Urban resilience for whom,what, when,where, and why?

ABSTRACT

In academic and policy discourse, the concept of urban resilience is proliferating. Social theorists, especially human geographers, have rightfully criticized that the underlying politics of resilience have been ignored and stress the importance of asking “resilience of what, to what, and for whom?” This paper calls for careful consideration of not just resilience for whom and what, but also where, when, and why. A three-phase process is introduced to enable these “five Ws” to be negotiated collectively and to engender critical reflection on the politics of urban resilience as plans, initiatives, and projects are conceived, discussed, and implemented. Deployed through the hypothetical case of green infrastructure in Los Angeles, the paper concludes by illustrating how resilience planning trade-offs and decisions affect outcomes over space and time, often with significant implications for equity.     

Diverging Discourses on Bauxite Mining in Eastern India: Life-Supporting Hills for Adivasis or National Treasure Chests on Barren Lands?

This article identifies the two dominant discourses that attempt to explain socioenvironmental change from bauxite mining in Eastern India and compares them to empirical material from three proposed mining locations. The anti-mining “life-giving hills” discourse understands the bauxite-bearing hills as an essential part of a wider ecosystem that supports sustainable, indigenous communities. The pro-mining “treasure chest” discourse, on the other hand, sees barren, uninhabited hilltops with rich ore deposits possible to extract for the benefit of the nation without harming nearby forests or communities. It is found that both discourses hold universalizing aspirations not backed up by available evidence. The technical rationality of mining proponents create sweeping generalizations resulting in unmitigated socio-environmental change, while the eco-romanticist opposition fails to see how communities and environments are differentially affected by mining. Two untenable discourses at present underpin seemingly intractable conflict without addressing wider resource politics dominated by political and business elites.     

ICT development from the perspective of connectivity and inclusion – the operation of a local digital agenda in Sweden

ABSTRACT

The aim of the article is to determine what a local Digital Agenda (DA) implies for ICT development at the local level and how such a policy can be realised in practice. The topic is discussed in relation to the EU and Swedish Digital Agendas, which have motivated the definition of a local DA for the examined Swedish municipality of Linköping. An analytical model is used both to examine the balance of supply-side and demand-side policies of the local DA, and in an attempt to determine what a local DA implies for local ICT development. The empirical material shows that local policy focused on supply-side strategies towards households and businesses, while demand-side policy was present to a greater extent in the management of the municipality’s own operations. The local authority has provided a major expansion in broadband infrastructure to rural areas of the municipality. This complies with mandates from local authorities to manage local infrastructure development and services to the local population. The authors conclude that the policy implications of the results suggest that although operations through the local DA are substantial, complementary measures to support increasing demands across households and businesses are important when dealing with challenges of uneven access and underutilisation of the large investments for ICT infrastructure.     

Fictive clusters: Crafty strategies in the New Zealand beer industry

ABSTRACT

The authors bring together two theoretical and empirical strands in economic geography – established work on clusters and nascent research on ‘fictive place’ – in order to introduce the concept of ‘fictive clusters’. To explore this concept, they examine the New Zealand craft beer sector, which has evolved from non-existence since the year 2000. This growth has precipitated the rise of a dynamic and innovative cluster at the local scale in Wellington. The fictive cluster is explored through the Wellington case study, and the authors pose various questions for future work based on this discursive geographical device. The construction and complicit reproduction of what they term a ‘fictive cluster’ has been central to the evolving strategies of the involved agents. Through the use of this term, the evolution of Wellington place-based brands that are increasingly territorially specific are seen as building competitive advantage based on constructed histories, environments, and other geographic characteristics.     

Rural and gender studies: A conceptual comparison

The aim of this article is to describe the noticeable similarities in the development of rural research and geography-close gender studies. Both research fields have developed greatly since 1970. Rural research has its roots in geography, while models and theories in gender research emanate from other disciplines. This article primarily treats the development of Nordic research and describes the development and different phases of each research field. The purpose is to draw attention to the parallel routes of development that characterize these fields, although in Swedish research they have not influenced each other much. Rural gender research, an area where the two research fields are interrelated, is the one exception. This focus, mainly developed by feminist geographers, has been largely invisible within the mainstream of both fields and has probably hindered new paths of development. Finally, I describe a route towards the development of a gender research based on the concept of space influenced by both fields of research.     

'Just sustainability': the emerging discourse of environmental justice in Britain?

Environmental justice is both a vocabulary for political opportunity, mobilization and action, and a policy principle to guide public decision making. It emerged initially in the US, and more recently in the UK, as a new vocabulary underpinning action by community organizations campaigning against environmental injustices. However, as the environmental justice discourse has matured, it has become increasingly evident that it should play a role in the wider agendas for sustainable development and social inclusion. The links between sustainability and environmental justice are becoming clearer and more widely understood in the UK by NGOs and government alike, and it is the potential synergy between these two discourses which is the focus of this paper. This paper argues that the concept of 'just sustainability' provides a discourse for policymakers and activists, which brings together the key dimensions of both environmental justice and sustainable development.     

Heidegger's philosophy of space and place

The purpose of Martin Heidegger's Being and Time ( BT ) is to recover the experience of Being that lies concealed behind the dominant modes of Western thought. BT represents a well-founded phenomenological attempt to interpret the everyday understanding of Being that Dasein always already has. Much of the contemporary discourse in human and social geography, such as on class, race and gender, centres on issues that can generally be described as grounded within a socio-political context. However, while recognising their value, these approaches are often unsatisfactory in that they fail to consider Dasein's Being-in-the-World as a unique and peculiar phenomenological problem. Dasein's spatiality is used expressly to establish that Dasein is spatial and Dasein can be spatial only as care. Dasein's spatiality, or place, expresses the bounded and lived spatiality that characterizes Being-in-the-World. Heidegger's body of philosophy should be of great interest to geographers in their attempts to understand themselves as part of the studies of the interaction between man and world. This is what hermeneutic phenomenology is all about, and is what geographers such as Edward Relph, Yi-Fu Tuan and John Pickles try to tell us in their many works on humanism, phenomenology and geography.     

Qualitative Health Research: Negotiating Life with HIV/AIDS

In this paper, I look at the use of qualitative methods in health geography. I focus on two projects using in-depth interviews with people with HIV/AIDS. Drawing from feminist work on qualitative methodologies and the production of knowledge, two questions are posed. First, what insights do interviews offer about people's daily experiences with HIV/AIDS? Second, given that interviews involve direct contact between interviewer and respondent, what are the implications of using this methodology? Projects reveal that living with HIV/AIDS involves a complex series of negotiations. These include negotiating one's own identity within medical discourse, dealing with health care professionals, and choosing how to use medication. The projects also indicate that qualitative research itself involves a process of negotiation. Researchers' preconceptions, interview settings and formats, and relationships established during research can effect research outcomes andresearch participants. I argue that a willingness to reflect critically on the use of qualitative methods is needed to safeguard against these unintended consequences.     

School Students' Understanding of Choropleth Maps: Evidence From Collaborative Mapmaking Using GIS

Abstract

Pairs of students from two age groups made choropleth maps using Arc View. Evidence from their discourse is used to assess aspects of their cartographic understanding as well as the nature of their collaboration. Students from both age groups spent a high percentage of their time talking about cartographic strategy and a low percentage of time on technical aspects of GIS functionality. Older students engaged in more reasoning and questioning. Key areas for teacher intervention include promoting better student understanding of what the mapped data mean (including directionality and numerical characteristics) and the most effective strategies for raising the level of students' conceptual exchange during collaborative learning.     

Making the Case for Critical Q Methodology

Q methodology combines qualitative and quantitative approaches to measure subjectivity by identifying shared worldviews among participants. Since Q methodology was first introduced to human geography by Robbins and Krueger (2000 Robbins, P., and R. Krueger. 2000. Beyond bias? The promise and limits of Q method in human geography. The Professional Geographer 52 (4):636–48.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), a nascent body of “critical Q” research has emerged among researchers who employ Q methodology in critical, reflexive, and innovative ways. In particular, this body of work questions the positivist foundations of standard Q methodology as a supposedly “objective” measure of subjectivity. Although many such analyses use Q methodology to identify and analyze discourses, few explicitly engage the field of critical discourse analysis. This article argues that discourse analysis has been “blackboxed” in geographic Q scholarship and outlines four key moments in the standard Q methodology protocol where researchers could productively integrate critical discourse analysis. In so doing, this article argues that juxtaposing the “messiness” of critical discourse analysis and the “tidiness” of Q methodology exposes productive tensions, gaps, and contradictions that provide key moments for interrogation and critical reflexivity. Key Words: discourse analysis, mixed methods, Q methodology, reflexivity subjectivity.     

“Ghana must Progress,but we are Really Suffering”: Bui Dam,Antipolitics Development,and the Livelihood Implications for Rural People

In late-2013, Bui Dam was commissioned on Ghana’s Black Volta River. The hydroelectric project inundated 444?km², flooding communities, forests, crops, and a national park. State elites promoted the dam through nationalistic discourses while simultaneously framing rural people responsible for accessing its trickle-down economic benefits. Drawing from critical development literature within a political ecology framework, this article examines tensions between discourses underpinning construction of Bui Dam and the lived experiences of rural people. Drawing from data collected in 82 interviews, the dam’s implications for resettlement, food security, mental health, agricultural production, and fishing livelihoods are detailed. I argue interlocking discourses, laws and processes—from eminent domain and compensation metrics to party politics—combined to work as an “antipolitics machine.” Hydroelectric development renders invisible structural processes shaping inequality and creates new injustices. As Bui Power Authority, the corporation managing the dam and surrounding land-uses has a new CEO, the article concludes with several practical suggestions for improving community members’ everyday lives.     

Emerging Memorial Landscapes of Labor Conflict in the Cotton Textile South

While research into the formation of memorial landscapes in the American South has focused on those resulting from racial conflicts, a new landscape memorializing labor conflict and class consciousness is also emerging in the region's textile-producing Piedmont. This memorialization poses significant challenges to dominant regional discourses of economic development and class mutuality in a region in which labor organizing and radical politics remain anathema. This paper examines this emerging landscape for what it can tell us about class relations in the region and the process by which memorial landscapes are formed.     

Emerging Memorial Landscapes of Labor Conflict in the Cotton Textile South

While research into the formation of memorial landscapes in the American South has focused on those resulting from racial conflicts, a new landscape memorializing labor conflict and class consciousness is also emerging in the region's textile‐producing Piedmont. This memorialization poses significant challenges to dominant regional discourses of economic development and class mutuality in a region in which labor organizing and radical politics remain anathema. This paper examines this emerging landscape for what it can tell us about class relations in the region and the process by which memorial landscapes are formed.     

The Victorian Bushfires of 2002–03 and the Politics of Blame: a Discourse Analysis

This paper identifies contrasting environmental discourses on bushfire from the public debate that followed the Victorian fires of 2002–03. Submissions to the inquiry into the 2002–03 Victorian bushfires provide a particularly rich source of documentation. It is argued that environmental events such as bushfire only become political issues, or problems, when they are constituted as such through environmental discourse. Through the analysis, three contrasting discourses on bushfire are identified—here labelled the ‘conservationist’, ‘ruralist’ and ‘wise use’ discourses. In examining how different ‘constructions’ of bushfire have led to conflict, each discourse is shown to consist of a range of actors who draw on shared storylines. Having established a better understanding of the different attitudes, beliefs, interests and values that underpin debates about bushfire, the paper concludes with a brief discussion of the prospects for compromise among the discourses and the potential for improved land and fire management outcomes.     

Social Mix and the Problematisation of Social Housing

Social housing in Australia is at a significant juncture. High levels of housing stress, increasing levels of socio-spatial polarisation and reduced government funding are posing complex policy challenges. Social mix policies are one response to these challenges, arising from the problematisation of social housing estates as socially excluded. This problematisation is examined through case studies of two Sydney social housing renewal projects: Telopea and Riverwood North. Drawing on interviews with government, private-sector and not-for-profit housing practitioners, the paper identifies two distinct discourses of social exclusion within this problematisation—culture of poverty discourse and equity discourse—that shape the implementation of social mix. These discourses reveal that implementing social mix is more complex than simply managing the cohabitation of residents in different tenures. Rather, the practice of social mix is embedded within discourses about the nature and causes of social exclusion. These discourses, in their turn, inform the multiple and sometimes conflicting aspirations pursued through social mix policies.     

Remapping heritage and the garden suburb: Haberfield's civic ecologies

ABSTRACT

Gardens in Australia are considered an important site of heritage maintenance and negotiation for their capacity to materialise transformations in everyday life, design, lifestyles, demographics, environment, as well as social and cultural practices. In the case of conservation areas, gardens tend to be valued in terms of their closeness and potential to preserve specific historical elements. Plants in these gardens are cultivated to evoke period designs, such as Federation (c.1890–1915) and cottage gardens. In this article we turn to gardens and gardening to make sense of entanglements between cultural, historical and environmental elements, and we ask: what role do plants play in shaping our understanding of suburban heritage? To answer this question, we draw on oral histories, archival research and ethnography in Haberfield, the first model garden suburb in Australia. We show how plants channel and mediate multiple concerns that contest and extend ideas of heritage circulating in public discourse. Foregrounding the centrality of plants, this article contributes a dynamic definition of heritage that includes the entanglement of environmental stewardship and individual and collective heritage.     

The Swedish Land Data Bank

Abstract

The Swedish Land Data Bank System has been developed in order to rationalize handling of data on real properties and land. The system replaces earlier manual systems for property and land registration. It interacts regularly with other EDP-based information systems and serves as a land information system (LIS) in a broad sense. The system is being steadily extended to cover all parts of the country. The costs for design, implementation and maintenance of the system are covered by reductions of costs for property and land registration.     

Childhood asthma: Regional and social inequalities in parents' perceptions of the diagnostic process in Norway

This paper focuses on the 'cultural turn' which has taken place in British and to a lesser extent North American and Australian human geography in the last decade. It begins by exploring what constitutes the cultural in what has been dubbed 'new cultural geography'. It then explores contemporary claims that cultural geography has eclipsed or marginalised social geography. The final section evaluates these claims about the demise of the social, arguing that the social has not been evacuated but rather has been redefined. While this paper tells a specific story about a particular tradition and geographical frame of reference, it nonetheless has wider relevance because it provides an example of the differential development of particular sub-disciplinary areas, of the way subdisciplinary knowledges shape each other, and of the way understandings of disciplinary trends are contested.