Creative destruction in urban planning procedures: the language of ‘renewal’ and ‘exploitation’21

This paper examines the language and phraseology of ‘creative destruction‘ (‘renewal‘ and ‘exploitation’) expressed in urban planning procedures concerning one particular house in West Jerusalem: 28 Radak Street. Through a forensic examination of the planning-related communications about this address, the work analyzes the various stages of the ’destruction’ and ’renewal’ of the property. It demonstrates how each of the various actors involved (Municipality, planning committees, legal courts, private entrepreneur and local residents) uses different language and phraseology to present their argument, while the voice of the original Palestinian owners of the house is entirely absent from the planning battle.     

Doing NGO Work: the politics of being ‘civil society’ and promoting ‘good governance’ in Cambodia

Two fundamental pillars of what it is to be a contemporary NGO and ‘do’ development work are being a part of and promoting civil society, and extending ‘good governance’. This article will provide insights into how supposedly universally applicable concepts and models for NGOs to ‘improve’ post-conflict ‘developing countries’ are incorporated into different social and cultural landscapes. Ethnographic fieldwork highlights some of the particularities of governance, as well as everyday challenges of doing NGO work in a remote province of north-eastern Cambodia. In the context of an authoritarian government, where kinship relations cross-cut all aspects of society, NGOs can be understood as embedded in neo-patrimonial networks rather than as a separate and autonomous realm of society as classic liberal theory understands ‘civil society’. Fear also plays a significant role in configuring peoples’ attitude towards authority and is rarely acknowledged in the project of ‘good governance’ which simplistically tends to see post-colonial governments situated on a linear trajectory which will eventually, with significant NGO interventions, reach advanced liberal democracy status.     

Understanding Place as ‘Home’ and ‘Away’ through Practices of Bird-watching

Bird-watching is an increasingly popular leisure activity. Previous research has taken for granted the identity of people who watch birds, often categorised by their level of skilled practice as ‘dude’, ‘birder’ or ‘twitcher’. Feminist geographers encourage us to explore identity work as an outcome of the reciprocal relationships between practices and place. Our feminist approach illustrates that the practices of bird-watching are always much more than categorising birds as species. This paper illustrates how the practices of bird-watching are integral to the making and remaking of sense of place as ‘home’ and ‘away’, to sustain identities beyond accepted categories of ‘dude’, ‘birder’ and ‘twitcher’. The creation and application of different types of ‘bird-lists’ helps to explain the ways in which practices of bird-watching facilitate making sense of place as simultaneously ‘home’, ‘away’ and habitat, as well as the identity work of home-maker, citizen-scientist and tourist. Our insights into these leisure practices of bird-watching are drawn from analysis of data gathered from 21 people who actively bird-watch and reside on the South Coast, New South Wales, Australia by combining research methods of talking, walking, drawing and photography.     

Remembering kauri on the ‘Kauri Coast’

This paper explores how the recent history of kauri is remembered and commemorated on the Kauri Coast, western Northland, focusing on three specific heritage sites: The Kauri Museum at Matakohe, Trounson Kauri Park, and Waipoua Forest Sanctuary. Each site was established to preserve elements of the past before they were lost or irrevocably altered. The museum commemorates the pioneers and the kauri timber and gum industries, while Trounson Kauri Park and Waipoua Forest were intended to represent primeval forest and stand as monuments to people who advocated their protection.     

Quaternary ontogeny of a pampean ‘laguna’

Our sedimentological study of Lobos Lake sediments has shown that, below modern deposits, there is a clastic and biological record of three different paleoenvironments: two aquatic (freshwater and mixohaline respectively) and one subaereal. This record documents the climatic and geomorphologic changes that affected the basin during its evolution up to its present water level, from the upper Pleistocene to the Holocene.This is the seventh in a series of papers published in this issue on Paleolimnology in Southern South America. Dr. C. A. Fernández served as guest editor for these papers.     

A modification of the time-geographic framework to support temporal flexibility in ‘fixed’ activities

The time-geographic distinction between fixed and flexible activities is widely acknowledged to be a somewhat arbitrary dichotomy but is still the current modus operandi for time-geographic calculations. This paper proposes a modification of the classic time-geographic framework to support temporal flexibility in ‘fixed’ activities. This modification is crucial for time-geographic calculations on public transit networks with a low frequency of service, which would otherwise return unstable results.     

A ‘demonstrator’ for the National Geosciences Data Index

Abstract

A survey of users of geosciences data in Great Britain, carried out as part of the Databank Pilot Study jointly supported by the Department of the Environment and the British Geological Survey, indicated a priority requirement for a central geosciences data index. The consultations suggested that the system should contain information about the sources, accessibility and nature of data held in both centralized and widely-distributed collections. To illustrate to users how such a system would appear in its final implementation, and in order to refine the system's specification, the British Geological Survey developed, on an Intergraph Interpro 32 Workstation, a working demonstration of a ‘user-friendly’, interactive graphical index, capable of satisfying the requirements of a wide range of users of geosciences data. This paper describes the development of the ‘demonstrator’, its structure, content and implementation, and the benefits of adopting such an approach.     

Governance,Gender and the Appropriation of Natural Resources: A Case Study of ‘Left-Behind’ Women’s Collective Action in China

China’s rapid urbanization has created large scale of population migration, resulting in many villages being dominated by “left-behind” women, and weak governance of those collectively owned resources. The situation has required these women to take up the functions of decision-making and governance as a remedial mechanism as well as a new path. Based on a case study in a typical hollowing-out village in central China, this paper explores an example of left-behind women’s collective action to prevent the over-exploitation of community and resources. It finds out that although traditionally excluded from public activities and marginalized, the “left-behind” women were able to mobilize and enhance collective action. When empowered, they are growing fast with endurance and courage, and as capable as anyone of defending the common-pool resources. It suggests that the left-behind women offer a new governance option for those population hollowing out rural areas.     

Soil-geographical characteristics of the western part of the democratic People’s Republic of Korea

The specific character of soil cover in the territory of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is revealed, and the soil interpretation schemes in the key areas are compiled. It is established that the main soil resource for agriculture within the region’s low and middle mountains is provided by areas of weakly developed brown forest soils in the lower parts of slopes as well as by alluvial soils along the valleys of large and medium-sized rivers. Specifically, brown forest soils of slopes are used largely in dry farming and forestry, while soils along river valleys are utilized in rice cultivation. Soils of terraced slopes and rice fields have been transformed anthropogenically to the greatest extent.     

Linked Boundary Functions: Examining the Role of ‘Research for Development’ Organizations in Integrating Levels of Resource Governance

Natural resource management practices such as community-based resource management (CBRM) are well-established bottom-up approaches to developing adaptive governance systems. Less is understood about how communities involved in such processes can attract top-down support without compromising their credibility or salience. We tested the usefulness of the linked boundary functions concept – boundary chains – for explaining the role of “research for development” (R4D) organizations in the integration of bottom-up community resource governance and top-down policy and legislative governance. We used the Australian Centre for Agricultural Research (ACIAR) in the Solomon Islands as a case study to probe the role of R4D organizations in this regard. The linked boundary functions concept proved useful in exploring the active functions of R4D organizations as actors that lend credibility, salience, and legitimacy to community-based governance initiatives. The concept of linked boundary functions or boundary chains can contribute to the current discussion in the complexity-aware theory of change and open new avenues for boundary management that enable the development of integrated resource governance in complex development contexts. This article contributes to the existing literature on the boundary spanning activities of R4D organizations.     

An ‘Effective’ Involvement of Indigenous People in Environmental Impact Assessment: the cultural impact assessment of the Saru River Region,Japan

The Cultural Impact Assessment of the Saru River Region represents the first time that a site investigation was implemented in Japan in order to preserve an ethnic culture in relation to the construction of a dam. One of the project's basic concepts was to get local residents, especially those of Ainu ethnicity, to participate in the investigation. Existing case studies of environmental impact assessment have argued that the assessment has failed to sufficiently involve Indigenous people in its process and has largely failed to incorporate Indigenous knowledge, cultural values, and voices into its processes and outcomes. Also, intangible aspects of Indigenous cultural heritage have not been protected. In the Cultural Impact Assessment of the Saru River Region, the Final Report was released in 2006 and significantly included the 3 year investigation of input by local residents. In this sense, this assessment succeeded in effectively involving Indigenous people in its process and in reflecting their cultural values in its results. The more important issue is, however, how these results were included in the final outcomes. If Indigenous people have no power over final decision making, their involvement is not effective. This paper analyses the significance and unresolved problems involved in this overall assessment process.     

Macassan/Indigenous Australian ‘sites of memory’ in the National Museum of Australia and Australian National Maritime Museum

For over two centuries people from Makassar on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi came to northern Australia with the onset of the northeast monsoon winds. They came in search of trepang that, with the help of Indigenous Australians, they collected and traded on to China. Their impact on the Indigenous communities in Arnhem Land was considerable. Along with sharing language, technology and culture, they built relationships, many ongoing, that are celebrated in Yolngu art, song and stories. These stories of contact are well known to many archaeologists and anthropologists but for many Australians the only place where they come into contact with these stories is in a museum display. In this paper I examine the ways in which these stories are disseminated by two national museums, the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney and the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. As important ‘lieux de mémoire’ or ‘sites of memory’, they tell of Macassan visits to northern Australia as part of Australian history. In both cases not only are the stories situated in the past but both Macassan and Indigenous Australian voices are largely absent.     

‘Like touching with your roots’: migrants’ children visiting the ancestral homeland

Many migrants and their descendants make journeys to their homelands, and these visits form an important part of their ethnic identities, kinship relations and transnational connections. While such journeys have attracted increased attention recently, there has been relatively little exploration of the experiences that migrants’ children have when visiting their parents’ homeland, especially in an exile context when there has been little contact with the homeland for an extended period. This paper examines why the children and grandchildren of Estonian migrants to Australia journey to Estonia, and the experiences they have there. Motivations for visiting are complex and varied, and typically interweaved with parents’ stories, ethnic identities, kinship and curiosity. While visiting was a positive but emotional experience for some, it involved awkward encounters for others. This paper explores how these journeys led to respondents reconceptualising their senses of identity, belonging and home, and how many came to align their identities to both Estonia and Australia simultaneously.     

The risk of occurrence of erosion processes on the western slope of the Tom’-Yaya interfluve

We assessed the level of geomorphological risk associated with the occurrence of erosion processes on the western slope of the Tom’-Yaya interfluve (West-Siberian Plain). We suggest the technique for points-based risk assessment in technogenically modified and naturally occurring geomorphological systems. Using the Luchanovskii area as an example, we identified the zones of increased, moderate and low risk levels.     

The evolution of the Kolpashevskaya meaner of the Ob’ and ongoing hazardous manifestations of channel processes

We examine the transformation of a gentle segmental to a meander loop with the result that the city, founded in the 17^th century, found itself on the caving bank. Comparison of cartographic materials from different times showed the occurrence of secondary bends on elongated rectilinear wings. Not only did such an evolution of the meanders lead to the caving of the terraced urban bank, but also it involved a likely emergency situation on the underwater crossing of the pipeline, and on other engineering facilities. We ascertained the causes of the ongoing channel deformations; modeling data were used in developing recommendations on meander straightening in order to divert the river away from the city.