Booming solidarity: Sandinista Nicaragua and the West German Solidarity movement in the 1980s

This article explores the reasons for the strength and persistence of West German solidarity with Sandinista Nicaragua during the 1980s. The image of Nicaragua played a key role for activists, as it motivated commitment and identification with the revolution. Their positive perceptions were shaped by the revolutionary reforms in Nicaragua and an effective image campaign by the Sandinista government as well as by activists' political desires and their discontent with West German politics. By promoting their reform policies through a transnational communications infrastructure, by practising cultural and public diplomacy as well as by playing host to thousands of visitors, the Sandinistas encouraged supporters to identify with the revolutionary process and feel part of it at a time when many activists felt like an isolated leftist minority in the Federal Republic.     

The Pied Piper of the ghetto: Lyndon Johnson, environmental justice, and the politics of rat control

When Congress rejected President Lyndon Johnson’s Rat Extermination and Control Bill in the summer of 1967, in a mood of growing conservatism, it inadvertently sparked a heated political controversy that brought the desperate conditions of life in inner-city America into sharp focus. This article focuses on the issue of rat infestation to explore the conditions of “urban blight” that disproportionately afflicted ghetto communities in the United States during the 1960s and that represented a form of environmental inequality linked to racial marginalization and poverty. It is suggested that a growing awareness of environmental aspects of inequality increasingly fueled ghetto discontent, feeding the outbreak of riots during the “long, hot summers,” and spurring liberals to think of new ways to understand the problems of inner-city poverty.     

The Violence of Poverty: Theology and Activism in an “Age of Austerity”

ABSTRACT

Faith groups are in the front line of the struggle to defeat poverty in breadline Britain. Given their roots in local communities Churches and Christian NGOs are well-placed to challenge economic policies that have resulted in the spiraling of food poverty, homelessness, personal debt and child poverty. By framing poverty as a political choice, a form of structural violence and systemic sin this paper brings peace studies and political theology into a constructive dialogue. In the face of ongoing “austerity” the paper demonstrates that poverty represents a clear and present danger to the social fabric of the UK and argues that only a re-imagined interdisciplinary theology of liberation can provide academics and activists with the tools needed to defeat systemic poverty and the cultural violence upon which it rests.     

SMALL BUSINESS VIABILITY IN THE URBAN GHETTO*

ABSTRACT Within the minority communities of large SMSAs, neither the black-owned business nor the small nonminority enterprises are flourishing. Facing limited access to financial capital as well as constrained markets, the ghetto firms that do persist are typically quite small in terms of sales and employment. Among black establishments, the least educated entrepreneurs are the ones who are most likely to remain in business. Unless greater financial capital is forthcoming and better educated owners are induced to remain in business, the business community that is located in minority neighborhoods of large urban areas may be destined to stagnate.     

Toronto's gay village (1969–1982): plotting the politics of gay identity

Between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, a loose association of gay social spaces consolidated into what is now known as the 'gay village' in the Church and Wellesley street areas in downtown Toronto. Scholars argue that, while these residential and commercial districts evolved prior to the formation of organized gay political organizations, they suggest that the emergence of these districts as political and commercial districts was a direct result of deliberate local gay activism. I argue here that contrary to this literature and for much of its history, the gay movement was largely opposed to the existence of specifically gay-identified spaces, particularly those operated by both heterosexual and homosexual businesspersons. Toronto's gay activists, using different ideological frameworks, struggled to constitute a homosexual identity that stood mainly in opposition to the so-called 'ghetto gay' and to construct alternative spaces that were seen as more appropriate to the formation of a properly politicized homosexual identity. Nevertheless, by the early 1980s, as the gay village continued to thrive and as the players in gay movement politics changed, the gay ghetto became the gay village and was celebrated as a location of political strength and social necessity. This article explores that material and symbolic transformation.     

The blowback of repression and the dynamics of North African radicalization

The narrative of the historic struggle against colonialism is subject to a high degree of political manipulation in North Africa. Myths, memories and symbols based on the struggle against colonial oppression, whether 'true' or not, provide a latent and continually relevant context for understanding and interpreting contemporary events. For both recent North African immigrants, and second, third and fourth generation immigrants to Europe, contemporary injustices and violence, whether perpetrated in Europe or in the Maghreb, are being understood in this historical colonial context. For some, these myths, memories and symbols may be the reason why they join a peaceful, democratic group to lobby for democracy and political transparency. For a minority of North Africans, these symbols of the past are invoked to justify a jihadist challenge to North African regimes and the West. Based on extensive interviews with North African activists and community leaders, this article will show how the collective memory of the abuse of power by the state, both during and after the colonial era, has created a latent mistrust of the West, especially of France. Political repression in North Africa since independence has created a rupture between what was expected from independence and the realities of political life, and North Africans often ascribe this disappointment to the inherently French character of the regimes which were in power during the 1950s and 1960s. North Africans also believe that this is reflected in the continuing active intervention on the part of the West to support these illiberal regimes in the face of democratic and popular challenges. The subsequent senses of injustice and disappointment, relating to the use and abuse of state power, continues to shape North African political mobilization and, worryingly, has created a latent basis for radicalization among North Africans living and working in Europe.     

民族地区负责任旅游扶贫开发模式与实现路径

国外关注贫困问题的负责任旅游研究和实践为我国民族地区旅游扶贫开发提供了新的视角。我国民族地区与贫困地区、旅游资源丰富地区具有高度的重叠性,进而衍生出了多样化的旅游扶贫开发模式。这些旅游扶贫开发模式对民族地区旅游业发展和贫困人口致富起到了促进作用的同时,也因缺乏对文化景观脆弱性和自然生态敏感性的系统考虑而产生了诸多负面影响。基于此,本文重点讨论了负责任旅游视角下民族地区扶贫开发的模式重构问题,明晰了民族地区负责任旅游扶贫开发的战略取向和运行机制,构建了民族地区负责任旅游扶贫开发的旅游者驱动和社会型旅游企业带动两种模式,进而提出了与之相适应的实施对策与建议。     

Challenging Orthodoxies: Understanding Poverty in Pastoral Areas of East Africa

Understanding and alleviating poverty in Africa continues to receive considerable attention from a range of diverse actors, including politicians, international celebrities, academics, activists and practitioners. Despite the onslaught of interest, there is surprisingly little agreement on what constitutes poverty in rural Africa, how it should be assessed, and what should be done to alleviate it. Based on data from an interdisciplinary study of pastoralism in northern Kenya, this article examines issues of poverty among one of the continent's most vulnerable groups, pastoralists, and challenges the application of such orthodox proxies as incomes/expenditures, geographic remoteness, and market integration. It argues that current poverty debates ‘homogenize’ the concept of ‘pastoralist’ by failing to acknowledge the diverse livelihoods and wealth differentiation that fall under the term. The article concludes that what is not needed is another development label (stereotype) that equates pastoralism with poverty, thereby empowering outside interests to transform rather than strengthen pastoral livelihoods.     

Spatialities of transnational resistance to globalization: the maps of grievance of the Inter-Continental Caravan

This paper explores the spatialities constructed through resistances to globalization. It focuses on the Inter-Continental Caravan, an ambitious project which united activists from the Indian New Farmers Movements with West European green activists in contesting neo-liberal institutions and biotechnology. The paper argues that these political activities constructed distinctive 'maps of grievance'. This term is used to suggest that the construction of grievances has both a distinctive spatiality and is constitutive of political identities. The paper argues that the different maps of grievances generated through the project were both a condition of possibility for these transnational alliances and exerted pressure on the formation of solidarities. It concludes by arguing that the location of counter-globalization politics at the intersection of different routes of resistance can be integral to the formation of alternative political imaginaries.     

These Bars Can't Hold Us Back: Plowing Incarcerated Geographies with Restorative Food Justice

Mass incarceration entrenches racial and class inequality and segregation. Before, during, and after low‐income people of color enter prison, they experience a range of barriers and biases that make it difficult to break out of the prison pipeline. This article investigates food justice and restorative justice activists in Oakland, California who are intervening at the point of reentry. I argue for the significance of teasing out the connections between food and carceral politics as a way to expand the practice and understanding of food justice. Specifically, I show how the incarcerated geographies of former prisoners, that is, perspectives and experiences that result due to the prison pipeline, motivate the formation of a restorative food justice. The associated healing and mutual aid practices increase social equity by creating spaces to overcome the historical trauma of mass incarceration, produce living wage jobs, rearticulate relationships to food and land, and achieve policy reforms.     

Assessing Poverty and Poverty Alleviation: Evidence from West Bengal

Recent interest in poverty and poverty relief has included debates that have moved beyond narrow concerns of consumption and income generation. Sen's research on entitlements and capabilities revolutionized approaches to poverty in the 1980s, and his work has itself been open to critical appraisals that have stressed empowerment and vulnerability as issues of equal importance. Some of these theoretical debates are briefly reviewed here, after which the frameworks for analysis that they suggest are applied to the study of rural poverty in West Bengal. The two tasks that the paper then sets itself are to illustrate the empirical value of broader conceptualizations of poverty, and to highlight the methodological difficulties that they raise.     

The Importance of Household Size and Composition in Constructing Poverty Profiles: An Illustration from Vietnam

The calculation of income–poverty profiles should allow for household size and composition, but rarely does so. Failure to do this means that the poverty profile will be distorted. The appropriate adjustments are straightforward, requiring simple assumptions which, whilst arbitrary, are better than ignoring the problem. Not making these adjustments distorts not only the relationship between household size and poverty, but all aspects of the poverty profile correlated to household size. For the case of Vietnam, this article shows that, if the adjustments are not made, rural poverty is under–stated as is poverty amongst those with little education, minority ethnic groups and female–headed households. Far fewer children live in poverty than is suggested when the appropriate data adjustments are not made.     

Responding to the second ghetto: Chicago's Joe Smith and Sin Corner

World War Two and its aftermath transformed Chicago's African American community. The Great Migration entered a second and more intense phase as black migrants flooded into Northern cities. This massive relocation of Southern blacks resulted in the expansion and reformulation of Chicago's ghettoes on both the West and South Sides of the city. The question of a response to this Second Ghetto from African Americans themselves presents itself. White politicians, cultural elites and businessmen still controlled the city and could impose their will on its neighborhoods simply redrawing ghetto boundaries to reflect the new realities of the postwar era. The strange case of Joe Smith and Sin Corner sheds some light on black agency in the 1950s. The African American middle class had resources it commanded to try and protect itself from racial injustice. These resources, however, were based on class privileges not enjoyed by most in the African American community.     

Ten Square Miles Surrounded By Reality? Materialising Alternative Economies Using Local Currencies

This article examines the success of paper‐based alternative currencies in facilitating convivial, sustainable localised economies. Based on fieldwork in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, it discusses the capacity of activists to create alternative forms of currency that communicate the organisers’ visions of a localised economy, before examining material practices: for whom do the currencies work, and who struggles to use them? Using insights from a diverse economies perspective, the article argues that we cannot read off the likelihood of an economic actor using the currency from the extent of their local economic embeddedness: economic actors in similar positions respond to the same stimuli in different ways, and local business owners and activists can form productive alliances to develop their shared project. The article concludes by arguing that local currencies should be used more proactively to stimulate new forms of concrete local production to meet locally identified needs.     

Breathless: Schools, Air Toxics, and Environmental Justice in California

The exposure of children to environmental disamenities has emerged as a key policy concern in recent years, with some analysts and activists suggesting that minority children are disproportionately impacted. Utilizing a dataset that combines air toxics at the census tract level with school-based demographic and other information, this article indicates disparate exposures for students of color in California schools and suggests that there may be negative impacts on one measure of academic performance, even after controlling for other factors usually associated with test scores. Policy implications include a special focus on school remediation and strengthening overall efforts to reduce emissions "hot spots."     

Bridging East and West: Muslim-identified activists and organisations in the UK anti-war movements

Divisive Orientalist discourses and practices, mobilised in the 'war on terror', have been resisted through collaborative political projects designed to contest and close gaps between East and West, Muslim and non-Muslim. Through interviews with Muslim-identified and other British anti-war activists, this paper traces the making of a 'new bridge between the East and the West'. It then goes on to examine the limitations of this political model and describe the search for political relationships that would mobilise Muslim identities in more subtle ways and speak past rather than against contemporary Orientalism.     

青海农村少数民族贫困妇女文化教育救助调查与分析

近年来,青海农村少数民族贫困妇女对子女的文化教育、家庭饮食和医疗保健的认识有了一定的提高,但是自觉脱贫的意识较差,还存在对文化教育重视不够等诸多问题。解决这些问题,既要不断提高广大少数民族妇女学习和掌握文化技能的主动性、积极性,激发她们内在的潜能,也要通过政府和社会的有效宣传以及引导和扶持,使少数民族贫困妇女实现真正意义上的脱贫致富。     

Transurban interconnectivities: an essay on the interpretation of the revolutions of 1848

This essay discusses the interpretation of the revolutionary situations of 1848 in light of recent debates on interconnectivity in history. The concept of transurban interconnectivities is proposed as the most precise concept to capture the nature of interconnectivity in 1848. It is argued that political models circulating on a European scale at the time provided the ‘knowledge resources’ that were appropriated by urban political activists across Europe. These circulating resources were appropriated by political activists as means of political mobilisation in their particular local urban context. It is argued that circulating political communication accounts for similarities with respect to political agenda, organisational form and political repertoire evident in urban settings across Europe. This argument is supported by a series of examples of local organisation and local appropriations of liberalism, radicalism and nationalism in 1848. In the concluding paragraph, the limitations of the notion of urban–rural interconnectivity are discussed in order to clarify the nature of transurban interconnectivity.     

中国藏区脱贫与生态保护政策的联动性探讨

藏区是中国贫困发生率最高的区域之一,也是中国乃至世界最重要的生态区域,更是少数民族贫困地区最具典型意义的区域。避免扶贫和生态保护单一政策的制度缺陷,发挥二者间制度安排的联动效应,选择统筹发展路径,是藏区经济社会可持续发展的关键。     

Existing at the Interface: Indian NGO Activists as Strategic Cosmopolitans

Abstract: This paper uses life history narratives to explore the multiple and overlapping scales and sites through which the cosmopolitan subjectivities of activists in local Indian NGOs are constituted. We particularly emphasise the “intermediate” status of the activists, and the ways their positioning shapes their subjectivities in diverse ways over time and place. We draw on the idea of a strategic cosmopolitanism to consider the multiple ways their cosmopolitanism shapes the negotiation of development from their intermediate position, and to reflect on the normative and political possibilities that emerge from this process.