The complex mobilities of homeless people in rural England

This paper explores the interconnected issues of mobility, power and meaning in the context of rural homelessness. It explores two common assumptions relating to these interconnections: that rural homeless people move to cities thereby transposing homelessness into an urban problem; and that mobility is deeply implicated in the mapping of moral codes in rural areas. Drawing on a range of interviews with homeless people, and workers with homelessness agencies in the rural areas of Gloucestershire and Somerset, the paper discusses four types of movement: ‘local’ homeless people moving out of rural areas; ‘local’ homeless people moving within rural areas; homeless ‘incomers’ moving to rural areas; and itinerant/transient homeless people moving through rural areas. The complex mobilities of rural homeless people influence common ideas about where homelessness occurs and how it is experienced. These mobilities also affect how homelessness is ‘made known’ in rural areas, as different elements of the mobility of homeless people are discursively scattered amongst identity labels and policy arenas other than homelessness. Finally, homeless mobilities problematise the adequacy and nature of policy responses to homelessness in rural areas.     

An Apollonian appreciation of Google Earth

This short article reviews and critically appraises Kingsbury and Jones’ (2009)Geoforum article entitled “Walter Benjamin’s Dionysian Adventures on Google Earth”, and finds it lacking in several regards. First, the use of Nietzsche’s Dionysus/Apollo dichotomy is in fact a double binary, in which Apollonian logic is constructed as a binary within the dichotomy, while the Dionysian logic is ‘bacchanalian’. Second, Walter Benjamin as exemplar of Dionysian logic is shown to be problematic and more a distraction from the flawed Nietzschean logic than a useful construct in itself. Lastly, the educational potential of Google Earth is overlooked by Kingsbury and Jones, in their haste to see Google Earth through ‘Google goggles’, in which everything Google appears through Dionysian-tinted lenses.     

Globalising failures

In this introduction and special issue we examine the ideas of ‘globalisation’ and ‘failure’ as concept metaphors that encapsulate contemporary processes of social, economic and political transformation. Through an emphasis on situated understandings, this collection explores the implications and consequences of attributions of failure in specific contexts. A focus on ‘failure’ opens up key trajectories of globalising processes and “actually existing neoliberalisms” [Brenner, N., Theodore, N., 2002. Cities and the geographies of ‘‘actually existing neoliberalism”. Antipode 34 (3), 349-379] to critical scrutiny, revealing a plurality of interpretations and contributing to a critical interrogation of globalisation discourse.     

Market triumphalism and the CBNRM ‘crises’ at the South African section of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park

Transfrontier conservation has taken Southern Africa by storm, where the modus operandi remains simple and intuitive: by dissolving boundaries, local benefits grow as conservation and development spread regionally. However, in the case of South Africa’s section of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, political and economic change redirects benefits to support ‘modern’ economies at the expense of rural livelihoods through community-based natural resources management (CBNRM). Neo-liberal agendas promoted by government and the transfrontier park derail efforts at decentralizing CBNRM initiatives beyond markets and state control. This paper argues that ‘hybrid neoliberal’ CBNRM has arisen in private and public sector delivery of devolved conservation and poverty relief projects as ‘tertiary production’ for regional development. As a result, ‘CBNRM’ projects related to and independent of transfrontier conservation support private sector interests rather than the resource base of rural livelihoods. Concluding sections assert that CBNRM can counter this neoliberal trend by supporting the land-based economy of local users living near the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park.     

Competitiveness versus ‘clean and green’? The regulation and governance of GMOs in Australia and the UK

It is increasingly argued that we are entering into a “biotech century”, in which biotechnology promises major advances in agricultural productivity. The development of biotechnology is not a straightforward affair, however, and the advent of GMOs has led to public protest and consumer resistance. This paper draws upon a comparative Australian-UK project concerned with the role of regulation and governance in mediating the debates and managing the associated risks. Regulatory responses and the mediation of conflicts by the Australian and UK governments have been shaped by the institutional and policy environments in these two countries. The implications of these public debates and regulatory responses for the capture of competitive opportunities are considered. The fact that the two countries have broadly similar systems of governance and regulation reveals how alike the circumstances are in many respects. But at the same time there are important differences in both the style and the content of the policy debates. In both the UK and Australia, the respective central governments remain committed to a ‘biotechnology future’. Against this background, there is little doubt that the choices about biotechnology will play a defining role in shaping the future of rural places.     

Governing minorities and development in Xishuangbanna, China: Akha and Dai rubber farmers as entrepreneurs

In Xishuangbanna, southern Yunnan, Akha and Dai farmers, regarded in China as “backward”, passive recipients of state-led development, have been “getting rich” on rubber and expanding rubber cultivation into neighbouring Laos. State cash crop campaigns to raise minority farmers’ incomes inadvertently turned minority farmers into dynamic entrepreneurs. This paper builds on Vinay Gidwani’s use of development as a “regime of value” to raise social and economic value to analyze these unexpected results. Local state agents believe they are the agents of development, bringing modest social and economic improvements to minority farmers of obdurate backwardness. Minority farmers see themselves as improving their own incomes and “quality”, a term in China for social value, in an era when they are responsible for their own development. National development discourse encourages citizens to raise population quality by becoming entrepreneurial, a message heard by minority rubber farmers as well as urban elites. Through creative, post-Fordist production models and agile deployment of land, labour, and capital, minority farmers have achieved incomes that exceed those of workers on state rubber farms, large plantations whose Fordist production models are losing out in the uneven transition from a planned economy to a more capitalist market assemblage. Akha and Dai rubber farmers, the “backward” minorities on China’s periphery, have unexpectedly become the forerunners of flexible production arrangements that are prevailing in the arena opened up by China’s 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization.     

Recombinant workfare, across the Americas: Transnationalizing “fast” social policy

The paper presents a genealogy of the Bloomberg administration’s Opportunity NYC program, launched in 2007 as part of New York City’s explicitly experimental anti-poverty strategy. Opportunity NYC was modeled on “conditional cash transfer” programs, currently operating in more than thirty countries across the Global South, drawing direct inspiration from Mexico’s widely touted Oportunidades program. This striking case of South-North policy emulation calls attention to some distinctive features of what is characterized here as a transnationalizing “fast-policy” regime, based on technocratic forms of program evaluation and development, dense expert networks, and orchestrated communities of practice, within which a range of policy intermediaries—particularly those connected with multilateral agencies—are assuming significant new roles. What appears to be a pragmatic form of policy learning in fact operates in the context of narrow ideological parameters, within which there is a concerted technocratic “push” toward favored solutions.     

Enter the working forest: Discourse analysis in the Northern Forest

In 1988, four states in the northeastern USA commissioned a study to address land use changes in the Northern Forest, 26 million acres of temperate and boreal forest extending from Maine to eastern New York State. Against a backdrop of economic destabilization and concerns regarding social and ecological implications of a real estate boom, the sustained deliberative dialogue catalyzed by this study has come to rely heavily on the ambiguous concept of “working forest.” To clarify political and environmental dynamics in the region, we analyzed how people respond to and seek to capitalize on the interpretive flexibility of the term working forest. We combine an analysis of socio-political discourses of working forest based on a structured literature review with an assessment of local peoples’ definitions of working forest based on a survey conducted in a pair of contrasting New York State communities. The first study site represents an amenity-oriented community (i.e. a place where the forest supports a service economy including recreation and tourism) and the other study site represents a timber-dependent community. By linking data from community-level analysis to data derived from a general analysis of forest politics, we seek to develop a more robust perspective. By comparing discourses across differently structured communities, we investigate how local forest politics are mediated by local economic development processes. Our study empirically illustrates contested and geographically uneven processes of social construction of environment and rural development in a region confronting pressures of globalization. Results indicate that timber harvesting is a heavily privileged management objective, as a logic of ‘the forest that pays is the forest that stays’ dominates. Environmental politics in the region, and perhaps more generally, increasingly conforms to a form of pragmatism in which economic opportunities structure conservation planning and investment.     

Tanzanite as conflict gem: Certifying a secure commodity chain in Tanzania

Shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the Wall Street Journal published an article claiming that al Qaeda sympathizers were using an obscure gemstone commodity known as tanzanite to raise funds for terrorist activities. Despite subsequent disclaimers by the US State Department, this allegation effectively marked tanzanite as a “conflict gem,” and set in motion a complex set of political maneuvers designed to rehabilitate the tanzanite industry’s reputation. This paper analyzes the immediate fallout from the Wall Street Journal article and the subsequent effects of anti-terrorist rhetoric on the tanzanite industry. I explore the origins of the “conflict gem” discourse and the political movement that has taken shape over the past decade to reform gemstone mining. Drawing on theories developed by critics of the fair trade movement, I examine a series of steps taken by the main corporate miner active in the tanzanite industry to re-brand and certify tanzanite as “conflict-free.” I underscore the degree to which these efforts have been inflected by new security provisions embodied in the USA Patriot Act.     

State visions, landscape, and disease: Discovering malaria in Argentina, 1890-1920

Recently, geographers and other scholars have reappraised the state’s spatial properties, roles, and strategies. According to these interpretations, modern states seek to control their subjects and coordinate economic development through various “rational” and “scientific” strategies that involve the standardization, transformation, and bureaucratization of space, territory, and landscape. Through this process social relations are increasingly configured through state discourses and institutions. The role of public health institutions in the development of state spatialities has been relatively underappreciated. This paper explores the establishment and early action of a malaria control campaign in Northwest Argentina, in the early twentieth century. I make three arguments: first, in creating a malaria control program, the Argentine state did not merely respond to a given “social fact” but rather was the key participant in constructing the “malaria problem”. Second, in response to this problem the Argentine state created a new technical-administrative territory, “the malarious zone”, which encompassed several provinces and defined the federal government’s jurisdiction for public health action. Finally, state actors came to understand the malaria problem, and potential solutions to it, through specific “rational” practices of the modern state: surveying, mapping, measurement, and statistical compilation. In its early years, the malaria campaign did not so much control the disease itself, as much as establish control over the “malaria question”, making it indisputably a state project.     

“Racism in a Melting Pot…?” Trinidadian mid-life transnational migrants’ views on race and colour-class on return to their homes of descent

This paper deals with second-generation, one-and-a-half generation and “prolonged sojourner” Trinidadian transnational migrants, who have decided to ‘return’ to the birthplace of their parents. Based on 40 in-depth interviews, the paper considers both the positive and critical things that these youthful transnational migrants report about returning to, and living in, this multi-ethnic plural society and the salience of racial and colour-class stratification as part of their return migration experiences. Our qualitative analysis is based on the narratives provided by these youthful returnees, as relayed “in their own words”, presenting critical reflections on racism, racial identities and experiences as transnational Trinidadians. It is clear that it is contexts such as contemporary working environments, family and community that act as the reference points for the adaptation “back home” of this strongly middle-class cohort. We accordingly encounter a diverse, sometimes contesting set of racial issues that emerge as salient concerns for these returnees. The consensus is that matters racial remain as formidable legacies in the hierarchical stratification of Trinidadian society for a sizeable number. Many of our respondents reported the positive aspects of racial affirmation on return. But for another sub-set, the fact that multi-ethnic and multi-cultural mixing are proudly embraced in Trinidad meant that it was felt that return experiences were not overly hindered, or blighted by obstacles of race and colour-class. For these returnees, Trinidad and Tobago is seen as representing a 21st century “Melting Pot”. But for others the continued existence of racial divisions within society - between ethnic groups and among those of different skin shades - was lamented. In the views of these respondents, too much racial power is still ascribed to ‘near-whiteness’. But for the most part, the returnees felt that where race played a part in their new lives, this generally served to advantage them. However, although the situation in Trinidad appears to have been moderated by assumptions that it remains a racial ‘Melting Pot’, the analysis strongly suggests that the colour-class system of stratification is still playing an essential role, along with racial stereotyping in society at large.     

Mobile pastoralism on the brink of land privatization in Northern Côte d’Ivoire

Côte d’Ivoire’s adoption of land privatization policies promoted by the World Bank and European Union is producing new land use patterns in the countryside. A centerpiece of these policies is the 1998 Rural Land Law that aims to restructure rural economic life along agrarian capitalist lines. The purported “development” objective of land privatization is to stimulate agricultural productivity based on the assumption that land titling will lead farmers and herders to make greater investments in their production systems. This paper argues that the mobile livestock raising system of immigrant FulBe pastoralists in Côte d’Ivoire is threatened by the new land law. Since mobility is crucial to animal health and fertility rates, I argue that reduced mobility will lead to lower livestock productivity. Although the land law has yet to be implemented, its very existence is leading prospective claimants to test their land rights by planting orchards and lending land to immigrant farmers. The monetization of land lending and grazing rights is increasingly common. Land disputes over who has the power to allocate land are also on the rise. I argue that this heightened interest in “tenure building” is constraining herd mobility, especially for herders with limited resources to negotiate access to rangelands. On the other hand, land privatization is strengthening the hand of local cattle-owning farmers who increasingly practice mobile livestock raising and compete with FulBe herders for grazing lands. Under these new conditions of land access, control, and competition, FulBe herd mobility and productivity are at risk of declining.     

Kinetics of Cd sorption, desorption and fixation by calcite: A long-term radiotracer study

Time-dependent sorption and desorption of Cd on calcite was studied over 210 days utilizing ¹⁰⁹Cd as a tracer to distinguish between ‘labile’ and ‘non-labile’ forms of sorbed Cd. Stabilizing the calcite suspensions for 12 months under atmospheric P_CO2 and controlled temperature was necessary to reliably follow Cd dynamics following initial sorption. Results revealed time-dependant Cd sorption and marked desorption hysteresis by calcite under environmentally relevant conditions. Data obtained were fitted to a first-order kinetic model and a concentric shell diffusion model. Both models described the progressive transfer of Cd²⁺ to a less reactive form within calcite and subsequent desorption of Cd subject to different initial contact times. The kinetic model provided a better fit to the combined sorption and desorption data (R² = 0.992). It differentiates between two ‘pools’ of sorbed Cd²⁺ on calcite, ‘labile’ and ‘non-labile’, in which labile sorbed Cd is in immediate equilibrium with the free Cd²⁺ ion activity in solution whereas non-labile Cd is kinetically restricted. For the diffusion model (R² = 0.959), the rate constants describing Cd dynamics in calcite produced a half-life for Cd desorption of ∼175 d, for release to a ‘zero-sink’ solution. Results from this study allow comment on the likely mechanisms occurring at the calcite surface following long-term Cd sorption.     

How to speak for aquifers and people at the same time: Environmental justice and counter-network formation at a hazardous waste site

A common source of conflict at hazardous waste sites in the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program is the accuracy of scientific investigations and representations produced to inform cleanup decisions. Liable firms often produce these technical representations themselves, and communities surrounding sites frequently argue that such “voluntary” investigations are compromised by conflicts of interest. In order to challenge the representations of powerful firms, locally situated actors often develop trans-local connections with expertise and equipment concentrated at distant centers of calculation. Although some interpret the spatial politics of such connecting in terms of “jumping scales,” another important spatial dimension of this network construction is differential positioning. In a conflict over groundwater models at the St. Regis Superfund Site in Minnesota, the counter-network that emerged to challenge the owner’s representations of the site positioned some actors as “outsiders” and others as “insiders.” This differential positioning enabled the counter-network to balance the need to demonstrate the reliability and impartiality of its claims with the requirement to maintain its accountability to local public interests. I argue that these requirements result from the prevalent view of the science-policy interface, which assumes a rigid separation between science and politics. Nonetheless, the conflict over groundwater at St. Regis reveals how at the science-policy interface, speaking for things and speaking for people are thoroughly entangled.     

Geochemistry of natural waters – The legacy of V.I. Vernadsky and his students

The geochemist, Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky has only recently become recognised internationally, despite being regarded as one of the greatest names in science of the 20th century in his homeland Russia. There are several reasons for his lack of renown in the west, but mainly because his most important work “The Biosphere” was only fully translated into English in 1997. This book and the ideas it contains are now becoming regarded as one of the pioneering works of the last century. It defines the biosphere as a unifying, holistic concept for the earth system at a time when reductionism was the driving motivation in scientific research. Above all, for earth scientists, Vernadsky regarded life as the driving geological force. However another, as yet unpublished work (in three volumes) entitled “The History of Natural Waters” also deserves similar attention. This book explores many concepts in hydrogeology, geochemistry, geofluid circulation and especially biology in which water is described as an integral part of the biosphere.     

Reading representations of women’s war experiences in the Changi Chapel and Museum, Singapore

In this paper, we highlight the way Singapore commemorates its involvement during the Second World War. After briefly tracing the genesis of war commemoration within the nation, we turn to one specific problematic--the gendered portrayals of the war within a particular war memorial in Singapore, the Changi Chapel and Museum. Through a reading of landscape texts, interviews with key figures, visitors and other ethnographic data, we explore the specific ways in which women have either been omitted or stereotypically represented within the site. We proceed to provide possible reasons for this, arguing how the male-centric focus of the site may be due to the perpetuation of hegemonic ideals of war as being a traditionally “male” terrain, and the fact that “silence” is often part of women’s approach to their war experiences. We also argue that gendered portrayals of the war within the site is also an unconscious product of the patriarchal nature of the Singapore state and nation-building endeavours that have placed limits on a more substantial inclusion of women’s stories vis-à-vis the men’s.     

Middle Pleistocene biota of the early Anglian ‘Arctic Fresh-water Bed’ at Ostend, Norfolk, UK

At three sites along the North Norfolk coast, freshwater sediments containing arctic plants have been reported to occur immediately beneath the glacial deposits. The sections at Mundesley and Beeston are no longer visible but a small exposure of this ‘Arctic Fresh-water Bed’ has recently been rediscovered at Ostend near Bacton. The fossils from this deposit are distinctly high boreal/arctic in character, indicating a small, possibly ephemeral, pool in a generally open landscape supporting some dwarf shrubs and conifers. Noteworthy records include three beetle species (Pterostichus brevicornis, P. middendorffi and Helophorus obscurellus) that today have their closest occurrences on either the Kanin or Kola peninsulas in arctic Russia. A Mutual Climatic Range reconstruction on the limited beetle fauna suggests that the mean temperatures of the warmest and coldest months were between 9 °C and 11 °C and between −36 °C and −10 °C, respectively. Other noteworthy occurrences include the aquatic pulmonate gastropod Gyraulus rossmaessleri (second and earliest British record), the ostracod Amplocypris tonnensis (earliest British record), ground squirrel (Spermophilus sp.) and the first record of arctic lemming (Dicrostonyx sp.) from the Cromer Forest-bed Formation (CF-bF). The ‘Arctic Fresh-water Bed’ has been assigned to the Bacton Member of the CF-bF and formed during the early Anglian, correlated with Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 12 of the deep sea record. The Ostend assemblage is therefore important in providing a glimpse of conditions that occurred during a major cold stage in the early Middle Pleistocene.     

Migrant pathways to resource access in Lampung’s political forest: Gender, citizenship and creative conjugality

An important theme in studies of enclosure and resource access in Southeast Asian hinges on the concept of the ‘political forest’, a particular constellation of power constituted by ideas, practices and institutions that seek to regulate peoples’ access to resources, providing recognition and legitimacy to some, whilst excluding and criminalizing others. Whilst issues of class and ‘race’ underpin work in this vein, in Indonesia, much less attention has been directed towards the ways in which gender inheres in the regularisation of land and livelihood, and the ordering of upland spaces. Drawing on recent feminist and queer theorizing of the links between citizenship, recognition and hetero-normativity, and on analyses of the social relationships through which resource access is negotiated and realized, the paper presents a feminist political ecology of the gender dynamics inherent in the power plays of resource access as land-poor rural migrants negotiate a shifting landscape of enclosure in Lampung province. Through an analysis of three periods of resource governance and control in the province, the paper shows how the negotiation of resource access is simultaneously a process of self-regulation and subject-making that draws on particular ideas about family and conjugal partnership, inculcating gendered and hetero-normative ideologies of the “ideal citizen”. Through particular representational strategies - positionings - necessary to qualify for resource access, and through the material practices necessary to realize the benefits of resource access, conjugal partnership is reiterated and remade as an important social relationship through which resource access may be realised, for men as well as for women.     

Regions between imposed structure and internally developed response. Experiences with twin track regionalisation in post-socialist eastern Germany

This paper investigates the dual nature of regionalisation between imposed institutionalised territoriality and self-made ‘ad hoc’ collaborative regional arrangements between localities. This involves, as the paper sets out to show, different, but concurrent imagineerings of ‘regions’ to two audiences - within and without a defined region. They are applied to the same territory, albeit with different images and sets of actors for internal (local) and external (national/international) consumption. These developments are examined within the context of the ‘new regionalism’ debate, in particular the notion of a replacement of ‘old’ through ‘new’ regionalism as a sequence. This duality of region making challenges the frequently somewhat simplistic presumption of regions forming as one complete entity, ‘out there’ to compete on a global market. They also have to fight for their recognition internally, but with different arguments, rationales and policies. This means that the possibility of overlapping single purpose ad hoc formed regions, as postulated under the new regionalism, needs to take into account the likelihood of several meanings of one and the same territory. The examples demonstrate that the two possibilities overlap - multi-territoriality and multi-meanings of (new) regionalism. The paper uses the example of post-unification eastern Germany, where in 1990 a completely new set of traditional regions was established, implementing a 1960s-derived western German model. Since this common starting point, strong economic, cultural and geographic differences have emerged, leading not only to policy adjustments, but also changes to the understanding of regionalisation and regional policy, and the actors involved.     

Security and the future: Anticipating the event of terror

This paper explores the relation between processes of security and futurity in the context of efforts to govern the complexity and contingency of events of terror. It argues that processes of securing function by generating a dangerous or promissory supplement to the present that thereafter propels the extension of forms of security. The paper develops this argument through an example of how an event of terror was anticipated: a RAND exercise into the aftermath of a ‘ground burst’ nuclear explosion in Long Beach, California on March 14th 2005. It argues that exercises (in)secure through three quasi-causal operations, each of which render events of terror actionable and result in specific relations between the present and future. First, ‘hypothetically possible’ generic events are named. The future takes place as a threatening horizon. Second, the defined phases of an event’s happening are staged (an advent, its multiplication into a crisis in the context of a milieu, and a response/recovery phase). The here and now is suspended between an ‘as if’ future and the present. Third, the consequences of the event are played. The future is both an intensified ‘practical’ presence embodied by exercise participants and an outside that exceeds attempts to definitively know it. The conclusion summarises the implications of the paper for work on futurity, security and the event.