Embedding the reforms in New Zealand schooling: After neo-liberalism?

Two decades of reforms to the state in New Zealand have altered policy, its making and the ways in which it is realised in micro settings. This paper uses the example of schooling to examine the rationality of these reforms, their spatial logic and what they mean for our understanding of the national state. It examines the development and practices of the Education Review Office (ERO), the body established under the reforms to evaluate and audit the performance of schools in the new national education `system'. The paper interprets neo-liberalism as a governmentality, and argues that the development of new managerial technologies of remote control such as contract and audit constitute a spatial model of control. The paper suggests that this model encourages, and relies for its efficacy upon, the cultivation of neo-liberal subjectivities. It argues that although the political projects working through the reforms have shifted, the altered rationality of the state and the models of control erected to secure it define an enduring and neo-liberalising social transformation. The shift to the `Third Way' in New Zealand's political and social economy is underpinned by neo-liberalising processes, which continue to reorganise social and economic spaces. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

From national to post-national territorial identities in Israel-Palestine

Territory remains a central component of national identity in the contemporary political discourse between Israelis and Palestinians, both populations opposing power sharing within the same space, for fear of the other's domination. The contemporary political discourse relates to conflict management and the desire for separate spaces within which national identities are strengthened through territorial/national homogeneity. The Zionist national ideology of most Jewish citizens of Israel has strong territorial roots; hence they reject the post-Zionist post-nationalist ideology, regardless of whether they accept the possibility of change in Israel's territorial configuration or of a diminishment in the importance of the territorial dimension of national struggle. The rights of residency and citizenship even of second and third generation Jewish citizens remain linked with the territorial configurations of a State that will continue to be called Israel and have a national anthem expressing the aspirations of a single, exclusive, national group. But within territorial readjustment, issues of configuration may become less relevant and in it is this sense that post-Zionism focuses on a discourse of territorial pragmatism, rather than the disappearance of territory from the nationality-citizenship debate altogether. It is part of a process of re-territorialization and spatial reconfiguration of political and national identities, not a reversal of territorialization, if only because there is no such thing as a post-territorial notion of the organization of political power. The boundaries of national identity become more permeable, more inclusive, but they do not disappear altogether.     

Party organisation and democracy – A comparison of Les Verts and the British Green Party

The environment is the issue most closely identified with the Green movement. However, a commitment to the rejuvenation of political practices has been equally important in the development of their partisan organisations. Green party members share the conviction that democracy is the best way to attain a sustainable society. They aspire to a more participatory politics and have translated their ideals of equality and individual fulfilment into alternative party structures. Many of their practices demonstrate that they share values and attitudes which inspire their behaviours and intra-party regulations. However, Green parties are also influenced by the national structure of political opportunities. The practical arrangements French and British Greens have developed reflect their relative integration within the political system as well as the influence of national political culture on conceptions of equality and participation. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Situating the geographies of injustice in democratic theory

Post-Marxist and poststructuralist ontologies of the political have been important reference points for recent discussions of democracy in critical human geography and related fields. This paper considers the conceptual placement of contestation in a strand of democratic theory often denigrated by these approaches, namely theories of deliberative democracy informed by post-Habermasian Critical Theory. It is argued that this concern with contestation derives from a focus on the relationships between different rationalities of action. It is proposed that this tradition of thought informs a distinctively phenomenological approach to understanding the situations out of which democratic energies emerge. In elaborating on this phenomenological understanding of the emergence of political space, the paper proceeds in three stages. First, it is argued that the strong affinities between ontological conceptualisations of ‘the political’ and the ontological register of canonical spatial theory squeezes out any serious consideration of the plural rationalities of ordinary political action. Second, debates between deliberative and agonistic theorists of democracy are relocated away from questions of ontology. These are centred instead on disputed understandings of ‘normativity’. This move opens up conceptual space for the analysis of phenomenologies of injustice. Third, using the example of debates about transnational democracy in which critical theorists of deliberative democracy explicitly address the reconfigurations of the space of ‘the political’, it is argued that this Critical Theory tradition can contribute to a distinctively ‘topological’ sense of political space which follows from thinking of political action as emerging from worldly situations of injustice. In bringing into focus this phenomenological approach to political action, the paper has lessons for both geographers and political theorists. Rather than continuing to resort to a priori models of what is properly political or authentically democratic, geographers would do well to acknowledge the ordinary dynamics and disappointments which shape political action. On the other hand, political theorists might do well to acknowledge the limits of the ‘methodological globalism’ that characterises so much recent work on the re-scaling of democracy.     

The cityscapes of European capital cities

Capital cities are politico-administrative centers. They are command centers, they symbolize authority and also the unit that is governed. Primarily they are capitals of states, but other governance systems may also have capitals. In the European context there are now regional capital cities and at least the concept of a European capital. Particularly on account of their symbolic function but also for the uses made of its appearance in political life, the cityscape of capital cities is an interesting topic for research. There are different types of capital cities in Europe that give rise to different cityscapes. Existing urban networks and types of political regime are important in this respect. Although cityscapes are pretty stable, they are differently perceived over time and uses made of them also change. A research agenda for this intersection of historical, cultural and political geography should concentrate on the evolution of these cityscapes, their perception and the uses made of them in the acting out of politics.     

Toward vegetal political ecology: Kyrgyzstan’s walnut–fruit forest and the politics of graftability

As part of their long-running project to get beyond the nature–culture dualism, political ecologists have increasingly explored the active contributions of nonhumans to environmental politics. Upon decentering humans, however, too often posthumanist political ecologies have recentered humans and animals, indexing the enlarged category of “political actor” to narrowly shared traits like mobility or intentionality. Among other consequences, this tendency in political ecology’s posthumanism leaves the political agency of plants largely neglected. Political ecology suffers from this neglect, but the field can benefit from an integration of the insights of vegetal politics, a literature that traces the consequences of plant capabilities in more-than-human geographies. In this article, I model this integration—a vegetal political ecology—by examining human–plant partnerships in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan's walnut–fruit forest, an ecosystem distinguished by the number of its trees that can be modified by horticultural techniques like grafting. I argue that the forest’s “graftability” incrementally undermines two different hierarchies, one typifying people–plant relationships and another that characterizes state-centered regimes of post-Soviet forest governance. Graftability thus allows Kyrgyzstani villagers and trees to act with more autonomy than they otherwise would. This antihierarchical effect is a small biological determinism conferred by the capacities of the graftable tree, and it has political consequences. Vegetal political ecology aims to similarly connect plant performances to their broader political effects; by doing so, it can help political ecologists escape the residual humanism that still characterizes their efforts at posthumanism and better illuminate the political possibilities of partnering with plants.     

A political-cultural map of Europe. Family structures and the origins of differences between national political cultures in the European Union

Differences between the national political cultures of the European states are puzzling. They are too often taken for granted or treated as an elusive explanation for residual differences that can not be accounted for in comparative politics. Here they are put at the core of a comparative analysis. This article explores the origins of differences between national political cultures. It deals with national political cultures from the perspective of Cultural Theory or grid-group analysis. A national political culture is conceived as a ‘conversation’ between subcultures associated to national political institutions and practices (and not as an aggregated pattern of individual orientations toward political objects). National political cultures can be characterised on the basis of ideal typical patterns of relations between the basic cultures or rationalities distinguished by Cultural Theory. After an assessment of the differences between the national political cultures of the Member States of the European Union, the paper considers traditional family structures as possible sources of differentiation, elaborating upon the work of the French political historian Emmanuel Todd who has documented the correspondence between the geography of traditional family structures and the geography of ideologies in Europe. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

There’s nothing inherent about scale: political ecology, the local trap, and the politics of development in the Brazilian Amazon

This paper argues that research in political ecology would benefit from more explicit and careful attention to the question of scale and scalar politics. Although political ecologists have extensively considered scale as a methodological question, they have yet to develop an explicit theoretical approach to scale as an object of inquiry. We highlight one principal drawback to this underdeveloped approach to scale: what we call “the local trap” in which political ecologists assume that organization, policies, and action at the local scale are inherently more likely to have desired social and ecological effects than activities organized at other scales. Over the past 10 years or so, an increasingly sophisticated literature on scale has been developing among scholars in geography working in the political economy tradition. This literature has argued that scale is socially produced rather than ontologically given. Therefore, there is nothing inherent about any scale, and so the local scale cannot be intrinsically more desirable than other scales. We suggest that a greater engagement with this scale literature offers political ecology a theoretical way out of the local trap. As a first approximation of the kind of scalar analysis we advocate, we present a case study that examines the scalar politics that have shaped environmental change in the Brazilian Amazon.     

Reconstituting nature conservation: Towards a careful political ecology

This paper is about the relationship between nature conservation in theory and nature conservation in practice. I argue that in theory nature conservation is concerned with revealing presence and rendering the present eternal. In practice, the spaces and times of conservation are less clear. Conservationists work with matters of concern that are neither self-evident nor unproblematically co-present. Presence has to be made and re-made. These matters of concern, like rare species, do not always announce themselves to political ecology and they do not always perform to type. Such difficulties are analysed through discussion of practical work conducted in a UK city with field ecologists and nonhuman inhabitants. It is argued that a careful political ecology is one that is intent on making spaces for others that are not simply about presence, inclusion or accumulation. It also involves uncertainties, precautionary measures and looser forms of assemblage.     

Beyond nationalism: Three visions of the European Union and their implications for the linguistic regime of its institutions

The linguistic diversity in the European Union is generally viewed as an essential component of the European identity, but the linguistic regime of the EU institutions (with eleven official and working languages) is not undisputed. In addition, the upcoming enlargements will complicate greatly the continuation of the present practices as new Member States bring new official languages. As a result, the debate about possible reforms is likely to be boosted by the necessity to prepare EU institutions for further enlargment. The present regime of institutional multilingualism is criticised from different angles, resulting in three options for the future. In this paper the linguistic regime of EU institutions is discussed in relation to general ideas about the nature of this supranational political system. Supranationalism is treated here as a program to supersede nationalism. Three variants are distinguished: pacified nationalism, neo-nationalism and post-nationalism. The paper examines how these different visions of Europe shed different lights on the issue of multilingualism (in terms of communication, identity and power) and its institutionalisation in the linguistic regime of the core instituions of the European Union. Although the three models are compatible with several arrangements, they support or oppose them for different reasons. Besides, they differ regarding the significance of the linguistic regime of the EU institutions for the whole polity and their ability to steer linguistic practices.     

Transition stages from a traditional city to an industrial city (Social and cultural environment of Tehran)

Some of Iran’s cities, specially Tehran that is the capital city of Iran have faced sudden changes of industrialization due to political, economic and ecological considerations. There is no doubt that it is not possible to conduct a thorough investigation of the cultural structures of these cities by theoretical models and they shall be evaluated in comparative and combinational terms. Because of the consideration mentioned above, different ethnicities and groups from different cultural backgrounds have been attracted to these cities and subcultures are highly influential in socialization, acculturation, solidarity, and integration of the individuals in the society. Although, one of the problems of the industrial cities all over the world, including Tehran is migration (from towns and villages), inflexible solutions and approaches to the migration problem are not logical. In addition, recourse to the weakness of the villages and attractions of the capital can not solve the problem (as shown by the author’s experience). Therefore, it seems that creating occupational opportunities in villages and towns is one of the practical and useful ways for the survival of small towns and reduction of the migration to big cities, including Tehran.     

Defining the acceptable level of risk for civil protection purposes: a behavioral perspective on the decision process

This work analyzes how acceptable risk levels are determined in political decisions and related policies in the field of civil protection, i.e., regarding disaster risks and their reduction at the national and supranational level. We examined why establishing the acceptable level of risk is a political decision, and why this decision is not an easy task. Some behavioral elements which can de facto impede such a decision were recognized. Among these, the anomalies inherent in intertemporal choices, availability heuristic and mental accounting play a primary role, because they interfere with preferences for selfish versus others’ interests and with the evaluation of individual versus community gains and losses. Due to these processes, the political decision-maker, unless she is a statesperson, will easily prefer not to decide. Political decision-making, however, could be induced by a change of mind in the voters’ community. This reorientation of the society’s values and interests can be stimulated taking advance from research on social norms, which underlines the role played by some people that drive innovation in a community, e.g., the trendsetters. The scientific, technical and professional communities have the knowledge needed, are aware of the work to be done on the disaster risk reduction and can establish a direct relationship with single trendsetters and statespersons to promote decision-making on disaster risk reduction. Within this relationship, they can build trust, give advice and participate in in-depth discussions. In this interaction and collaboration, behavioral sciences can provide a valuable support for a better reciprocal understanding.     

The state and peasant farmers’ leverage in Kenya

Limited capitalist development has meant that social classes in independent Sub-Saharan Africa are comparatively weak and the peasant farmers are the weakest of all. Isolated and divided, imbued with ethnic as opposed to class or broad policy consciousness, the peasant farmers may be politically unruly, but they are usually at the mercy of those in power. A by-product of peasant farmers political weakness in Africa generally is their economic exploitation by the state and dominant classes in the form of low prices for agricultural goods coupled with high prices for the manufactured products and a relatively high preference for urban over rural investment. Self-help initiative in Kenya is a politically valuable as a semi-autonomous peasant farmer-based institution oriented towards state policy. But self-help initiative is not a simple instrument of any class or the state. It is a contested terrain and embraces all the contradictions of the Kenyan political economy. Self-help has been a useful development strategy for peasant farmers. The Kenyan case study points to the need to examine what peasant farmers are doing for themselves, how they unite, form coalitions and manipulate state structures to their advantage. Finally, there are important struggles taking place quietly in the rural areas, the outcomes of which are by no means certain.     

The Upper Adriatic borderland: From conflict to harmony

The paper presents an overview of the Upper Adriatic as a contact area between different cultural, social, economic and political entities, producing potential conflicts in the last century. The first part of the 20th century represented a classic example of geopolitical conflict through two World Wars and their related Peace Conferences that deeply impacted the region. Conflicts arising from the mid-century solution of the Trieste question transformed the Upper Adriatic into a laboratory of contemporary political geographic transformation. Changing geopolitical patterns have also modified the political, social and ethnic construction of the Upper Adriatic. The process of creating new international boundaries in the region ended in 1991 with the independence of Slovenia and Croatia. Through these geopolitical transformations in the Upper Adriatic, new political geographic attitudes evolved. Early on, Ratzel's geopolitical principles of defining borders as power barometers between neighbors dominated. More recently, attitudes have reflected modern integrative ideas with a focus on looking for harmony and the elimination of international conflicts. Greater attention has thus been given to the political geography of `everyday life', inter-ethnic relations, and cross-border contacts. Hence, `new' borderlands of the Upper Adriatic are more receptive to integration because they seek to overcome conflicts caused by the division of traditionally homogeneous spaces as local level political and ideological hindrances disappear. The region divided among Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia is becoming a new and special type of European borderland in the new century.     

Nations as economic regions

Nations are first of all political regions. Their significance as economic regions derives from the political regulation of economic affairs. Never have such regulations been more pervasive, complex, and economically disruptive than in the 20th century. Politicians seek to extend their power over the subjects whom they govern as well as the power of their nation over other nations. In liberal democratic nations, politicians frequently respond to appeals for protection from economic hardship, thereby courting the favor of those whom they protect. In nations with centrally planned economies, the power of politicians rests on the implementation of ideological doctrines incompatible with open national borders. Politicians of any nation, reluctant to use the military arsenal at their command for fear that an armed conflict may escalate into a nuclear holocaust, may resort to economic warfare instead. All such policies contribute to the economically disruptive nature of national boundaries.     

Contesting colonial rule: Politics of exile in the Indian Ocean

This paper examines the compulsory relocation of anti-colonial nationalists from other parts of the empire to Seychelles during British colonial rule. It explores how these colonial policies of forced expulsion that were used to contain anti-colonial political activity unintentionally enabled political exiles to create new trans-imperial networks of resistance. From the late 1800s, the British Colonial Government exiled to Seychelles over 500 anti-colonial leaders and their followers from Egypt, Somaliland, Ethiopia, Gold Coast, Palestine and other colonies; the last political exile was Greek Cypriot leader Archbishop Makarios who arrived in Seychelles in 1956. Based on archival and empirical research this paper examines their experiences of exile and how, despite feelings of loss and isolation, they continued to challenge colonial authority by mobilising new forms of contestation. Through a colonial geographical imaginary, Seychelles was constructed as distant, remote and isolated, a place where political agitators could be safely confined and prevented from infecting others with their anti-colonial sentiments. Instead, however, these movements brought colonised people together from across the empire and created spatially extended networks of ideas that became significant in connecting these ‘remote’ islands to other places. Exiles disrupted the authority of the British Colonial Government through mundane and small acts of resistance in which they made constant, almost daily, demands for their right to return home and better living conditions. This study, on a much under-researched form of imperial mobility and confinement, contributes to debates on colonialism, space and resistance by identifying networks produced by colonised people and, through an exploration of translocal subaltern agency and resistance, confounds place-bound notions of politics.     

Against (the idea of) financial markets

The difference between bank-based and market-based financial systems is a longstanding and influential conceptual staple of the interdisciplinary literature on finance. This dualistic model has been subjected to wide-ranging critiques over the past decade. Yet, while those critiques productively problematize the relationship between banks and markets presumed by the model, they fail to address the underlying distinction between banks and markets that is also presumed by the model. This article questions that distinction. It argues that financial markets are best understood not as places or platforms where banks and other financial actors come to interact – and thus as essentially separate from banks – but, instead, as, in large part, their interaction; as constituted by it. The article further argues for the political as well as scholarly importance of reconfiguring our ideas of what financial markets are. The idea of markets as separate, reified phenomena not only underpins the scholarly model of bank- and market-based financial systems – it does political work in the wider world, with the appeal to financial markets or, more nebulously, “the market” to rationalize and justify political decision-making having become a commonplace of contemporary public policy discourse.     

Facing the new world order: Middle East geopolitics and Palestinian peace strategies

The purpose of this paper is to examine the future geopolitics of the Middle East against the backdrop of the Gulf War crisis and its aftermath. Special attention was given to the case of Palestinians and their search for peaceful solution to their territorial conflict with Israel. It is suggested that in an era of a new world order most Middle Eastern governments will give priority to their domestic problems, gearing toward power sharing at home and evolving a certain degree of liberalizations as an attempt to be accommodated within a worldwide sphere of social, economic and political reconciliation. Having overcome the post-Gulf political isolation, the Palestinians are now in a better position to make their claim for self-determination recognized. Ultimately, the fulfilment of such claim is desirable for achieving lasting peace and regional stability. This paper also proposes concrete suggestions for future Palestinian territorial behaviour addressed mainly to the Palestinian government to be considered while they are engaging in peaceful negotiations with Israel.     

Rethinking multi-level governance in a changing European union: why metageography and territoriality matter

The literature on multi-level governance in Europe offers important insights into the institutional character of emerging spaces of political practice and the ways in which they are part of a politics of scale that has been unleashed in the wake of neo-liberal reform. What is less clear is the extent to which new multi-level governance arrangements are moving Europe beyond a political geography rooted in the Westphalian state system. This paper argues that a deepened understanding of the possibilities and limitations of multi-level governance requires consideration of the emerging territorial arrangements and practices that are shaping how things are organized on the ground and how people conceptualize Europe as a geographical construct. Focusing on questions of territoriality and metageography can offer insights into the socio-political significance of multi-level governance while directing attention to developments that have the potential to undermine dominant political-territorial framings of Europe.     

Situating regional advantage in geographical political economy: Transformation of the state-owned enterprises in Guangzhou, China

Drawing upon insights from geographical political economy, this study examines the causal processes and mechanisms that underlined the growth and adaptation of state-owned enterprises in mechanical and electrical sectors (SOMEEs) in a leading Chinese city since market reforms. It reveals that the geographically specific and historically contingent political economy in which SOMEEs in Guangzhou were situated before economic reforms was the fundamental force underlying their successful adaptation in the post-reform period. SOMEEs in Guangzhou prior to market reforms were placed in a geographical political economy characterized by a special market orientation toward the production of low-end machinery for local needs and a loosely-coupled political linkage with the state apparatus. While such place-specific market and institutional relations were not favorable to the growth and survival of SOMEEs in Guangzhou in the Mao era, they have constituted an important source of regional advantage to enforce both market competitive pressure and hardened budget constraints on SOMEEs in Guangzhou and propel them to adopt efficient market-adaptation strategies and practices during the post-reform period. There is a need for ‘scaling up’ the theorization of regional advantage to go beyond the exclusive emphasis placed on the institutional dynamics endogenous to regional economies and take more seriously the unequal positions of regions within the extra-local structural relations of actually existing political-economic regimes. The paper advocates a place-contingent treatment of soft budget constraints in future studies on state-owned enterprises in China and other transitional economies.