Insights from past and present social science literature on the (unequal) development of New Zealand's rural communities

A review of social research on rural New Zealand undertaken as part of the National Science Challenge (NSC 11) “Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities” allows a fresh look at rural development within the context of New Zealand's colonial history. The research suggests that government development programmes and legislation privileged those responsible for producing the bulk of New Zealand's export income. Cultural attitudes, structural inequalities and a failure to understand how the character of, and social relations in, rural areas have changed has impeded particularly Māori economic growth, the participation of women, and non‐farm sectors of rural society, to the detriment of all.     

‘Here,we don't just trade goods,we also “sell” people's lives’: Sari‐sari stores as nodes of partial surveillance in a Philippine fishing community

Home‐based neighbourhood stores (locally known in the Philippines as sari‐sari stores) are a ubiquitous feature of most Philippine communities. They are small to medium‐size trade stores not unlike convenience stores in the West where people buy goods in small quantities. In the Philippines, these stores play a vital role in providing everyday economic sustenance to low‐income communities. But more than an economic hub, sari‐sari stores also function as a social hub that connects people and acts as eyes and ears of the community through the people who make use of their services. In a sense, sari‐sari stores are the community's ‘myopticon’ where people's day‐to‐day dealings with everyone in the community and its environs are reported and discursively brought under the gaze of the ‘entire community’. Being myopticon as opposed to Foucault's panopticon, surveillance in sari‐sari stores is partial, non‐hierarchicalized and could be resisted by people in the community. Nonetheless, regardless of the ‘myoptic’ features of sari‐sari stores, their presence in the community ‘interpellates’ everyone's daily existence and instantiates a discursive space from which a structure of informal social control is enacted among community members. Sari‐sari stores then are an important reminder of how our built environment is also about contestation and negotiation of everyday life as we make use of space and as the architectonics of space both constrain and empower our manoeuvring in places.     

Legal Geographies—Governing Through Law: Rightsbased Conflicts and Property Development in Shanghai

This article examines recent legislation on the mandatory practice of government adjudication and its impacts on community residents' legal challenges to chaiqian (demolition and relocation) in Shanghai. In recent years, rights-based grievances over community displacement have become a major source of social conflict in urban China. The new legislation represents the Chinese state's efforts to establish a law-based model through which to govern an increasingly rights-conscious society. It is argued that the mandatory practice of government adjudication has smoothed out the conflict-laden property development process by establishing a legalized channel for affected residents to express their claims of rights and interests. Yet, at the same time, legislative practice has also reinforced the government's control in defining social interests to which residents' individual rights are subordinate.     

Countering Inequality: Brazil's Movimento Sem‐Terra

Data from a national survey of formerly landless peasants residing in federal land‐reform settlements in Brazil (Pesquisa Nacional de Educação na Reforma Agrária—PNERA) confirm that the Landless Rural Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem‐Terra—MST) has been far more successful than other settlement movements in assuring a better quality of life for its members. This superior performance is attributed to an organizational structure that demands and assures membership involvement, and a commitment to participatory education in an environment that fosters and supports MST's goals and objectives. MST's members have higher self‐perceived social status than members of non‐MST movements, have better residential environments and more material possessions, and experience an education that emphasizes the movement's principles of social justice, radical democracy, and humanist and socialist values.     

Coffeehouses And The Art Of Social Engagement: An Analysis Of Portland Coffeehouses

Coffeehouses have been a part of America's cultural landscape since the seventeenth century. Their fortunes have risen and fallen with the changing demand for coffee and consumer preferences. This paper examines their historic function of promoting social engagement as so‐called third places among independently owned coffeehouses in the city of Portland, Oregon. Individual coffeehouses were evaluated to determine the extent to which they provided a supportive physical environment for social engagement in which a space is transformed into a place and detailed patron behavior was recorded over a three‐week period. Few coffeehouses provided a supportive physical environment. The majority of coffeehouse patrons during the weekday and weekend ordered drinks ‘to go.’ Among those who stayed during the weekday most sat alone and worked. Coffeehouse are spaces to ‘be alone together.’ It was only on lunchtime weekends that coffeehouses were full of the sound of conversations. Further study should consider the effect of eliminating free Wi Fi and banning laptops on social engagement and whether other place attributes need to be incorporated to promote social engagement.     

Social Exclusion and the Disabled: An Accessibility Approach*

Understanding social dimensions (e.g., transport equity) is an important aspect of sustainable development. This holistic perspective allows the use of accessibility as a tool to identify disadvantaged groups. In this article, cumulative accessibility measures are calculated for a sample of individuals who participated in a one‐day travel diary survey for the Buffalo‐Niagara region in the state of New York. These measures, which include the number of opportunities available in an individual's activity space, are used to compare the levels of access between disabled and nondisabled groups and to determine if individuals' disabilities and other characteristics are contributing factors to their exclusion. Findings show that being young, coming from a small household, possessing a driver's license, having a steady job, living in an urban setting, and being willing to travel a long distance increase the number of opportunities available.     

EXPANSION OF GOLF COURSES IN THE UNITED STATES*

ABSTRACT. Twenty‐five million Americans play golf on the nation's 16,000 courses each year. These golf courses constitute a significant national landscape feature. Since 1878, when the game arrived in the United States, golf has filtered down the urban, economic, and social hierarchies to become accepted by and accessible to most Americans. During the ensuing thirteen decades the number, location, and layout of the nation's golf courses have responded to many of the same driving forces that impacted the nation, including decentralization, growth of the middle class, war, economic depression, suburbanization, and the increasing role of the federal government. Four epochs of golf‐course growth and diffusion show the growing acceptance of the sport and depict where courses were most likely to be constructed as a result of the prevailing forces of each epoch.     

(Anti?) Colonial Women Writing War

This paper examines the wartime literature of Sarah Selwyn, Mary Ann Martin, and Caroline Abraham, all wives of prominent church and government men in colonial Aotearoa/New Zealand. Along with their husbands these women became leading participants in the “pamphlet war” surrounding the justice and legality of the colonial government's survey and confiscation of Māori land at Taranaki, c. 1850–1860. I analyze the socio‐spatial frameworks of these colonial women, linking them with their protest narratives of the Taranaki confiscations and ensuing war. The anti‐colonial position articulated by these women must be viewed within the context of ideological constraints on women's participation in public life, but also within the context of expanded social and spatial boundaries of such high‐placed colonials, the gendered space of the episcopal residences during wartime, the women's networks of communication, and their material and discursive links to public arguments taking place in England over colonial conflicts.     

Spatial dimensions of New Zealand's environmental management

New Zealand's regional council boundaries drawn as part of the 1989 local government reforms privilege integrated catchment management. This privilege is now challenged by calls to both fragment and amalgamate councils and centralise decision‐making but with little analytic assessment of the spatial differentiation to support them. The spatial underpinnings of these calls were explored using a case study that assessed the spatial dimensions of environment management. Analysis of the Land Environments and River Environment Classification databases and councils' planning documents highlights challenges local governments face in applying integrated natural resource management within single purpose jurisdictions and implications for wider sustainable development policy.     

In the Critical Zone: Geography at the U.S. Geological Survey

Geography is again becoming an integral part of the premier natural‐science agency of the federal government. Geographic research emphasizes the surface of the earth, a portion of the earth system that the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) defines as the “critical zone.” Although geography was part of the USGS from the creation of the agency, in recent years geography in the agency has largely been limited to topographic mapping. Recently, the USGS and an advisory committee of the National Research Council (NRC) reviewed the role of geography at the Survey. The committee's report, along with ongoing decision‐making in the federal government, is likely to reshape geography in the USGS. The newly defined USGS has a regional structure and four disciplines: geology, hydrology, biology, and geography. The NRC report emphasizes the need for the creation of a spatial database called the National Map to replace the existing series of paper topographic maps. The report also outlines the need for geographic research in geographic information science (GIScience), nature‐society connections, and bridging of science to decision‐making. The NRC report has been briefed throughout the USGS, in the federal executive branch, and in Congress. The changing role for geography in the USGS requires change in the agency culture, revised budgetary decisions, and the establishment of a long‐term core agenda for research. Academic geographers will need to prepare a new generation of geographers for participation in the USGS and similar agencies.     

Sun,sea, sand and tsunami: examining disaster vulnerability in the tourism community of Khao Lak,Thailand

The impact of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami on coastal tourism communities highlights the vulnerability of tourism destinations to external shocks. Based on fieldwork conducted in Thailand in the wake of this disaster, this paper addresses one fundamental question: what sociopolitical and environmental conditions contributed to the vulnerability of the affected tourism community of Khao Lak in the southern Phang Nga Province. We argue that an understanding of the root causes of destination vulnerability is vital not only for the successful implementation of regional recovery plans, but also for building long‐term resilience against future shocks. In the absence of an appropriate tourism vulnerability framework, this paper analyzes Khao Lak's vulnerability through an innovative theoretical framework comprised of the sustainability vulnerability framework, relational scale and place. The findings reveal that Khao Lak's vulnerability is shaped by 13 interlinked factors. These are the complex outcomes of social norms and developmental and dynamic governance processes driven by the competing agendas and scaled actions of key government and industry stakeholders. The identification and understanding of the drivers of Khao Lak's vulnerability and a strong vulnerability framework have significant implications for the wider tourism community. First, the empirical findings provide tourism communities with a blueprint for understanding the foundations of their vulnerability to external shocks. Second, the tourism vulnerability framework presented here provides destination communities and government stakeholders with an analytical tool through which to analyze their unique sociopolitical conditions. Together, these empirical and theoretical contributions bring us closer to securing sustainable livelihood futures for tourism dependent communities.     

Institutional environments and the livelihood impacts of voluntary sustainability standards: A Village‐based analysis from southern Sumatra's coffee sector

Lead roasting firms are operating through Indonesia's coffee exporters to introduce voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) in an attempt to secure supply, and to simultaneously meet corporate social responsibility requirements, even as empirical studies continue to show uncertain benefits for producer livelihoods. Value chain interventions like VSS, however, are not rolled out over a blank canvas, and many contributing factors determine their overall impact on livelihoods, particularly the local institutional environment. This study assesses the extent to which variability of empirical outcomes is determined by the institutional environment, by identifying specific processes through which VSS interact with pre‐existing social, political and economic institutions to influence livelihood outcomes. These include: firm‐specific corporate strategies (including producer training); livelihood strategies of households (including access to assets); government programs; and local political economy, as manifest particularly through patronage between traders and suppliers. VSS have thereby become an additional institutional layer shaping livelihood strategies and regional development outcomes, best viewed as providing access to a new social network that may be exploited by producers. The interaction between VSS programs, livelihood strategies and pre‐existing institutional environments in a particular place often dictates the variable outcomes for producers, making attribution of impact causation to VSS enrolment problematic.     

EXPRESSING “LOCAL CULTURE” IN HAWAI'I*

ABSTRACT. Detached from the mainland and with a distinct historical ethnic geography, the conquered kingdom of Hawai'i, now the fiftieth state, is the only U.S. state with an Asian and Pacific Islander majority as well as the highest percentage of racial and ethnic intermarriage. Hawai'i's population reflects the tensions between the culturally pluralistic “spirit of aloha” and the ethnic‐cum‐social stratification that has evolved from its historical economic geographies. In this article I focus on one of these strata—what is referred to as “local” culture—discussing its ethnogenesis and contemporary manifestations, and I apply Jonathan Okamura's 1981 model of situational ethnicity to examine how locals and new immigrants negotiate the ethnic dynamics and social expectations of their daily lives. I also discuss various ways in which “localness” is represented on O'ahu's economic landscape, with an analysis of the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet, as a holistic expression of local culture.     

TRACEABILITY: TRACKING AND PRIVACY IN THE FOOD SYSTEM*

ABSTRACT. Lapses in food safety have spurred development of governmental traceability systems to track every stage of food production as part of a standardized information base. These systems form part of national and international government efforts to reduce food‐security risks and control food‐related disease outbreaks. The European Union, the United States, Japan, and Canada have traceability requirements now in various stages of implementation, as does the Codex Alimentarius. Traceability regulations require that, from farm (plant or animal) to fork, foods have a clear, verifiable record that tracks through all stages of cultivation, production, supplying, transporting, processing, and distribution. Traceability implies complete information control over the geography of one of life's most essential acts, eating. The apparent object of traceability is food, which seems to imply that human tracking is not part of the process, but food does not move on its own. Those people responsible at each stage for food transfers and transactions may go into the traceability database, making their locations part of the record and supporting precise monitoring of labor performance, consumer buying patterns, and ownership and management strategies. Given these capabilities, the development of public‐sector traceability systems demands careful consideration. Owners, especially large exporters and importers, are likely to see their needs and fears shape the system. The food workforce may well bear tracking's brunt. Consumers, the presumed beneficiaries of the systems, will probably resist direct incorporation (and full benefit), favoring their privacy over their safety.     

Conservation And Conflicts In The Sundarban Biosphere Reserve,India

The Sundarban Biosphere Reserve in West Bengal, India, is part of the largest mangrove forest ecosystem in the world. The reserve is a world heritage site and the last refuge for the endangered Bengal tiger at a crucial time when global climate change threatens their existence. The mangrove ecosystem and wildlife conservation have become the priority for the state government of West Bengal. However, in becoming so, the state government imposes restrictions on catching fish in the core and buffer areas of the biosphere reserve, which intensify fishermen's everyday resource‐access struggles in the mangrove forest. This paper examines the conflict between local fishermen and conservation needs, broadening the understanding of human‐environment relationships in the Sundarbans region of India.     

Provincializing urban appropriation: Agonistic transgression as a mode of actually existing appropriation in South African cities

Urban appropriation is a key dimension of both Lefebvre's widely hailed ‘Right to the City’ and Bayat's concept of ‘quiet encroachment’. For Lefebvre, appropriation is a (generally unrealized) claim by those who do not ‘have’ the city of a right to ‘take’ it. Bayat, in contrast, characterizes actually existing appropriation as motivated by everyday needs, not aimed at wider social change. While both theorizations may be useful, we argue that a third mode of appropriation is apparent in South African urban contexts. Actors often act in ways that could be characterized as appropriative, yet do not work to consolidate an abrogated appropriative right or durable permission. Nor are they adequately explained as apolitical or individualistic; the logic used to justify them similarly is based neither on rights nor needs. We label such appropriation ‘agonistically transgressive’. We argue that agonistically transgressive appropriations are particularly evident in post‐apartheid South Africa, in part because of changing urban conditions and consequent renegotiations of spatial regulation. Using examples of urban land appropriation for housing in South Africa, we briefly illustrate how thinking pluralistically about urban appropriation might help better understand its actually existing forms in—and beyond—the global South.     

The Geography and Area Studies Interface from the Second World War to the Cold War

Disciplinary geography's history represents an important source for contemporary debates over the status of geographical knowledge across the social sciences. This article argues for a reorientation of geography's history by examining its interface with the development of area studies in the United States. It investigates the epistemological and institutional transformations that occurred in the decades before and after the Second World War as the regional concept transmuted into area studies. The article finds that although geography's regional concept shaped the spatial constructions of area studies, the latter's imaginative geographies fixed the regional concept along geopolitical visions of the nation‐state and Cold War regional blocs that continue to occlude social scientific attempts to redraw the borders of the world.     

Gender and Migration Policies in Southeast and East Asia: Legal Protection and Sociocultural Empowerment of Unskilled Migrant Women

This paper is concerned with how existing migration policies affect individual migrant women's choices, in particular, with the advancement, or consolidation, of a migrants' rights perspective. The focus is thereby on those migrants classified as unskilled, who constitute the largest and most vulnerable category among migrants. The analysis of migration policies has conventionally been approached from a state/government‐centred viewpoint that sees states as the key actors. This paper, however, emphasises a larger number of actors ‐ governmental and non‐governmental ‐ as well as the power relations among them to argue that protection through “legal regulation” in the absence of actual implementation is an incomplete solution to alleviate unfair labour conditions that migrants in general, and migrant women specifically, experience. Measures designed to “protect” migrants must be accompanied by measures that empower them, a role that has largely been taken on by existing migrant worker non‐governmental organisations (NGOs). Focussing on intra‐Asian migration flows in which Southeast Asia is the main labour sender and East Asia the receiver of Southeast Asian migrants, the paper explores the nexus between law and civic activism in the specific subject area of international labour migration and its gender implications.     

Becoming coca: A materiality approach to a commodity chain analysis of hoja de coca in Colombia

Coca is a controversial plant, existing on the boundary between legality and illegality. This study aims at providing an analytical technique for discussing the problematic of coca in Colombia. Using new theoretical propositions in human geography, a more‐than‐human approach is adopted to encounter coca holistically. The results are a narrative account of coca's social life as experienced by the researcher following its network of non‐cocaine derivatives. An analytical section invokes the Foucauldian dispositif to the drug trade and utilizes concepts of informed materials and technological zones to describe coca outside a political economy discourse. The research finds that coca's dynamic materiality complicates it as a commodity and that these conventional approaches do not fully encapsulate this complexity. By grappling with the messiness of coca's materiality, this paper reveals the multiplicity and interplay of coca's definitions, which lie at the heart of many conflicts.     

FIGHTING FIRE WITH A BROKEN TEACUP: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF SOUTH AFRICA'S LAND‐REDISTRIBUTION PROGRAM*

ABSTRACT. Since the rise of its first democratically elected government in 1994, South Africa has sought to redress its highly inequitable land distribution through a series of land‐reform programs. In this study we examine land‐redistribution efforts in two of South Africa's provinces, the Western Cape and Limpopo. By analyzing a cross‐section of projects in these two locales we develop a political ecology of stymied land‐reform possibilities to explain the limited progress to date. Given South Africa's ambitious goal of redistributing 30 percent of its white‐owned land by 2014 and the incremental and flawed nature of its redistribution program, we argue that the process is like trying to put out a fire with a broken teacup. Our results are based on interviews with policymakers, commercial farmers, and land‐redistribution beneficiaries, as well as on an analysis of land‐use change in Limpopo Province.