Shifting spatialities of power: The case of Australasian aviation

This paper explores how different modalities, spatialities and scales of power operate in a geopolitical context. By tracing the dynamic geographies of state and firm power in the events leading up to the collapse of a major Australian firm, Ansett Airlines, it reveals the difference that place and position make to the creation and use of power. The paper stresses agents’ relational positioning, their ‘places’ in multiple networks of association and the ways in which their past actions and visions of the future condition their strategic options. The paper contextualises the workings of power and explores how power relationships are re-configured in specific contested events. It concludes that power cannot be separated from the spatial and temporal dimensions of actual contexts, from actor’s positions in contexts, or from their strategic objectives.     

Native Americans water rights in the water scarce Western United States,its causes,consequences and probable solutions

Conclusions The governmental body charged with defining the Indian water rights may be Congress, the courts, or a Federal agency. Regardless which body assumes this responsibility, resolution of particular disputes between private users and Indian reservations must be made against a background of a larger political battle between the states, the Federal Government, Indian tribes, and private enterpreneurs for control over W waters. The Federal-State concerns are supplemented by Indian fears of unfair treatment at the state level and of failure by the Federal Government to meet its fiduciary obligations to the tribes. As a first step in resolving the Indian water dilemma, the nature of the contending interests and the institutional possibilities calls for the Federal courts to protect Indian interests and to reduce uncertainty through definition of the scope of Indian reserved water rights.     

Challenging power from the bottom up? Community protocols,benefit-sharing,and the challenge of dominant discourses

This article discusses the ways in which community protocols might challenge the dominant discourses that guide environmental law and policy at the local, national and international levels and makes suggestions about the conditions that need to be fulfilled if such a challenge is to be effective. Community protocols have attracted the attention of many scholars as they are recognised in the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Nagoya Protocol. They are argued to hold the potential to achieve fair and equitable benefit-sharing by allowing local community voices to express their customary law, worldviews, and ideas of benefit and development among other things. While much of the existing literature discusses community protocols as legal tools, they are also tools that may challenge the dominant discourses argued to guide environmental law and policy. The article takes up this question on the basis of findings from five original case studies. It is argued that community protocols may challenge dominant discourses by: facilitating and articulating the recognition of local communities and indigenous peoples; providing a source for understanding their worldviews; and by empowering them in the long term. In order to achieve these outcomes, community protocol must be understood as processes and pay attention to legal and political contexts, how communities organise, the role of supporting actors, and the articulation of benefits.     

Australia's approach to Asia

Conclusion As all the political and economic changes of the fifth continent Australia's approach to Asia is a gradual process. With the political recognition of the People's Republic of China Australia gave up its strict anticommunist attitude, regarding its alliances with the USA as of secondary importance to its future policies and trying to find its own political position. The political approach to Asia was accompanied by an economic one after Britain's entry into the EEC that caused a restraint on trade for Australian products on the British market. The intensive relationship with the highly industrialized Japan gave remarkable impulses to the economic develoment of Australia; the trade relations to the other countries of Asia, especially to those of South-East Asia, were expanded. An enlarged foreign trade with these countries, however, requires the establishment and expansion of the native industries and markets as well as their organisation and the stabilization of their financial powers to enable them to export products important to Australia and to receive Australian exports of high value on normal terms. So not only humanitarian and political reasons but sturdy economic interests are at the bottom of Australia's economic and technical aid given to these countries. Although Australia's approach to Asia still excludes a change of its immigration regulations for the time being it can already be regarded as efficient. By this approach Australia aims, in its own interest, at the political stability of South-East Asia and the Pacific and at the economic development of the countries in this region.     

Planning and development regulation amid rapid urban growth: Explaining divergent trajectories in Africa

Why are urban plans, land use regulations and construction codes implemented effectively in some African states but not others? This constitutes an increasingly urgent development concern with major implications for the environment and the urban poor. Rather than being explained by economic factors, bureaucratic capacity or the nature of the urban policies and regulations in place, this paper argues that divergent outcomes are largely rooted in differing political bargaining environments. Comparing Uganda and Rwanda, it presents an empirical study that analyses contrasting planning and regulation trajectories in contexts of similarly low levels of socioeconomic development and soaring rates of urban growth. It argues that the divergent outcomes can be explained in relation to the political resources and incentives confronted by governing elites, which in Rwanda impel state actors to implement plans and regulations while in Uganda incentivize overriding them in the interests of political or economic gain. In highlighting political bargaining contexts and how these change over time, the paper illustrates the critical importance of historically informed city-level political economy analysis for understanding divergent urban development outcomes.     

Circulating climate services: Commercializing science for climate change adaptation in Pacific Islands

In order to address the impacts of climate change, global multilateral institutions, development organizations, and national and regional science organizations are creating climate services – packages of useful climate information intended to help decision makers. This diffuse collection of actors and institutions suggest that producing climate services will help bridge gaps between climate scientists and decision-makers and will therefore help vulnerable countries and people manage the risks and optimize the impacts of climate change. This article examines this global science-policy ecosystem using the case of climate services produced by Australian science agencies for consumption in adaptation programming in the Pacific Island countries of Kiribati and Solomon Islands. Linking research on geographies of marketization and the neoliberalization of science, I demonstrate that within the climate service movement a focus on usefulness is paired with an emphasis on commercialization. As a result, this case shows the inherent tensions in the climate service model: first, a focus on competition and circulating service products at the expense of collaborative relationships; second, difficulties in negotiating uncertainty; and third contradictions between ‘objective’ and ‘entrepreneurial’ science. In each of these instances, the commercialized mechanisms through which climate services are governed, and the political economic circumstances within which they are produced, magnify rather than ameliorate gaps between science and policy.     

Public space design as class warfare: Urban design, the `right to the city' and the production of Clinton Square, Syracuse, NY

Urban designers and their design process remain largely outside the literature on public space. Either designers are cast as simple tools of capitalist social relations, producing exclusionary public spaces, or they figure as entrepreneurs that complement economic renewal schemes through beautification measures that bring business and jobs to the city. This paper analyzes both of these arguments, through an ethnographic analysis of the urban design process behind the redevelopment of a public square in Syracuse, NY. I argue that aesthetic considerations most often derive from economic and political pressures, pressures that draw upon the social contexts of urban designers within an international division of labor and their relationship to class struggle. Because public space serves such an important role in political and social life, its status as a product of urban design should therefore act as a crucial component in any discussion of rights to the city.     

The intersection of corporate social responsibility guidelines and indigenous rights: Examining neoliberal governance of a proposed mining project in Suriname

With neoliberal reforms and the growth of multinational mining investment in developing countries, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become notable (and debatable) for its potential to fill a social and environmental governance gap. As yet, there has been limited analytical attention paid to the political struggles and power dynamics that get reflected through specific CSR guidelines and their implementation in local contexts; this is particularly apparent with respect to the human rights dimension of CSR, and more specifically, indigenous rights. This study documents the debates, issues of accountability, and different interpretations of CSR between NGOs representing indigenous rights and a mining corporation. These debates focus on environmental impact assessments; indigenous rights to land; and the indigenous right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent. These exchanges illustrate the socio-political, as well as economic, positioning of these actors, and the different agendas associated with their positions that determine issues of accountability and shape alternate interpretations of CSR guidelines. The outcomes of these debates also reflect the different degrees of power that these actors hold in such contexts, irrespective of the strength or validity of their arguments about CSR. This dialogue is thereby a lens into the more complex and contentious entanglements that emerge with CSR as a mode of governance, as it plays out ‘on the ground.’ These findings also reinforce questions regarding what we can expect of CSR as a mode of governance for addressing human rights issues with resource extraction projects, particularly within the constraints of overriding political and social structures.     

Spaces of sustainable development in the Lower Hunter Regional Strategy: An application of the ‘cultural sociology of space’

Sustainable development was introduced as an approach to overcoming growing concerns about consumption and the limitations of the natural resource base upon which society depends. It advocates a system in which economic growth can still occur, but within natural resource limits and such as not to disadvantage either current or future generations. However the implementation of sustainable development has proven problematic due to definitional problems, institutional constraints and unresponsive socio-political systems. This paper examines the mechanisms through which an aspatial policy such as the Australian Government’s National Strategy for Ecological Sustainable Development is reinterpreted through the recent spatial planning processes of Lower Hunter Regional Strategy. This paper applies the cultural sociology of space theoretical framework which considers the dialectical relationship between material practices and the symbolic meanings that people attach to their environment. The framework provides insights into how within this spatial planning process, through a combination of language and representation, spatial practices and power rationalities produce discourses and spaces. Applying the framework also shows how a desired “sustainable future” is achieved through the predominance of land development rationality.     

Nations as economic regions

Nations are first of all political regions. Their significance as economic regions derives from the political regulation of economic affairs. Never have such regulations been more pervasive, complex, and economically disruptive than in the 20th century. Politicians seek to extend their power over the subjects whom they govern as well as the power of their nation over other nations. In liberal democratic nations, politicians frequently respond to appeals for protection from economic hardship, thereby courting the favor of those whom they protect. In nations with centrally planned economies, the power of politicians rests on the implementation of ideological doctrines incompatible with open national borders. Politicians of any nation, reluctant to use the military arsenal at their command for fear that an armed conflict may escalate into a nuclear holocaust, may resort to economic warfare instead. All such policies contribute to the economically disruptive nature of national boundaries.     

The politics of defining and alleviating poverty: State strategies and their impacts in rural Kerala

This paper presents a relational approach to the study of poverty (Mosse, 2010), and uses this to critically evaluate state strategies for identifying and alleviating poverty in Kerala, India. It traces these from national planning documents through to their point of implementation, drawing on qualitative research in two of Kerala’s poorest Districts. Ideas of participatory poverty classification, economic self-reliance and political empowerment are laudable national policy goals, and Kerala has shown innovation in its adaptation of these within the State’s devolved structures of local governance. However, both the framing of policy and its implementation reproduce ideas of individual transitions out of poverty which indicate that the state pays insufficient attention to the highly unequal social and economic relationships reproducing poverty in contemporary Kerala – in short, to poverty’s inherently political nature.     

Nature–society and development: social, cultural and ecological change in Nepal

This paper presents a theoretical framework for analyzing human–environment issues that examines shifting, dialectical relationships between social and power relations, cultural beliefs and practices, and ecological processes to allow an interdisciplinary, complex assessment of social and environmental change in Nepal. The purpose of this analysis is to capture the complexity and non-static nature of environmental and social change in the context of uneven development. Drawing from political ecology and feminist geography, this framework brings together scholarship on aspects of human–environment issues that are often pursued in isolation, yet all three processes, social–political relations, cultural practices and ecological conditions, have been acknowledged as important in shaping the trajectory of social and ecological change. I argue that a consideration of the articulations between them is necessary to understand first, how specific land management regimes arise and are dominant over time in specific places. And second, I examine the extent to which these regimes distribute resources equitably within communities, promote economic development and sustain ecological resilience. In this analysis, ecological processes are conceptualised as co-productive of social and cultural processes to explore their role in land management regimes without resorting to environmental determinist or similarly reductive paradigms. I present this framework through the example of natural resource management, specifically community forestry in Nepal, as it offers a rich case study of the relationships between the political economy of land use and the ecological effects of natural resource extraction.     

Moving workers with the work: State selection, key workers and spatial development policy in post-war Britain

Spatial and planning policies in Britain have increasingly become focused on regional inequalities and the creation of mixed, sustainable and balanced communities. Within these new policy paradigms the category of the key workers has emerged as an essential element in the socio-economic sustainability of any bounded area programmes have been introduced to support their needs. Yet, defining key workers is an inherently political process as it necessitates the selection of essential and non-essential workers. Theoretical approaches that highlight state selectivity and the ways in which key policy subjects and objects are identified and mobilised have become increasingly popular across the social sciences and key worker support programmes provide a clear example of these processes in action. This paper draws on archival research to explore the formation of the category ‘key’ worker as an object of government in spatial development policies of the post-war period. It examines how key worker programmes were established to tackle the economic problems of Development Areas. It argues that definitions of key workers were forged in and through particular social, political, and economic contexts and that their emergence as an object of government presupposed and reinforced the existence of different classes of workers and different types of citizens. The paper highlights the significance of such historical work in assessments of contemporary policy and academic debates concerning the changing character of sustainable communities and citizenship, regional development, and changing modes of state regulation.     

Rethinking economies/economic geographies

This paper provides a short introduction to the papers in this special issue on Rethinking economies/economic geographies. It focuses on the diversity within and between Economics and Economic Geography in their performative relationships with economies and economic geographies. Questions of power/knowledge and cross-disciplinarity are raised. Five hoped-for consequences of the debate are identified.     

World cities and territorial states under conditions of contemporary globalization II: Looking forward, looking ahead

The influence of globalization on the future study of political geography is investigated through research on world cities. It is argued that political geography, like most social science, has been excessively state-centric in its organisation and that this will not help in understanding new transnational processes within contemporary globalization. Study of the state should not be abandoned, of course, but it must be set in a new context where much politics takes place beyond the state. This is illustrated through using the world city network as an alternative spatial framework to the world political map. The political geography of the twenty first century will have to incorporate traditional concern for political areas with new concerns for power networks in more subtle geographies than heretofore.     

Spatial change and economic organisation: The Tyneside coal industry (1751–1770)

Concepts of economic power and organisation are rarely considered by historical geographers in their attempts to explain change in space economies. In this paper an attempt is made to use these concepts to explain and understand the changing geography of the Tyneside coal industry from 1751 to 1770, a time when the industry was dominant nationally. At the beginning of the period the Tyneside industry was itself dominated by a monopolistic group, the Grand Allies, a dominance partly maintained through control over the use of land. Their dominance was broken by a combination of technological and economic developments as exploited by a competing group of capitalists based on the emerging banking system. The monopoly of the Grand Allies was broken but replaced, in a more developed form, by the Limitation of the Vend, and by 1770 the geographical and economic structure of the industry had changed dramatically. Underpinning this changing geography was the interaction of social and political structures, including the interdependence of enterprises with a developing political economy. It is in this interaction that the understanding of change in space economies must be sought.     

Neo-rural populations and their relations with local decision makers in rural Québec: collaboration or conflict?

The socio-demographic recomposition of the countryside is affecting local interactions and power relations. Understanding these relationships remains a challenge, as the studies to date are often limited to conflicts between neo-rural populations (newcomers) and long-time country residents over partial issues, without including decision makers. To go beyond this conflictual and fragmentary perspective, the objective of this article is to present an overall picture of both cooperative and oppositional relations between four groups, namely, newcomers, long-time rural residents, leaders of local organizations and municipal officials, in regard to all the issues that concern them. The data are based on interviews with these various actors in two contrasting rural areas of Québec (Canada). After looking at the newcomers’ mixed assessment of their participation in community life, we concentrate on areas of collaboration and/or conflict between all the actors regarding demographic, economic, sociocultural, political, environmental and agricultural issues. Three main trends emerge, revealing unexpected ways of interacting, complex power relations and antagonistic conceptions of rural spaces and their future development.     

Relational networks of knowledge production in transnational law firms

For geographers, debates surrounding the knowledge economy have reinvigorated interest in the geographies of learning and knowledge production. Particularly topical are discussions of the possibility of spatially stretched (global) learning, something especially relevant to professional service firms where the production and management of knowledge across transnational organizational networks is essential. Taking this as its starting point, the paper explores the way knowledge is produced and circulated in transnational legal professional service firms. Drawing on the ideas of relational economic geography to analyse original empirical material, it highlights the way relational networks are socially constructed to allow learning to be stretched across space. The paper then goes on to identify the ‘politics’ of inclusion in these networks and the exclusivity of membership. It also highlights the geographies of power that influence the nature and effect of the knowledge produced and circulated. It does this by examining the role of relational knowledge networks in the ‘Americanization’ of legal practice in Europe and the impacts of such changes on national institutional and regulatory contexts. It is, therefore, argued that transnational corporate networks need to be viewed as heterogeneous and ‘embedded spaces of social practice’. It is shown that studying the actors and their interactions across relational networks is vital to fully understand how global relational forms are constructed and to understand their structuring effects on the global economy.     

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 potential and prospect for global cities in China: in the context of the world system

Over the last two decades, accompanying their rapid economic development, many `mega-cities' in China have devoted themselves to changing their relationships to the global economy and some have aimed at attaining global (world) city status as a key future development goal. This paper examines the relationship between global (world) city status and the emerging world economic system, and discusses the intense competition between `mega-cities' in the Asia-Pacific region that Chinese cities will face in the 21st century, especially after the Asia financial crisis. It also explores the potential and possibility of achieving global or world city status in China. The main arguments are that only Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing have the possibility to attain leading positions in the global urban system in the future. Post-1997, it has been very important for the Chinese government to find a way to coordinate the functions of Hong Kong and the other major cities which allows them to operate smoothly together under quite different political systems. Finally, the authors analyse the relationships between these three metropolises and suggests some possibilities for coordinating their roles in the global urban system.