Two Sides of the Same Coin: Formal and Informal Institutional Synergy in a Case Study of Wildlife Governance in Ghana

Abstract

There has been the call to forge a synergistic relationship between local ecological knowledge and formal institutions in the governance of natural resources. How do informal institutions complement the efforts of formal state regulation of natural resources? How does this complementation foster a regularized human–wildlife interaction? Adopting an ethnographic design, this study assesses the role of institutional complementation in natural resource governance using the case of Boabeng–Fiema Monkey Sanctuary (BFMS) in Ghana, West Africa. We purposively selected 33 informants relevant to the BFMS governance process. The study observes that the synergy between formal and informal institutions strengthens wildlife protection in BFMS and the surrounding villages. The usefulness of informal rules is enhanced if appropriately complemented with a formal institutional arrangement. Over time, it becomes necessary for informal rules to grow in dynamism to depict the principles of collaboration, inclusivity, and benefit arrangements.     

Pastoralists and livelihoods: A case study from northern Afar,Ethiopia

The changing contexts in the drylands of Africa in which pastoralists operate pose potential negative effects for the livelihood sustenance of pastoralists. We examined present livelihood adaptations among Afar pastoralists in north eastern Ethiopia through a household survey. With an average per capita income of 1.20 USD a day (PPP-adjusted in 2006), all households surveyed in the study area fall below the international 2 USD a day poverty line. Most Afar pastoralists have become increasingly involved in farming and non-farming/non-pastoral activities, but do not display a total detachment from traditional mobile herding. Pastoral households are still less likely to diversify their livelihoods, while semi-pastoral and agro-pastoral households keep livestock more as an additional insurance against failure in other livelihood activities such as farming. This indicates combining livestock production and farming has improved or at least constrained declines in livelihood outcomes. Our quantitative findings are congruent with the general patterns of pastoral livelihood contraction occurring in the region even if a substantial group of pastoralists continue to engage in keeping livestock. These findings are highly relevant in a management context, suggesting more encompassing, and locally adapted policy and development strategy rather than a wholesale abandonment of support to pastoral livelihood styles.     

遗产地农村社区参与旅游发展的制度嵌入性——丹霞山瑶塘村与断石村比较研究

基于制度嵌入性理论,采用质性研究方法,采取主位的研究立场,揭示正式制度与非正式制度对农村社区参与旅游发展的约束与影响。研究发现：遗产地农村社区参与旅游发展是一个制度约束下的理性行动过程,同时嵌入在多层正式制度和非正式制度中;不同农村社区在参与旅游发展过程中,由于制度嵌入的差异,导致相异的行动决策和发展结果,社区内部非正式制度嵌入的差异是主要影响因素;当社区内部非正式制度脱嵌时,外部正式制度的有效嵌入是协调遗产地与社区发展的关键因素。研究认为,制度嵌入性范式可以深入地解释不同农村社区参与旅游发展的差异性,为中国农村社区参与旅游发展的增权行动、制度设计和监督管理提供有益参考。     

Coproducing urban space: Rethinking the formal/informal dichotomy

Providing an introduction to the special section ‘Close encounters: ethnographies of the coproduction of space by the urban poor’, this article sets out to argue that the image of ‘the informal’ as unruly, messy and dirty continues to inform urban planning around the world. As a reaction to this view, it contends that the informal and formal should be analysed as interconnected and that the informal sphere should be revalued. Urban development is studied as close encounters between established practices, with a locus and a history (tree‐like), and newly emerging, unstable and untraceable practices (rhizomatic). Contrary to the tendency in urban planning to conflate the formal with the tree and the informal with the rhizome, we argue that from the perspective of marginal urbanites, formal planning tends to be very arbitrary and frightening (rhizomatic), whereas informal practices can be very predictable and stable (arboreal). The article analyses residents of marginalized urban areas as inventive navigators who explore the changing physical, spatial and sociopolitical environment, avoiding threats and looking for opportunities, grounded in their everyday practices and life histories. The article concludes that marginal urbanites should be acknowledged as coproducers of urban space and that the right to ‘coproduce’ the city lies at the heart of the call for the right to the city.     

社会资本是否促进污染型企业退出?——来自中国城市的微观数据

污染型企业的区位选择、转移及其驱动机制研究是环境经济地理研究的热点话题。现有文献从正式制度的角度深入探讨了地方政府的环境规制对污染型企业进入退出、空间分布和产业转移的影响,相对忽视了地方社会资本如公众环保意识、企业环境责任等非正式制度因素对污染型企业区位选择的作用机制。本文基于2011年中国工业企业数据、中国综合社会调查（CGSS）以及城市统计年鉴等数据资料,从社会规范、社会网络和社会信任三方面构建中国城市尺度社会资本,利用二元logit回归模型探讨了社会资本与环境规制对中国污染型企业退出的影响。研究发现：① 环境规制对污染型企业退出的促进作用存在门槛效应。② 公众环保意识、企业环境责任作为社会规范因素,对污染型企业生存构成了外部非正式环境压力;但社会信任和社会网络并没有直接促进污染型企业退出。③ 社会资本在强环境规制地区中的交互作用显著,能够形成正式制度与非正式制度的良好互动。本研究从社会资本这一非正式制度的视角理解污染型企业退出的影响机制,不仅是对正式制度层面环境规制研究的补充,同时也对污染型企业的区位选择和地方政府环境治理政策的制定具有借鉴意义。     

CONTESTING NATURAL(IZED) LAWNS: A GEOGRAPHY OF PRIVATE GREEN SPACE IN THE NIAGARA REGION

The lawn as material practice is historically grounded in a complex of influences that has given rise to its dominance as the appropriate landscaping form in urban and suburban North America for private green space. This occurs as a variety of ecological concerns challenge the continuation of the lawned landscape. The inability of such critique to displace this dominance attests to the ideological naturalization of the lawn. This paper examines current and historical factors that sustain the lawn's dominance and presents two interrelated findings. The first is the "social machinery" that delineates the informal and formal arrangements for upholding and monitoring landscaping practices. The second are residential property holders' perspectives on the importance of the lawn, and associations between residential yard practices and professed environmental concerns. Apparently, the lawn retains enough symbolic and material value to withstand critique, a quality that removes it from the geography of environmental concerns. [Key words: ecological naturalization, naturalization, transgression, lawn.]     

Accessing Flexibility: A Historical Institutional Analysis of Water Use for Oil and Gas Development in Colorado

US Mountain West Water access and allocation institutions have a history of adapting policy and practice to increase flexibility for diverse water uses. We examine how flexible access has developed over time and space by operationalizing the historical institutional (HI) theoretical and methodological framework. We trace historical water access for oil and gas (OG) development in Colorado, working from contemporary water right data to examine historical critical events, policies, and political contexts. OG water use has iteratively shaped water governance institutions in the top OG producing regions of Colorado, Weld, and Garfield Counties. The analysis suggests that to more accurately capture institutional change and continuity in resource allocation systems, an analysis of informal institutions is an essential theoretical contribution to the HI framework. While increased flexibility makes multiple uses easier, policies favor the most economically lucrative beneficial uses and generate issues of transparency, an important consideration for the public’s resource. Future practices of flexibility are contingent on market structures and institutional access mechanisms shaped during previous government policy processes, illuminating the value of the HI framework to inform future water policy.     

非正规就业:女性人力资本积累的一种方式——以广州芳村茶叶市场茶艺表演业为例

非正规就业对女性的影响一直是非正规就业研究的重点,其中许多研究认为,从事非正规就业的女性往往难以实现向上发展而强化了自身弱势地位.这类研究忽视了非正规性的多样化性质,过度地强调了非正规就业对女性的负面影响.本研究以广州市芳村茶叶市场茶艺表演业为例,使用观察、问卷调查和深度访谈的方法研究了非正规就业对女性人力资本积累与向...     

The right to move: informal use rights and urban practices of mobility

Everyday urban practices are enabled by both formal and informal rights regimes. Researchers often focus on the effects of formal rights; informal rights to use urban spaces have been less widely examined, particularly in North America. This article examines practices of intra-urban mobility in a gentrifying area of Portland, Oregon. We find that rights regimes regarding movement in urban space importantly shape who uses particular transit strategies and infrastructures. Specifically, we identify rights regimes rooted in explications of a city ideal and a neighborhood ethic. We suggest that Portland’s widely admired transit planning process has not sufficiently engaged with informal use rights in transit spaces, leading to uneven adoption of a transportation infrastructure that re-inscribes historic racialized injustices. An examination of informal use rights complicates common rights analytics, including those leveraging Lefebvre’s right to the city, emphasizing how all urban rights are contingent, contested and negotiated.     

After the 1997 financial crisis in Bangkok: The behaviour and implications of a new cohort of street vendors

After the 1997 financial crisis, many retrenched workers preferred not to return to provincial homes but remained in Bangkok to establish informal retail businesses in branded and other consumer products. In contrast to traditional street vendors, who specialized in food items primarily catering for low‐income customers, and focused on high volume, these ‘new generation’ street vendors also adopted more formal business practices. Given their greater sophistication and better education, we hypothesized that they would be more organized advocates of vendors' rights and thus more prone to conflicts with municipal authorities. Based on interviews, however, we found that new generation vendors are adaptive to location and business strategy, and prefer a low profile in dealing with officialdom. By contrast, traditional vendors remained more tied to particular spaces, are more likely to stand up for their rights to use public space and, because they expect more from government, are more prone to conflicts with municipal authorities. Our findings relate to ongoing discussion on the rights and needs of street vendors to access urban public space and the responsibilities of authorities to meet and provide for these informal sector livelihoods that make up a significant share of the national economy in Thailand, as elsewhere in the global South.     

Livelihoods and the transformative potential of cities: Challenges of inclusive development in Rustenburg,North West Province,South Africa

Urban geographers increasingly incorporate the potential of so‐called informal livelihood activities to provide resources that can be creatively managed in the transformation of urban space, particularly to the benefit of less well off and marginalized residents. This paper reports a case study in Rustenburg, North West Province, South Africa, where city managers began to promote inclusive development in the early 1990s, just prior to the formal dismantling of the apartheid system. The findings reveal that Rustenburg's urban transformation process, over a decade later, continued to reproduce repressive practices that limit the informal livelihood activities of the urban majority. Apparently efforts of well‐meaning city managers to implement a sustainable and inclusive development process are often rendered futile at the point of actually defining the constituents of urban socioeconomic transformation.     

改革开放以来珠江三角洲基层非正规土地利用实践与制度创新——以东莞市长安镇为例

21世纪初,在对非正规经济研究的二元主义、新马克思主义和新自由主义理论解释基础上,出现了批判管治主义理论,重点关注国家权力与制度对非正规性产生的影响。基于该视角,以东莞市长安镇为例,运用质性研究方法,分析了改革开放先行区的珠江三角洲,其基层非正规土地利用实践的产生、表现及其与制度创新之间的关系。研究发现：改革开放以来,在国家土地制度缺失、正规土地管理制度颁布和实施阶段,以及省级政府主导的土地制度创新阶段,非正规土地利用实践经历了被政府鼓励、包容和默许及正规化的过程。部分非正规土地利用实践成为制度创新的根源。土地制度的演变经历了由乡村基层“自下而上”式向地方政府“自上而下”式推动的转变,在演变过程中具有非正规性特征,并服务于各个时期的城市与经济发展需求。未来的研究中,应更多的关注“自下而上”的制度创新和地方实践。     

地方出口产品结构及制度环境与企业出口相关多样化

产品相关多样化是企业发展的重要战略.经济学研究认为企业内部因素会影响企业的产品多样化策略,而一些地理学研究则发现企业外部的地方因素也会影响企业发展.为了弥补当前研究中关于企业微观发展战略外部影响因素的空白,本文基于2012-2016年中国出口产品贸易数据研究地方出口产品结构对企业出口产品相关多样化的影响,并进一步探究地...     

Creating and sustaining Islamic financial centers: Bahrain in the wake of financial and political crises

Although primarily concentrated in countries with Muslim majorities, Islamic finance has become a global industry representing both a decentering of the global financial architecture and the emergence of an urban network that resides beyond the confines of traditional world city literature. While geographers have identified the “Mecca’s” of the Islamic finance industry – one of which is Bahrain – there remains a need to identify the factors necessary to create and sustain centers of Islamic finance. This paper examines these factors through a firm-level survey of foreign and local Islamic financial institutions in Bahrain, in conjunction with key informant interviews with representatives of these firms. We find that while Bahrain’s entrenched institutional advantages have preserved its role as a center in the Islamic financial landscape, ongoing political instability and the increasing attractiveness of new and emerging centers are threatening this role. As the country navigates the current social and political unrest, questions are raised as to what it takes to be an Islamic financial center.     

Are traditional and modern forestry institutions complementary or do they prescribe contradictory rights in Trans-Himalayan Nepal? A lesson to be learned for REDD+ implementation

Rights to forest products are difficult to decide in situations when traditional management institutions exist parallel to formal ones. Such situations raise the question of whether the institutions are complementary or prescribe contradictory rights and management principles. Based on a household survey and key informant interviews, the article focuses on how diverging management principles can be harmonized to satisfy national forestry goals in Nepal. Villages in the Trans-Himalayan district of Mustang used to manage forests according to their traditional institutions but after 1993 they were included in a new management regime called Conservation Area Management Committees (CAMCs). The findings revealed that the villagers appreciated development initiatives undertaken by the CAMCs but three disjunctions regarding forest management existed between the CAMCs and traditional institutions: there was a disjunction between the two sets of rules for forest resource utilization; there were role dilemmas of local residents who were entrusted with CAMC implementation; and there were spatial disjunctions when formal administrative forest borders did not coincide with customary ones. The simultaneous existence of two institutions thus blurred the rights to forest resources. The author concludes that knowledge of the disjunction between parallel institutions is vital for accommodating new management schemes such as REDD+.     

The role and value of local knowledge in Jamaican agriculture: adaptation and change in small-scale farming

Local knowledge has played an active role in the lives of rural communities in virtually every part of the world. In Jamaica, traditional cropping systems based on local informal knowledge have been practiced since the days of slavery and play a vital role in meeting food security. Yet, some negative attitudes remain about the legitimacy and relevance of small-scale farmers' local and traditional knowledge. This paper discusses some conceptual and empirical issues related to the application of local knowledge among small-scale food farmers in central Jamaica. The paper argues that contextually speaking, local and traditional knowledge is valuable, adaptable and necessary in coping with risk and uncertainty in a changing world, while cautioning against a misguided notion of traditional knowledge as a panacea to all the ills of local agriculture.     

Hillsong: A Megachurch in the Sydney Suburbs

Religious belief and practice, especially Pentecostalism, are increasingly suburban phenomena in an otherwise more secular society. The megachurch of Hillsong in Sydney's north-western suburbs has recently grown rapidly, offering a distinct architecture, institutional structure and informal service format Protestantism generally, distinguished by its stadium show, prosperity preaching, overt materialist orientation and egalitarian populism. Diverse church social groups have partly replaced the civic social institutions never vibrant in suburbia, creating social capital and a new, more fluid sense of place. Hillsong exemplifies the globalisation of religion, while simultaneously stressing local ties, with contemporary media technology in a traditional theological and modern social context.     

Social capital and community preparation for urban flooding in China

Social capital can enhance community resilience to environmental change. Productive and trusted relations among social actors and effectual social norms can help local residents share resources, information and risks. The main objective of our study is to understand the ways in which social attributes and risk considerations influence adoption of resilient economic measures by individuals for reducing potential losses due to catastrophic rainstorm and flooding. This article provides evidence from China on how social capital contributes to anticipatory adaptation to environmental change. The inquiry is based on structured interviews with local residents of Tianjin, a flood-prone port city in China, and a standard regression analysis. Findings show that the intention to make preparation increases with the levels of social expectation, social relationship, and institutional trust. Perceived risk and damage experience, however, have no significant impacts. This suggests that building social capacity and trust will be more effective in enhancing community resilience than merely increasing awareness of hazard risks. We call for greater efforts on strengthening the capacity of formal and informal communal institutions. The structural changes required, however, are challenging.     

Local‐government data sharing: Evaluating the foundations of spatial data infrastructures

This paper presents a typology of local‐government data sharing arrangements in the US at a time when spatial data infrastructures (SDI) are moving into a second generation. In the first generation, the US National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) theoretically involved a pyramid of data integration resting on local‐government data sharing. Availability of local‐government data is the foundation for all SDI‐related data sharing in this model. However, first‐generation SDI data‐sharing activities and principles have gained only a tenuous hold in local governments. Some formalized data sharing occurs, but only infrequently in response to SDI programmes and policies. Previous research suggests that local‐government data sharing aligns with immediate organizational and practical concerns rather than state or national policies and programmes. We present research findings echoing extending these findings to show that local‐government data sharing is largely informal in nature and is undertaken to support existing governmental activities. NSDI principles remain simply irrelevant for the majority of surveyed local governments. The typology we present distinguishes four distinct types of local‐government data sharing arrangements that reflect institutional, political, and economic factors. The effectiveness of second generation, client‐service‐based SDI will be seriously constrained if the problems of local government take‐up fail to be addressed.     

欧盟跨边界合作研究对粤港澳大湾区协同治理的启示

经济全球化与区域一体化是21世纪区域合作的核心动因,跨边界合作议题备受学界关注。欧盟在区域一体化实践方面有丰硕的理论与实证成果,其发展经验为粤港澳大湾区协同治理提供了指引,二者均涉及到跨制度、边界的协作和权力的尺度重组。文章基于Web of Science（WOS）数据库和中国知网（CNKI）,运用Citespace文献计量方法,系统分析了1993—2020年欧盟跨边界合作研究动向。结果发现：1）欧盟跨边界合作研究主要集中在边界区域互动、跨边界合作模式、跨边界合作领域、跨边界合作障碍等方面;2）欧盟跨边界合作的发展得益于国家之间政治上的互动互信、正式与非正式的制度协调和合作范围的扩大与深入,然而在双边差异、跨边界可达性、移民和安全等方面仍存在不足;3）欧盟跨边界合作的实践经验对粤港澳大湾区协同治理具有重要启示作用,增强价值与文化认同,创设特殊制度安排,构建多尺度合作空间与多维度治理体系是实现大湾区协同发展的核心支撑。