Neoliberal Globalisation, "Exotic" Agro-exports, and Local Change in the Pacific Islands: A Study of the Fijian Kava Sector

The economically vulnerable and geographically isolated states and territories of the Pacific Islands find themselves increasingly powerless to resist the recent accelerated diffusion of globalisation and the economic options that this entails. Neoliberal policy has arrived in the ocean region later than elsewhere in the tropical world and in the developing world in general. However, it now almost exclusively frames regional and state policy agendas, and is profoundly restructuring economies and societies across the region. Agriculture, by far the leading economic sector in Pacific Island countries, has been targeted specifically for reform. The cultivation of non-traditional agricultural exports has formed the centrepiece of the evolving strategy. As well as "staple" exports such as sugar, copra, and taro going to non-traditional markets, "exotic" niche products are being developed for export to high income markets in Europe, Asia and North America. A major example of such a product is kava – a "traditional" crop used in the preparation of a ceremonial and/or social drink. Psycho- and physiological properties have been identified in the plant by the pharmaceutical industry that is marketing a range of kava products. Produced widely across the Pacific, Fiji is the major export source. This paper traces the evolution of globalisation in the Pacific Islands, placing the current wave of neoliberalism in its historical context. It goes on to outline the evolution of the Fijian kava export sector, and investigates some of the local socio-economic impacts of recent market growth. Given the evidence presented in this study, the paper asks if the power relations evolving under contemporary neoliberal globalisation are likely to be any different from those that existed during colonial globalisation.     

American Empire and Globalisation: Postcolonial Speculations on Neocolonial Enframing

In this paper, I examine the ways in which widely reproduced discourses and theories about globalisation elide American dominance. Drawing on arguments about enframing made by Timothy Mitchell in his postcolonial analysis of Egypt's colonisation, I suggest that one significant cause of this elision relates to a commonplace imagined geography of globalisation that enframes economic interdependency as constitutive of a smooth, decentred and somehow levelled global space of flows. I argue that this imagined geography is structured into dominant political-economic forms of practice and governance, and that in this way it both enables and elides American dominance. Notwithstanding this force in the world, and notwithstanding the tendency of many commentators on globalisation to ignore American dominance, recent events have made such elisions more difficult. I therefore suggest that we need to do more to theorise how American dominance is interwoven with economic globalisation.     

State versus Capital: The Regulation of the Vietnamese Foreign Sector

The debate over globalisation and the state has been sharpened by the emergence of such transitional economies as China and Vietnam. These states have become the subject of considerable attention, both in terms of the form that production is taking and the manner in which they interact with international capital. In both cases, interaction with international capital and the establishment of elements of the market economy have taken place under the auspices of highly centralised single party states. The resulting approach to the forces of economic globalisation has been both highly interventionist and, at times, extremely heavy-handed. As such, both countries may be seen as being seriously out of step with the advocates of liberalisation and economic globalisation. This paper seeks to further the understanding of the position of such states through an examination of Vietnam at two levels: first, through an overview of the distinctive and changing nature of the interaction and, second, through an examination of the nature and consequences of the differential treatment of labour and capital for foreign companies operating in Vietnam.     

Globalisation and the pattern of inbound tourism in Australia

International tourist flows to Australia are examined from the perspective of globalisation. The factors influencing such flows are identified and their geographical impact outlined. Inbound tourism is shown to be growing quickly in both absolute and relative terms and to have a metropolitan emphasis that contrasts with the non‐metropolitan focus of domestic tourism. Tourism illustrates many of the social and cultural changes occurring in contemporary society; the nature of tourism is changing as society changes with a result that new forms of tourism are emerging. Particularly noteworthy is the shift from mass to ‘new tourism’. The nature and likely impact of these changes in Australia is assessed. The paper concludes that growth rates comparable with those achieved in the past might not be sustainable.     

Fluid modern ethnic spaces: contesting the spatial ordering of the State in Bolivia

Relationships between the Bolivian State and the emerging indigenous and peasant social movements have become increasingly fluid since the end of the 1970s. Although this process could be traced back to the 1953 Agrarian Reform, it was not until the world crisis of the 1970s and the surge in globalisation that it led to radical changes in the relationship between State and indigenous peoples. Seen from the point of view of the State, our case study of a group of Quechua communities seems to illustrate a process of fragmentation leading to ungovernability and disorder. This understanding has to do with a lack of 'legibility'. However here I replace that 'image' of disorder with another 'feeling' of cultural ordering, one that emerges from indigenous people's livelihoods, strategies and governance from below. I argue for understanding the apparent lack of governance as the expression of an autonomous reorganising process that leads to the regrouping and expansion of indigenous localities linked into new forms of regionalisation.     

Planning a Prosperous Sydney: The challenges of planning urban development in the new urban context

Since their post-war inception, Sydney's metropolitan plans have tended to be overtaken by the social, economic and environmental conditions they have had to confront. The depth and scope of Sydney's recent urban transformation threatens again to overtake metropolitan planning capacity creating, in the context of competitive globalisation, a potentially significant market disadvantage for the city, not to mention poor urban development outcomes. This paper reviews Sydney's post-war metropolitan planning strategies, examining the social and economic contexts and the policy paradigms in which they have been framed, in order to draw out the lessons to be learned from their successes and failures. We argue that future success in planning urban development will rely on richly informed and fine-grained understanding of the complex spatial outcomes of Sydney's ever-deeper global integration. Only such fine-grained understanding can empower metropolitan planning to be responsive to the evolving challenges of managing development in the contemporary urban context.     

Hillsong: A Megachurch in the Sydney Suburbs

Religious belief and practice, especially Pentecostalism, are increasingly suburban phenomena in an otherwise more secular society. The megachurch of Hillsong in Sydney's north-western suburbs has recently grown rapidly, offering a distinct architecture, institutional structure and informal service format Protestantism generally, distinguished by its stadium show, prosperity preaching, overt materialist orientation and egalitarian populism. Diverse church social groups have partly replaced the civic social institutions never vibrant in suburbia, creating social capital and a new, more fluid sense of place. Hillsong exemplifies the globalisation of religion, while simultaneously stressing local ties, with contemporary media technology in a traditional theological and modern social context.     

Spatial transgression of new religious sites in Israel

Religion and the expansion of religious sites throughout the built environment have a long and conflict-ridden history. This paper examines the development of three controversial religious sites in Israel that have developed in recent decades in an effort to better understand the kinds of political, social, and locational circumstances that cause some new sites to be regarded as spatially transgressive. The three sites examined here are the Mormon Center in Jerusalem, the Baha'i Gardens in Haifa, and the Church/Mosque in Nazareth. The study is based primarily on 75 structured, open interviews with stakeholders and decision-makers.The broader aim of the paper is to generate a better understanding of the concept of spatial transgression through systematic investigation based on the methodology of “framing.” This methodology provides a comprehensive vocabulary for perceptions, referred to as “frames,” and offers a detailed and systematic typology of frames based on the literature and the empirical data (grounded research) of the case studies.The main findings fall within the three aggregated super-frames identified in the research: “Process,” “Values,” and “Issues.” Of these, the Process super-frame was found to be dominant in all three cases. Comparing the different frames in the three cases enabled us to identify the factors that influenced the transgression process. It also facilitated a better understanding of the different “stories” involved and the concept of spatial transgression, which was found to exist on a scale ranging from low to high intensity. This paper also proposes a framing typology that may prove useful for understanding and mapping similar cases elsewhere.     

Globalisation, the Economic Crisis, and Small Enterprises in Makassar, Indonesia: Focusing on the Local Dimensions

It has been suggested that the economic crisis in Southeast Asia had a severe effect on small scale enterprises in the region. In this paper, I interpret the different consequences of this economic crisis ( krismon ) for small enterprises in the city of Makassar, Sulawesi, in the light of current globalisation debates. It is argued that for the majority of small enterprises, there have not been significant changes because of the relative isolation of Sulawesi within the Indonesian and global economies. However, for other small enterprises, there have been two significant changes indirectly linked to wider globalisation influences, because of the importance of conspicuous consumption amongst local cultural groups. In turn, this leads to an evaluation of both the strength of globalisation tendencies in the city, and the important influence of local cultural traits on the ways in which members of the local economy have responded to change.     

当代全球化背景下的边界和边界景观①

随着社会的变化,相关研究的范式往往也会发生改变。本文对边界研究中概念的变化作出了解释。在边界仍然具有重要作用的今天,我们需要重新审视这些概念在不断变化的历史、政治和社会背景下体现出来的时空变化性和不确定性。本文强调了边界不仅是国家主权的分界线,还具有从地缘政治,到边界和跨边界的社会实践和文化生产的多层次复杂性。本文力求对边界研究中的相关争论作出建设性贡献,以促进对边界的过程化、去领域、分散性的本质,及其在全球化和跨国流动时期保证政权的作用的充分理解,展现边界研究作为一个跨学科的领域,仍具有自身内涵的学术地位。本文以边界景观的概念为核心组织元素,提倡在边界研究中采取相关的研究方法,从互补的视角考虑政治愿景与日常社会文化实践之间、社会表现和艺术想象之间的相互作用。     

VOODOO,ZOMBIES, AND MERMAIDS: U.S. NEWSPAPER COVERAGE OF HAITI*

ABSTRACT. Newspaper articles in the United States paint a picture of Haiti as a failed state, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. These articles place the blame of the country's problems entirely on Haiti itself, with little regard for the outside forces that also contributed to the country's present‐day state. This study is a critical geopolitical analysis of Haitian representation in U.S. newspapers. I empirically examine a year's worth of articles from 2004 written in five major U.S. newspapers. From these articles I analyze both the words used to describe Haiti and the emerging media frames. Critical studies have shown that representation in the media can greatly impact the conventional wisdom surrounding a place and legitimize social inequalities. By understanding the images used to describe Haiti, I hope to develop a means of rethinking popular perceptions of the country. I argue that only then can the problems of Haiti be more effectively addressed and a new dialogue created, one that encompasses the entire story of this Caribbean country.     

Double exposure in Mozambique's Limpopo River Basin

This paper examines how double exposure to economic and environmental stressors – and the interaction between the two – affect smallholder farmers in Mozambique's Limpopo River Basin. Studying two case study villages we find that people, in general, are resilient to environmental stressors. However, most households show less resilience to the socioeconomic stressors and shocks that have been introduced or intensified by economic globalisation. Our findings indicate that economic change brought about by structural adjustment policies pressures rural people to alter their approach to farming, which makes it more difficult for them to respond to environmental change. For example, smallholder farmers find it difficult to make a transition to commercial farming within the Limpopo Basin, in part because farming techniques that are well adapted to managing environmental variability in the region – such as seeding many small plots – are not well suited to the economies of scale needed for profitable commercial agriculture. People use a variety of strategies to cope with interactive environmental and economic stressors and shocks, but many face considerable constraints to profitably exploiting market-based opportunities. We conclude that economic stressors and shocks may now be causing small-scale agriculture to be less well adapted to ecological and climate variability, making smallholders more vulnerable to future climate change. Some local level policy interventions, including those that support and build on local environmental knowledge, could assist rural agricultural societies in adapting to future environmental change in the context of economic globalisation.     

Newsprint Mills in Australia: A story of shifting optimum location

The focus in this paper is on the shifting optimum location for a newsprint mill in Australia, factors influencing this shift, and the implications for a particular manufacturing site that is becoming increasingly outdated and out-of-place. Shipping times and schedules for high-volume, high-density tonnages of commodities such as newsprint have altered insufficiently over the last 60 years to affect competitive relations among various newsprint manufacturers around the world. With sea transport held roughly constant, changes in other aspects of the international newsprint industry can be investigated as part of unpacking the concept of globalisation. Globalisation for the former Australian Newsprint Mills Ltd meant becoming more open to new and closer competition, as well as becoming more exposed to acquisition by increasingly transnational enterprises. In the global newsprint industry at least, the world is less a smaller place than a more open one, with tonnes of newsprint moving at similar speeds to 60 years ago but among different and changing locations in terms of geography, ownership and market preference.     

Conforming (to) the opposition: the social construction of geographical information systems in social movements

This paper proposes a new framework to understand the use and value of GIS by social movement groups and to transcend the contested debate over how and whether GIS should be adopted. It frames the debate in terms of the conforming properties of GIS. The proposal is that conservation GROs must conform to GIS to ensure effective usage; however, in the process of that use, they mould the GIS to their own objectives. Various examples from the North American conservation movement illustrate the properties of GIS conformity and likely outcomes of research. This paper asks the reader to rethink PPGIS and GIS diffusion. It also poses questions for further research that frames adoption as an issue of conformity.     

Resource Struggles and the Politics of Place in North Lampung, Indonesia

This paper considers the difficulties inherent in countering the negative effects of globalisation in Indonesia through an enhanced recognition of place-based cultural communities, which are seen to offer an alternative and more progressive path towards development. Focusing on the local history of resource struggles involving Javanese migrants and local people in North Lampung, the paper examines the ways that different groups of migrants and local Lampung people have dealt with changing resource control mechanisms in the context of the local transmigration ( Translok ) programme and large-scale agro-industrial development in the region. Whilst elites have been able to develop their personal wealth by capitalising on political and economic uncertainty, poor people from both groups have had to contend with conflict and increasing livelihood vulnerability that, if anything, has been intensified through the reassertion of place-based cultures of resource control. In challenging populist narratives of resistance to transmigration that pit migrants against "indigenous" local people, the paper identifies the class-related ambivalences towards development and structures of authority that cut across community and locality in the Translok zone     

GARDENS AND DWELLING: PEOPLE IN VERNACULAR GARDENS*

ABSTRACT. Investigations of dooryard gardens, kitchen gardens, home gardens, and houselot gardens fall unequally into one of three groupings. The first are those that treat the plants in the gardens as biological entities and define a space considered a culturally controlled biological community or habitat. The second are those that consider plants cultural traits and the space defined by their positions a setting for household activities. The third conceives of plants as design elements within a garden or a landscape that frames a house or provides a setting for formal human performances. Recent decades have witnessed a broadening focus in the study of gardens, from spatial characteristics and biological content to social and cultural concerns such as reciprocity networks, contested spaces, and the concept of “dwelling.”     

Does Social Learning Lead to Better Natural Resource Management? A Case Study of the Modern Farming Community of Practice in Sweden

This study investigates whether social learning among large-scale farmers in central Sweden leads to better natural resource management in the agricultural landscape. Three different frames of social learning are first identified: social learning as a fundamental social phenomenon, social learning as collaborative learning, and social learning as deeper learning. This article investigates the role of social learning and other factors through semistructured in-depth interviews. Results show that learning among farmers is inherently social, but that this learning does not necessarily improve natural resource management or lead to better environmental governance. The article discusses when social learning can be expected to influence natural resources management, and finds that without the presence of policy, individual leadership, or facilitation, it is not an important factor. Furthermore, the call for social learning based on results from successful instrumental application risks obscuring findings indicating that both social learning and better natural resource management are conditioned on the same external factors.     

食物景观对地方社会记忆的表征和塑造 ——以《舌尖上的中国》为例

以纪录片《舌尖上的中国》为数据来源,借助情感挖掘、语义网络分析以及扎根理论等方法探究食物景观对社会记忆的表征内容和塑造过程.研究结果表明:1)从情感分析结果来看,个体对食物景观的情感倾向总体呈现积极趋势,不同年龄、复杂的社会经历以及多元的社会角色是影响个体情感变化的重要因素,人们的情感认同形成了社会主流意识形态,并框定...