Blue grabbing: Reviewing marine conservation in Redang Island Marine Park,Malaysia

While academic literature and media attention has rightly focused on the numerous instances of land grabbing taking place in various corners of the world, far less attention is paid to the enclosure, appropriation and dispossession taking place in the guise of marine conservation – or the recently developed concept of “blue grabbing”. Blue grabbing articulates how marine conservation results in the appropriation of marine resources and coastal land from previous custodians by more powerful actors, such as state and tourist operators. Blue grabbing can be considered a form of primitive accumulation, yet dispossession via marine conservation does not take the conventional form of privatising land, as the spaces involved are still formally state-owned areas. Rather, it is the benefits from natural resources that contribute to capital accumulation of tourist operators and indirectly the state. Restrictions on local resource use are justified using degradation narratives of “overfishing”, while financial benefits from tourism are drained from local communities within a system lacking transparency. This intervention draws on fieldwork research to reveal how blue grabbing plays out in Redang Island Marine Park, Malaysia, yet given that blue grabbing is a recently developed concept, argues there is a pressing need for research to build a more informed picture.     

新一轮规划背景下的南京市土地征用问题

进入新世纪以来,为了贯彻党中央、国务院"五个统筹"和科学发展观的精神,适应南京市经济社会发展新形势,新一轮土地利用总体规划修编在前期研究阶段对统筹区域土地利用,优化城乡用地结构与布局等重大问题展开了深入研究,而规划作为土地管理工作中的龙头,对征地工作必然有一定的指导与影响,因此本文以南京市为例,从新一轮土地利用总体规划角度出发,深入分析其在征地过程中的作用,提出相应的对策措施。     

'You Gotta Love This City': The Whitlams and inner Sydney

This analysis of music in cultural geography, in the context of the inner Sydney-based band, The Whitlams, traces the creative links between sounds, 'scenes' and places. Based in Newtown, The Whitlams are associated with political values, evident in the band's name, and social values tied to and opposed to urban changes, such as gentrification, where community is threatened. The band's lyrics emanate from their experiences, challenging commercialisation of city life at different scales and reflecting the anomie of city living, but defending its virtues, whilst also fostering place stereotypes. The audience was similarly inner-city based until the band's recent commercial success, which has challenged The Whitlams' identity and radicalism, and resulted in mainstream appropriation. Though The Whitlams continue to reaffirm their local identity, and local audiences have remained, the popularity and commodification of their music has challenged concepts of shared meaning, the link between bands and their fans, and the connection between music and its place of origin. The Whitlams' music nevertheless remains a means of evoking and sharing a sense of place.