The political economy of part-time farming

This paper seeks to root the analysis of part-time farming in the political-economic structure of agriculture and the larger economy. While part-time farming is not a new phenomenon, the growing prevalence of part-time farming in the US and other advanced industrial societies bears a strong relationship with the emergence of dualistic agrarian structures. Part-time farming has also been connected with the deconcentration of industry and employment. The political implications of the trend toward part-time farming are explored, with a conclusion that multiple jobholding, while nominally a proletarianization process, may in fact reinforce political conservatism in the countryside. The paper concludes by suggesting that future research on the political economy of part-time farming should place particular emphasis on the political implications of and sexual division of labour on multiple jobholding.     

The political economy of agrarian reform and spatial organisation in Chile

This paper examines the geographical changes associated with the agrarian reforms implemented in Chile between 1965 and 1973. The intentions and results of the Christian Democrat and Popular Unity agrarian reforms were very different; while the former was a limited programme of modernisation and liberalisation, the latter formed part of a revolutionary programme. Nonetheless, a study of the Maria Pinto commune in central Chile shows that, in both cases, the changes in spatial and social organization produced by the reforms had resulted from a complex interplay between a changing class structure and consequent shifts in material interests and political alignments.     

Industrializing nature,knowledge, and labour: The political economy of bioprospecting in Madagascar

This article provides a new way of analyzing and defining contemporary bioprospecting under emerging frameworks of neoliberal conservation. I document how bioprospecting has changed over time on the island-nation of Madagascar due to shifts in environmental governance. The most significant change includes efforts to speed up and industrialize the production of new drugs derived from nature. This has been accomplished through the switching over to rational collection strategies that employ new geo-referencing technologies, global networks of herbarium archives, and high-technology rapid screening methods. Results show that nature is re-constituted, traditional knowledge is rendered inefficient, and labour is mechanized within sites of production. This study demonstrates how changes in bioprospecting alter the way Malagasy scientists and local resource users participate in the practice and diminish their decision making power over natural resources. These developments, in turn, cause some Malagasy scientists, researchers and administrators to question their participation in bioprospecting projects and reveal that current natural resource policies of extraction, commercialization and benefit-sharing face many challenges.     

A political economy of the waterfrontier: Planning and development in Toronto

The process of redevelopment of Toronto's water-frontier during the past quarter century is the theme of this article. The analysis of this process of change is guided by temporal and spatial dimensions: the current phase of redevelopment is presented in its historical context, and the waterfront is viewed as an integral part of the urban area. Following a review of early twentieth century waterfront development, this article identifies major discrepancies between an elaborate planning process intended to guide redevelopment and the de facto reality of developers. Subsequently, the focus is on the praxis of change on the water-frontier. Three main conclusions are reached. First, planning has been ineffectual in resolving the objectives of fragmented and conflicting interest groups. It has been forced to play catch-up, reacting to politically influential developers' initiatives and using them as the basis of policy formation. Second, while the current redevelopment of the waterfront represents a dramatic transformation, it is, nevertheless, the latest of a series of adaptations. Finally, the praxis of change on the water-frontier is best understood as a function of structural economic change, in which the pace, extent and composition of redevelopment are mediated by the local political system and the corporate interests of major landowners.     

Neo-liberalising corporate social responsibility: A political economy of corporate citizenship

In this paper we situate the rise of corporate social responsibility in the context of a re-casting of the boundaries between corporate- and state-centred regulation. We argue that this process can be understood in a theoretical framework of “rolling-out” neoliberalisation. We focus firstly upon an emergent CSR consultancy industry within the UK context, demonstrating that there is now a network of organisations dedicated to making profit out of socially-responsible corporate behaviour. These organisations have helped to re-define the nature and meaning of the private sector. Then we interpret global framework agreements on corporate behaviour (such as the UN Global Compact, the Equator Principles, and the World Economic Forum’s Global Corporate Citizenship Initiative) as examples of how neoliberalism is created in and through new “in-between” spaces that set the rules of political action. Subsequently, we note that some NGOs have recently recognised the limits on campaigning for more socially responsible corporate activity, and re-connect these concerns with longer-term debates on corporate voluntarism versus state-centred regulation. We conclude that demonstrating how hegemony is constructed in and through neo-liberalising corporate social responsibility remains to be fully explored, but argue that it is beneficial to consider the diversity of political projects involved in this ongoing process.     

Neo-liberalism, markets and class structures on the Nepali lowlands: The political economy of agrarian change

In recent years, neo-liberalism has manifested itself in peripheral social formations on an ideological basis through strategies of poverty alleviation. This process is epitomized by Nepal’s donor led agrarian strategy, which constructs farmers as ‘rational entrepreneurs’ responsible for their own welfare. In the process it seeks to encourage smallholders to shift from subsistence to market oriented production. However, over 10 years since the current agrarian strategy was released, there is little evidence of commercialisation and the integration of rural populations into global or domestic markets, while subsistence production remains dominant. To understand this failure, one must examine both the contradictions inherent in neo-liberal ideologies and the rural political economy of Nepal. While the emphasis on self-help through market access can be understood to be an ideological process constitutive of the overdetermined nature of capitalist expansion, contradictions are evident in such ideologies when they are mobilised in regions dominated by non-capitalist economic systems. The depoliticizing assumptions inherent in such ideologies can serve the interests of capitalist expansion through glossing over the associated forms of class exploitation. However, a case study from Nepal’s eastern lowlands demonstrates how they also divert attention from complex non-capitalist modes of surplus appropriation in both the relations of production and circulation. Such forms of exploitation have not only obstructed the process of classical agrarian transition long envisaged in Marxian theory, but have also blocked the emergence of the particular form of rural commodity production envisaged in Nepal’s neo-liberal agrarian strategy itself.     

Impediments to the management of shared aquifers: A political economy perspective

The reliance on aquifers which are shared by more than one country is increasing. Yet, shared aquifers are only rarely addressed in international treaties, despite the wide recognition of the desirability of comprehensive coordinated management. In order to identify the impediments to reaching agreements on the management of shared aquifers, and the factors that may assist in overcoming these impediments, the political economy of transboundary groundwater exploitation is outlined, and the Israeli-Palestinian case examined. It is argued that the main impediment to the conclusion of international agreements on groundwater is the array of domestic power structures, and particularly the power of small cohesive interest groups. The analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian 1995 interim agreement, and the negotiations leading to it, suggest that this impediment can be overcome, if the domestic interests are recognized in advance, and addressed in the agreement. It also shows that high level politics can play a positive role in forcing water negotiators to conclude an agreement.

The political economy of informal settlements in post-socialist China: The case of chengzhongcun(s)

Informal settlements become an intriguing spatial dimension of urbanization in those countries which experience the systemic shift from socialism to neoliberal regimes. This paper takes chengzhongcun(s) (literally meaning ‘villages encircled by the city’ boundaries) as a case to explore the dynamics of informal settlements in post-socialist China that has certain distinctive features related to the legacy of socialist institutions and restructuring of urban space by various forces. The paper details the political and economic contexts, as well as the ways in which chengzhongcun(s) are transformed into functional but unregulated urban space. It also elucidates the policy approach towards formalizing chengzhongcun(s) and confrontation involving in government-led redevelopment. The analysis illustrates how spatial informality is shaped by the interaction of economic interests and political considerations in a post-socialist economy with retaining the rural-urban dualism of land ownership and the control of urban citizenship.     

The urban political ecology of plastic bag waste problem in Nairobi, Kenya

Over 24 million plastic bags are consumed in Kenya monthly. More than half of the bags end up in the solid waste stream. Plastic bags now constitute the biggest challenge to solid waste management in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya and home to three million people. As a result, plastic bag waste has attracted great political and public attention, especially because the waste has myriad unique environmental problems. This paper seeks to unravel the problem of plastic bag waste in Nairobi through an urban political ecological perspective. Urban political ecology has done much to excavate economic, political, and cultural processes, as well as ecological dynamics that create and re-create urban environments. Little has been done in this context with respect to urban solid waste problems, with the exception of urban political ecology of environmental justice. However, research done within the context of urban political ecology of environmental justice has mainly focused on solid waste problems in the Western World, particularly USA. Drawing on research conducted in Nairobi, as well literature on business and politics, and solid waste management in Kenya, this paper examines the nature of plastic bag waste problem, its political–economic roots and implications for environmental justice.     

Regional planning's last hurrah: the political economy of the Tumen River regional development plan

This paper describes a regional development plan in North East Asia, in the context of regional planning theory and various geo-political changes which have occurred in the region. Known as the Tumen Regional Development Project, the area encompasses parts of North Korea, China, and Russia. On the one hand, the geography, the presence of raw material, and social factors suggest that there may be unique opportunities to develop the region. At the same time, there is increased competition for capital and resources from other regions in the world. Regionalism, therefore, needs to be seen in a global context. After critiquing the plan from the perspective of contemporary regional planning theory, a call for a ‘new paradigm’ of development is issued, one that considers, for example non-traditional industries such as tourism and emphasizes the management of growth as well as its promotion. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Business and Bludgeon at the Border: A transnational political economy of human displacement in Thailand and Burma

Transnational economic integration between Thailand and Burma is intimately linked to protection for Burmese refugees in Thailand. In the case of Burmese nationals who seek safety in Thailand, their protection becomes more negotiable as economic integration with Thailand proceeds. Since 1988, hundreds of thousands of Burmese citizens have fled beyond the borders of their state, fearing both human rights abuses and successive offensives by a military junta intent on its own survival. Critical analysis of the dynamic of human displacement and bi-national economic cooperation between the governments of Thailand Burma grounds this study. The story is one of transnational trade across one border, where people's labour, homes, and passports are exchanged – in an obscured fashion – for investment, natural resources, and economic cooperation. The Thai-Burmese border proves to be a flexible concept that can be invoked to produce refugees or blurred to promote binational economic infrastructure and trade. Despite economic booms and busts in Southeast Asia, economic integration in the region is on-going. At the same time, Burma's government – the State Peace and Development Council – and its military force more and more citizens into neighbouring countries. Their reception in Thailand, however, is increasingly chilly. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Cultural political economy: On making the cultural turn without falling into soft economic sociology

This article explores the implications of making the cultural turn in the engagement of economic and political geography with issues of political economy. It seeks to steer a path between a fetishistic, reified economics that naturalizes economic categories and a soft economic sociology that focuses on the similarities between economic and other socio-cultural activities at the expense of the specificity of the economic. We show how combining critical semiotic analysis with an evolutionary and institutional approach to political economy offers one interesting way to achieve this goal. An evolutionary and institutional approach to semiosis enables us to recognize the semiotic dimensions of political economy at the same time as establishing how and why only some economic imaginaries among the many that circulate actually come to be selected and institutionalized; and Marxian political economy enables us to identify the contradictions and conflicts that make capital accumulation inherently improbable and crisis-prone, creating the space for economic imaginaries to play a role in stabilizing accumulation in specific spatio-temporal fixes and/or pointing the way forward from recurrent crises. The paper illustrates these arguments with a case study on the Flemish ‘anchoring strategy’ as a specific regional economic development strategy. It concludes with a set of guidelines for the further development of cultural political economy.     

Methodology and challenges of fire following earthquake analysis: an urban community study considering water and transportation networks

Typhoon Lionrock, also known as the national number 1610 in Japan, caused severe flooding in east Japan in August 28–31, 2016, leaving a death toll of 22. With a maximum sustained wind speed of ~?220 km/h from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center’s best track, Lionrock was classified as a category 4 hurricane in Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale and as a typhoon in Japan Meteorological Agency’s scale. Lionrock was among unique typhoons as it started its landfall from north of Japan. Here, we studied the characteristics of this typhoon through tide gauge data analysis, field surveys and numerical modeling. Tide gauge analysis showed that the surges generated by Lionrock were in the ranges of 15–55 cm with surge duration of 0.8–3.1 days. Our field surveys revealed that the damage to coastal communities/structures was moderate although it caused severe flooding inland. We measured a maximum coastal wave runup of 4.3 m in Iwaisaki. Such a runup was smaller than that generated by other category 4 typhoons hitting Japan in the past. Our numerical model was able to reproduce the storm surge generated by the 2016 Typhoon Lionrock. This validated numerical model can be used in the future for typhoon-hazard studies along the coast of northeastern Japan. Despite relatively small surge/wave runups in coastal areas, Lionrock’s death toll was more than that of some other category 4 typhoons. We attribute this to various primary (e.g., flooding, surges, waves, strong winds) and secondary (e.g., landslides, coastal erosions, debris flows, wind-blown debris) mechanisms and their combinations and interactions that contribute to damage/death during a typhoon event.

     

Situating regional advantage in geographical political economy: Transformation of the state-owned enterprises in Guangzhou, China

Drawing upon insights from geographical political economy, this study examines the causal processes and mechanisms that underlined the growth and adaptation of state-owned enterprises in mechanical and electrical sectors (SOMEEs) in a leading Chinese city since market reforms. It reveals that the geographically specific and historically contingent political economy in which SOMEEs in Guangzhou were situated before economic reforms was the fundamental force underlying their successful adaptation in the post-reform period. SOMEEs in Guangzhou prior to market reforms were placed in a geographical political economy characterized by a special market orientation toward the production of low-end machinery for local needs and a loosely-coupled political linkage with the state apparatus. While such place-specific market and institutional relations were not favorable to the growth and survival of SOMEEs in Guangzhou in the Mao era, they have constituted an important source of regional advantage to enforce both market competitive pressure and hardened budget constraints on SOMEEs in Guangzhou and propel them to adopt efficient market-adaptation strategies and practices during the post-reform period. There is a need for ‘scaling up’ the theorization of regional advantage to go beyond the exclusive emphasis placed on the institutional dynamics endogenous to regional economies and take more seriously the unequal positions of regions within the extra-local structural relations of actually existing political-economic regimes. The paper advocates a place-contingent treatment of soft budget constraints in future studies on state-owned enterprises in China and other transitional economies.     

Searching for (un)sustainabilty in pangasius aquaculture: A political economy of quality in European retail

Drawing on a political economy of food quality, this paper investigates the main sources of uncertainty over the environmental sustainability of Vietnamese pangasius catfish in European markets and how retailers subsequently respond to these uncertainties. Based on media survey and interviews with supermarket retailers across Europe between 2008 and 2010, the analysis focuses on the claims and counterclaims over the sustainability of pangasius aquaculture, how retailers have dealt with the uncertainty these claims have engendered about the fish, and what effect this uncertainty has had on the potential of marketing ‘sustainable pangasius’ in European supermarkets. The paper concludes that successful claims around new food qualities like sustainability by retailers are dependent on the ability of regulatory networks to overcome any perceived illegitimacy of imported products in the face of continuing uncertainty and the wider politics of market protectionism.     

Gramsci in green: Neoliberal hegemony through urban forestry and the potential for a political ecology of praxis

The US Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources coordinate the distribution of urban forestry grants to nonprofits and citizen groups. These granting agencies increased state funding during a period of neoliberal, fiscal austerity in order to channel ecosystem services provided by urban forests. Increased funding is an instance of rollout neoliberalism whereby the fiscally austere state builds market capacity to harness these services as part of an ecologically modernist agenda. A Gramscian perspective and data gathered from 20 in-depth interviews with foresters are used in this paper to theorize how rollout policy is deployed through urban forestry to extend market hegemony to new geographies. This is anything but a smooth process because the public’s perception of urban trees is highly varied. State bureaucracies must build civil sector capacity to educate people about the ecosystem services trees provide as market commodities. In doing so the state’s market-oriented regulatory legitimacy is consolidated through the apparently benign act of promoting urban forestry. This dialectical process limits participation in urban forestry because markets are inherently selective. Yet it potentially gives rise to an alternative political ecology of praxis beyond market ideology when grant recipients participate in the production of urban ecology and recognize their relationship with nature.