‘Nation-states’, ‘quasi-states’, and ‘collapsed-states’ in contemporary Africa

The revival of ethnic identities and the search for historical roots have been significant factors in re-shaping the map of the world in the late twentieth century. Multi-ethnic states have come under increasing strain throughout the century and undermining the concept of the nation-state. However, the successor states to the colonial empires in Africa exhibit the same strains as the often highly fragile successors to the European continental empires earlier in the century. The survival of these quasi-states has been dependent upon the support of the international community for over thirty years as a reaction to the era of colonialism. Anti-colonialism offers little practical support for states in a post-colonial, post-Cold War era. In some cases the result has been disintegration and the emergence of the collapsed state. The revived political movements aimed at democratisation and self-determination have unleashed forces which may be incompatible with the survival of the current state system.     

‘Marketing quality’ in the food sector: Towards a critical engagement with the ‘quality turn’ in wine

Our review explores the role of quality conventions that have emerged since the 'quality turn' in the food sector. By examining how the 'quality turn' contributes to transforming the wine sector, it asks whether the labeling systems seek to certify the quality of productive practices (informative function) or are intended to create imaginaries of quality as a differentiated business market strategy (symbolic function). After discussing relevant literature in geography and related fields, this review uses two emblematic examples from the wine sector to argue for the need to move beyond the marketing of quality to deepen the analysis and understanding of quality. This analytic insight questions the viability and usefulness of quality conventions aimed at differentiation, territorial development, with a focus on markets with high added value, and argues for the need to open new lines of research and policy in this sphere.     

‘A place for everything’: Moral landscapes of ‘swiftlet farming’ in George Town,Malaysia

This paper is based on 6 months of ethnographic, multi-sited research in Malaysia, and investigates the relatively recent phenomenon of edible birds’ nest farming in urban areas (‘swiftlet farming’). Swiftlet farms are typically converted shophouses or other buildings which have been modified for the purpose of harvesting the nests of the Edible-nest Swiftlet (Aerodramus fuciphagus). I use the controversy over urban swiftlet farming in the Malaysian city of George Town, Penang, to examine discourses used by key stakeholders to shape debates over the place of non-human animals in cities. By considering everyday experiences of urban swiftlet farming, I explore how this burgeoning industry is perceived amongst residents, and how it is deemed to be (in)appropriate within the political, economic and cultural landscape of George Town. Yet, I also consider how farmers have sought to contest these discourses on ideological and normative grounds. In so doing, I place the cultural animal geographies literature in conversation with emergent literature on landscape and urban political ecology. Such a framing allows for a critical evaluation of the controversies surrounding this case, and their implications for human-animal cohabitation in cities. The paper reflects on the implications of this case for how we regulate human-animal relations and live in contemporary cities, and the crucial role of animals in altering urban form, aesthetics and everyday life, particularly in non-Western contexts.     

Dance and wellbeing in Vancouver’s ‘A Healthy City for All’

Through the lens of the dancing body, this paper examines practices of health and wellbeing produced in response to City of Vancouver urban governance policies. In particular, it calls attention to the legislative onslaught by city government in the years abutting the 2010 Winter Olympics to cultivate and manage healthy people, communities, and environments. In an effort to sell Vancouver’s ‘liveability’, I argue City of Vancouver endorsed a new legislative alliance that merged a conspicuously Anglo-American wellbeing lexicon, favouring individual responsibility and self-governance, with the performing arts industries. Drawing upon interviews and performance-based research, the paper illustrates how Karen Jamieson’s community dance project Connect, created for the In the Heart of the City festival, embodies Vancouver’s tri-level legislative ambitions to nurture A Healthy City For All. This materialised through the crafting of a dance-health body practice (healthy people), by choreographing a sense of belonging among ‘at risk’ communities (healthy communities), and in the uniting of the arts and health professions in the process of ‘cleaning up’ disenfranchised neighbourhoods (healthy environments). In bringing together scholarship on cultures of wellbeing and creative dance practice, the article contributes to understandings of how the health-seeking subject is embodied and performed. It also offers a productive critique of the exclusionary nature of urban health legislation, and of the contested role artists and arts festivals can play in nurturing urban wellbeing and normalising inequalities.     

‘Ageing in place’: experiences of older adults in Amsterdam and Portland

This article addresses the importance and meanings of formal and informal social support relationships and neighbourhood ties for older adults ‘ageing in place’ in urban neighbourhoods in two different welfare state settings: Portland (Oregon, the United States) and Amsterdam (the Netherlands). The rising number of people growing old(er) in urban environments raises new demands and pressing challenges for urban development. The majority of older adults are and will be ageing in their homes and communities, as opposed to institutionalized care facilities and settings. At the same time, the provision of formal and public care is being increasingly challenged by government cutbacks. On top of this, the formerly strong welfare states in many European countries have weakened. In-depth interviews with 40 older adults and key informants in two neighbourhoods in each city provide the empirical basis for this study. In Portland, there are widespread local civic initiatives related to care provision for older adults. The city has a long tradition both of individual responsibility and community culture, which has emerged from and appears to compensate for the overall lack of state services and support. Amsterdam has a long tradition of state provision, but is experiencing a policy shift towards a stronger reliance on private market-led services, and an emphasis on family and community as providers of support. Although a few emerging local initiatives for elderly care in Amsterdam were identified, it is unclear whether this form of community support can compensate for decreasing state provision in Amsterdam. This study raises concerns about the future of care provision for older adults living in unsupportive urban neighbourhoods, without financial resources or nearby relatives.     

对‘清河镇动物群’和‘昌图动物群’的质疑

在《地质学报》64卷2期和66卷2期上发表有这两个‘动物群’的重要论文。在长期有争议的清河镇群和下二台群中发现小壳化石固然非同小可,但笔者拜读了两文后,却感到有些困惑与失望。图版所示两个动物群的绝大多数(如果不是全部的话!)看来不象是小壳化石,而是人工处理样品时所形成的假化石。如果依据这样的‘化石’来确定地层,将会带来极大的混乱。     

The neighborhood council: Where ‘top-down’ engages with ‘bottom-up’

The paper examines the neighborhood council from the perspective of its contribution to town planning. Within the context of planning in Israel, two distinct models of neighborhood council and their relationship to the municipal planning administration in two different towns are considered. Their potential as a new arena of planning at the neighborhood level is evaluated, including the ability to mediate between ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ planning processes, and to offer a planning framework that combines local with professional knowledge.     

‘Making space’ in Cairo: Expatriate movements and spatial practices

This paper examines what it means to be an ‘expatriate’ in Cairo through the lens of movement and space-making. Inquiring into a set of migrant (im)mobilities, spatial practices, relations, and imaginations, it argues that as a ‘spatialised’ identity category ‘expatriate’ narrates and enacts migratory privileges linked to wider hierarchies of social difference. It contributes to a growing literature examining the social and political dimensions of ‘expatriate’ migration and further engages scholarship thinking space and movement in relational and socio-historical terms. Rather than denoting an easily distinguishable group of migrants, ‘expatriate’ emerged as a contingent and ambiguous category of practice. As such, ‘expatriate’ stands in a productive relationship with privileged movement and socio-spatial processes. Like other migrants, respondents skillfully navigated the global differences in wealth, power and status they were presented with. Yet, unlike many other migrants, they did so from a privileged position within the global power-geometries of international migration. Migrants’ personal geographies were further shaped by how bodies were racialised and gendered in entangled, intersecting and sometimes counter-intuitive ways. This diversity and complexity of ‘expatriate’ geographies highlights the necessity of intersectional and situated analyses of privilege.     

Identifying ‘place’ in place branding: core and periphery in Brisbane’s “New World City”

Brisbane is Australia’s third largest city, and capital of the state of Queensland. It has a sprawling urban footprint and impending connections to neighbouring metropolises, said to create a ‘200 km city’. The governing body of Brisbane controls the largest municipality in Australia, with unrivalled opportunity to influence both urban planning and marketing for the CBD and suburbs. Brisbane is home to over one million people, and its population has grown rapidly over the past decades, doubling in the past 40 years. Brisbane represents the quintessential city with an emerging quest for urbanity, both in brand and physical form. The relationships between the city’s urban planning and its branding is not well examined, despite clear entanglement between these two strategies. We use a case-study analysis of both Brisbane City (which is glossed as the Central Business District) and an outer-suburban area, Inala, to interrogate how urban identities and brand are being constructed in relation to their social settings and governance, with particular reference to the importance of city branding and its relationship to planning strategies. The manifestation of branding and relationship to place qualities at the core and on the periphery of Brisbane are examined, with relevance for other rapidly growing, ambitious cities. The focus of Brisbane’s push for urbanity is on the city centre, and is not representative of the typical suburban condition, nor of many cities dominated by suburban forms. An analysis of place brand, planning strategies and resident’s responses to place, from planning, architectural and anthropological perspectives are offered, as an alternative reading of place brand from the marketing dominated approach usually favoured in branding analysis. We make recommendations to incorporate a more complete version of place in the construction of a “genuine” urbanity. We argue that the recognition of resident-centred place identity in place branding will produce more socially sustainable places, as well as more authentic city brands.     

The ethnographic spectacle of the ‘other’ Filipinos in early cinema

My paper aims to ask what space characterizes the various constructs of orientalism and othering in the early short films of Thomas Edison. Using Lefebvre’s concept that social space “subsumes things produced, and encompasses their interrelationships in their coexistence and simultaneity” in these early shorts, I will look at three Biograph actualities found at the Library of Congress-American Memory page to show how space is manifested and negotiated onscreen. I will examine Edison’s “Filipinos Retreat From Trenches”, “Capture of Trenches at Candaba” and “U.S. Troops and Red Cross in the Trenches Before Caloocan” which were all released in 1899. These reenacted short films were shot during the tumultuous years of the Spanish-American War. In the Biograph shorts, the privileged positions of both Spanish and American forces in relation to the annexation of a foreign land in world history books is indicative of the tendency to de-emphasize the contribution of the native population in the war. Manthia Diawara has said that “space is related to power and powerlessness, insofar as those who occupy the center of the screen are usually more powerful than those in the background or completely absent from the screen.” The spatial hierarchies and spatially situated images in Edison’s short films show how historically configured power relations encrypted oppression to its external “others” through the cinematic apparatus.

Ethnic Enclave Reconfiguration: A ‘new’ Chinatown in the Making

Years of past research on traditional Chinatowns were based on the assumption that Chinatown is an ethnic enclave for a single ethnic minority, i.e. the Chinese. In recent years, one could observe significant changes over Chinatowns in terms of more Vietnamese presence. Yet, the transition process as an object of study is much under-represented in the literature on ethnic enclaves. Looking at ethnic business transition from Hong Kong to Vietnamese in Toronto’s Chinatown West, this paper argues strongly that ‘multiple ethnicity’ can coexist in an enclave. For this case study, the Chinatown is being reconfigured into a ‘new’ Chinatown. Drawing upon data from the authors’ Vietnamese Business Database that covers information between 1983 and 2003, we present both spatial and temporal analyses that offer insights into how the Vietnamese businesses grow through time. Our findings support the existence of a Vietnamization process in Toronto Chinatown West. However, its evolution is still in an infant stage. In some aspects, the incoming Vietnamese businesses display similarities with the remaining Hong Kong businesses. In sum, a total reconfiguration of Chinatown West in form and business nature is still unaccomplished. The conventional enclave concept which bases on the singularity of ethnic group has to be abandoned in view of rising occurrence of ethnic transition, particularly in this globalizing era.     

Theoretical issues in the ‘food desert’ debate and ways forward

Food is essential to life—yet the spatial and economic configuration of the conventional food system does not meet nutritional needs and exacerbates issues of food insecurity. Relevant options for policy change have been explored in light of evaluations of geographic disparities in food access, but the dominant ‘food desert’ discourse often focuses uncritically on insufficient conceptions of access. Understanding the complexity of food deserts is important for moving into meaningful policy action. We present a theoretical position to inspire future empirical research. The ecological model recognizes both endogenous and built environment factors in shaping health. Interventions in the food environment, however, often concentrate exclusively on structural determinants of health (e.g. retail-based initiatives). Yet retail-based interventions are difficult to implement due to governance systems which limit the ability of government bodies to influence private retail development. As well, recognizing the complexity of debates over the influence of structure and agency, we apply structuration theory to food deserts. Behavioral economics further informs both structural and behavioral determinants of health. This approach sidesteps the issue of victim-blaming, as all consumers are viewed as ‘predictably irrational’ in decision-making. In combining these theories, we challenge methodological and theoretical assumptions by showing the complexity of food desert interventions. Policy recommendations focus on behavioral determinants of health and the opportunities for empowerment through local food systems. These recommendations recognize the limits of translating research into policy and in devising effective food based interventions, and are sensitive to social, economic, and political constraints uncovered throughout the paper.     

‘Seeing red’ in national parks: How visitors’ values affect perceptions and park experiences

People’s reasons for visiting national parks have been well researched. So too have their park activities and how diverse activities potentially affect visitors’ park experiences (e.g. perceptions of overcrowding). Far less research has examined how park users’ environmental values might affect their perceptions of other users and the appropriateness of different activities – a potential source of conflict. Relationships between personal environmental values and environmental and social perceptions are complex and interactive in the context of park visitation. Visitors’ encounters with other users can powerfully affect their experience and enjoyment of parks, in turn reflecting such factors as values-related expectations and judgments in the context of national parks. Personal and social values may also play an important role in influencing whether different activities are perceived as ‘out of place’ in the context of national park place meaning, yet the conceptualization of values within geographic literature on parks remains comparatively weak.This paper utilizes a definition of values, derived from a concise review of the geography and social psychology literatures, to explain the results of survey research we undertook within national parks in Queensland, Australia. We use a ‘values-behavior hierarchy’ conceptual framework to consider how the personal environmental values of a sample of park visitors (n = 404) potentially affected patterns of park visitation, user activities, and user conflicts. Findings suggest that visitors’ environmental values shaped how they perceived other park users and the appropriateness of their activities. This has international implications for geographic research and other disciplines and professions involved in national park visitation, park use, and human impacts, on and of these powerful places.     

Imagining global work: Producing understandings of difference in ‘easy Asia’

In this paper, I advance debates that argue that we need to reconceptualise global work from a mobilities perspective by looking how the representation of movement connects with the experience of movement. By looking at the imaginative geographies of Singapore for the British corporate expatriate, I explore how the qualitative representation of place is changing within managerial discourses from a hardship to an opportunity. In doing so, the paper argues that we need to combine understandings of the global economic flows that move some transnational migrants with their everyday lived experiences in order to explore what qualitatively makes work global. This allows us to highlight the multiplicity of ways in which transnational migrants can be understood rather than trying to impose singularity.