From ‘Global’ to ‘Revolutionary’ Development

This article argues that Horner and Hulme's call for moving towards ‘global development’ to do justice to changing 21^st century development geographies neither contributes to advancing our understanding of contemporary development challenges nor helps articulate realistic responses to tackle them. A key problem is that they try to explain several general trends in the geography of development with reference to mainstream statistics without appropriate critical reflection or adequate theorization. Focusing specifically on the environmental and conservation aspects of development, this article contends that these omissions not only confuse the debate on the current state and geographies of development, they risk something more serious, namely the reinforcement of a generic development narrative which will intensify 21^st century development challenges. The article concludes that what we need is not global development but revolutionary development.     

The ‘Political’ Economies of Central America: Foreign Aid and Labour Remittances

This paper reviews recent literature to show how foreign aid and labour remittances have transformed Central America's macroeconomy, state apparatus and class structure over the last ten years. They have lifted real exchange rates, changed the composition of investment, lowered food prices, and directly supported large numbers of people. Control over these resources is now a major focus of political activity and donors play a greater role in economic policy. Project administration has become a major function of the state. Planning and public sector personnel management have become more difficult. Foreign funds have favoured decentralization and increased participation, but they have also weakened the core capacity of the state to execute policies. Transfers have fomented new social groups including sectors supported by remittances, foreign-financed soldiers, public employees, non-traditional export producers, financial intermediaries who channel remittances and refugees.     

‘Divided Within Itself’: The Parliamentary Labour ‘Right’ and the Demise of Post‐War Revisionist Social Democracy in the 1970s

The article seeks to identify a neglected dimension of the ‘crisis’ and schism of British social democracy in the 1970s from within the ranks of the parliamentary Labour ‘right’ itself. Accounts of the so‐called ‘Labour right’ and its influential revisionist social democratic tradition have emphasized its generic cohesion and uniformity over contextual analysis of its inherent intellectual, ideological and political range and diversity. The article seeks to evaluate differential responses of Labour's ‘right‐wing’ and revisionist tendency as its loosely cohesive framework of Keynesian social democracy imploded in the 1970s, as a means of demonstrating its relative incoherence and fragmentation. The ‘crisis of social democracy’ revealed much more starkly its complex, heterogeneous character, irremediably ‘divided within itself’ over a range of critical political and policy themes and the basis of social democratic political philosophy itself. The article argues that it was its own wider political fragmentation and ideological introspection in the face of the ‘crisis’ of its historic ‘belief system’ which led to the fracture of Labour's ‘dominant coalition’ and the rupture of British social democracy.     

Redefining ‘Aid’ in the China–Africa Context

Discussions on the politics of Chinese engagement with African development have been marked by increasing concern over Chinese use of aid in exchange for preferential energy deals. Normative liberal discourse criticizes the Chinese for disbursing ‘rogue aid’ and undermining good governance in the African continent. These criticisms not only ignore the longer‐term motivations and modalities of Chinese aid and the historical diversity of Chinese relations with Africa, but also uncritically assume ‘Western’ aid to be morally ‘superior’ and ‘more effective’ in terms of development outcomes. This paper consists of three parts. First, it will discuss the debates surrounding Chinese engagement in Africa, especially around aid and development issues. Second, the paper maps the historical development of China–Africa engagement and investigates the impacts of the changing modalities of Chinese aid with reference to case studies of two countries: Angola and Ghana. It then offers a comparative analysis of the similarities and differences between these two cases. The principal argument is that Chinese and Western donors employ different ideologies and practices of governance to conceal their own interests and political discourses in the African continent.     

Introduction: The state and historic buildings: preserving ‘the national past’

Historic buildings are important in nationalism through their roles in building and reinforcing national identity. As part of the expanding ‘heritage industry’, they are also of growing economic and political importance. Despite their physical existence, historic buildings are ‘created’ – they must be constructed as ‘historic’ through processes of choice and the attachment of significance. The state can perform these functions through policies that define and select buildings for protection, by ownership and funding, and by its uses of buildings for nationalistic purposes. Yet state actors can have good reasons – nationalistic and economic – to destroy or fail to preserve historic buildings. The paper examines why, when and how state actors pursue policies to protect historic buildings. It offers arguments about patterns of state action that part of state strategies to promote national identity and cultural nationalism.     

FOCUS: The Scapula Representation could be the Key: A Further Contribution to the ‘Klasies Pattern’ Debate

Past discussion on the unusual skeletal part representations at Klasies River Mouth is briefly summarized. Recent discussion in this journal, regarding the “Klasies Pattern”, has focused upon the differential destruction of small and large bovid bone epiphyses by carnivore ravaging and density-mediated attrition. Bartram & Marean (1999) argue, from ethnoarchaeological study and consideration of other archaeological sites, that, unless shaft fragments are painstakingly identified, the upper limb bone epiphyses of large bovids will be seriously under-represented. They therefore suggest that the “Klasies Pattern” is likely to be artefact of taphonomic and analytical processes. Klein, Cruz-Uribe & Milo (1999) replied with a defence of the analytical procedures employed during the original Klasies River Mouth analysis. They also state that there was very little evidence of carnivore ravaging at Klasies River Mouth. In this paper, it is pointed out that Bartram & Marean's (1999) study only considered the humerus, radius, femur, tibia and metapodia. However, in the “Klasies Pattern” it is the scapula that is most notably abundant in the small bovid classes and most notably scarce in the large bovid classes. It is argued that, from the study of bone mineral densities and Brain's (1981) carnivore ravaging experiment, there is no reason to expect a differentially greater taphonomic destruction of large bovid scapulae. In fact, exactly the reverse may be true. It is therefore argued that at least this aspect of the “Klasies Pattern” must be considered to represent human differential bone transport, rather than an artefact of taphonomic processes.     

Organic Thought in Urban Geography: ‘The ’Evolution‘ of towns

This paper is a brief cautionary tale on the problem of the usage of the term ‘evolution’ by urban geographers. Most geographers. and other social scientists, have used a Darwinian interpretation of the term. without facing its logical developments. and seem unaware of recent changes in evolutionary thought. In this light the relevance of the continued use of The term is questioned.     

Recategorizing ‘Public’ and ‘Private’ Property in Ghana

In the course of political struggle in northern Ghana, the classification of land and resources has shifted between the two ‘master categories’ of public and private. Despite the fact that master categories may be wholly inadequate in accounting for the actual complexity of property objects, social units and rights, they are not divorced from the agency of people who have something at stake. Laws, rules and by‐laws are referred to as important markers and fashion the local political struggles over the rights to and control over resources. This article offers a general account of conflicts and the recategorization of resources in the property system of small‐scale irrigation. It examines the logics and positioning of the different stakeholders, and discusses how different levels of public policy have provided opportunities for such changes. A case study presents the opportunity to examine the details of a particular controversy demonstrating the social and political powers involved in the recategorization of property.     

‘The Law is to Blame’: The Vulnerable Status of Common Property Rights in Sub‐Saharan Africa

The context of this article is the surge in large‐scale land acquisitions of African lands by local and foreign investors for commercial food, livestock, oil palm and carbon trading purposes. Involuntary loss of rural lands at scale is not new to Africa's majority rural poor, nor is it driven by a single factor. Historically inequitable land relations within communities, compounded by a century of capitalist transformation, take their toll. This study argues, however, that the weak legal status of communal rights is the most pernicious enabler in their demise, allowing governments to take undue liberties with their citizens’ lands, and particularly those which are unfarmed and by tradition held in common. While international acquiescence to abusive domestic law helps entrench the diminishment of majority land rights, the domestic laws themselves are principally at fault and necessarily the target for change. This legal vulnerability is explored here through an examination of more than twenty African land laws.     

The ‘Global’ versus the ‘Local’: Cognitive Processes of Kin Determination in Aboriginal Australia

ABSTRACT Morgan and his informants' interpretation of Australian social categories as ‘marriage classes’ has survived in Dumont's (and Viveiros de Castro's) distinction of a ‘local’ (Dravidian systems) and a ‘global’ (Australian systems) formula. This paper explains that the ‘global formula’ is neither a necessary nor an applied device in Australian kin category determination, even when genealogical memory is short and when there is a non‐limitation of range in the extension of categories. Instead, a heuristic model, which is called the relational triangle, is proposed. This model depicts the procedure through which Australian people pragmatically determine and extend kin categories. Moreover, it also offers a visualisation of the cognitive schema and processes framing discourse and behaviour in relation to kinship and draws some parallels with Greenberg's hypotheses on markedness in kinship classes.     

From ‘Problem City’ to ‘Promise City’: Gentrification and the Revitalisation of Newcastle

The city of Newcastle is a complex and changing landscape. Once regarded as Australia's ‘problem city’, Newcastle's identity is being significantly transformed. This identity transformation draws significantly upon the emergence of more cosmopolitan landscapes within inner Newcastle associated with the gentrification of these areas. The discourse of gentrification is inherently post‐industrial, providing a cleaner and more positive identity as Newcastle seeks to erase the stigma of its’ industrial heritage. However, as landscapes are the amalgam of multiple identities, Newcastle's industrial heritage periodically re‐emerges to problematise the city's newly adopted cosmopolitan identity.     

NRM Regions in Australia: the ‘Haves’ and the ‘Have Nots’

This paper identifies external factors affecting the capacity of Australia's now‐formalised 56 regional natural resource management (NRM) bodies and their community‐based Boards to meet planning and management responsibilities. It demonstrates that little is known about the basic capacity‐related characteristics of NRM regions, despite the lengthy and elaborate process of regionalism that Australia has embarked upon, with its associated and substantial devolution of responsibilities and resources. A suite of indicators is used to develop an ‘exploratory’ capacity typology of NRM regions. The ten regional ‘types’ identified are found to attract varying budget allocations under the Natural Heritage Trust Extension and National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality. There are indications that State and regional interests within and outside NRM can significantly influence the distribution of resources. An examination of resources allocated to capacity‐building activities shows significant differences between regions in the scale of resources allocated (0–96% of total budget). The paper argues the case for intervention to reduce the gap between ‘have’ and ‘have not’ regions, and for further exploration of disparities in the allocation of resources to capacity‐building activities. Clarification is needed of the extent to which capacity‐building activities adequately target regional NRM bodies and their Boards.