Implementing the Slow Life in Southwest Ireland: A Case Study of Clonakilty and Local Food

Cittaslow is an Italian‐based global network of towns and cities that grew out of the Slow Food movement. Cittaslow and Slow Food reject the standardization of culture and taste that has accompanied globalization. Instead, they focus on strategies that foster a sense of place that is derived from a town's unique environmental and cultural setting: its terroir. Clonakilty, a small town located thirty miles southwest of Cork, is Ireland's first and only “slow city.” This paper examines how a sense of place is conveyed in the town's restaurants through the selection of menu items and locally produced food. The results indicate that independently owned restaurants are more likely to embrace Cittaslow's efforts at conveying a sense of place than restaurants in hotels and pubs. Nearly all of the town's restaurants serving Irish food use locally available food suppliers.     

PERSPECTIVES ON THE CHANGING ECOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF SUBURBIA

This article examines the history of community investments made by woolen manufacturer Austin Levy in the town of Burrillville, Rhode Island, in the first half of the 20th century. These investments, characteristic of the paternalistic welfare capitalism typical of the era, sustained the town as a vibrant industrial producer at a time when capital was disinvesting from other communities in the region. Levy's investments in the workplace and the community and his interventions in the town's built environment were noteworthy because they were grounded in an attempt to reproduce an imagined history of the town, linking images of pre-industrial Puritan New England with the paternalism of the early-industrial Rhode Island System mill village. Although his attempts to construct new identities for himself, his town, and his workers met with some resistance, the project was generally successful. His result suggests a reconsideration of the viability and desirability of such projects for contemporary communities attempting to stave off industrial decline. [Key words: paternalism, welfare capitalism, textiles, New England.]     

Kilofarms in The Agricultural Heartland

Kilofarms are farms of 1,000 acres or more. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Census of Agriculture has few tabulations of data by farm size, but geographical analysis suggests some of the characteristics of kilofarms. Their operators are part‐owner farmers. Their land and buildings are worth several millions of dollars, and their gross annual income is well over the $250,000 necessary to provide an acceptable level of living for a contemporary farm family. Kilofarmers concentrate on growing crops of corn and soybeans for cash sale, and they rely on computers and Internet access to help them make marketing decisions.     

REJECTING VIOLENCE ON THE LANDSCAPE IN LAWRENCE,KANSAS*

ABSTRACT. Lawrence, Kansas, survived a tumultuous beginning. The young town endured attacks twice, in 1856 and 1863. The second raid, by the guerrilla William Quantrill's troop of more than 400 men, resulted in the deaths of 143 citizens. Lawrence serves as an example of how Americans memorialize unconventional warfare, targeted at citizens, in a material and permanent fashion on the landscape. Small and obscurely placed memorials fill the town, to the point that they have become ordinary. The memorialized landscapes of these tragedies thus display ambivalence toward the past and symbolically reject the loss of lives despite this era's high position in the literature and archival history of the town. Additionally, Lawrence has found alternative sources for its historical identity that do not reflect these tragedies but instead celebrate the city's pioneer establishment. In this article I use a set of methods for reading the memorialized landscape that includes archival and landscape analysis and uncovers the processes that have led to this town's understated and ambivalent memorialization and identity.     

Time out and Worlds Apart: Tradition and Modernity Meet in the Time‐Space of the Gravesweeping Festivals of Hong Kong

This paper focuses on Hong Kong's Gravesweeping Festivals, Qingming and Chongyang. The practices carried out in urban cemeteries at these Festivals are over two thousand years old, and represent “time out” from modern “clock time”. They are examined in the context of Giddens' (1985) reworking of Hägerstrand's time‐space geography, and of Douglas' (1966) discussion of pollution. It is suggested that the cemeteries are regarded as dangerous places because they represent liminal spaces. Giddens' dimension of span enables a distinction to be made between, on the one hand, the long‐established cultural significance of the grave, and, on the other, the recentness of the urban cemetery. The dimension of form(redefined from Giddens' original concept), applied to some details of cemetery landscapes, reveals the “worlds apart” of the non‐material worlds of the spirits and of fengshui. By considering the Festivals in the light of Giddens' dimension, character, it emerges that the Gravesweeping Festivals are, as they have been for centuries, firmly embedded in Hong Kong's social system, where routines of ancestor veneration continue to renew and strengthen the family bonds that are at the heart of Confucian values. Furthermore, their continued observation may well represent practices that are of deep ontological significance to the predominantly immigrant community of Hong Kong.     

BETWEEN A REFUGE AND A BATTLEGROUND: BEIRUT'S DISCREPANT COSMOPOLITANISMS*

Beirut has experienced cosmopolitanism and its opposite. It is a site of multicultural encounters and communal entrenchment: a refuge and a battleground. How and where does Beirut's cosmopolitan project turn into violence? The notion of “discrepant cosmopolitanism” provides two answers, blurring accepted distinctions between multicultural openness and communitarian entrenchment. First, openness and closure are not opposed but part of discrepant cosmopolitanisms immanent in urban space. Second, these discrepant cosmopolitanisms originate in Lebanon's encounter with colonial modernity. The making of the Lebanese nation‐state has revolved around the sectarian spatiality of the ta'ifa (religious community), which produced contested but coexisting discourses and practices of rivalry and harmony. The rise of Beirut's international hotels in the 1960s, their destruction, and their role in contemporary urban redevelopment are treated here as embodiments of discrepant cosmopolitanisms. Within Beirut's recurrent tensions, a renegotiation of its cosmopolitan project could stem from a different relationship between the urban and national policies.     

‘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.     

Looking back and moving forward: Health geography in Aotearoa and beyond

Health geography in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) has had a major impact on international sub‐disciplinary debates. It is timely to celebrate our domestic health geography achievements and alert ourselves to the challenges ahead. This reflection article provides a brief overview of Aotearoa NZ's maturing health geography community and includes the reflections of a panel discussion held during the bi‐annual NZ Geographical Society conference in 2016. We argue that the eclectism of health geography in NZ and beyond is both the sub‐discipline's major strength and challenge.     

Who Is “Forest‐Dependent”? Capturing Local Variation in Forest‐Product Sale,Eastern Honduras

How researchers describe groups living within or near the world's tropical rain forests has important implications for how and why these groups are targeted for assistance by conservation and development organizations. This article explores how data about market behavior can be used to assess one aspect of forest peoples’ livelihoods: their “dependence” on forest resources as a source of market income. With the intent of revealing the importance of methodology to how we describe forest peoples’ livelihoods, I draw from a multiyear survey of market activity among the Tawahka Sumu of Honduras and distinguish nested measures of the Tawahkas’ engagement in forest‐product sale. Results indicate that whether or not the Tawahka —or any forest group — can be considered financially “dependent” on forest resources depends on the spatial and temporal scales at which data are aggregated. As a group, the Tawahka earned 18 percent of total market income from forest‐product sale, but their group profile masked a high degree of heterogeneity at the village and household level. Similarly, multiyear data indicated that while group‐level generalizations adhere from year to year, they belie considerable change in households’ market behavior across years. I discuss three ways in which the findings are relevant to the theory and practice of conservation and development in the humid tropics. I emphasize the importance of spatial scale in interventions, how market‐oriented conservation schemes can benefit from a broader conceptualization of the economic context in which forest‐product sale occurs, and how longitudinal analysis can reveal the dynamism of forest peoples’ livelihoods.     

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.     

Place‐Making Through Beer‐Drinking: A Case Study of Montana's Craft Breweries

Montana's craft brewing industry has grown astronomically in the last few decades and has spawned many breweries with local names and themes. Using Montana's craft breweries as a case study, this paper demonstrates that craft breweries play a significant role in contemporary place‐making. First, brewery and beer names are analyzed to extract several place‐based themes, and it is argued that these perpetuate a particular New West identity for the state. Then, through the lens of tourism and the quest for “authenticity,” surveys of brewery visitors are used to identify the various attractions that drinking craft beer and visiting breweries offer their patrons. Besides the taste of the beer, the local nature of breweries and their community focus prove to be an important draw for brewery visitors and provide the chance to experience the community in a more authentic way, and thus, offer an opportunity to make a meaningful connection with place. This research proves that craft breweries have become an important venue for place‐making, not only in Montana, but in other cities and states with a significant craft‐brewing industry     

SPATIAL CONSTRAINTS ON WOMEN'S WORK IN TARIJA,BOLIVIA

ABSTRACT. This geography of women's work in the less‐developed world is set in Tarija, Bolivia, a small city that has been dramatically changed by economic crisis and structural‐adjustment programs. Explored is the spatial component of women's economic activities in a low‐income barrio following the imposition of structural‐adjustment programs in the 1980s and 1990s. Women who pursue employment away from home must rely on other women. In particular, households that include more than one woman who is capable of handling important daily chores are more likely to have a woman engaged in income‐generating activities away from the home and the neighborhood. Women at home make it possible for other women to extend their economic activity into the broader community. These findings are important because they draw attention to women's reliance on other women, how women use space, and how they are constrained by spatial factors as they negotiate their daily lives.     

The Paradoxical Black Rock City: All Cities Are Mad

Since 1986, Burning Man has evolved from an obscure bohemian San Francisco solstice celebration into the world's largest intentional community, anchored by annual burns on a playa in Nevada's Black Rock country. Participants embrace an ethos that radically challenges mainstream culture through Black Rock City's yearly (re)formation, negotiation, immolation, and deconstruction. Voicing curiosity, as humanists, in who we are, what we do, and why we do it, we examine rituals associated with this transitory yet international‐scale event. Such happenings imply a human need to seek clarity, dwell in close confines, and engage with a utopian desire for concerted communal participation. Yet, there exist historical‐cultural paradoxes associated with Burning Man, including steep entry barriers that reinforce an elite homogeneous population no longer representative of Burning Man's distinctive California roots.     

Agricultural practices and sustainable livelihoods: Rural transformation within the Loess Plateau,China

Effective agricultural practices can enable and sustain rural livelihoods, particularly in rapidly developing and transforming areas such as the Chinese Loess Plateau. Drawing from the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA), a conceptual framework for agricultural practices and sustainable rural livelihoods for the Yangou watershed within the Chinese Loess Plateau is presented and discussed. It is found that agricultural practices that include building terraces, returning sloped farmlands to forestland and grassland, and expanding orchards all have had positive and significant impacts on farmers' livelihood assets, strategies, outcomes, and vulnerabilities. From 1997 to 2006, 48.4 ha (95%) sloped farmland in the Yangou watershed was converted to new land management, and the percentages of income from fruit sale and sale of labor to total income dramatically increased by 59% and 14%, respectively. The watershed community also experienced 159% raise in per capita net income from 1997 to 2003, while the watershed itself experienced a 99% decrease in sediment yield from 1998 to 2007. These positive and significant impacts of new agricultural practices on the sustainable rural livelihoods of the Yangou watershed are evident in the community's reduced dependence upon grain and subsidies income, the diversified strategies for livelihood, and the improved environmental indices. The successful implementation of new agricultural land management practices and policies in the Yangou watershed strongly suggest that similar transformations can be achieved in similar regions throughout China's vast rural areas of the Loess Plateau.     

The market(able) place of school geography scholarship, 2007–2016

This report analyses a decade of geography scholarship student entry and achievement data (n = 10,205) to reveal patterns and trends of high‐achieving school students. The study is an exploratory analysis, the aim of which is to describe where the greatest scholarship success has occurred, as well as attendant demographic characteristics of New Zealand's most capable geography students and their schools. Emerging from the regions is a localised story of students from an extremely narrow number of schools achieving disproportionate scholarship success. This raises questions in the wider geography teaching community about the possibility of a broader constituency achieving scholarship awards.     

Maintaining a sustainable economic base in rural towns: a case study of Leeton

Leeton, a town of 6000 in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, has in recent times suffered major economic upheaval. In 1993 the Letona Co‐operative stone fruit cannery, Leeton's masthead industry since 1921, was placed in receivership and closed after extensive search for a new investor in stone fruit processing failed. The removal of a substantial income stream from the local community has placed great stress on Leeton's economic and social fabric. However, the town in recent years has developed an economy that is no longer completely reliant on a narrow range of agricultural processing and service activities. Utilising factors of location, irrigation‐supported production flexibility and security, cheap land and utilities, and a stable and productive workforce, the combined efforts of the Leeton Shire Council, local community groups, the Riverina Development Board, and State Government departments have attracted a range of new industries to the town and shire over the past decade. It is these industries that will allow Leeton to survive the loss of Letona, sustain its economy and look to the future with confidence.     

Review symposium: our common future: the world commission on environment and development

In 1983 the General Assembly of the United Nations called for the setting up of a World Commission on Environment and Development. The Commission's ambitious tasks were described by its Chairman, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Prime Minister of Norway, as: (1) to propose long‐term environmental strategies for achieving sustainable developments by the year 2000 and beyond; (2) to recommend ways concern for the environment could be translated into greater cooperation among developing countries and between countries at different stages of economic and social development; (3) to consider ways and means by which the international community could deal more effectively with environmental concerns; and (4) to help define shared perceptions of long‐term environmental issues and the appropriate efforts needed to deal successfully with problems of protecting and enhancing the environment. The Commission's Report, Our common future,was published in 1987.     

TENDING CULTURAL LANDSCAPES AND FOOD CITIZENSHIP IN TORONTO'S COMMUNITY GARDENS*

ABSTRACT. Scattered throughout the city of Toronto are more than no community gardens, sites of place‐based politics connected to the community food‐security movement. The gardens, spaces where passions for plants and food are shared, reflect the city's shifting cultural landscape and represent an everyday activity that is imbued with multiple meanings. Toronto's community food‐security movement uses gardens as one strategy to regenerate the local food system and provide access to healthy, affordable food. Three garden case studies expand on the complexities of “food citizenship,” illustrating the importance of that concept to notions of food security. The gardens reveal the role gardeners play in transforming urban spaces, the complex network of organizations working cooperatively and in partnership to implement these projects, and the way in which social and cultural pluralism are shaping the urban landscape.     

A Geography of Children's Vulnerability: Gender,Household Resources,and Water‐Related Disease Hazard in Northern Pakistan*

Water‐related diseases continue to pose major threats to children's survival and well‐being in many places in the developing world. This article develops a theoretical perspective on the ways in which children's vulnerability to water‐related disease hazard is produced within the everyday circumstances of livelihood and child care. Central to this analysis is the role that household resources play in mediating or shaping particular microenvironments of health risk. Further, the effects of local geographies of gender on how household resources are accessed and on how child care is structured are examined. Children's vulnerability is evaluated in a community in the District of Gilgit in northern Pakistan, a region presently undergoing tremendous social and economic transformation. The case study highlights household‐level response and adaptation to child health risks associated with diarrheal disease transmission and infection in this mountain environment. The case study draws from ethnographic fieldwork involving qualitative household microstudies and interviewing to elicit mothers' resource and risk‐response strategies in the context of changes in livelihood systems and household dynamics.     

Spatial aspects of MRSA epidemiology: a case study using stochastic simulation,kernel estimation and SaTScan

The identification of disease clusters in space or space–time is of vital importance for public health policy and action. In the case of methicillin‐resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), it is particularly important to distinguish between community and health care‐associated infections, and to identify reservoirs of infection. 832 cases of MRSA in the West Midlands (UK) were tested for clustering and evidence of community transmission, after being geo‐located to the centroids of UK unit postcodes (postal areas roughly equivalent to Zip+4 zip code areas). An age‐stratified analysis was also carried out at the coarser spatial resolution of UK Census Output Areas. Stochastic simulation and kernel density estimation were combined to identify significant local clusters of MRSA (p<0.025), which were supported by SaTScan spatial and spatio‐temporal scan. In order to investigate local sampling effort, a spatial ‘random labelling’ approach was used, with MRSA as cases and MSSA (methicillin‐sensitive S. aureus) as controls. Heavy sampling in general was a response to MRSA outbreaks, which in turn appeared to be associated with medical care environments. The significance of clusters identified by kernel estimation was independently supported by information on the locations and client groups of nursing homes, and by preliminary molecular typing of isolates. In the absence of occupational/lifestyle data on patients, the assumption was made that an individual's location and consequent risk is adequately represented by their residential postcode. The problems of this assumption are discussed, with recommendations for future data collection.