beyond the research trajectory within sustainability research. Our experience raises important questions about the politics of research practices when doing sustainability research ‘with’ communities and the challenges associated with participatory approaches as a means to demonstrate research impact. We argue that in developing a fuller understanding of why and how different types of community level initiatives can contribute to the ‘sustainable communities’ agenda, greater consideration needs to be given to how these community practices can be better supported through the process of doing academic research.     

Constructing legitimacy in post-war transition: The return of ‘normal’ politics in Nepal and Sri Lanka?

Bringing together ethnographic evidence from mid-Western Nepal and eastern Sri Lanka, this article explores how political legitimacy is constructed and contested in post-war environments. We posit that in the post-war context there are important changes in the kinds of politics, agenda-setting, players and tactics that are considered acceptable and those that are rendered transgressive, threats to order and stability, or otherwise placed ‘out of bounds’. The art of crafting political legitimacy is defined in sharp contrast to the immediate history of armed conflict. The end of the war and the resumption of supposedly democratic politics thus mark a shift in what is seen as legitimate or normal politics. This shift constrains certain kinds of actors, tactics, and registers and it amplifies others, while being itself a result of political work. We argue that a reduction of the space for dissent, and an increase of the space for politicking are complementary aspects of the redefinition of what constitutes legitimate politics in the post-war context. These adverse political effects are not simply problems of context – post-war environments being non-conducive to democracy – but rather expose the more fundamental fallibilities and contradictions of demarcating a legitimate sphere of democratic politics in particularly visible and precarious ways.     

‘Making space’ in Cairo: Expatriate movements and spatial practices

This paper examines what it means to be an ‘expatriate’ in Cairo through the lens of movement and space-making. Inquiring into a set of migrant (im)mobilities, spatial practices, relations, and imaginations, it argues that as a ‘spatialised’ identity category ‘expatriate’ narrates and enacts migratory privileges linked to wider hierarchies of social difference. It contributes to a growing literature examining the social and political dimensions of ‘expatriate’ migration and further engages scholarship thinking space and movement in relational and socio-historical terms. Rather than denoting an easily distinguishable group of migrants, ‘expatriate’ emerged as a contingent and ambiguous category of practice. As such, ‘expatriate’ stands in a productive relationship with privileged movement and socio-spatial processes. Like other migrants, respondents skillfully navigated the global differences in wealth, power and status they were presented with. Yet, unlike many other migrants, they did so from a privileged position within the global power-geometries of international migration. Migrants’ personal geographies were further shaped by how bodies were racialised and gendered in entangled, intersecting and sometimes counter-intuitive ways. This diversity and complexity of ‘expatriate’ geographies highlights the necessity of intersectional and situated analyses of privilege.     

Splendid isolation: ‘Philosopher’s islands’ and the reimagination of space

This paper argues that the metaphorical figure of the island plays an important but profoundly ambiguous role in the imagination of social space. The paper argues that ‘utopic’ islands have historically provided a fictional domain of experimentation that has informed the constitution of ‘real’ state spaces. From the 16th to 20th centuries this took the form of an increasingly consolidated and ‘global’ endotopia: a world, exemplified by the ‘political’ map, full of state spaces constituted as interiors. More recently, islands have served a very different metaphoric function, being used to create and legitimise spaces of exteriority – ‘xenospaces’ such as the online worlds of the ‘metaverse’ and the arcane legal/financial spaces of offshore – which in combination constitute an emergent xenotopia. The ‘philosopher’s island’ (Mackay, 2010), therefore, represents a complex and polyvalent spatial form that serves to continuously and expediently redefine the nature of social space.     

Why do smallholders plant biofuel crops? The ‘politics of consent’ in Mexico

Recent studies have addressed the social and environmental impacts of biofuel crops but seldom the question as to why rural producers engage in their production. It is particularly unclear how governments worldwide, especially in middle-income countries such as Brazil, Thailand, and Mexico, could enroll so many smallholders in biofuel cropping projects. Conventional views see yields and economic returns as main drivers for smallholder participation in biofuel production but ignore the role played by power and politics. This paper analyses the rapid biofuel expansions (oil palm, jatropha) in the southern Lacandon rainforest in Chiapas (Mexico) and their partial failure (jatropha) from a political ecology perspective. Our findings indicate that biofuel expansions in this region not only occurred for productive reasons, but also because biofuel programmes provided prospects for political gains through strengthened rural organisations. In contrast with emphasis on state coercion and local resistance—common in political ecology—the biofuel expansion relied, in this case, upon a ‘politics of consent’ in which both the state and rural organisations, albeit in a power-laden relationship, sought to achieve their own goals by supporting the planting of biofuel crops. These findings suggest the need to rethink how particular approaches within political ecology apply Gramsci’s notions of power and hegemony and, more broadly, to consider the importance of politics in explaining why certain forms of agricultural production become dominant.     

Representing the imagined city: Place and the politics of difference during Guangzhou’s 2010 language conflict

In this article we investigate local citizens’ place politics and discourses of place identity during the 2010 language conflict in Guangzhou, China. Drawing on geographical scholarship on the relational construction of place and the progressive politics of difference, we conceptualize place as an assemblage of trans-local connections and disparate trajectories which constitute the radical hybridity of any particular place. In concretizing a relational rethinking of place into a local politics of difference, we suggest that Doreen Massey’s thesis of a global sense of place provides an important epistemological basis for destabilizing the normative local/non-local boundary in order to realize a relational constitution of place-based cultural identity and subjectivity. Based on a social and political campaign against state-led hegemonic language standardization, the 2010 language conflict in Guangzhou is a socially and culturally constructed process in which the Guangzhou locals’ imagination and representation of place and identity are reproduced within a local geometry of social relations involving the state language policy, the local community and the city’s migrant population. Both exclusionary and progressive discourses of place identities have been articulated in this process of re-negotiation and re-imagination of place-based identities. This paper acknowledges that some place-bounded politics may demonstrate a counter-hegemonic dimension and are therefore not inherently regressive. But we also contend that any place politics needs to ask which elements are to be welcomed and which can be excluded in a fluid regime of politics within specific networks of social relations. The cultural boundary of insiders/outsiders must be constantly re-negotiated and rendered relational with the attentiveness to ethical responsibility towards otherness.     

Kahoolawe Island,Hawaii: The role of an ‘inaccessible’ shield volcano in the petrology of the Hawaiian islands and plume

Kahoolawe volcano (～10×17 km) forms one of the eight major Hawaiian islands. Access for geologic sampling has long been restricted due to military and preservation policies. However, limited visits to Kahoolawe in the 1980s yielded >200 samples, many of which have since been used to study the volcano within the framework of Hawaiian shield and mantle source geochemistry, petrology, mineralogy, and igneous processes.Kahoolawe is a tholeiitic shield with tholeiitic caldera-filling lavas, and at least seven postshield vents that erupted tholeiitic and (sparse) alkalic lavas. On smaller scales are a gabbro intrusion and ultramafic and gabbroic xenoliths in some postshield lavas. There is no evidence for rejuvenated volcanism. In its structural setting, Kahoolawe lies along the “Loa” trend of Hawaiian shields.Major element compositions of shield and caldera-filling lavas are similar and cluster at ～6–7 wt% MgO, range from ～5.5 to 16 wt% MgO, and include ～9 wt% MgO examples that can be modeled as parental to the evolved lavas. For example, least squares mass balancing demonstrates that from ～15% to 30% crystallization of olivine (±orthopyroxene), clinopyroxene, and plagioclase accounts for the ～5.5–6 wt% MgO range of tholeiitic lavas. Greater differentiation occurred in the gabbro (diabasic) intrusive body as a segregation vein with ～2.9 wt% MgO, and extreme differentiation produced local, small-volume rhyolitic melts that segregated into lava vesicles. Postshield lavas are mainly tholeiitic, have ～5–7 wt% MgO, and overlap shield compositions. Some are alkalic, as low as ～3.9 wt% MgO (hawaiite), and can be modeled as liquids after a ～9 wt% MgO alkalic magma crystallized ～30% olivine, clinopyroxene, plagioclase, and magnetite.Important aspects of Sr, Nd, Hf, and Pb isotopic ratios in Kahoolawe shield and caldera-filling lavas are slightly higher ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr than in Koolau shield lavas (Oahu island; Makapuu-stage; e.g., Koolau mantle ‘endmember’) when compared at a given ¹⁴³Nd/¹⁴⁴Nd (e.g., ～0.7042 at 0.5128), ²⁰⁶Pb/²⁰⁴Pb largely at the low end of the range for Hawaiian shields (e.g., ～18), and ε_Hf generally comparable to the values of other Hawaiian shields and ocean islands (e.g., ε_Hf 8 at ε_Nd 4). The isotopic ratios overall suggest small-scale source heterogeneity, considering the island size, and that Kahoolawe shield and caldera lavas were derived from a Hawaiian plume source containing recycled oceanic crust of gabbro and sediments. Based on certain geochemical indicators, however, such as Ce/Sr and La/Nb vs. ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr, the source contained slightly less gabbro component than other shield sources (e.g., Koolau). Isotopic data for Kahoolawe postshield lavas are scarce, but those available generally overlap the shield data. However, ratios among certain alteration-resistant incompatible trace elements (e.g., Zr/Nb) discriminate some postshield alkalic from shield lavas. But because the different ratios for those postshield lavas can be explained by smaller partial-melting percentages of the shield source and by differentiation, neither isotopes nor trace elements identify postshield magmas as originating in a source unlike that for the shield lavas.     

Becoming a young migrant or stayer seen through the lens of ‘householding’: Households ‘in flux’ and the intersection of relations of gender and seniority

This paper conceptualises migration and staying by young rural Lao in the empirical context of above replacement level fertility as manifestations of ‘householding’ that interacts with other dimensions of householding. Drawing on the framework of the inter-generational contract and by juxtaposing qualitative and quantitative data I show that becoming a young migrant and becoming or remaining a young stayer is shaped by young migrants’ situated agency.The second part of the paper departs from conventional household-based analyses and introduces the notion of ‘households in flux’. This highlights the dynamic interaction between changing external dynamics affecting rural households, and internal dynamics that constantly reconfigure the field of the household. These conceptual readjustments require going beyond inflexible notions of the household, the analytical disconnection between a focus on migrants and stayers in migration research, and static readings of relations of gender and generation. Furthermore, the paper argues that intra-household relations need to be appreciated as gendered relations of relative seniority which are in the process of householding constantly made and remade, among other things, by young dependents through ‘staying’ and ‘leaving’. These conceptual moves help explain the empirical puzzle of why in rural Lao households young women are both the ones most inclined to become a young migrant as well as most inclined to become or remain a young stayer.     

Internet spaces and the (re)making of democratic politics: the case of Singapore’s 2011 General Election

The 2011 Singapore General Election (GE2011) has often been hailed as an ‘Internet Election’, highlighting the role of networked technologies in enabling democratization practices/processes for the unprecedented consolidation of oppositional politics in the city-state. Building on theorizations that broach the interface between social media and digital democracy, this paper critically examines Singaporeans’ myriad engagements with the internet during GE2011 in order to tease out the constructions of social and political debates within these online communities and the extent to which they facilitate democratic discussions. These computer-mediated colliding and emerging of perspectives related to Singapore’s (electoral) politics can in turn set the scene for the (re)production and negotiations of the multifarious meanings of democracy in place. Hence, in addressing these research inquiries, this paper goes beyond GE2011 to reflect on the ways in which web technologies and social media can make a difference to political debates, deliberation and representation in societies where there are limited public avenues for citizenry to articulate their voices/concerns. It also enables documentation of ordinary people’s aspirations and hopes for political change and the sort of democracy they want to see progressively initiated in the Singaporean society.     

Geochronology and Geochemistry of the Radiolarian Cherts of the Mada’er Area, Southwestern Tianshan: Implications for Depositional Environment

In the southwestern Tianshan,the geologic ages of many strata and their depositional environments are still poorly constrained because of complex structures.The Mada'er area is located in the Kuokesaleling belt,Southwestern Tianshan.The cherts from the former Wupata'erkan Group contain abundant radiolarian fossils,including 10 species which are identified as late Devonian to early Carboniferous in age.Eleven chert samples have SiO_2 contents ranging from 88.80 wt%to 93.28 wt%, and 2.02 wt%to 3.72 wt%for ...     

Geochronology and Geochemistry of the Radiolarian Cherts of the Mada’er Area, Southwestern Tianshan: Implications for Depositional Environment

In the Southwestern Tianshan, the geologic ages of many strata and their depositional environments are still poorly constrained because of complex structures. The Mada’er area is located in the Kuokesaleling belt, Southwestern Tianshan. The cherts from the former Wupata’erkan Group contain abundant radiolarian fossils, including 10 species which are identified as late Devonian to early Carboniferous in age. Eleven chert samples have SiO2 contents ranging from 88.80 wt% to 93.28 wt%, and 2.02 wt% to 3.72 wt% for Al2O3. The SiO2/Al2O3 ratios of all samples vary from 23.84 to 46.11, much lower than those of the pure cherts (80–1400). These values suggest that the cherts contain high ratios of terrigenous materials. The Al2O3/(Al2O3+Fe2O3) ratios vary between 0.64 and 0.77, whereas V and Cu concentrations range from 10.92 ppm to 26.7 ppm and from 2.15 ppm to 34.1 ppm respectively. The Ti/V ratios vary from 25.53 to 44.93. The total REE concentrations of the cherts are between 30.78 ppm and 59.26 ppm, averaging 45.46 ppm. The (La/Ce)N ratios range from 0.81 to 1.12, and 0.88–1.33 for (La/Yb)N, averaging 1.09, which suggests a continental margin environment. Consequently, it is inferred that the cherts formed in a residual sea environment during the late Devonian to early Carboniferous time, which suggests that the collision between the Karakum-Tarim and Kazakhstan-Junggar plates did not occur at the time. In addition, the regional geological information indicates that the study area experienced a post-collision stage during the early Permian, and thus it is likely that the collision between the two plates took place in the late Carboniferous.