New political violence in Africa – Secular sectarianism in Sierra Leone

Mary Douglas (1993) has indicated some of the shared concerns that keep voluntary enclaves together as ‘social movements’. The present paper describes a rather different kind of enclave politics, being concerned with the ‘new violence’ of groups enclaved by social exclusion and force. The paper focuses on the emergence and subsequent development of dissidents in the civil war in Sierra Leone. The RUF was at the outset a tiny but conventional guerrilla force, modelled on one of the militias in the Liberian civil war, and seeking to overthrow a decayed neo-patrimonial ‘one-party’ regime. Gaining little popular support, its members became marooned in forested isolation on the Liberia-Sierra Leone border. Recruits were mainly school children seized by force and ‘converted’ through having to take part in atrocities against rural civilians. Unable to return to the larger society on pain of summary execution, captives have had little option but to adjust to the political fantasies of a violent and unstable leadership. They were enclaved by force. Indicating the predictive strength of Douglas' arguments about the cultural dynamics of the enclave, the subsequent atrocity-drenched story of the RUF suggests that it is not the content of belief that determines institutional culture but vice versa. To survive, the enforced enclave develops the concerns of the classic ‘sect’ - a doctrinaire ‘rationality’ (expressed in crude acts of ‘subtractive’ violence), rejection of magic, decision making by lots, preoccupation with defection, otiose leadership style. If the rest of the world is to come to terms with violent enclave organizations such as the RUF and Algerian GIA it may have to pay more careful attention to the way enclave institutions think. They may not respond ‘rationally’ to the kinds of incentives offered by mainstream groups organised around hierarchical and/or individualist systems of social accountability. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Problems associated with tourism development in Southern Africa: The case of Transfrontier Conservation Areas

Tourism in Southern Africa is synonymous with the wildlife safari. In the post-colonial era the establishment of so-called ‘peaceparks’ that straddle the borders of states has come to be seen as a key not only to increasing tourism in the Southern African region, but also to the modernizing of conservation policies and the development of rural economies. This paper focuses on the global and continental presence of transfrontier conservation areas, the link between conservation and tourism development, and the current factors that constrain and influence the realization of an ‘African Dream’ — ‘establishment of the greatest animal kingdom’. The unstable political situation in Zimbabwe and how this negatively affects wildlife conservation and tourism in the Gonarezhou part of the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park, serves as a case study. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The local politics of the global countryside: boosterism,aspirational ruralism and the contested reconstitution of Queenstown,New Zealand

This paper examines the local politics through which the reconstitution of rural localities under globalization is advanced and contested, with particular reference to the impact of international amenity migration. It contends that as globalization proceeds not by domination but by hybridization and negotiation, local politics is critical as the sphere in which the outcomes of globalization processes are interpreted and contested. The paper examines the case study of Queenstown Lakes district in South Island, New Zealand, as a locality that has experienced significant transformation through engagement with globalization processes. These include high levels of international amenity in-migration, substantial overseas investment in property, commerce and construction projects, and an increasing volume of international tourists. Collectively, these processes have contributed to rapid population growth and intensive pressure for the development of rural land in the area. As detailed in the paper, land use planning became the dominant issue in local politics, with conflict between groups informed by ‘boosterist’ and ‘environmentalist’ stand-points, as well as the ‘aspirational ruralism’ of amenity in-migrants. Although locally-grounded, the conflict engaged trans-local actors and networks and transgressed space and scale, thus becoming itself an expression of globalization.     

Cultural industries, information technology and the regeneration of post-industrial urban landscapes. Poblenou in Barcelona - a virtual city?

In a former industrial part of Barcelona, as in the de-industrialising neighbourhoods of many big cities, the ‘new’ economy and the ‘cultural’ economy have started to replace the ‘old’ economy, bringing new life into a declining district but also causing conflicts of land use, housing or the preservation of architectural heritage. The latter is an important part of regeneration and marketing policies of city governments, whereby the ‘new’ economy not only emerges from the old but the physical space of the old industrial quarter becomes the tool and setting in which the city can re-present itself and its success story of transformation and regeneration. Through the increasing use of information and communication technologies, which are at the same time driving this transformation - an industry as such as well as business-aid in various sectors, cultural industries in particular - the city has acquired a second, virtual presence. The city exists and ‘lives’ on numerous websites. Those by city government and city organisations often have the express purpose of marketing and presenting the city, while those by (cultural) businesses and other organisations in the district add to the mosaic of the virtual city. As a result, the old industrial space continues to live and be productive, its economic value having changed largely into a cultural value. This coexistence of the real and the virtual, old and new, also meets with a conflict at certain junctures. There is the positive representation of plans and events on the city's websites on the one hand, and the undercurrent of protest and disenchantment among the local population who find themselves marginalised from the profits and success of development, on the other. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Socio-geographical transition in the rural areas of the Carpathian Euroregion

Cross-border cooperation is starting to overcome the isolation of frontier regions where interaction under the socialist system was minimal. Change has been particularly apparent in areas where trans-frontier organisations on the ‘Euroregion’ model have emerged. The Carpathian Euroregion is the first exclusively East European example of this approach and it has already made a positive impact in overcoming backwardness in an area where four East European countries were in contact with the Former Soviet Union. The paper outlines the challenge facing the Euroregion – and the national and local governments in the five countries concerned – in providing non-agricultural employment for a large rural population augmented by return-migration from the towns since 1989. Many small farming businesses have been started as a survival strategy but they cannot be economically viable in a market situation. Although most people are satisified with their rural lifestyle, the inevitability of radical consolidation in a future EU context could be politically destabilising if more jobs are not generated in manufacturing and in an expanding tertiary sector. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Growth and urban differentiation on the urban periphery: A case study from Szeged, Hungary

In late nineteenth century Hungarian cities there were strong contrasts between the inner ‘urban’ core and the rural periphery in terms of housing conditions, accessibility and lifestyle. Rural-urban fringe zones in the Great Plain were quite distinctive because the Turkish period was followed by an outflow of population which resulted in scattered settlement around the urban centres. The fringe could be regarded simply as a zone of transition, but the differences between urban centres and their immediate surroundings were gradually reduced through the industrialisation of the larger towns in the communist period. A study of Szeged examines the expansion of the fringe zone and its gradual urbanisation through the growth of housing as people have moved out from the centre to live among the rural population which increasingly turned from agriculture to commuting. Villages on either side of Szeged's administrative boundary accommodated more migrants from the city during the 1980s and experienced a gradual positive change in the quality of life as people escaped from the decaying residential blocs in the centre. During the years since 1989 there has been further migration, coupled with a growth of small businesses and a big improvement in services (shopping, running water, sewage and telecommunications). Further change may be expected in line with the forces of counterurbanisation. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Dodging alligators,rattlesnakes, and backyard docks: a political ecology of sweetgrass basket-making and conservation in the South Carolina Lowcountry,USA

There is growing recognition among political ecologists of the need to examine shifting natural resource regimes and their effects on livelihoods in “First World” places. This emerging literature has variously examined the “Third World within,” the persistence of “subsistence activities” in the “First World,” and the “reterritorialization” of land tenure and access. However, much of this work has tended to focus on traditional extractive industries in the American West, indigenous claims to lands and resources in the U.S. and Canada, and non-timber resources on public lands. In contrast, we use a case study of African-American sweetgrass basket-makers, associated with the Gullah culture, in South Carolina’s lowcountry to examine the ways in which ongoing amenity-driven residential development is fundamentally reshaping resource access on private lands. Historically, basket-makers harvested the materials (primarily sweetgrass or Mulenbergia filipes) needed for their culturally important art form from accessible, rural, and privately held tracts of land in close proximity to their communities, but development pressures and changes in resident interpretation of property rights has decreased access to basket-making resources. The case is particularly illuminating, as it examines the emergence of ‘conservation subdivisions’ in the region and raises important questions about what “rural uses” and users are being conserved through responses to exurban, suburban, and urban development in formerly rural areas.     

Primitivism and the other. History of art and cultural geography

The article advocates an articulation of cultural geography and art history, and in this perspective focuses on the analysis of the primitivist movement and particularly on Gauguin's work and personal itinerary. Primitivism introduced artefacts of ‘primitive’ people into the history of Western art and signalled a change in the relationship between the West and the ‘Other’ and ‘Elsewhere’. This reversal of values has a major geographical dimension. Primitivism manifests the contradiction-rife colonial ideology, but can also challenge colonization. Tourism, which is, in the case of Tahiti, directly linked to Gauguin and to his myth, inherited a lot from primitivism, in terms of hopes and ambiguities. Conversely, primitivism casts light on geographical features of these places, instituted as ‘Elsewheres‘ by the West, and visited, even transformed by painters, colonizers and tourists. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Memorial landscapes: analytic questions and metaphors

Over the past two decades, geographers have probed the intersection of collective memory and urban space. Their sustained interest in the subject reflects an understanding of the social condition of commemoration and the important role that space plays in the process and politics of collective memory. Along with other critical social scientists, geographers envision these public symbols as part of larger cultural landscapes that reflect and legitimate the normative social order. A review of the extant literature indicates that geographers scrutinize memorial landscapes through three conceptual lenses that may be understood via the metaphors of ‘text,’ ‘arena,’ and ‘performance.’ These metaphors are in turn mobilized through a series of analytic questions that serve to identify the interests served and denied by landscape ‘texts,’ the ‘arenas’ in which they are produced, and the ways in which they are enacted via ‘performance.’ This article’s synopsis of the subfield’s predominant metaphors and its attendant questions contributes to the ongoing cultural geographic project of articulating and implementing methods for interpreting landscapes as open-ended symbolic systems.

A comparative analysis of several vulnerability concepts

A comparative analysis of six vulnerability models aims to identify differences and similarities between several approaches towards understanding vulnerability. The analysis yields a set of characteristics for explaining the condition of vulnerability (multiple contexts, multiple dimensions, temporal variability, multiple scales and scale-interdependency). In addition, ‘adaptation’ and ‘adaptive capacity’ are identified as key elements of vulnerability. The results of the analysis are put into a wider context not only of vulnerability but also of resilience and risk research. It is demonstrated that ‘adaptation’ and ‘adaptive capacity’ serve as hinges not only for conceptualising vulnerability but between ‘vulnerability’ and ‘resilience’ alike. Based on the results of the comparative analysis, a model of vulnerability focussing on the household and community scale is developed, which displays the key findings of this work.     

Patterns of population change in Ghana (1984–2000): urbanization and frontier development

The study addresses population dynamics in Ghana on the urban and regional levels between 1984 and 2000. At the urban level, the development trends are analyzed for urban localities (population above 5,000) on the basis of geo-coded census data. Potential driving forces for rapid population growth related to size, location, accessibility and facility counts are examined using bivariate and multivariate analysis. An index of weighted accessibility relative to other urban localities provides significant explanation at the national level, as does initial locality size. At the regional level, population development is analyzed to provide insight into the rural–urban relations. The level of urbanization is steadily increasing but varies considerably between regions. Areas of high population growth are found in some rural areas that have a remote location relative to the large urban centers. This seems to indicate the existence of ‘frontier’ regions, i.e. areas that experience a high degree of in-migration by people aiming to undertake specific farming activities. A high proportion of the population growth in these areas appears to take place in relatively small towns. The paper concludes with a more in-depth discussion of the development characteristics of Ghana’s Western Region. This region has experienced one of the highest regional population growth rates, mainly due to its status as a ‘frontier’ for cocoa production.

Placing voluntarism within evolving spaces of care in ageing rural communities

Guided by a theorisation of voluntarism as a critical process shaping local outcomes of changes underway in health care systems and in rural communities, this paper re-analyses qualitative results from previous case studies of rural ageing to deconstruct the multifaceted role of the voluntary sector in facilitating the emergence of homes and communities as ‘new’ spaces of care. The specific focus is on the lived experience of voluntary sector care providers from the perspectives of non-profit organisations, community groups and families as well as elderly residents of rural communities in Canada and New Zealand. The findings confirm the local dynamics of voluntarism as a crucial yet neglected component of sustainable rural services and communities. More importantly, they reveal the voluntary sector as a major source of resistance to both the short-term changes mandated by restructuring and longer-term changes associated with rural ageing and service decline. It is through resistance that voluntary organisations and volunteers are seen to be engaging most intensely with the challenge of ageing in place within evolving spaces of care. A more nuanced understanding of their complex role is a prerequisite for developing informed policy on rural ageing and care provisioning.     

Expanding horizons: Women’s voices in community-driven development in the Cameroon grasslands

Communities are increasingly becoming development spaces where members are dynamic actors in fashioning issues of common interest. This paper explores women’s efforts at building social capital for communitarian ventures in selected rural localities of the Cameroon grasslands. It is argued that effective participation in raising livelihoods and infrastructure provisioning is facilitated through women’s social networks (njangis). The paper situates the gender concerns in community participation, rekindled through village development associations (VDAs) – crucial in needs identification, prioritization and execution of identified projects. Based on focused field studies in selected localities, it is established that due to their low social status, workloads and tight schedule, women remain on the sidelines of the leadership in VDAs. However, women’s in-cash or in-kind contribution remains crucial to the successful implementation of projects. Enhancing female participation hinges on efforts at erasing cultural stereotypes that project women as domestic workers, improving literacy, increased access to productive resources especially land, direct support to women’s agricultural activity and improved rural infrastructure (roads, water supply, and electricity) that is compromising women’s participation and empowerment drive.     

‘How do the American people know…?’: embodying post-9/11 conspiracy discourse

Conspiratorial thought has been highly visible in post-September 11th America, manifest through the continued growth of a public ‘9/11 Truth Movement’ as well as at the state-level, through the Bush administration’s conspiracy rhetoric of Islamic terrorists intent on infiltrating the US homeland. In this paper, I demonstrate how conspiracy can be understood as a ‘knowledge-producing discourse’; dialectically engaged across multiple subject positions and through which geopolitical narratives are performatively produced and contested at interconnected scales of bodies, homes, city streets and national ‘homelands’. Through drawing on, and challenging, the conceptual and methodological approaches of a burgeoning feminist geopolitics, I ground my analysis in the embodied performances of ‘patriotic dissent’ by members of the 9/11 Truth Movement in New York City, as well as through my own situated and ethical engagement with positions of political difference.     

Key barriers to community cohesion: views from residents of 20 London deprived neighbourhoods

The notion of community has been central to the political project of renewal of New Labour in the UK. The paper explores how the discourses of community are framed within New Labour and discusses these in the light of the results from research which focuses on how people within urban deprived areas construct their community. It draws upon the results of one part of a larger research project (the ‘Well London’ programme) which aimed to capture the views of residents from 20 disadvantaged neighbourhoods throughout London using an innovative qualitative method known as the ‘World Café’. Our results show the centrality of young people to the development of cohesive communities, the importance of building informal relationships between residents alongside encouraging greater participation to policy making, and the need to see these places as fragile and temporary locations but with considerable social strengths. Government policies are only partially addressing these issues. They pay greater attention to formally encouraging citizens to become more involved in policy making, largely ignore the contribution young people could make to the community cohesion agenda, and weakly define the shared norms and values that are crucial in building cohesive communities. Thus, the conclusion is that whilst an emphasis of the government on ‘community’ is to be welcome, more needs to be done in terms of considering the ‘voices’ of the community as well as enabling communities to determine and act upon their priorities.     

The changing relationship between state and church/religion in the Netherlands

The Netherlands is part of the historic Northwest-Southeast multi-confessional culture belt according to the comparative framework of church-state relations in Europe as recently developed by Madeley on the basis of Rokkan’s conceptual map. The aim of this paper is to describe the development of the church-state relations in the Netherlands within this historic framework of state-formation and nation-building, and to interpret recent challenges of its historic state-church model, such as secularisation, the rise of immigrant religions, and general ‘de- and re-territorialisation’ tendencies. The Netherlands developed from a relatively very tolerant polity dominated by the Calvinist Church to a ‘pillarised’ society, in which the Rome-Reformation divide (which also had a strong geographical dimension) was institutionalised in the political system. After the 1960s, very strong secularisation put this ‘pillarised’ system under severe pressure, but the remnants of this system offered a favourable opportunity structure for religious newcomers (Muslims in particular), who could establish their mosques and Muslim schools relatively easily. However, while the main Protestant churches, and even Catholic and Protestant political parties have merged, failing integration of these newcomers in Dutch society and terrorist attacks at the global level as well as in the Netherlands encouraged a new divide between Muslims and non-Muslims. The metropolitan areas in particular became the scene of this new divide.     

Pathways,motivations and challenges: contemporary Tuvaluan migration to New Zealand

The global climate change literature suggests that at some point in the future it is possible that low-lying areas may be drowned due to rising sea levels, and a number of Pacific Ocean states could be particularly vulnerable. It is increasingly evident that the emerging scenario of environmental change has compounded more established push–pull factors leading to migration, and has provided a new imperative for migration decision-making. By interrogating the proposition that there is a clear distinction between the policy categories of ‘migrants’ and ‘refugees,’ we examine a hitherto un-defined group of Tuvaluan migrants whose movement is in response to environmental change and possible climate change effects. The paper examines Tuvaluan migration to New Zealand through various immigration schemes for permanent residency, with an emphasis on the International/Humanitarian stream.     

Local co-operation, ethnic diversity and state territoriality – The case of Haparanda and Tornio on the Sweden – Finland border

The neighbouring towns of Haparanda and Tornio, separated only by a narrow strip of grass and wetland, are divided by the only inhabited land boundary between Finland and Sweden in the southern part of the Torne River. The population represents four different groups in relation to linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In the daily lives of the inhabitants, the state boundary is probably of less significance than linguistic, social and ‘ethnic’ differences. On the local government level there is a strong will to unite forces to make the total area a viable region in spite of its peripheral location, but state legislation makes co-ordination difficult. This may be seen as a necessity, but in the daily lives of the populations, the state boundary defines an area of unequal access, sometimes working in favour of and sometimes barring contacts and co-operation. The media consumption reflects a clear ‘national’ interest with a strong local bias. In their attitudes, Finnish speakers and bilinguals show a greater appreciation of ‘the other’ than unilingual Swedes. This may reflect the actual possibility space (reach) in the local area. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Changing poverty distribution in Bolivia: the role of rural–urban migration and urban services

Bolivia is a country with high levels of poverty and inequality among its peoples and regions. For the nation and its urban and rural areas, trends in the social and spatial distribution of poverty (and extreme poverty) are identified from 1976 to 2003 using UBN data with minor support where appropriate from poverty lines. The main survey between 1992 and 2001 uses composite and selected UBN to track detailed poverty change for the country’s nine departments, its ten largest cities and a selection of other smaller urban and rural municipalities. Because of rising background increases in population in the various surveyed administrative units, many instances of relative reductions in poverty are accompanied by rising absolute increases. Marked spatial variations in poverty and development in the country over the last several decades are identified as the main driver for the country’s quickening pace of rural–urban migration. As a result, the paper concludes by assessing two different but closely related views. One investigation tests the notion that because more poor people have been living in Bolivia’s cities than in its rural areas since the mid to late 1990s, rapid rural–urban migration has simply shifted the locus of poverty from the countryside to the cities in a process called, the ‘urbanisation of poverty.’ A second, more challenging, investigation assesses the view that the flow of poor rural people to the better serviced urban areas of Bolivia has actually acted to alleviate national poverty levels.     

Rip current escape strategies: lessons for swimmers and coastal rescue authorities

Lagrangian flow of two rip currents was measured using human drifters to understand how variations in surf zone circulation affect exit positions of floating swimmers. Based on these results, two escape strategies were assessed, ‘do nothing’ and ‘swim parallel to the beach’. The drifter paths and exit positions were analysed to determine the best escape strategy for passive swimmers in each scenario. Of the two methods, doing nothing to allow the rip current to take a swimmer is the most effective strategy. More than 75% of rip current flow scenarios could hinder chances of escape of swimmers if the wrong direction was chosen to swim parallel to the beach to safety. This is because in many situations a swimmer encounters not only a rip current flowing offshore but also a longshore current flowing parallel to the beach. The best education campaign for the public, in addition to only swimming on a patrolled beach, would be to promote the ‘do nothing’ rip current escape strategy, as it covers all flow scenarios without reducing a swimmer’s chance of survival.