Commuting for rights: Circular mobilities and regional identities of Palestinians in a Jewish-Israeli town

Mobilities in settler states have become a defining feature of indigenous spatiality. This is mainly due to the structural disadvantage of indigenous communities in relation to urban locations. In Israel, Palestinian citizens are relocating to Jewish cities because of systemic discrimination, primarily in the allocation of land and housing construction permits in Arab locales. Yet, as this paper shows, their movement is neither unidirectional nor an one-time event, but ongoing and circular. Able to enjoy only certain economic and social rights in indigenous spaces and other rights in settler spaces, Palestinian citizens continuously commute between the two. Utilizing a human rights based approach, the paper unpacks Palestinian mobility practices to illuminate a lacuna in the literature, which has overlooked the quest for rights as a driving force of indigenous mobilities. The paper further demonstrates that circular mobilities become a generative act that connects the settler city to neighboring localities in a way that undermines the separation between ‘Jewish’ and ‘Palestinian’ spaces, and collapses the distinction between the ‘urban’ and ‘regional.’ Rather than attempting to integrate within the city, Palestinians incorporate the city within their own ethno-regional topography, thereby asserting their presence and a claim to the city-space itself.     

物质地理学的研究进展和启示：追踪物质(following the things)视角

伴随着“文化转向”与“再物质化”思潮的出现,物质地理学已经成为西方社会文化地理研究中新兴且活跃的研究分支之一,而追踪物质(following the things)是物质地理学中重要的方法论视角,它强调人文地理学所重视的“流动性”,通过追踪特定物质在流动过程中物质性的变化以及能动性,揭示物质流动中的社会关系与文化意义。论文通过梳理和分析西方学界中物质地理学的相关文献,阐述了近年来的研究进展,同时指出现阶段在追踪物质视角下该领域的主要议题为：物质的象征研究、物质与认同研究、生产与消费研究以及权力博弈与协商研究等内容。最后,论文归纳总结了当下物质地理学存在的研究局限与空白,展望了未来中国物质地理学研究可进一步探索的话题与方向,以期打开未来中国与西方国家物质地理学的对话窗口。     

信息通讯技术对老年人的社区满意度影响路径——以南京市锁金社区为例

在中国老龄化进程加快以及智慧养老快速发展的背景下,如何运用信息通讯技术(ICT)提高老年人社区生活质量成为地理学与规划学等领域的关注热点。本文选取南京市首个智慧平台落户社区——锁金社区为实证调研对象,通过构建结构方程模型结合问卷调查,探究信息通讯技术对老年人的社区满意度影响路径,其中问卷内容主要包括个人特征属性、个人ICT使用情况、社会支持情况、社区满意度等。结果表明：老年人信息设备的拥有及使用越趋向多元化,其网络活动越频繁;受教育使用水平越高、使用互联网意愿更强烈的老年人其网络活动越频繁;信息通讯技术主要通过社交类网络活动促进老年人的家庭、邻里交往,提高老年人的社会支持,从而提升社区满意度;与社区建成环境相比,社会支持对于老年人的社区满意度影响更大。因此,合理运用信息通讯技术加强老年人与家人、邻里等的联系强度,是提高老年人社区生活质量的一条可行路径。研究结果对于智慧社区、智慧养老建设具有一定的借鉴意义。     

“This is a Montreal Issue”: Negotiating responsibility in global production and investment networks

While geographers have increasingly focused on how global commodity and production networks create new ‘geographies of responsibility’ there has been little empirical work considering how responsibility is worked into management systems and social activism in such networks. Drawing on literature from global production networks, geographies of responsibility and other literatures, this paper explores the dynamic and contested ways in which concepts of responsibility can play a role in network regulation. Both foreign direct investment and commodity networks (here referred to as ‘global production and investment networks’) are subject to complex negotiations and compromises involving corporate social responsibility and sustainability initiatives as well as shareholder activist, human rights, labor, and environmental activism. This is illustrated by reference to conflicts in Canada over Alcan, Inc.’s investments from 1993 to 2007 in the Utkal Alumina Project in Orissa, India. The project involved significant socio-environmental conflict. In Canada, Alcan’s investment was met by civil society campaigns that tested the company’s commitments to sustainability and corporate social responsibility. The case study suggests revising theories of geographies of responsibility. While foreign direct investment can create new relationships between distant others, these are fluid and contingent and not necessarily desirable. Rather than see networks as a source of responsibility we should work to ensure that the relationships that networks foster be structured to ensure our deeper values are respected.     

Contested carbon: Carbon forestry as a speculatively virtual,falteringly material and disputed territorial assemblage

Assemblage approaches are increasingly being used to understand new socio-natural formations arising in relation to the multiple crises of capitalism, climate change and environmental degradation. The valuation of nature is key to these new formations, which the creation of new ‘valued entities’, through calculative practices, that can be accounted for, costed and circulated in monetised and financialised forms in order to ostensibly ‘fix’ certain environmental outcomes in relation to contemporary global crisis. This paper uses an assemblage approach in relation to the global’ transnational project of carbon forestry offsetting and REDD+ in a particular place, Uganda, arguing that it has utility in this respect. While Uganda has been named by Lang and Byakola (2005) as a ‘funny place to store carbon’ due to its contested land politics and history of violence its weak governance context paradoxically re-enforces the imperative for intervention. The paper argues that carbon forestry assemblages are inherently ephemeral and fundamentally contested in three ways: exhibiting a speculative virtuality, faltering materiality and disputed territoriality. Such analysis has the ability to go beyond technical and managerial, or solely pollical economic critiques of carbon forestry, to point at openings for alternatives.     

Right to food,right to mine? Competing human rights claims in Bangladesh

The right to food is increasingly evoked by a range of actors, but there is not sufficient critical analysis of distinct interpretations of what this right means in practice. Through examination of a mineral extraction project with agricultural implications, this article explores diverse human rights narratives and illuminates associated corporate efforts to minimize recognition of food as a fundamental right. A British mining company proposes the Phulbari open pit coal mine in an agriculturally important region of Bangladesh. Highly contested by affected populations, clashes in 2006 between the police and protestors turned deadly in the area. In February 2012, a group of UN Special Rapporteurs cautioned the Government of Bangladesh regarding human rights violations associated with the planned mine. They warned that the project would displace hundreds of thousands of people, while destroying fertile agricultural land. In contrast, an ongoing publicity campaign by the corporation attempts to promote their intervention as a positive step, fully compliant with international human rights and corporate social responsibility standards. Taking this case as an exemplar, the article illuminates the pursuit of mining profit and the distinct use of human rights narratives by corporations and UN Special Rapporteurs. These diverse actors represent the layering of voices weighing in on mineral extraction and associated right to food concerns. Collectively, these layered narratives represent a new terrain for the promotion and contestation of mining and highlight the need to scrutinize mining practices in light of social responsibility and human rights claims being voluntary and self-regulated.     

基于耦合关系的干旱绿洲区农村居民点整理分区研究——以张掖市甘州区为例

以张掖市甘州区为例,利用系统科学理论与方法,研究农村居民点整理与农村社会经济之间的动态耦合规律,并以甘州区18个乡镇为研究单元,构建了农村居民点用地整理分区评价指标体系,利用熵值法确定权重,计算农村居民点整理的综合评价值,运用层次筛选法将研究区划分为5个整理区。研究结果：①甘州区农村居民点与农村社会经济的耦合度演化分为3个阶段：1995—1997年,二者不甚协调;1998—2003年,二者都处于持续、稳定、最佳协调发展状态;2004—2007年,二者处于相对稳定协调状态;目前二者处于不甚协调发展阶段。②农村居民点整理分区包括优先整理区、强化整理区、适度整理区、一般整理区和完善整理区。     

Western migrants in central Europe: Isolated individuals or members of transnational communities?

Migration flows from western Europe, the United States and Canada to east central Europe have received little attention so far. But numbers are now considerable and in the context of globalisation it seems appropriate to conceptualise communities of Westerners in terms of transnational social spaces as defined by Glick Schiller et al. Study of Americans in Prague reveals three main groups: enterprise managers, lifestyle migrants and entrepreneurs in small and medium-sized enterprises. All are engaged in a variety of different processes of community-building, often with clear trends towards a new transnationalism. Yet, the individual attempt to live in two societies is limited by the marked boundaries of the communities and by the degree of social exclusion which they experience from the majority population. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

锰三角地区电解锰压滤渣高温可控脱硫生产活性微粉项目经济效益与社会效益分析

电解锰压滤渣是工业生产金属锰过程中采用湿法酸浸电解工艺产生的一种工业废渣。这种传统的废渣处理处置方式,极易造成严重的环境污染和地质灾害的发生。本次研究将电解锰压滤渣通过焙烧生产活性微粉、产生的脱硫烟气制硫酸,是一种能有效解决电解锰压滤渣处理处置和综合利用的方法。本文对"锰三角"地区拟建20万吨电解锰压滤渣焙烧生产活性微粉、脱硫烟气制硫酸生产示范线项目,进行了区域市场调研,对项目的经济效益与社会效益进行分析。该项目年均可实现销售收入4162.7万元,为当地循环经济和锰产业可持续发展探索了一条新的出路。