Invisible colour: Landscapes of whiteness and racial identity in international development

Racialized identity in relation to international development is a surprisingly unanalyzed theme within anthropology, even though extensively explored in connection with contemporary western multi-cultural societies and historical relations between different parts of the world. In the paper I explore race and whiteness in relation to international development, emphasizing the importance of analyzing how the historical construction of racial identity continues to inform actual lived relationships of people belonging to different geographical spaces. In order to capture the importance of development in visual and everyday lives of people in different parts of the world, I use the term "developscape", adapting Arjun Appadurai's (1996) idea of globalization consisting of different "scapes", furhtermore, as asking how this "developscape" is racialized.     

Shared sovereignty and the politics of peace: evaluating the EU's 'catalytic' framework in the eastern Mediterranean

There has been a consistent failure on the part of international actors over the past four decades to resolve the Cyprus problem. The EU framework, heralded as a catalyst, has failed so far to bring the two sides together, despite the significant advantages it possesses in linking resolution of the Cyprus problem with the Turkish ambition to join the EU. Cyprus has always been a testing ground for experimental approaches to dealing with conflict, and what may well emerge after the failure of the Annan Plan in 2004 is a form of 'shared sovereignty' where important governance functions that remain contested are undertaken by the UN and EU Commission. Furthermore, the EU framework has led to the Cyprus problem becoming a catalyst for Turkish accession. While very controversial, these avenues offer the opportunity for the international community to accept the political and interventionary nature of the 'peace' they prescribe.     

Trauma in the Crusader period city of Caesarea: a major port in the medieval eastern Mediterranean

Caesarea is the first fortified city to undergo palaeopathological analysis of its Crusader period inhabitants. This study of the 12th and 13th century population aims to determine the major types of trauma present, whether from weapon injuries or accidents. Since the Crusades were known for the significant number of battles and raids that took place, weapon injuries were expected to be common. Thirteen cases of trauma are described and a highly unexpected pattern has come to light. These cases do not include one single example of weapon‐related trauma. Every fracture is of a type expected from accidents or interpersonal violence without weapons. Possible explanations include the location of the city deep within Frankish territory and the robust city walls giving effective protection to the inhabitants, and also that the population were involved in activities that left them prone to accidents but not weapon injuries. The other important finding from this study was that the cases of lower limb long bone spiral fractures had healed in a near‐anatomical alignment. This is not what we would expect, as a proportion of these injuries would normally have been unstable and tend to heal poorly aligned. The good position could have resulted from surgeons' use of splints to immobilise the bones while they healed. This suggestion is supported by laws of the kingdom of Jerusalem, which stated that surgeons were to be punished if they allowed such fractures to heal at an angle. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cultural impact of modernization and tourism on Dai villages in Xishuangbanna,China

The development of tourism can have a considerable sociocultural impact on ethnic communities, but few studies have attempted to separate the unique impact of ethnic tourism from the overall impact of modernization and describe its mechanism clearly. This paper describes a quasi-natural experiment performed in three typical Dai villages in different stages of tourism development. A crosswise and longitudinal comparative study was performed on Dai village culture. The study indicates the following: (1) spiritual culture has been transmitted relatively unchanged across generations in three Dai villages, but material culture has undergone various degrees of change. (2) The changes in material culture and some parts of institutional culture have been caused primarily by the pressure of overall social modernization. (3) Currently, the overall thrust of modernization in mainstream Chinese society has driven some ethnic cultural practices out of use, while the endogenous driving force of tourism development in ethnic communities has pulled them back into use. (4) Under the influence of modernization, the issue of whether ethnic tourism communities can be developed in a sustainable way depends on both bottom-up and top-down factors: the leading role played by community elites internally, developing useful parts of ethnic culture and discarding useless parts during repeated games in the tourism field, and government policy and guidance facilitating planning.     

Geo-strategy and the persistence of antiquity: surveying mythical hydrographies in the eastern Mediterranean, 1784–1869

This paper explores late eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century mappings of three strategic sites in the Eastern Mediterranean, each with a notable ancient history: the Straits of the Dardanelles, and the isthmuses of Suez and Mount Athos. Considering mapping as a culturally and historically situated cognitive practice, the paper focuses on the rhetorical use of Classical antiquity (the Persian Wars) in the geopolitical discourse of that period and in the legitimization of great hydraulic projects, like the Suez Canal. At the same time, it also seeks to re-evaluate Mediterranean straits and isthmuses in their geographical specificity, as physical and imaginative ‘gateways’ to the Orient, as ‘connecting points’ and boundaries between the Self and the Other.     

Borders,planning and policy transfer: historical transformation of development discourses in the Finnish Torne Valley

European Union spatial policies have become a key institutional context in which to study policy transfer processes in European border areas. These policies are, however, only the most recent part of these transformation processes which raises a need for more historically sensitive approaches. An historical perspective is important, since border regions are historical processes with particular path-dependent development trajectories and power structures. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion concerning the transformation of European border regions by looking at the policy transfer of regional development discourses in the Finnish Torne Valley. The study material consists of strategic development documents produced by the Finnish border municipalities and the municipal-based co-operation organizations from the 1930s to 2013. The examination, based on critical discourse analysis, shows that the transformation process is driven by national trends and the dominant planning discourse. Nevertheless, the particular border setting and local discourse on ‘united Torne Valley’ have also intertwined with political and economic processes during different time periods.     

Progress before modernization: Foreign interpretations of American development in James Bryce's generation

This essay considers how observers from various national backgrounds explained the late nineteenth‐century United States as a developing nation. Outsiders often portrayed American industrialization, urbanization, corporate capitalism, and similar modernizing trends as manifestations of transnational forces that would eventually reshape their own countries, but they also stressed ways that American development diverged from what was taking place at home. The evolutionary mindset that infused many of these writers ‐ law professor and politician James Bryce being a noteworthy example ‐ encouraged them to view the ‘progress’ of the United States as a product of Darwinian adaptation and variation. The enormous territory and resources held by the United States supposedly rewarded and reinforced the aggressive, enterprising qualities of Anglo‐American culture, which facilitated emergence of a distinctive American civilization. Racial thinking thus pervades these accounts. Nevertheless, they draw attention to ways that environment, resources, and regional dynamics ‐ factors often overlooked in the modernization framework normally applied by historians to this so‐called Gilded Age ‐ drove and molded American development.     

The anthropology of modernization and the modernization of anthropology

John J. Poggie, Jr. and Robert N. Lynch, eds. Rethinking Modernization. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1974. xii + 405 pp. Tables, illustrations, maps, figures, bibliography, and index. $15.95.     

Archaeobotanical inference of Bronze Age land use and land cover in the eastern Mediterranean

Charcoal and charred seeds at five Bronze Age archaeological sites discern ancient land use in the eastern Mediterranean. Seed frequencies of orchard crops, annual cereals and pulses, and wild or weedy plants are used to characterize plant utilization at different archaeological sites on the island of Cyprus, in the Rift Valley of Jordan, and in the Jabbul Plain and along the upper Euphrates River valley in Syria. Seed to charcoal ratios provide proxies to determine the relative usage of dung versus wood for fuel across the ancient Mediterranean landscape. Greater charcoal and lower charred seed values are interpreted to represent a wooded environment, while higher amounts of charred seeds and minimal wood charcoal suggest a much great use of dung as a fuel source. Interestingly, Politiko-Troullia (Cyprus, Cypriot archaeological sites are, by convention, named for the nearest modern village (Politiko), followed by an italicized toponym (Troullia) referring to the plot of land that incorporates the site) has the lowest seed to charcoal ratio, suggesting its residents primarily burned wood and that the landscape surrounding Troullia remained relatively wooded during the Bronze Age. In contrast, villagers at Tell el-Hayyat (Jordan) utilized a mixture of wood and dung, in contrast to Tell Abu en-Ni’aj (Jordan), and especially Umm el-Marra and Tell es-Sweyhat (Syria), where inhabitants relied solely on dung fuel. Comparative analysis and interpretation of seed and charcoal evidence thus illustrates the variety of fuel use strategies necessitated by the dynamic and diverse Bronze Age landscapes of the Eastern Mediterranean.     

Competing discourses of territorial development: tensions between cities and regions as a result of the new regionalism

Competition between metropolitan areas and old regions is one of the most visible results of the ‘new regionalism’ policy in the EU. The aim of this paper is to explain the newly emerged tensions between the regions and the cities within the EU in the context of the ‘new regionalism’. The newly introduced ‘Integrated Territorial Investments’ (ITI), a potentially powerful instrument of the cohesion policy of the EU was presented as ‘a flexible mechanism for formulating integrated responses to diverse territorial needs’. However, this flexibility produced a competitive relationship between cities and regions in their chase for money. Based on interviews with sub-state officials, the study focuses on two countries: Czechia and Slovakia. They are both major recipients of EU structural funds and the ITI tool is being implemented in both of them, however with different outcomes. Three variables have been identified as major factors causing the tensions: insufficient administrative capacity, political challenges and lack of shared understanding of priorities of regional development among sub-state actors.     

Landscapes on the Margins: Gender and homelessness in Canada

This introductory article examines the issue of gendered homelessness and asks why so little academic feminist writing addresses this theme. The article begins with reference to a feminist novel—The Longings of Women by Marge Piercy—that does tackle this matter. The invisibility of the novel's homeless character is used as a way of introducing some distinctions between women's and men's homelessness. More generally, the article has two objectives. The first is to examine what feminist and other critical geographers have said, conceptually and empirically, about gendered homelessness, especially in Canada but also in other Western contexts. The second involves highlighting the problematic nature of too great a focus on visibility in relation to gendered homelessness, and offers an alternative reading drawn from examining the relations of bodies and urban space in conjunction with a discussion about the politics of scale and difference. All told, this collection of essays is an effort to highlight the often hidden and variable nature of gendered homelessness in Ontario, Canada and to argue that the theme is worthy of greater attention by feminist geographers.

Paisajes en los margines: género y la falta de vivienda

Éste artículo introductoria examina el tema de género y la falta de vivienda y pregunta porque hay pocos escritos feministas académicas que toca éste tema. El artículo empieza con relación a una novela feminista—The Longings of Women por Marge Piercy—que trata el tema. La invisibilidad del personaje sin hogar en el libro se utiliza como una manera de introducir algunas distinciones entre la falta de vivienda de mujeres y hombres. Más generalmente, el artículo tiene dos objetivos. El primer es examinar lo que feminista y otros geógrafos críticos han dicho conceptualmente y empíricamente sobre género y la falta de viviendo, no solo en Canadá sino en otros contextos Occidentales. El segundo involucra destacar la naturaleza problemática de un enfoque extensivo en la visibilidad en relación a género y la falta de viviendo, y ofrecer una lectura alternativa que viene de examinando las relaciones de cuerpos y espacio urbano conjuntamente con una discusión sobre las políticas de espacio y diferencia. En general, ésta compilación de ensayos es una tentativa para enfatizar que la naturaleza de género y la falta de vivienda en Ontario, Canadá son a menudo escondidos y variables, y además para argumentar que éste tema vale la pena de tender más atención por geógrafas feministas.     

Going West and Going Out: discourses,migrants, and models in Chinese development

Abstract

In 1999 China announced the launching of the Open up the West campaign, sometimes called “Going West,” to help western China finally catch up to the much wealthier eastern, coastal areas after several decades of lagging behind. The same year, China also announced a “Going Out” strategy to encourage Chinese investment abroad. The 15 years since then have witnessed dramatic Chinese government investment in various development activities in western regions of China, as well as around the world. Though rarely considered together, we argue that there are significant parallels in development discourse, the centrality of physical infrastructure, the characteristics of Chinese labor migration and the nature of migrant-local relations, and the application of “models from elsewhere” in Going West and Going Out. Considering these parallels can help shed light on Chinese development discourse and practice, as China becomes increasingly important in the field of development once dominated by Western countries. Finally, we also consider direct connections and convergences between the two strategies in China’s neighboring countries of Asia and in the One Belt One Road initiative.     

The development of metropolitan regions in Germany in light of the restructuring of the German states: two temporally overlapping discourses

The topics of the territorial structure of the German states and the strategic development of the metropolitan regions are at first glance two completely separate discourses. However, this paper demonstrates that the development of the metropolitan regions in Germany, supported by Federal Spatial Planning, has at least in some cases been influenced by the possibility of offering an alternative to state restructuring and that the metropolitan regions today continue to represent a basis for interstate cooperation. The in-depth observation of four cross-state metropolitan regions makes clear that different development paths have been followed. Thus, while certain metropolitan regions have distanced themselves from issues relevant to interstate cooperation, the examples of Hamburg and Berlin-Brandenburg show the value of metropolitan regions for cooperation between states and as an alternative to state restructuring.     

Materials on the Medical Geography of Mountain Landscapes

The effect of mountain climates, solar radiation, soils, waters, plant and animal life on the human organism is analyzed. Environmental conditions and their influence on the state of the organism are discussed separately for low, middle, and high mountains and for highlands or high plateaus.