PERI‐URBAN AGROFORESTRY IN THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON*

ABSTRACT. Together, urbanization and the search for sustainable development present a dilemma in the Brazilian Amazon: how to accommodate an expanding urban population while creating and maintaining sustainable production systems that feed the people and manage the forest. A unique peri‐urban agroforestry project, implemented by a municipal government in western Amazonia and concerned with a citywide influx of rural agriculturalists and former forest‐dwelling extractive producers, is examined as a source of food and self‐determination. Peri‐urban agroforestry seems to be a viable option for other Amazonian cities that are experiencing increasing urbanization and its associated problems.     

THEIR SPACE: SECURITY AND SERVICE WORKERS IN A BRAZILIAN GATED COMMUNITY*

ABSTRACT. This study examines the role of service workers in creating a secure landscape in a zone of gated communities near Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Most research on gated communities emphasizes their segregation and formal security apparatuses. In fact, gated communities interact with surrounding rural settlements because they draw their service employees from them. Security emerges from informal relationships of trust that property owners establish with service workers. Gardeners, especially, enable homeowners to project their property investment to others through landscaping. Equally of importance, a manicured garden conveys the message that a home is receiving daily attention—and is secure—even if the owner is not present. The study probes this interdependence from the point of view of gardeners in the context of one gated community in an area south of Belo Horizonte and the attempts by members of its homeowners association to minimize the sense of fear they associate with the Brazilian city.     

TWO HUNDRED HECTARES OF GOOD BUSINESS: BRAZILIAN AGRICULTURE IN A THEMED SPACE*

Geographers have recognized that trade fairs and other temporary spaces function as centers of knowledge, but we have a weak understanding of how fairs are themed spaces, similar to parades, festivals, and built environments, that produce cultural and political meanings. In this article we analyze the morphology, iconography, and performance of a large agricultural fair in Brazil, the Bahia Farm Show, which produces a regional identity of highly productive, leading‐edge, and globally competitive agriculture in a former economic backwater. We discuss the production of themes in terms of power relations, cultural processes, relations with nature, and sociotechnological norms for agriculture. Omissions from the Farm Show indicate tension and accommodation between elites at different geographical scales. Brazil's high‐input, high‐output agriculture relies in part on the meanings that events such as agricultural fairs sustain and reproduce.     

THE ENVIRONMENTAL TRANSFORMATION OF AN APPALACHIAN VALLEY, 1850–1906*

ABSTRACT. The physical environment of the George's Creek Valley in western Maryland was altered dramatically during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as coal mining and associated activities expanded and intensified. Although mineral extraction was the chief agent of change, forest and water resources were also affected by other industrial and commercial activities, as well as by the region's growing population. Examining the environmental alteration that took place in the valley, this work also considers attitudes and motivations that contributed to the transformation.     

Spillover effect offsets the conservation effort in the Amazon

Diverse conservation efforts have been expanding around the globe, even under the stress of increasing agricultural production. A striking example is the supply-chain agreements put upon the Amazon forest which had reduced deforestation by 80% from the early 2000s (27,772 km²) to 2015 (6207 km²). However, evaluation of these conservation efforts usually focused on the impacts within the Amazon biome only, while the effects that spill over to other areas (e.g., displacement of environmental pressure from one area to another) were rarely considered. Ignoring spillover effects may lead to biased or even wrong conclusions about the effectiveness of these conservation efforts because the hidden cost outside the target area of conservation may offset the achievement within it. It is thus important to assess the spillover effects of these supply-chain agreements. In this study, we used the two supply-chain agreements (i.e., Soy Moratorium and zero-deforestation beef agreement) implemented in the Amazon biome as examples and evaluated their spillover effects to the Cerrado. To achieve a holistic evaluation of the spillover effects, we adopted the telecoupling framework in our analysis. The application of the telecoupling framework includes the interactions between distant systems and extends the analytical boundaries beyond the signatory areas, which fill the gap of previous studies. Our results indicate that the supply-chain agreements have significantly reduced deforestation by half compared to projections within the sending system (i.e., Pará State in the Amazon, which exports soybeans and other agricultural products), but at the cost of increasing deforestation in the spillover system (i.e., a 6.6 time increase in Tocantins State of the Cerrado, where deforestation was affected by interactions between the Amazon and other places). Our study emphasizes that spillover effects should be considered in the evaluation and planning of conservation efforts, for which the telecoupling framework works as a useful tool to do that systematically.     

Dammed and diversionary: The multi‐dimensional framing of Brazil's Belo Monte dam

Belo Monte is one of the most divisive dams in Brazilian history, becoming entangled in a thirty‐year struggle between pro‐ and anti‐dam interests over the role of the facility within a complex web of Brazilian development and the future of the Brazilian Amazon. This research explores how the proponents of Belo Monte have adopted a number of policy frames as a means of deflection, to divide the opposition and legitimize the project. It investigates this claim by analyzing speeches given within the Brazilian Câmara dos Deputados and the public speeches of high‐level politicians. These sources, organized around a framework previously identified by Ahlers et al. ( 2014 ), show that the government and individual politicians have used a variety of framing devices to legitimize the hydroelectric facility. Principal methods of framing used also demonstrate how contemporary narratives (e.g. sustainability) have been employed to deflect opposition criticism and widen the scheme's perceived beneficiaries. In doing so, this paper demonstrates how the transformation represented by Belo Monte encompassed not only a process of engineering but also a re‐articulation of the complex and its role in modern Brazil.     

PLACE INVADERS: CONSTRUCTING THE NOMADIC THREAT IN ENGLAND*

Over the centuries, the image of nomads threatening sedentary ways of life has been a common pejorative representation. In order to understand what geographies underpin narratives about nomads, I examine how social theory and media representations invoke the image of nomads. Both media and academic representations are buttressed by limited understandings of place and space, framing nomads as the quintessential “place invaders.” Focusing on nomadic Gypsies and Travelers in England provides a contemporary example of this process. British media representations construct nomadic Gypsies and Travelers in England as out‐of‐place and threatening. Deconstructing essentialist geographical conceptions allows us to avoid reproducing the common image of placeless nomads, reveals how people utilize place to render others inferior, and highlights the fact that conflicts between nomadic and sedentary ways of life are not intractable and natural. Adopting a more nuanced understanding of place can challenge the dominant trope of nomads as place invaders.     

PRAÇAS,PLACE, AND PUBLIC LIFE IN URBAN BRAZIL*

ABSTRACT. This study interprets critical stages in the changing design and landscape of urban squares, or praças, in Brazil and assesses the circumstances of their cultural‐historical production. Urban squares were shaped by, and in the process contributed to and shed light on, several of the country's major social and artistic movements. The history of the square illustrates a theme of European cultural dominance, especially French, that was a product of the colonial experience and neocolonial influences which were overcome only in the twentieth century through spontaneous creative fusion with indigenous Brazilian elements.     

Forest Transitions in Mexico: Institutions and Forests in a Globalized Countryside*

Forest‐transition theory suggests that economic development eventually leads to forest recovery, but there is great uncertainty about the existence, the characteristics, and the mechanisms of forest transitions that might be occurring under current socioeconomic conditions. A case study in a small region of highland Mexico finds agricultural abandonment and forest regeneration, but also forest degradation due to woodcutting. A discussion locates those findings in the international political economy of agriculture and emigration in Mexico, which are substantially different from the conditions associated with forest recovery in developed countries. Although regional forest transitions are possible in marginal agricultural areas such as that studied here, their environmental implications depend on the evolution of social institutions coordinating rural people's environmental actions.     

THE SEARCH FOR OIL: FACTORS INFLUENCING US INVESTMENT IN FOREIGN PETROLEUM EXPLORATION AND DEVELOPMENT*

Determinants of foreign exploration and development spending by US oil companies are examined with multiple regression analysis. Since major US oil companies earn higher profits abroad, I test the role of profit rate surrogates and cash flow in a petroleum investment model. A high income tax rate is shown to discourage foreign oil investment, a finding that should be recognized by foreign governments. Institutional factors also appear to limit the flow of investment funds out of the United States, despite attractive foreign profit rates.     

The Hegemony of Global Politics: News Coverage of Climate Change in a Small Country

Researching media coverage of climate change may shed light on the different configurations of global and domestic factors affecting journalism and politics. This article analyzes climate change coverage in Portugal from 2007 to 2014 in comparison with 14 other countries. It shows that the Portuguese press tends to reproduce the global political agenda on climate change, mainly focusing on international events associated with global political decision-making processes, instead of providing a domesticated coverage, as observed in other countries. National and local levels of action are thus obscured. The interplay between global and domestic factors—including characteristics of Portugal’s press and politics, such as national political leaders’ lack of mobilization and communication on climate change, media’s deference to powerful sources, and reliance on international news feeds—creates the conditions for global politics to play an hegemonic role in media representations, which is likely to influence public engagement with climate change.     

THE MAGNETISM OF MIAMI: SEGMENTED PATHS IN CUBAN MIGRATION*

ABSTRACT. Miami is the primate city in a system of urban settlements that make up a Cuban ethnic archipelago in the United States. The city is also a national magnet, attracting Cuban migrants from metropolitan regions across the archipelago. Four large secondary cores of Cubans outside Florida serve as major “feeders” to the Miami enclave: northern New Jersey, New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Currents of migration to Miami are especially strong among older, foreign-born, and disadvantaged Cubans, an indication of segmented paths in Cuban assimilation. Although concentration in Metropolitan Miami has been the Cuban story over the past three decades, processes of deconcentration now may well be under way.     

BUILDING A FACADE FOR FINLAND: HELSINKI IN TOURISM IMAGERY*

Tourist destination promoters compose visual images and arrange them in brochures in order to communicate a coherent and attractive story. In a changing socioeconomic and political context, the city officials of Helsinki recognized a need for systematic promotion in the 1950s. In this article I examine 127 images published in ten tourism brochures produced by the Excursion Section of the Sport and Excursion Office of Helsinki between 1954 and 1963. The data‐driven, content‐analytical study shows how the images served a political identity project aimed at creating a sense of national solidarity among the Finns and to show international audiences that Finland is a modern nation. As a means of gaining acceptance in the West, support of citizenship education included emphasis on national symbols and signs of well‐being and visualization of urban tourism.     

IN THE WAY OF DEVELOPMENT: INDIGENOUS LAND‐RIGHTS ISSUES IN MALAYSIA*

The Malaysian government regards the country's indigenous peoples as “backward” and in need of “modernization.” It aims to assimilate them into the so‐called mainstream society and to incorporate their lands and resources into national and global markets. These policy objectives leave little scope for indigenous groups to pursue their own life projects. Indigenous communities want to share in the benefits of economic development, but they are not prepared to give up their lands, cultures, and identities to obtain them. They have attempted to ward off the negative consequences of development projects by forming advocacy nongovernmental organizations, engaging in various forms of resistance, and seeking redress of their grievances in the courts. Most of all, they want recognition of their rights to land and place. The efficacy of their agency is severely hampered by a battery of repressive laws and by their own political weakness.     

STATISTICAL INFERENCE IN GEOGRAPHY: MODERN APPROACHES SPELL BETTER TIMES AHEAD*

Concepts relevant to statistical inference testing are discussed within a framework which contrasts conventional methodology with current trends in statistics. The latter are emphasized as having the quality of being less restrictive than the former. To show this quality, randomization testing is described and an example presented. Also described is a nonparametric technique known as QAP, which is particularly versatile. Optimism is expressed about the potentiality of such procedures for geographic research.     

RECONNAISSANCE SURVEYS OF CONTEMPORARY PERMAFROST ENVIRONMENTS IN CENTRAL ICELAND USING GEOELECTRICAL METHODS: IMPLICATIONS FOR PERMAFROST DEGRADATION AND SEDIMENT FLUXES

Four different sites in the highlands of central Iceland have been investigated for permafrost occurrence using two‐dimensional resistivity imaging. The results of the surveys indicate the presence of shallow permafrost of low to medium resistivity. The distribution pattern is spatially heterogeneous which is consistent with permafrost at the fringe of seasonal frost. These sites are likely to react rapidly to changes of the environmental boundary conditions, therefore future research should include monitoring for detecting the early impact of climate change on permafrost degradation. The extent to which periglacial morphodynamics and sediment fluxes are influenced by permafrost and/or seasonal frost and potential permafrost degradation is hard to determine. Hence, long‐term monitoring approaches for both permafrost and sediment dynamics are essential.     

INFLUENCES ON COUNTY FARMLAND PROTECTION EFFORTS IN CALIFORNIA: A DISCRIMINANT ANALYSIS*

County-level policies and programs to conserve farmland in California are examined through discriminant analysis. Based on 1981 state planning data, four degrees of farmland protection effort are established. A two-function discriminant analysis using 17 agricultural, socioeconomic, and political-ideological variables correctly predicts the fourfold classification of 88 percent of the counties. The propensity to enact protective actions is associated with the intensity of agricultural development, local government spending and taxing practices, demographic characteristics, ideological and political party voting traditions.     

THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF RIPARIAN CORRIDORS IN CORNBELT FLOODPLAINS: A RESEARCH FRAMEWORK*

A new research framework determines the economic value of riparian corridors in floodplains of the agricultural Midwest. Market mechanisms can fail to account for many positive attributes of riparian wetland ecosystems. Individual farmers frequently make socially inappropriate decisions regarding floodplain land-uses because the benefits accruing from wetlands, such as improved water quality and enhanced recreational activities, are public goods. A spatial economic model, based on willingness-to-pay procedures, assesses the apposite mix of agricultural/wetland land uses that compares the marginal value of natural riparian vegetation and agricultural production on rural Cornbelt floodplains. A simple case study illustrates the framework.     

EXPLORING MARKET‐BASED DEVELOPMENT: MARKET INTERMEDIARIES AND FARMERS IN CALAKMUL,MEXICO*

ABSTRACT. Market intermediaries play important roles in the development of tropical‐forest frontiers but are often overlooked in the assessment of land‐change dynamics. Consistent with research beyond land‐change studies, intermediaries are found to be a pivotal element in land‐use and land‐cover change in southeastern Mexico. They have stimulated commercial chili cultivation in this development frontier, providing transportation and other services to smallholders who could otherwise not enter the chili market. This role comes at the cost of a near monopoly on chili marketing. The various roles played by these intermediaries, or coyotes, the means by which they operate, and the consequences for smallholders and land use are detailed for the Calakmul Municipality, Campeche, Mexico.