An unsustainable state: Contrasting food practices and state policies in the Czech Republic

This paper brings together consideration of food policies and practices and of post-socialist transition to raise neglected questions about means of nurturing more sustainable food systems in the developed world. The last three decades have been marked by the growing salience of food as a political and scholarly concern. While market-based alternative food systems have been heralded for their potential to promote environmental sustainability, the benefits of non-market practices such as household food self-provisioning and barter have been assumed rather than being the focus of research. In the western context, both types of food consumption have positive connotations. Although food self-provisioning in European post-socialist societies is a more wide-spread practice than in western societies, it has been on the periphery of research. The existing literature has conceptualised them as ‘coping strategies’ or as a legacy of irregular supply of goods in the state socialist era. Drawing on empirical research in the Czech Republic, we are proposing a novel approach to the phenomenon of household food production in post-socialist societies as a practice compliant with principles of sustainability. First, we highlight the large extent and social inclusivity of food self-provisioning in Czech society to demonstrate how post-socialist societies are a repository of a rich set of sustainability-promoting consumption practices in relation to food systems. Second, we show that international and domestic policy actors in these societies have ignored these alternative, socially inclusive and environmentally effective practices in favour of far less effective market-based sustainability oriented food policy initiatives. The paper promotes a more integrated view of non-market and market approaches in the pursuit of more sustainable food systems.     

The American Geological Institute （AGI）

The American Geological Institute (AGI) is a federation of 42 professional geoscience organizations representing more than 100,000 geologists, geophysicists, and other Earth scientists. In addition, 12 regional societies are Geoscience Associates, 150 colleges and universities are Academic Associates, and 45 companies are Corporate Associates. Geoscience societies and organizations outside of the United States are invited to affiliate with AGI to become part of a growing international community of Earth scientists working in concert to strengthen the global geoscience community.     

The transformation of the British building society movement: Managerial divisions and corporate reorganization, 1986–1997

The paper examines the impact of re-regulation of the British building society industry, between 1986 and 1997. Re-regulation of retail financial markets has split the building society movement between those, mainly large societies, which regard regulation as too restrictive and have decided to become more broadly-based public-limited companies, and the remaining, predominantly medium and smaller-sized building societies, that intend to continue to focus on personal savings and mortgage business. Both sets of companies are pursuing a strategy of consolidation in response to the more competitive environment promoted by regulatory change. The analysis of this restructuring provides a different perspective on the British financial sector, because unlike most of the financial sector, the building society movement is northern-based. Nevertheless, analysis of branch networks suggests that large societies are being attracted to the South East by the higher levels of income and wealth in that area. In contrast, branch closures have been mainly in smaller urban centres, in the north and west of Britain. It seems, however, in the short term at least, that this rationalization is unlikely to be on the scale found in the banking sector.     

The European system of capital cities

Capital cities reflect the nature and organization of the states they control. Their functional role is higher in centralized systems, societies where the state is the source of all legitimacy, and countries using Continental Law. It is lower in federal systems, pillarized societies and countries, which are ruled according to a Common Law. The symbolic status of capital cities is higher when the state is the source of all legitimacy, lower in consociationalist societies. Theses processes were responsible for the development of two types of political capital cities and one type of economic and cultural capital cities during the nineteenth century. A partial standardization of the functions and statuses of capital cities occurred later. The European Union is neither a state nor a super-state since its main responsibilities are still in the economic field, it lacks a huge administrative bureaucracy and does not have definitive territorial limits. The European Union has officially three capital cities, Strasbourg, Luxembourg and Brussels. The really important one is Brussels. Its functions are nevertheless quite different from those of national capital cities during the first half of the twentieth century. European capital cities are thriving because most of them managed to become economic metropolises. The result is that the European Union has a complex and rapidly evolving system of capital cities.     

Simultaneity as a challenge for development

Societies in the Global South are simultaneously confronted with various challenges that societies in the Global North faced over a long period of time. From the beginning of the 18th century the Global North has faced challenges in line with its industrialization and modernization processes including population growth with the necessity to feed that growing population, rapid urbanization or infrastructure development. Solving these challenges during past centuries has led to highly developed societies but produced new threats: environmental degradation and climate change—features of Beck’s ‘reflexive modernity’. Today, societies in the Global South not only face similar challenges such as population growth, malnutrition or lacking infrastructure, but also the consequences of the human-made environmental change and its related risks. Change in the Global South has reached a previously unseen pace and notable simultaneity. This paper aims to operationalise and visualise the challenge of simultaneity. By identifying six indicators for three main issues, the extent of simultaneity will be analysed using the examples of Kenya, India, Brazil and Germany. The findings show that simultaneity is a key challenge for current social, economic and ecological transformations in the Global South.     

The ‘urban–rural divide’ at question: exploring the long-term shift of marital age in Greece

GeoJournal - While marital age is the highest worldwide, spatial disparities still exist among European regions. Although Mediterranean societies were traditionally characterized by high propensity...     

A conceptual framework for integrated management of disasters recovery projects

Natural Hazards - Following the increasing rate of disasters’ impacts on societies, more attention is being paid to recovery projects after these disasters. However, from the perspective of...     

Genesis of the Angeer Yinwula Pb–Zn deposit,Inner Mongolia,China: constraints from fluid inclusions,C–H–O–S–Pb isotope systematics,and zircon U–Pb geochronology

Arabian Journal of Geosciences - Soil toxic metal pollution is one of the most prominent environmental problems in the rapid industrialization of societies because of the considerable harm caused...     

Forgotten coast,forgotten people: sustainable development and disproportionate impacts from Hurricane Michael in Gulf County,Florida

Natural Hazards - A central challenge for sustainable development is how societies are to avoid, minimize or address impacts from anthropogenic climate change. However, competing perspectives on...     

Extracting wealth from a land of starvation by creating social complexity: A dialogue between archaeology and climate?

Arid areas are often considered as places where the emergence of complex societies and economies is unlikely to happen, due to the environmental restrictions they impose on land use, food production and settlement patterns. Archaeological data collected during 30 years in the Oman peninsula are used to analyze the relationship between human societies and climate change during the Early Bronze Age (3rd millennium BC/5th millennium BP). It is suggested that establishing a direct chronological correlation between indicators of climatic change and social evolution is unrewarding and a deterministic approach irrelevant. Societies perceive climatic change and react to it according to their representations of nature and to their history. Modeling social evolution in conjunction with environmental changes by using non-linear multi-agent models is a much more fruitful way to understand the relationship between Man and climate.     

The role of land use patterns in earthquake resilience: a case study of the Ahvaz Manba Ab neighborhood

Natural Hazards - Urban resilience to natural disasters has constantly been a challenge to sustainable development in human societies. Since Iran is always exposed to natural disasters such as...     

Facts behind the myth of conservative rurality: major determinants of rural farmers’ innovation adoption decisions for sustainable agriculture

Even though development is about change, conservative rurality associated with the refusal of rural societies to submit to technological, livelihood and socio-cultural changes has not received adequate focus in development studies and practice. Using the case of selected rural communities in Ghana and their response to the mass cocoa spraying intervention of government, the paper discusses the determining factors that influence innovation adoption decisions of rural farmers. The study followed mixed methodology with the application of Relative Importance Index to establish the order of importance of major factors that influence farmers’ innovation adoption decisions in the study area. We argue that, innovation adoption decisions of rural societies are rooted in their awareness, cost and benefit factors and applicability of introduced technology rather than the myth of adherence to socio-cultural heritage.     

When citizens choose not to participate in volunteering geographic information to e-governance: a case study from Mexico

Citizen participation is a crucial democratic practice in many western societies. In contemporary societies, different social agents utilise information and communication technology using Internet-based systems, to establish two-way communication in order to promote citizen participation. One such approach is volunteered geographical information (VGI). It is considered that VGI provides a new space for citizen engagement, as well as an arena for political contestation, however little attention has been paid to the reasons, drivers and limitations for voluntary citizen participation. Although there is an extensive literature on both VGI and citizen participation, this rarely considers how much citizen participation is necessary to run a VGI platform, what are the drivers for non-participation, and what happens within a democratic political space when citizens are apparently not interested to participate with a VGI deployment These topics are explored in this paper, through the lens of a particular case study of a University deployment for VGI developed in Mexico and a wider analysis of other VGI deployments taken from the literature. By critically assessing the extent to which the VGI deployments have enabled citizen participation, and the degree and quality of this participation, we draw conclusions as to how far and under what circumstances VGI can support government agencies to engage citizens in a meaningful dialogue as part of democratic governance initiatives. This leads us to identify key areas for further research by geographers and related social scientists exploring these socio-technical systems and their effects on democratic societies.     

Party politics,civil society and local democracy – Reflections from Johannesburg

Party politics are generally absent from urban governance or urban politics theories or debates, or present only anecdotally or as a ‘black box’, whilst they are more and more described, especially in Cities of the South, as central to urban societies, access to resources and social dynamics. This paper attempts, through the case of the role of the ANC in civil society in Johannesburg, to uncover the place and the role of political parties in urban governance. It first argues that the party local branch is often crucial as a platform of mobilization, expression and debates around local needs, being more structured and able to access channels of decision than other civil society organizations or local government participatory structures. However, its strong embededness in urban local societies also means a form of social control restricting the ability of civil society to revolt and challenge urban policies more radically.     

Conference on territorial claims in the South China Sea, 4–6 December 1990

Reports

Island territories and societies     

Floods: impacts on livelihood,economic status and poverty in the north-west region of Pakistan

Natural Hazards - Climate change-induced floods have diversified effects on the physical and economic system of the dwelling societies. These effects mainly hit agricultural livelihood and...     

The Mount Parnitha (Athens) Earthquake of September 7, 1999: A Disaster Management Perspective

Natural Hazards - Strong earthquakes in the proximity of densely inhabited urban areas pose one ofthe most complicated disaster management situations faced by societies today. Herethe experience...     

The Arab Geologists＇ Association（AGA）

The Arab Geologists Association (AGA) is a non-governmental pan-Arab geological organization founded in 1975 by geological commissions, i.e., geologists unions, geological societies, representing nine Arab countries, namely, Egypt, Palestine, Morocco, Jordan,Libya, Sudan, Lebanon, Tunisia and Iraq. Organizations of geologists in Syria and Yemen joined the Association shortly after.     

The ecology of hazardousness,the experience of South America

In many parts of South America, the socio-economic condition of the population is such that in many respects the people, because of their vulnerable state, are a disaster waiting to occur. The triggering action of the disaster will be an extreme physical or biophysical event. If any advance is to be made in natural hazard management, then the focus must be upon people first. Halt the process of underdevelopment in South American societies and you have taken a major step forward in natural hazard management. The major concern of this paper is not so much with the competition for first place in hazard proneness in South America, but rather the elaboration of the total ecology of what we commonly designate as disasters, which ordinarily occur at the interface of extreme natural phenomena and vulnerable settlement patterns, and which should be seen, as the extreme situation which is implicit in the everyday condition of the population. Vulnerability is the key concept in this relationship. South American nations vary greatly in their hazard proneness, in the vulnerability of sectors in their societies, in the losses and general repercussions of hazardous events, and in their ability to cope effectively with the post-disaster situation, either alone or with international aid.     

Damage to buildings and structures due to recent devastating wind hazards in East Asia

Extreme wind events such as typhoons and tornadoes can cause devastating damage to structures and huge losses to human societies. This paper introduces recent devastating wind-related disasters in East Asia, including disasters in Japan, the Philippines and China, from 2013 to 2016. In particular, it describes several post-disaster investigations including those on Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 in the Philippines; typhoon Mujigae and two typhoon-associated tornadoes in October, 2015, in Guangdong, China; and a tornado in June, 2016 in Yancheng, China. Meteorological features, damage details and failure mechanisms of structures, factors related to damage generation and spread, scales to evaluate storms, estimations of tornado wind speeds and so on are discussed, with the aim of mitigating future wind-related disasters and to create safer and sustainable societies. Lessons derived from aerodynamic effects, cladding and component performances, debris impacts, building arrangements, fatigue effects, construction methods, etc. together with suggestions for wind-resistant design of buildings are given.