Inhabiting the Imaginary: Factory Women at Home on Batam Island, Indonesia

Batam Island, Indonesia, located a short ferry ride away from Singapore, is a place where tourism and industry have been developed simultaneously and a border area where “developed” and “developing” nations meet. Government officials, investing international corporations and the “factory women” who work in the island's industrial estates arrive in Batam ‐ native to none of them ‐ with their own preconceptions and goals. When challenges not foreseen through master planning arise, the authorities cling ever more tightly to their physical and structural development model: the nearby city‐state of Singapore. Conversely, the factory workers who travel intranationally to work in this export processing zone (EPZ) find their objectives contested in the face of the Master Plan, corporate agendas and ethnic fusions characterising this transnational capitalist space. Entering into the homes of three groups of women migrants living and working in Batam, the relationship between the private realm that they inhabit and the social contexts in which they participate publicly is investigated. Some of the choices that women make at and about home are identified, and their ability to “micro‐resist” these external structures is explored. At home, the dynamic relationship between the Batam development project and the women's own hopes and visions of the place ‐ sometimes parallel and sometimes incongruous ‐ are revealed. As they experience life on Batam, their “social imaginaries” of it are shaped into various new realities, and their homes, removed from the confines of the factory floor, thus become spaces of release from these tensions.     

A story of “communities”: boundaries,geographical composition and social coherence in a forest conservation project,Northern Cambodia

Explicit notions of “communities”, as key actors in conservation and development projects across the Global South, are common. Narratives about “indigenous people” or “forest-dependent communities” in forest conservation programmes prevail, portraying a picture of “communities” as homogeneous and harmonious entities. In this study, we unfold “communities” as a construct with an empirical example of a community-based forest protection project, Northern Cambodia. Based on qualitative interviews, field observations and document analysis, we examine the “community” construct in terms of establishment of boundaries, geographical composition and social coherence. We not only find that the establishment of forest “community” boundaries are dominated by powerful external actors rather than the “community members” themselves, but that the spatial composition of “communities” is complex, and affects the ability of local people to benefit from the project. We also find that the studied “communities” show low levels of social coherence and mainly consist of migrant farmers, as opposed to common policy narratives. Taking these inconsistencies into account, we discuss implications of constructing “communities” for the success of forest conservation projects, and argue in favour of more discursive and political analyses to better understand, acknowledge and adapt to existing and changing conditions in present and prospective project locations.     

RURAL-URBAN CLASSIFICATION AND MUNICIPAL GOVERNANCE IN INDIA

Rural‐urban classification constitutes an important framework for the collection and compilation of population data in many countries. While “urban” is often specifically defined, “rural” is treated simply as a residual category. The criteria defining urban also differ from country to country. This paper argues that these rural and urban statistical categories are also highly significant for local governance, increasingly so in recent years given the emphasis on local governance and its restructuring. In India, constitutional amendments have given constitutional status to local bodies in the federal structure of the country. Local bodies are thus now expected to draw up their own plans and initiate development works, which requires them to generate their own resources and lessen their dependence on central government funding. It is thus necessary to reorganize urban space into viable spatial units in terms of their revenue base. While rural‐urban classification is the task of the Census of India, state governments are responsible for granting municipal status to urban centres. This paper examines the criteria and limitations of the rural‐urban classification followed by the Census, its congruence with the dynamics of state‐accorded municipal/non‐municipal status and some implications for municipal governance in India.     

DIVIDED LANDSCAPES, FRAGMENTED IDENTITIES: EAST BENGAL REFUGEES AND THEIR REHABILITATION IN INDIA, 1947–79

The partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 was followed by the forced uprooting of an estimated 18 million people. This paper focuses on the predicament of the minority communities in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) who were uprooted and forced to seek shelter in the Indian province of West Bengal. It considers the responses of Indian federal and provincial governments to the challenge of refugee rehabilitation. A study is made of the Dandakaranya scheme which was undertaken after 1958 to resettle the refugees by colonising forest land: the project was sited in a peninsular region marked by plateaus and hill ranges which the refugees, originally from the riverine and deltaic landscape of Bengal, found hard to accept. Despite substantial official rehabilitation efforts, the refugees demanded to be resettled back in their “natural habitat” of Indian Bengal. However, this was resisted by the state. Notwithstanding this opposition, a large number of East Bengal refugees moved back into regions which formed a part of erstwhile undivided Bengal where, without any government aid and planning, they colonised lands and created their own habitats. Many preferred to become squatters in the slums that sprawled in and around Calcutta. The complex interplay of identity and landscape, of dependence and self-help, that informed the choices which the refugees made in rebuilding their lives is analysed in the paper.     

The Strange Case of the Missing Female Geographer∗

“It is not our desire to change needle and thread in women's hands into astrolabes and globes; neither do we consider it necessary that a woman should retreat to a room papered with maps and ornamented with globes ‥. Their high moral standards allow them, in our view, to possess wide knowledge of geography, on condition that they do not attempt, through use of terms too coarse for a lady, to appear too eager a group of geographers. I am certainly willing to let them use such words as climate, zones, and so forth; but I do not want them to scare me stiff quoting longitude and latitude at me. Let them speak as much as they want about what they read in travelers'tales, and I will listen with pleasure ‥. But I certainly do not want to see the day when a woman's knowledge of the earth equals that of men!'”(1)     

The Strange Case of the Missing Female Geographer*

“It is not our desire to change needle and thread in women's hands into astrolabes and globes; neither do we consider it necessary that a woman should retreat to a room papered with maps and ornamented with globes ‥. Their high moral standards allow them, in our view, to possess wide knowledge of geography, on condition that they do not attempt, through use of terms too coarse for a lady, to appear too eager a group of geographers. I am certainly willing to let them use such words as climate, zones, and so forth; but I do not want them to scare me stiff quoting longitude and latitude at me. Let them speak as much as they want about what they read in travelers'tales, and I will listen with pleasure ‥. But I certainly do not want to see the day when a woman's knowledge of the earth equals that of men!'”(1)     

Contemporary Geographies of Indigenous Rights and Interests in Rural Australia

More than half of Australia's lands and coastal regions are now encompassed within the boundaries of native title claims. The claims and the 'native title communities' who have lodged them are shaping a new geography of Australia's lands and seascapes. These communities derive from traditional ownership and thus have a different, and more fundamentally authoritative, basis to the indigenous 'residential communities' whose representative organisations are the mechanism through which governments have promoted indigenous self-management and which dominate in public affairs. Recognition of native title provides some opportunities for indigenous people to negotiate for benefits which will address their marginalised and economically dependent status but these are limited by the protection given to non-indigenous interests and are often proving they can be very difficult to realise. Overcoming indigenous marginalisation, promoting co-existence between indigenous and other Australians, and securing sustainability in rural regions requires that institutional reform goes beyond legally bounded interpretations of where native title does and does not still exist. Rebuilding indigenous institutions for governance of country is fundamental to achieving necessary change but political will and resources to support the process are critically lacking.     

"VALUING THE TROPICS": DISCOURSES OF DEVELOPMENT IN THE FARM AND FOREST SECTORS OF FRENCH INDOCHINA, circa 1900–40

The paper examines how land and forest management policies were elaborated in French Indochina circa 1900–40. It places their development in the context of a scientific and economic discourse about the value of land and forest resources, the most appropriate ways in which they might be exploited and the relationship between colonial science and indigenous knowledge. By focusing on debates and laws relating to the development of small‐scale and plantation farming systems (Land Code legislations) and forest management and exploitation (Forest Code legislations) the paper seeks to ground arguments about Western conceptions of the “tropics” within a discussion of national policy development and impacts. Focusing primarily on Cochinchina and Annam (southern and central Vietnam) and drawing on materials from French archives, the paper shows how changes in both attitudes and legislation have had lasting consequences on systems of property rights in forest management and on the place and status of indigenous peoples in Indochina.     

THE SUPREME COURT'S ROLE IN CHOCTAW AND CHICKASAW DISPOSSESSION*

ABSTRACT. During the nineteenth century, Indian groups throughout the United States saw their lands taken from them through a variety of means, including land cessions and allotment. The Choctaw and Chickasaw, two of the Five Civilized Tribes of the southeastern United States, endured this process of dispossession. Although the U.S. Congress promulgated much of this dispossession through treaty‐based territorial demands, the Supreme Court proved an able partner in the process by subverting treaty guarantees and expanding congressional power. The dispute over the area known as “Greer County” provides an example of the Supreme Court's role in Indian dispossession, for its ruling in 1900 extinguished the Choctaw and Chickasaw claim to most of southwestern Oklahoma, earlier treaty provisions notwithstanding.     

TRANSPLANTING PILGRIMAGE TRADITIONS IN THE AMERICAS

ABSTRACT. Transplanting pilgrimage traditions, or the process of remaking the collective self in sacred places, requires new sacred places as worthy destinations. As people migrate from the lands where sacred places developed to those where such places may become only a distant memory, many communities attempt to recover their pilgrimage tradition by co‐opting sacred sites of host communities, maintaining links to their homeland, or re‐creating sacred sites in the lands of resettlement through replication, (re)recognition, creating movable rituals, celebrating sites of sacred embodiment, and ritual historicizing. Examples taken primarily from Catholic and Hindu experiences in the Western Hemisphere illustrate this preliminary typology. Transplanting pilgrimage traditions may be viewed as anchoring our individual, existential quests to fleeting ships of “collective selfhood.”     

“面向区域”的GIS控件的设计与使用

本文提出了一个“面向区域”GIS控件的概念———即以特定的地理区域为对象,将基础地理信息连同有关的GIS功能操作融合为一个可重用的程序模块,以Microsoft的COM(即“组件对象模型”)技术为基础,组织为“GIS化”的ActiveX控件。这种GIS控件,将面向对象技术中的“对象”扩展到了整个特定的地理区域空间,其核心思想是不仅封装了GIS的数据模型,必要的功能操作,而且封装了所有的基础地理信息。由于省去了对空间数据的处理,因而这种GIS控件可被广大非GIS专业的信息系统开发者灵活、简便地用于各种管理信息系统、办公自动化系统和决策支持系统的GIS功能扩充,也可用于构建一般的地理信息系统,因而有利于GIS技术应用的普及。文章最后给出了有关陕西省的应用实例     

COMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTAL KNOWLEDGE AND LAND RESOURCE SURVEYS IN SWAZILAND

This paper argues for the incorporation of community environmental knowledge systems in modem land resource surveys. Such surveys, usually carried out by specialists from outside traditional communities, oftem do not incorporate the communities’ concepts and knowledge which modulate land use practices. They are therefore not helpful to the small farmers who are the primary land users. Recent studies have confirmed the viability of indigenous knowledge systems. In Swaziland, the farmers’ concepts of soil and slope unit systems have been validated and are found to be similar to the modem survey concepts of “soil series” and “land slope”. They have also employed other land attributes (such as animal life and vegetation elements) as indicators of land quality. The time has come when land resource surveys must take account of such indigenous knowledge systems so that the goals of improved land management and increased production may be achieved.     

The tendencies in the development of the system of specially protected natural territories of Siberia

An analysis is made of 100 years of development of specially protected natural territories of Siberia. Attention is centered on the characteristic features of territorial nature conservation which are determined by the dependence on the political, economic and managerial factors. The analysis revealed the periods of formation, decline, opposite trends and negative dynamics in the establishment of new protected natural territories. Using the history of reserve management and studies of Russia as an example, it is shown that most innovations were tested in Siberia, starting from the establishment of Russia’s first state zapovedniks and zakazniks and ending with the setting up of joint directorates of specially protected natural territories in recent years. It is pointed out that the approaches in substantiating the system of protected natural areas were characterized by fundamental differences: from the organization of “pristine benchmarks” of nature with the ideology of total non-interference, to “farm zapovedniks” for breeding valuable game animals and active maintenance of the population of rare species accompanied by measures to eliminate “harmful” species. The rivalry between the geographical and biocentric approaches is described: in the former case, the preservation of typical natural systems was dominant; in the latter case, the preservation of rare and endangered species was paramount. It is concluded that the unevenness of distribution of zapovedniks, zakazniks and national and natural parks depends on the degree of development and exploration of a relevant territory, the likelihood of a total disappearance of the most valuable areas, and on the existence of lands of indigenous ethnic groups. It is demonstrated that the process of development of the system of territorial nature conservation is governed by the administrative initiative, consideration for the characteristics of a region’s economic development and changeable institutional conditions as well as by the factors of the country’s foreign and internal policy.     

“The city” as developmental justification: claimsmaking on the urban through strategic planning

Municipal governments produce a seemingly endless supply of urban strategic plans, which purport to define the city by making claims on its future development trajectories. Critics note that this claimsmaking on “the city” renders it conceptually vacuous and overextended. Yet it is essential to question the degree to which speculative policymaking is merely rhetorical. Discursive claimsmaking on the city through strategic planning documents is an important technique in urban politics—a form of targeted simplification that benefits particular stakeholders by defining the city around sites in which they are invested. Bids to host sporting “mega-events” like the Olympic Games are a case in point: event planning corporations routinely make claims on the city, which strategically simplify its forms and processes, often by defining the city in ways that mediate between particular land investment projects and broad visions for citywide development. The implication is that claimsmaking on the city through urban strategic planning is intentionally simplistic and acts as an ideological practice for justifying urban development projects.     

Subversive formalization: efforts to (re)form land,labor, and behavior in a carioca favela

ABSTRACT

State entities in Brazil have rolled out numerous programs to “integrate” precarious settlements into the so-called formal city of Rio de Janeiro. Two of the most visceral integration projects in Rio’s favelas have been infrastructural upgrading and public security via military police occupation. Drawing on participant observation, interviews, and policy analysis, in this paper I trace how these projects attempt to formalize land, labor, and behavior in a complex of favelas called Complexo do Alemão. Inspired by postcolonial urban approaches to formalization, I argue that formality/informality as it operates through these projects is, in part, a performative distinction deployed by the state, echoing elite and popular socio-spatial imaginaries. I add, however, that non-state actors are also involved in their own practices of formalization. Residents themselves are re-making diverse forms of property, employment, and behavior through processes of subversive formalization, informed by their geographically-embedded and historical relationships with one another.     

LAND‐USE CHANGE IN THE ATLANTIC COASTAL PINE BARRENS ECOREGION

Information on the rates, characteristics, and drivers of land‐use change are vital for addressing the impacts and feedbacks of change on environmental processes. The U.S. Geological Survey's Land Cover Trends project is conducting a consistent, national analysis of the rates, causes, and consequences of land‐use change. In this article we assess change in the Atlantic Coastal Pine Barrens ecoregion from 1973 to 2000. Urban lands expanded by more than 900 square kilometers during the study period. Land‐use change in the ecoregion followed the tenets of “Forest Transition Theory” (ftt ) prior to the study period, but forest lands experienced consistent declines from 1973 to 2000. Increasing government regulation during the study period, consistent with concept of the “Quiet Revolution” (qr ), mitigated forest loss during the latter half of the study period. Generalized theories, including ftt and the qr , are valuable, but local and regional determinants of comparative land rents ultimately drive land‐use change at this scale.     

REVISITING RIO DE JANEIRO AND SÃO PAULO*

ABSTRACT. Contrasting models of urban development characterize the historical-geographical evolution of Brazil's two leading cities, viewed in an updating of the seminal 1933 article by Preston James. Native to Rio de Janeiro is a distinctive Luso-Brazilian style of irregular coastal urbanization, whereas SÃo Paulo displays a more uniform, modern type of inland commercial-industrial expansion. Even as Rio de Janeiro and SÃo Paulo sprawl today to form a virtual megalopolis in southeastern Brazil, they retain distinguishing roles in the national city system. Both metropolises are experiencing increasing functional decentralization and socioeconomic polarization, but in their own characteristic fashions. Generalized models of “Latin American city structure” are of limited value, unless they take into account such significant historical-geographical variations in urban form.     

A PLACE UNBECOMING: THE COFFEE FARM OF NORTHERN LATIN AMERICA*

ABSTRACT. This article examines recent transformations of the coffee landscape of northern Latin America through the optic of “place as process.” As coffee became the most important regional export crop, its “place” evolved. Coffee lands in northern Latin America now embrace 3.1 million hectares, often contiguous across international borders. Like many agricultural systems, coffee has succumbed to intensification, a process termed “technification” in the Latin American setting. The result is a landscape mosaic in which a traditional agro-forest coffee system coexists with coffee lands transformed by modernization. The institutional forces behind this process, as well as some of its social and ecological consequences, are discussed.     

SPIRITUAL PILGRIMS AT MOUNT SHASTA,CALIFORNIA*

ABSTRACT. Even the casual visitor cannot fail to notice unusual activity on the slopes of Northern California's Mount Shasta. Prayer flags, altars, and crystals are found in the meadows; drumming, chanting, and meditation are commonplace. Non‐indigenous spiritual pilgrims have found Mount Shasta a sacred place. An amorphous group of spiritual seekers, these are sometimes referred to as “New Age” adherents or “Crystal People.” Within the Shasta‐Trinity National Forest, the situation of this sacred site exemplifies the difficulties of reconciling nonsecular claims to public lands with secular management mandates. Spiritual activism at Mount Shasta includes recently successful opposition to development of a Forest Service‐endorsed ski area. Using a questionnaire survey and interviews, we compare the characteristics, activities, and attitudes toward resource management of spiritual pilgrims and others who visit Mount Shasta's meadows. Conclusions are drawn about the environmental values and concerns of all visitors and of spiritual pilgrims in particular, including some that bear on pilgrim activities and ecological restoration efforts.     

Making the Connections: Infusing the National Geography Standards into the Classroom

Abstract

How will the National Geography Standards change the way teachers teach? The Standards will provide teachers with a geographic perspective that will enable them to teach improved geography content while building geographic skills and knowledge that will benefit their students for the rest of their lives. By taking a fresh look at the content in the curriculum from a geographic perspective, teachers can make connections between the Geography Standards and our own classrooms. The Standards provide information and strategies for teaching geography. They can be used to create lessons which offer opportunities for students to “do” geography and apply the skills they are learning.