Mobility in marginalized spaces: Manoeuvring for survival among the Veddas in Sri Lanka

In Sri Lanka the indigenous population, the Veddas, are rapidly losing their traditional habitats due to cash cropping and infrastructure development, and they are being forced to find new means of living. The purpose of the article is to show how mobility is an inherent characteristic of the new economy in the country and that mobility is gendered. The author documents how one group of Veddas has become immobilized (Dambane study village, which has turned into a tourist site) while another group has been forced to be more mobile (Henanigale study village, where emigration is increasingly practised) due to the same development policies. The study reveals that the market-led economy has caused spatial fixations that limit people more than they liberate them. These fixations take place in the domestic sphere as well as in the villages and they change gender relations, showing that mobility is intertwined with social processes that change local structures and relationships. In the case of the Veddas, living in marginalized places conditions their motility. Mobility is therefore a selective process and as much about the fact of moving as it is entangled with meaning and the power to produce (im)mobility at different scales.     

A DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE OF THE TAWAHKA AMERINDIANS OF HONDURAS*

ABSTRACT. Latin America's lowland indigenous groups have been characterized in contradictory ways. Are populations shrinking or growing? Do groups face cultural extinction, or are they increasingly asserting their ethnic identities? This article uses a case study of the Tawahka Amerindians of Honduras to show how basic demographic techniques can shed light on these issues. A multimethod approach resolves conflicting reports of population growth and ethnic admixture within the 1,000‐strong population. Household surveys indicate a contemporary growth rate in excess of 4 percent; a review of historical sources suggests that this rapid growth has been building for more than fifty years. Although genealogical evidence shows high levels of interethnic mixing since 1900, the Tawahka retain their language and identity. The potentially negative effects of rapid population growth on local resources are likely to be mitigated as the Tawahka translate their renewed ethnic identity into political gains, which in turn have increased educational and economic opportunities. Closer attention to microdemographic processes is recommended for those involved in the long‐term management of Latin America's indigenous homelands.     

Negotiating Technology — (Re)considering the Use of GIS by Indigenous Peoples

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been increasingly touted for their ability to help empower indigenous peoples. The opportunity to discuss the development of an iwi‐based GIS with Te Ruunanga O Raukawa provides a platform for reflecting critically on issues that impact the effective use of GIS by indigenous groups. The dialectical context of GIS is explored by (re)considering the opportunities and challenges of applying GIS as a cross‐cultural communication device. A position is negotiated which interprets GIS as conditionally empowering provided that indigenous peoples consider their symbolic representation in, and physical access to GIS before making an initial investment in the technology.     

批判地缘政治学视角下原住民组织对北极事务的参与和影响

从自发组建的非政府组织到北极事务中颇具影响力的权力组织,原住民组织已经成长为北极事务中不可忽视的利益攸关方。在获取北极事务参与权及实施行动决策中,北极原住民组织展现了独特的思考和实践。基于批判地缘政治学的理论视角观察因纽特环北极理事会为代表的原住民组织的发展历程,发现：（1）北极原住民组织强调基于文本生产的知识权力获取方式;（2）制度性参与是原住民组织的主要行动路径。北极事务参与权的获取及针对性行动策略的实施帮助原住民组织成功影响和重塑了北极的治理理念、身份认同与地理空间,推动北极地区向着善治和良治发展。通过对因纽特环北极理事会案例的解析,可以为中国拓展自身在北极地区的合作空间提供参考。     

Quitovac Oasis: A Sense of Home Place and the Development of Water Resources

Agricultural development at Quitovac, a Sonoran Desert oasis that is an ancestral home of the Tohono O’odham people, was first interpreted in the literature as a typical example of an indigenous community succumbing to the economic pressures of industrial society. However, a humanistic analysis of the cultural and historical context and the results of ethnographic fieldwork leads to a radically different interpretation of recent community actions. Community‐initiated institutional and economic changes can be understood as creative and resilient adaptations, and perhaps a resolution, to a complex social and religious challenge to the community's identity. Notwithstanding the economic failure of part of the development efforts, the overall effects are interpreted as strengthening the residents’ sense of their home place and ensuring the continuation of religious rites associated with this sacred place.     

Oil Extraction and Benefit Sharing in an Illiberal Context: The Nenets and Komi-Izhemtsi Indigenous Peoples in the Russian Arctic

ABSTRACT

How can indigenous communities in illiberal regimes benefit from oil production? This paper compares the experience of two indigenous peoples in the Russian Arctic, the Nenets and the Komi-Izhemtsi, in their quest for environmental protection and the development of benefit-sharing arrangements with Lukoil, a Russian oil company. The Nenets people, recognized by the Russian state as indigenous, are marginalized political actors who identified a route to receiving compensation for loss of land and damage to the environment as well as economic benefits under the auspices of Russian law and Lukoil’s corporate policies. In contrast, the Komi-Izhemtsi, despite indigenous status in global institutions including the United Nations and the Arctic Council, are unrecognized as indigenous domestically and initially received no compensation. Their path to benefit sharing was more challenging as they partnered with local nongovernmental organizations and global environmentalists to pressure Lukoil to sign a benefit-sharing agreement. Ultimately, the comparison illustrates how transnational partnerships can empower indigenous people to gain benefits from natural resource exploitation even in illiberal political systems.     

Spatial practices of integration and segregation among internally displaced persons and their hosts in Sri Lanka

This article recounts how a group of Muslim internally displaced persons from the Northern Province of Sri Lanka arrived and settled in the North-Western Province of the island. The account is placed in the context of local integration, as one of the so-called durable solutions for refugees and displaced people. It is argued that it is useful to study integration and segregation as related processes. The main focus of the article concerns the development of resettlement villages for displaced people and how this has made it necessary for local people to reconstruct and redefine their places. One particular confrontation that took place between local Sinhalese people and displaced Muslims is discussed, to show how the negotiation of place may become violent. The article concludes by arguing that, in order for the process of local integration to succeed, active participation by all groups involved in the local integration process is a prerequisite.     

Living fast and dangerously? Spatio‐temporalities of happy and healthful smoking futures

This paper gathers together young smokers’ senses of present‐futures in the context of Singapore, where smoking is generally frowned upon. Accordingly, I examine how young smokers perceive and perform a multiplicity of healthful subjectivities, which is set within the context of an aggressive state‐driven pre‐emptive politics striving to nip the ‘problem’ of smoking in the bud. In providing a range of justifications for their smoking practices, young smokers have attempted to redefine their own spaces of healthfulness and happiness beyond those imposed by public health discourses. More specifically, although some of them are able to recognize the mutual imbrication of the present and future, others are more inclined to privilege the here‐and‐now over the there‐and‐then. In this way I disrupt stereotypes of young people as being only emblems of the future and as passive victims of their own irresponsibility. Rather, I argue that in responding creatively to anti‐smoking messages that propagate the inevitability of dystopic smoking destinies, young smokers play an active role in reproducing their own futural geographies. In so doing, I hope to extend critical geographical perspectives by highlighting the influence that the future can have on the spatio‐temporalities that young people experience.     

Children's Geographies: Tracing The Evolution and Involution of a Concept

This essay traces the evolution of children's geographies as a concept through three phases. First, in the early 1970s as a beginning impression influenced heavily by developmental and environmental psychology. Second, beginning around 1990, children's geographies cohered politically as geographers focused on young people's identity through feminism and Marxism, and global policy initiatives on children's rights. The third phase, covering the last couple of decades, coming from issues of political identity, challenges what we think we know about young people and their geographies, and also advocates a set of loose theories about the ways young people create and re‐create spaces and themselves. Cognate disciplines coming to geography for insights about children and their worlds characterize this current phase. To offset this seeming linear progression the essay also notes an involution of the concept that defies clear categories and sequences, but suggests the fluidity of tensions and accommodations that comprises children's geographies.     

"VALUING THE TROPICS": DISCOURSES OF DEVELOPMENT IN THE FARM AND FOREST SECTORS OF FRENCH INDOCHINA, circa 1900–40

The paper examines how land and forest management policies were elaborated in French Indochina circa 1900–40. It places their development in the context of a scientific and economic discourse about the value of land and forest resources, the most appropriate ways in which they might be exploited and the relationship between colonial science and indigenous knowledge. By focusing on debates and laws relating to the development of small‐scale and plantation farming systems (Land Code legislations) and forest management and exploitation (Forest Code legislations) the paper seeks to ground arguments about Western conceptions of the “tropics” within a discussion of national policy development and impacts. Focusing primarily on Cochinchina and Annam (southern and central Vietnam) and drawing on materials from French archives, the paper shows how changes in both attitudes and legislation have had lasting consequences on systems of property rights in forest management and on the place and status of indigenous peoples in Indochina.     

Spatial (re)organization and places of the Brao in southern Laos and northeastern Cambodia

Initiatives designed to bring about social and spatial change, whether implemented by governments, international agencies, nongovernment organizations or private companies, invariably have an impact on how people perceive ‘places’– defined as spaces with particular meanings. In southern Laos and northeastern Cambodia the ethnic Brao peoples are facing rapid social and spatial changes as a result of a wide range of initiatives, many of which are associated with ‘development’. Case studies on internal resettlement from the uplands to the lowlands, the redesigning of living spaces, and the implications of protected national park establishment and management are discussed in relation to a four‐point typology of what is required to constitute place. The role of social and spatial (re)organization on place amongst the Brao is considered, including how peoples' conceptions of place are being altered and how the Brao are variously responding to efforts to (re)organize them and reconstitute their places.     

Quitovac Oasis: A Sense of Home Place and the Development of Water Resources

Agricultural development at Quitovac, a Sonoran Desert oasis that is an ancestral home of the Tohono O’odham people, was first interpreted in the literature as a typical example of an indigenous community succumbing to the economic pressures of industrial society. However, a humanistic analysis of the cultural and historical context and the results of ethnographic fieldwork leads to a radically different interpretation of recent community actions. Community-initiated institutional and economic changes can be understood as creative and resilient adaptations, and perhaps a resolution, to a complex social and religious challenge to the community’s identity. Notwithstanding the economic failure of part of the development efforts, the overall effects are interpreted as strengthening the residents’ sense of their home place and ensuring the continuation of religious rites associated with this sacred place.     

在韩中国朝鲜族社会网络地理特征对其中国认同的影响

许多研究表明,人们在流动到其他国家后,其族群认同、国家认同会因为迁入地的社会条件的影响而发生变化。这个结论已经毋庸论证,人们需要知道的是影响这些认同的因素和机制为何。在当今世界中,要破解复杂的国家认同问题,需要将影响国家认同的机制做细致分解。研究组设计了一般性分析框架,将社会网络之地理特性作为影响因素,旅居海外公民的母国认同作为影响结果,再以之分析在韩国的朝鲜族对中国认同的变化趋势,并对这种认同变化做一个基本的评价。分析结论是:在韩朝鲜族社会网络的三个地理特征对他们的中国认同有正向促进作用,其一是近年在韩朝鲜族的业缘网络对中国的覆盖度不断增加;其二是家庭长者作为亲缘网络中的核心人物位于中国;其三是中国的国际地位逐渐提高。地理学视角有助于更清晰地分析国家认同。未来需要分析在韩朝鲜族对哪个国家的认同更强,这对移入国和移出国双方或许更为重要。     

THE KIOWA HOMELAND IN OKLAHOMA

ABSTRACT. Kiowa Indians derive their common identity from deep roots in southwestern Oklahoma, an area they call their “homeland.” On this landscape are recognized and distinctive marks, both visible and invisible: The Kiowa have blanketed it with their significant stories. The region is important as a psychological anchor in the Kiowa past and as a core for their modern identity as a distinct people. In this article I explore Kiowa stories, ideas, and feelings about specific landmarks of the homeland. I also step back to discuss how the homeland generates attachments that are not attributable to individual elements within it.     

Connecting the local and the global in post‐secular urban settings

Postsecular geographies seek to examine how place is linked with identity and how religious identities in turn can be accommodated in public space. Postsecular practices in urban contexts have been researched extensively, but they do not always fully engage with a relational approach to place‐making. This paper argues that through the place‐making practices seen at Virgin Mary statues in Dublin city, Ireland, a relational approach to examining postsecular practices and representations provides a more productive way to understand how the secular and the religious coexist in cities. The paper uses archival and contemporary data gathered from a sample of Marian statues in Dublin city to locate the relational geographies of the religious and the secular. By focussing on the ways that the statues remain uncontested within a changing urban landscape, the paper re‐examines the political significance of religious place‐making practices. It concludes that if geographies of religion in the postsecular city are to have a broader relevance to geography, they need a relational approach to place‐making.     

Political ecology of tiger conservation in India: Adverse effects of banning customary practices in a protected area

Protected areas have had significant impacts on local communities primarily through the physical removal of people. In some instances, people continue to live within protected areas due to the inability of the state to evict them. The restrictions on livelihoods placed on people living inside protected areas lead to in situ displacement. We show how conservation enclosures in the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Tiger Reserve have produced a class of people that the state ‘lets die’ by banning customary practices such as fire use, hunting and harvesting of forest produce. Using longitudinal ethnographic, socio‐economic and ecological data, we demonstrate that conservation policy has alienated indigenous forest dwellers from their agricultural and forest‐land. The outcomes of conservation policy include dispossession through increased crop losses, reduced income from agriculture and forest produce, as well as a forest that is dominated by weeds due to fire suppression. The ban on hunting in particular has increased wildlife densities, which has enabled the state to accumulate revenues through the establishment of wildlife tourism facilities. All in all, centralized protected area governance has changed the relationships among people, forest and the state in a way that has produced adverse effects for both livelihoods and the ecosystem.     

IN THE WAY OF DEVELOPMENT: INDIGENOUS LAND‐RIGHTS ISSUES IN MALAYSIA*

The Malaysian government regards the country's indigenous peoples as “backward” and in need of “modernization.” It aims to assimilate them into the so‐called mainstream society and to incorporate their lands and resources into national and global markets. These policy objectives leave little scope for indigenous groups to pursue their own life projects. Indigenous communities want to share in the benefits of economic development, but they are not prepared to give up their lands, cultures, and identities to obtain them. They have attempted to ward off the negative consequences of development projects by forming advocacy nongovernmental organizations, engaging in various forms of resistance, and seeking redress of their grievances in the courts. Most of all, they want recognition of their rights to land and place. The efficacy of their agency is severely hampered by a battery of repressive laws and by their own political weakness.     

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     

PLACE AS A SOURCE OF IDENTITY IN COLONIZING SOCIETIES: ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS IN GAZA

ABSTRACT. The tendency to reduce the role of places in the formation of sociospatial identities and to emphasize the impact of sociopolitical structures on place making is growing. We argue that, under certain conditions, places may become salient sources of identity formation. In addition, we suggest viewing different types of places on a continuum from mythical “big places,” to everyday‐life places, to parochial “little places.” We further suggest a distinction between mythical and everyday‐life senses of place. Following Zali Gurevitz, who describes the characteristics of West Bank Jewish settlers' mythical sense of place, we demonstrate how Gaza settlers only partially internalized their conception of place, adopting an everyday‐life conception of thereof. Yet place became a main source of identity for Gaza settlers, who viewed their experience in the settlements as an empowering process that helped them escape their marginality and join the national elite.     

PERI‐URBAN AGROFORESTRY IN THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON*

ABSTRACT. Together, urbanization and the search for sustainable development present a dilemma in the Brazilian Amazon: how to accommodate an expanding urban population while creating and maintaining sustainable production systems that feed the people and manage the forest. A unique peri‐urban agroforestry project, implemented by a municipal government in western Amazonia and concerned with a citywide influx of rural agriculturalists and former forest‐dwelling extractive producers, is examined as a source of food and self‐determination. Peri‐urban agroforestry seems to be a viable option for other Amazonian cities that are experiencing increasing urbanization and its associated problems.