Floods in megacity environments: vulnerability and coping strategies of slum dwellers in Dhaka/Bangladesh

In many megacities of the global south, the combination of rapid population growth and high pressure on space for housing, results in urban growth taking place in areas particularly prone to natural hazards. Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is no exception to this rule. Many marginal settlements or slums are located on low-lying land at high risk of flooding. This paper analyzes the vulnerability of slum dwellers in Dhaka and highlights the major factors behind their sensitivity to floods and their ability to adapt to the related changes. The empirical findings presented are based on a questionnaire survey covering 625 households in five slum areas of Dhaka. Our data suggests that social capital plays an important role with regard to the ability of slum dwellers to find ways to live with the floods. Regardless of how strongly people are affected, mutual help and support are dominant features in times of crises. While poorly educated and resourced slum dwellers are highly vulnerable to external shocks, they still show a surprising capacity to cope with natural calamities.     

Large-scale farming as a cultural dilemma in U.S. rural development— The role of capital

Although agressive economic traditions have benefited U.S. agricultural fortunes enormously in the past, expanding farming scale now also seriously threatens equally-prized rural traditions extolling the values of family farming. To see in detail how strongly and in what ways large-scale farming is exerting its influence across the nation, a multivariate model was applied to county census data. Emphasized were forces of capital accumulation rather than traditional single criteria like farm size or incorporation. Results uniformly dispute the argument for continued vigor of the family farm. Smaller operators are not only disadvantaged in all production factors, but also are no longer protected by such traditional recourses as labor intensification and production efficiency. Far more farmers are also subjected to large-scale farming pressures well beyond the “factory farm” areas, and in several places to pressures as intense. One of these centers is the Western Corn Belt, a bastion of both technology and rural tradition, and thus quite possibly the place where the foremost dilemma in American agriculture is finally resolved.     

‘They took our beads,it was a fair trade,get over it’: Settler colonial logics,racial hierarchies and material dominance in Canadian agriculture

Canada is in a liminal space, with renewed struggles for and commitments to indigenous land and food sovereignty on one hand, and growing capital interest in land governance and agriculture on the other. While neoliberal capital increasingly accumulates land-based control, settler-farming communities still manage much of Canada’s arable land. This research draws on studies of settler colonialism, racial hierarchy and othering to connect the ideological with the material forces of settler colonialism and show how material dominance is maintained through colonial logics and racially ordered narratives. Through in-depth interviews, I investigate how white settler farmers perceive and construct two distinctly ‘othered’ groups: Indigenous peoples and migrant farmers and farm workers. Further, I show the disparate role of land and labour in constructing each group, and specifically, the cultural and material benefits of these constructions for land-based settler populations. At the same time, settler colonial structures and logics remain reciprocally coupled to political conditions. For instance, contemporary neoliberalism in Canadian agriculture modifies settler colonial structures to be sure. I argue, however, that political economic analyses of land and food production in Canada (such as corporate concentration, land grabbing and farm consolidation) ought to better integrate the systemic forces of settler colonialism that have conditioned land access in the first place. Of course, determining who is able to access land—and thus, who is able to grow food—continues to be a territorial struggle. Thus, in order to shift these conditions we ought to examine how those with access and control have acquired and maintained it.     

Place and the implications of ‘the local’ for sustainability: an investigation of the Ugu District Municipality in South Africa

Sustainable development is accepted worldwide as a programme for the improvement of human-environment relations. It has been argued that the local level is the optimum level at which to implement sustainability. However, variability of local characteristics problematises this process as engagements with the principles and practices of sustainable development in unique places are likely to result in varying interpretations of the internationally accepted discourses of sustainable development. In order to assess local level interpretations of sustainability [Sharp, L., 1999. Local policy for the global environment: in search of a new perspective. Environmental Politics 8 (4), 137-159] calls for a more contextual analysis of the relationship between sustainability and the local level.This paper evaluates the interpretations of sustainability that were evident in a capacity building workshop in the Ugu District Municipality on the south coast of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa through consideration of the context in which they emerged. The notion of place as a construction of social and spatial interrelations, the social relations of power within places and the environmental discourses through which debates over sustainability often occur have been used in this study to consider how unequal power relations and the process of political and social transition taking place within the Ugu District Municipality drive the social construction of sustainability agendas. Consequently, the case study draws attention to the need to consider the ways in which local contexts set the terms for interpretations of sustainability as these conceptualizations can direct actions for sustainability and may interrelate to assist or hinder the implementation of local level sustainability plans.     

Place-based learning and knowing: critical pedagogies grounded in Indigeneity

For Indigenous peoples, knowledge and science are written onto the landscapes our languages ??talk into being?? through the ??individual and collective consciousness of our communities (Cajete 2000, 284).?? Our landscapes are the storied histories, cosmogonies, philosophies and sciences of those Indigenous knowledges which are increasingly being pushed aside by the ??gray uniformity?? of globalization and its progenitor, European colonization. It is within storied places that we can still glimpse alternatives to this gray uniformity of globalization which brings with it a rhetoric of capitalism, modernism, abstract space and Western science. It is this rhetoric produced through globalization which erases the storied landscapes, destroying the libraries embedded within Indigenous toponyms, creating a terra nullius: an empty land awaiting a colonial/neo-colonial history and economy. As Paulo Freire has challenged us to see, critical consciousness requires us to ??read our world,?? decoding the images of our own concrete, situated experiences with the world (Freire and Macedo 1987, 35). A critical pedagogy of place recognizes the concrete experiences of communities grounded in shared histories, stories and challenges based within a politics of place. A critical pedagogy of place seeks to decolonize and reinhabit the storied landscape through ??reading?? the ways in which Indigenous peoples?? places and environment have been injured and exploited. This paper seeks to discuss how through reading the places in the world as ??political texts,?? one may engage in reflection and praxis in order to understand, and where necessary, to change the world.     

Linking places to problems: geospatial theories of neighborhoods, alcohol and crime

This paper provides a critical review of two broad categories of social ecological theories of crime, social integration and place-based theories, and their relationships to spatial assessments of crime patterns. Social integration theories emphasize the role of neighborhood disorganization on crime, while place-based theories stress the social interactions within and between places as a source of crime. We provide an analysis of the extent to which these two types of theorizing describe processes and mechanisms that are truly ecologic (identify specific interactions between individuals and their environments) and truly spatial (identify specific movement and interaction patterns of individuals and groups) as they endeavor to explain crime outcomes. We suggest that social integration theories do not provide spatial signatures of sufficient specificity to justify the application of spatial statistical techniques as quantitative arbiters of the theory. On the other hand, place based theories go some way toward addressing these issues because the emphasis is placed on understanding the exact physical and social characteristics of place and the activities that occur around locations as sources of crime. Routine activities and crime potential theories attempt to explain clustering or “hot spots” of crime in ways that give clear spatial dimension by looking at micro-spatial interactions between offenders and targets of crime. These theories have strong ecological implications as well, since they contain specific statements about how people use the space around them and how these patterns of use are related to patterns of criminal activity. We conclude by identifying a set of requirements for successful empirical tests of geospatial theories, including the development of valid measures of key theoretical constructs and the formulation of critical empirical assessments of geospatial hypotheses derived from motivating theory.     

The ‘leisuring’ of rural landscapes in Barbados: New spatialities and the implications for sustainability in small island states

The transformation of rural areas into up-scale leisure amenity landscapes has become a global phenomenon. Small islands, especially in tropical and subtropical regions, are particularly attractive magnets for this kind of development. Yet it involves land use changes that challenge the sustainability of small island development as set out in the United Nations program for Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States (SDIDS). Through a case study of Barbados this paper critically examines the ‘leisuring’ of rural landscapes on small islands. It ties together Lefebvrian concepts of the production of space with the perspective of political ecology to argue that the agendas of global capital impose new spatialities involving social constructions of space and socio-environmental transformations by an offshore elite who are insensitive to local interests as well as the smallness of small islands. This creates conflict between space and place - between the spaces produced by the global leisure economy and the places that have purpose and meaning for local people. It challenges the possibility of local, community-based development solutions and imposes serious constraints on the implementation of the SDIDS agenda. More research into the nature of the new leisure spaces and how they are perceived and experienced by local populations is needed.     

Distinctive and comparative places: Alternative narratives of distinction within international student mobility

Moving beyond the ‘world-class’ institutional model of international student mobility, this paper examines alternative narratives of distinction relating to place of study. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with international students at universities in the UK, Austria and Latvia, we illustrate how students inside and outside mainstream reputable higher education institutions narrate and reconfigure markers of distinction to validate their international mobility and location of study, in part to compete with peers at other (more prestigious) institutions. We demonstrate the importance of lifestyle and experiential places within a global differentiated higher education landscape and argue that many students engage in comparative narratives of place of study to authorise the symbolic capital associated with international education. The findings also consider how experiential places and mobility capital are used for distinction not only during educational mobility but within post-study aspirations.     

Rethinking space: an outsider’s view of the spatial turn

Geographical concerns with space and place have escaped the confines of the discipline of geography. Many humanities scholars now invoke such conceptions as a means to integrate diverse sources of information and to understand how broad social processes play out unevenly in different locations. The social production of spatiality thus offers a rich opportunity to facilitate interdisciplinary dialogues between different schools of critical theory. Following a brief assessment of the spatial turn in history, history of science, and political philosophy, this paper explores its implications for literary and cultural studies. It invokes a detailed case study of late 18th century Lima, Peru to explicate the dynamics of colonialism, the construction of racial identities, and different power/knowledge configurations within a particular locale. Space in this example appears as both matter and meaning, i.e., as simultaneously tangible and intangible, as a set of social circumstances and physical landscapes and as a constellation of discourses that simultaneously reflected, constituted, and at times undermined, the hegemonic social order. The intent is to demonstrate how multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarship can be facilitated by paying attention to the unique of circumstances that define places within given historical moments. As seen in this example from literary colonial studies, other disciplines, therefore, can both draw from and contribute to poststructuralist interpretations of space as a negotiated set of situated practices.     

生计资本对农户参与耕地保护意愿的影响——以成都市永安镇、金桥镇, 崇州市江源镇为例

耕地效益比较低下导致兼业农户数量增多, 生计资本发生转变. 农户作为耕地的直接使用者, 生计资本转变不仅带动农村社会经济的发展, 更影响农户参与耕地保护的意愿. 以最早实行耕地保护政策的四川省成都市永安镇、金桥镇和崇州市江源镇为例, 构建农户生计资本与耕地保护参与意愿的结构方程模型, 定量刻画生计资本对于农户参与耕地保护意愿的影响. 结果表明: 生计资本对于农户参与耕地保护的意愿具有显著影响, 其中, 自然资本对耕地保护意愿的正向影响最显著, 高于社会资本; 物质资本对耕地保护意愿的负向影响最显著, 高于金融资本和人力资本. 生计资本中自然资本和社会资本每增加一个单位, 农户耕地保护意愿将提高0.071和0.011个单位; 物质资本、金融资本和人力资本每增加一个单位, 农户耕地保护意愿对应减少1.231个单位、1.030个单位和0.232个单位. 所以, 生计资本差异会直接影响农户参与耕地保护的意愿. 政府应从不同生计资本农户的诉求出发, 寻找农户经济利益与参与耕地保护政策的切合点, 根据农户不同生计资本情况制定相应的补偿政策和扶持策略, 从根本上激发农户参与耕地保护的积极性, 确保耕地保护政策实施的持续性和有效性.     

Masculinities and femininities of drinking in Finland,Italy and Sweden: Doing,modifying and unlinking gender in relation to different drinking places

In this article we analyze how Finnish, Italian and Swedish men and women are doing, modifying and unlinking gender in relation to different drinking places and situations. In the study, Finland and Sweden represent the Nordic intoxication-oriented drinking cultures, whereas Italy, in turn, represents the Mediterranean meal drinking cultures. The data were collected in a similar way in Finland, Italy and Sweden from 2007 to 2010, covering four different age groups. From each country at least eight male and eight female groups were selected, i.e. two male and two female groups from each age group, one representing higher and the other lower social status professions. All focus groups were asked to interpret a set of pictures representing different kinds of drinking places and situations, such as a couple’s moderate wine drinking at a sidewalk table, heavy drinking among men in a bus, and playful drinking among women while dancing. In the analysis we emphasize the flexibility of doing gender and the possibility of challenging conventional gender performances. We assume that doing gender is a multi-dimensional process mediated by structures, hierarchies, identities, situations and agency. Our analysis presents a mosaic repertoire of masculinities and femininities that change shape depending on how the place is seen in terms of a drinking space or situation. The masculinities and femininities are not reducible to any single hierarchy of dominant and subordinate masculinities and femininities. Rather, the doing, modifying and unlinking of masculinities and femininities vary by geographical area, age and/or education, as well as by drinking situation.     

Mobility centre-oriented urban regeneration: examining place value of railway stations

Urban regeneration involves the notion of reconstruction of places, where regeneration initiatives are undertaken to ameliorate the quality of physical and social spaces, accrue economic profitability of space, and finally encourage environmental sustainability. Railway stations all around the world have a very important role to play in contemporary urban regeneration strategies as places of both social and material interest. With the progress of the twentieth century several issues like rapidly growing population, seemingly relentless urbanisation, an alarming rate of vehicle emission, and consequent pollution emphasised railway stations as critical places with great potentials of infrastructure development for the optimised functioning of urban centres. Thus the huge value of railway stations and their adjacent land has been acknowledged since the last quarter of the previous century. This paper aims to analyse the place value of railway stations and their immediate neighbourhoods within the urban fabric of a city using a relevant theoretical concept i.e. the ‘Node-Place Model’. Simultaneously it also draws attention to the notion of (re)development of functional spaces in and around the railway stations as a dimension of contemporary urban regeneration strategies, with the help of some global examples. This paper thereby reveals that in the urban centres throughout the entire world the railway stations are progressively attaining the focal position within integrated transport and land use planning strategies, either under the larger concept of 'Transit-Oriented Development' (TOD) or more simply, with the label of (re)development programme. This paper will significantly contribute to the ability of spatial policymakers to direct the future of urban growth towards public transit stations so as to achieve sustainable urban development.

     

Postcolonial environmental justice: Government and governance in India

In this paper, we investigate the context within which struggles for environmental justice are taking place in India. We explore the ways in which postcolonial patterns of government and governance in India affect the ends, the means and the representation of these struggles, focusing on three particular areas: state reform, the judiciary and public interest litigation, and environmental social movements. We argue that India differs from west in the ambitious yet incomplete and contradictory nature of government-sponsored intervention in the environment, and in the particular nature of its public sphere, both of which have been important in shaping struggles for environmental justice. Our wider intention is not merely to catalogue these differences, but to use the Indian material to raise questions about the emphases and implicit assumptions of western environmental justice literature, and reflect on how these may be need reconsideration when working in postcolonial contexts.     

‘Seeing red’ in national parks: How visitors’ values affect perceptions and park experiences

People’s reasons for visiting national parks have been well researched. So too have their park activities and how diverse activities potentially affect visitors’ park experiences (e.g. perceptions of overcrowding). Far less research has examined how park users’ environmental values might affect their perceptions of other users and the appropriateness of different activities – a potential source of conflict. Relationships between personal environmental values and environmental and social perceptions are complex and interactive in the context of park visitation. Visitors’ encounters with other users can powerfully affect their experience and enjoyment of parks, in turn reflecting such factors as values-related expectations and judgments in the context of national parks. Personal and social values may also play an important role in influencing whether different activities are perceived as ‘out of place’ in the context of national park place meaning, yet the conceptualization of values within geographic literature on parks remains comparatively weak.This paper utilizes a definition of values, derived from a concise review of the geography and social psychology literatures, to explain the results of survey research we undertook within national parks in Queensland, Australia. We use a ‘values-behavior hierarchy’ conceptual framework to consider how the personal environmental values of a sample of park visitors (n = 404) potentially affected patterns of park visitation, user activities, and user conflicts. Findings suggest that visitors’ environmental values shaped how they perceived other park users and the appropriateness of their activities. This has international implications for geographic research and other disciplines and professions involved in national park visitation, park use, and human impacts, on and of these powerful places.     

Place,gender and the appeal of video lottery terminal gambling: unpacking a focus group study of Montreal youth

Youth gambling has become an important public health issue in Canada and elsewhere owing to the known associations between gambling and delinquency, family dysfunction and suicide. Modern electronic and virtual gambling activities like video lottery terminals (VLTs) may have particular appeal to youth who have been raised in social environments that are increasingly dependent on information and communication technologies. The main objective of the study was to explore why youth gamble and what makes gambling activities like VLTs popular to youth in the places where youth live, study and play. The research is framed within a population health perspective that recognizes the role of social and physical environments in influencing health-related behaviours. Group discussions were conducted with youth to explore the popularity and appeal of gambling and VLTs, and how gambling fits into the daily routines of youth and the spaces they occupy. Methodologically, this research was conscious of responding to calls in the literature to analyze focus groups as an interactive group process rather a collection of individual responses, and to exercise analytic rigour by explicitly making the research team’s positionality and the data collection process transparent. Group discussions revealed gender differences in the appeal of particular gambling activities with young males being more likely to discuss poker, dice, sports-betting and online gambling as exciting social activities, while females described lottery and scratch (instant win) tickets as fun solitary activities. Substantive results point to the need for interventions to address social aspects of gambling that appeal, in particular, to young males potentially through increased provision of healthier alternatives to social engagement and greater attention to young people’s use of space.     

巨大灾害后的脆弱性：台湾集集地震后中部地区土地利用与覆盖变迁

自2004年底的南亚大海啸、美国遭受飓风侵袭以来，人类社会如何采取应对措施以降低灾害的冲击成为国际科学界的一个重要议题。台湾在几年前也遭遇巨大的地震灾害，1999年9月21日凌晨，震中发源于台湾中部、芮氏规模7.3级的巨大地震，造成全台湾2 000多人死亡，8 000多人受伤，除了造成直接的经济社会损失外，也造成山区土石松滑、地层松动与山崩，直接改变了地表的覆盖状况。在后续几年台风所带来的强风豪雨下，丰沛的降雨量使原本因地震而松滑的土石大量滑落，造成严重的土石流灾害，河床也因土石泥沙的堆积而被提升，形成严重的洪患。这些自然环境的变化不仅再次改变地表的覆盖，也使重建后的小区面临极大的灾害风险。此次冲击促使当地居民重新思考人地关系之意义，通过重建过程凝聚小区意识，发展有别于过去的土地利用形态。因此为检验当地居民对灾害的暴露程度、敏感性与适应能力，本研究采用近年来在国际环境灾害研究课题备受重视的脆弱性研究途径，并利用野外调查以及遥测与地理信息系统分析呈现地震后的土地覆盖变化。希望通过分析人与环境系统的变化，以及人类社群的社会内部固有特质，归纳出重要机制以发展降低脆弱性的策略。 研究结果显示，灾害是人与环境耦合系统(coupled system)共同形成的结果，非单一的独立事件，也不是不可避免的；且地方的脆弱性具有演化与多元化的特性，同一地方下不同族群与个体对灾害的脆弱性皆不同，因此灾害研究必须更关注于灾害发生的机制，相关的政策与策略也必须建立在更小的社会与空间单元上。     

Blue grabbing: Reviewing marine conservation in Redang Island Marine Park,Malaysia

While academic literature and media attention has rightly focused on the numerous instances of land grabbing taking place in various corners of the world, far less attention is paid to the enclosure, appropriation and dispossession taking place in the guise of marine conservation – or the recently developed concept of “blue grabbing”. Blue grabbing articulates how marine conservation results in the appropriation of marine resources and coastal land from previous custodians by more powerful actors, such as state and tourist operators. Blue grabbing can be considered a form of primitive accumulation, yet dispossession via marine conservation does not take the conventional form of privatising land, as the spaces involved are still formally state-owned areas. Rather, it is the benefits from natural resources that contribute to capital accumulation of tourist operators and indirectly the state. Restrictions on local resource use are justified using degradation narratives of “overfishing”, while financial benefits from tourism are drained from local communities within a system lacking transparency. This intervention draws on fieldwork research to reveal how blue grabbing plays out in Redang Island Marine Park, Malaysia, yet given that blue grabbing is a recently developed concept, argues there is a pressing need for research to build a more informed picture.     

Nature–society and development: social, cultural and ecological change in Nepal

This paper presents a theoretical framework for analyzing human–environment issues that examines shifting, dialectical relationships between social and power relations, cultural beliefs and practices, and ecological processes to allow an interdisciplinary, complex assessment of social and environmental change in Nepal. The purpose of this analysis is to capture the complexity and non-static nature of environmental and social change in the context of uneven development. Drawing from political ecology and feminist geography, this framework brings together scholarship on aspects of human–environment issues that are often pursued in isolation, yet all three processes, social–political relations, cultural practices and ecological conditions, have been acknowledged as important in shaping the trajectory of social and ecological change. I argue that a consideration of the articulations between them is necessary to understand first, how specific land management regimes arise and are dominant over time in specific places. And second, I examine the extent to which these regimes distribute resources equitably within communities, promote economic development and sustain ecological resilience. In this analysis, ecological processes are conceptualised as co-productive of social and cultural processes to explore their role in land management regimes without resorting to environmental determinist or similarly reductive paradigms. I present this framework through the example of natural resource management, specifically community forestry in Nepal, as it offers a rich case study of the relationships between the political economy of land use and the ecological effects of natural resource extraction.     

On the specific nature of space

Location referring to the earth's structure is absolute and unique. Relative location, emphasising relationships between places, is the basis of locational analysis. Specific location implies a designation of places in terms of social activities and values. A place is a location invested with social values. Space may be undifferentiated until the accumulation of activities and values begin to map it into a meaningful cultural landscape. The significance of specific places can be extended to regions and to states, in which there is convenience between a territory and a value system. Although experiential, this approach to understanding places is a necessary corrective to the incomplete view of reality of orthodox positivism.     

Landing capital and assembling ‘investable land’ in the extractive and agricultural sectors

Over the last decade, shifting strategies of capital accumulation have deepened the integration of land and associated primary commodities into circuits of investment. More than merely an economic revaluation of land, such integration involves an iterative rearrangement of the social and natural processes determining land’s material and symbolic qualities. Highlighting these shifts through a comparative study of investment processes for large-scale agricultural and extractive projects, we posit investment processes as assemblages proceeding in the context of different ontologies, valuations, and uses of land, which coalesce and compete with one other in complex ways, producing new spaces and subjectivities. Such assembling, we suggest, notably involves a discursive component involving the narration of the need for investment, an institutional component reforming regulatory arrangements, and an operational component enrolling labour, infrastructure, and ancillary resources associated with agricultural and extractive production. After examining each of these components in turn, we conclude with a discussion of tensions and contradictions inherent in ‘opening’ lands for investment and the business of harnessing agricultural and extractive resources.