Social Networks as Livelihood Strategies for Small-scale Traders on the Thai–Lao Border

ABSTRACT

Small scale cross-border trade on the Thai–Lao border has come under increasing pressure with the construction of a new Mekong bridge that has expanded formal trade between the two countries. Most small-scale traders are women who, with assistance from family and friends, have developed small businesses from childhood, and created social networks across the border with other traders, and relevant actors such as drivers and government officials. Such networks, trust, experience and familiarity enabled superior access to information and trading concessions that have enabled the continued success of small-scale trade, the maintenance of complex cross-border livelihoods, and the ability of traders across an increasingly regulated border to deal with constraints and risks. A few established traders have developed trade networks and social relationships involving supply chains across several countries.     

An Eruv for St Ives? Religion,identity, place and conflict on the Sydney north shore

Religious identity, when marked by physical changes to urban landscapes, has been a cause of tension and conflict in many cities. In the Sydney suburb of St Ives, an attempt to create an eruv, a symbolic and only partly physical boundary around orthodox Jewish space, was vigorously opposed and eventually defeated through the planning system. The religious and physical significance of the eruv resulted in diverse rationales of opposition, centred on the physical and environmental impact, the conceptual nature of boundaries and the role of religion and ‘modernity’ in everyday suburban life. The place of an eruv was opposed with reference to spatial imaginaries of the nation, the suburb and the secular public, as religion and worship intersected with the politics of urban citizenship and belonging. Each of these spatial imaginaries was constructed by opponents in such a way as to deny a place for an eruv in St Ives, and reinforced through the application of planning instruments which eventually refused permission for an eruv. To many residents, public space was seen to be at risk, raising complex questions over amenity, the politics and perception of difference and what is in or out of place. The planning framework adjudicating such development proposals must transcend such imaginaries in the production of public spaces in multicultural cities.