Social Mobilization in Protest of Trans‐boundary Highway Projects: Explaining Contrasting Implementation Outcomes

Trans‐boundary highways have increasingly complemented trade agreements as instruments of global economic integration, and both have incurred political protest. This article presents a comparative analysis of two recently proposed trans‐boundary highway projects, the Trans‐Texas Corridor from Mexico through Texas to Oklahoma in the USA, and the Inter‐Oceanic Highway in the southwestern Amazon where Bolivia, Brazil and Peru meet. The analysis focuses on the similar political contexts, justifications and funding models, as well as the contrasting political responses and implementation outcomes. The findings reveal important differences in the two cases, even among their ostensibly similar aspects, which are necessary to provide an adequate explanation as to why social mobilization stopped one project but not the other. The analysis bears implications for the social‐political study of trans‐boundary infrastructure as an instrument of economic globalization.     

Accessibility interrupted: the Shimshal road,Gilgit‐Baltistan,Pakistan

Geographers working in mountainous northern Pakistan note that gains in accessibility following the Karakoram Highway's official opening in 1978 significantly reshaped social organization, economic activity, and land use across the region. These valuable regional‐scale analyses provide few insights regarding the contingent and variable ways new roads are conceived and experienced at the community and household level by the people whose mobility they drastically impact. This article addresses that limitation of regional research by focusing on an individual agricultural community called Shimshal that in 2003 completed a 40‐kilometre link‐road connecting it to the highway. Drawing from qualitative information gathered before and after the Shimshal road's completion, we briefly describe the community's motivation for constructing the road, villagers’ accessibility‐related hopes and concerns as it was being built, and some of the social, cultural, and economic changes that followed the road's completion. The article concludes by summarizing the community's response so far to landslide‐induced destruction of over 20 kilometres of the Karakoram Highway which, since January 2010, has left community members without vehicular access to the rest of Pakistan just seven years after their link‐road's completion.     

War,Livelihoods and Vulnerability in Sri Lanka

As the number of de‐stabilized regions of warfare or post‐war conditions worldwide continues to grow, this article investigates how civilians survive in the context of a civil war. It analyses livelihood strategies of farmers in the war‐torn areas of Sri Lanka, using an analytical framework based on a revised form of DFID's sustainable rural livelihoods approach, placing particular attention on the institutional reproduction of household capital assets in the war economy. The author delineates a three pillar model of household livelihood strategies focusing on how households (1) cope with the increased level of risk and uncertainty; (2) adjust their economic and social household assets for economic survival; and (3) use their social and political assets as livelihood strategies. Empirical evidence comes from four case study villages in the east of Sri Lanka. Although the four case studies were very close together geographically, their livelihood outcomes differed considerably depending on the very specific local political geography. The role of social and political assets is essential: while social assets (extended family networks) were important to absorb migrants, political assets (alliances with power holders) were instrumental in enabling individuals, households or economic actors to stabilize or even expand their livelihood options and opportunities. The author concludes that civilians in conflict situations are not all victims (some may also be culprits in the political economy of warfare), and that war can be both a threat and an opportunity, often at the same time.     

The Equity and Legitimacy of Markets for Ecosystem Services

Markets for ecosystem services are being promoted across the developing world, amidst claims that the provision of economic incentives is vital to bring about resource conservation. This article argues that equity and legitimacy are also critical dimensions in the design and implementation of such markets, if social development goals beyond economic gains are to be achieved. The article examines this issue by focusing on two communities involved in a project for carbon sequestration services of forests in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. The perceived legitimacy of the activities and the distribution of economic outcomes and project‐related information are found to be mediated by organizational allegiances and the history of social relations regarding access to property and forest resources. Political affiliation determines the project's legitimacy, while the poorest farmers and women have been excluded from project design and implementation. The authors argue that pitfalls such as these contribute to reinforcing existing power structures, inequities and vulnerabilities, and suggest that this is a product of the nature of emerging markets. Markets for ecosystem services are, in effect, limited in promoting more legitimate forms of decision making and a more equitable distribution of their outcomes.     

Unofficial Road Building in the Amazon: Socioeconomic and Biophysical Explanations

Roads have manifold social and environmental impacts, including regional development, social conflicts and habitat fragmentation. ‘Road ecology’ has emerged as an approach to evaluate the various ecological and hydrological impacts of roads. This article aims to complement road ecology by examining the socio‐spatial processes of road building itself. Focusing on the Brazilian Amazon, a heavily‐studied context due to forest fragmentation by roads, the authors consider non‐state social actors who build ‘unofficial roads’ for the purpose of gaining access to natural resources to support livelihoods and community development. They examine four case studies of roads with distinct histories in order to explain the socio‐spatial processes behind road building in terms of profit maximization, land tenure claims, co‐operative and conflictive political ecologies, and constraints as well as opportunities afforded by the biophysical environment. The study cases illustrate the need for a multi‐pronged theoretical approach to understanding road building, and call for more attention to the role of non‐state actors in road construction.     

THE CASE FOR REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT INTERVENTION: PLACE‐BASED VERSUS PLACE‐NEUTRAL APPROACHES*

ABSTRACT The paper examines the debates regarding place‐neutral versus place‐based policies for economic development. The analysis is set in the context of how development policy thinking on the part of both scholars and international organizations has evolved over several decades. Many of the previously accepted arguments have been called into question by the impacts of globalization and a new response to these issues has emerged, a response both to these global changes and also to nonspatial development approaches. The debates are highlighted in the context of a series of major reports recently published on the topic. The cases of the developing world and the European Union are used as examples of how in this changing context development intervention should increasingly focus on efficiency and social inclusion at the expense of an emphasis on territorial convergence and how strategies should consider economic, social, political, and institutional diversity in order to maximize both the local and the aggregate potential for economic development.     

Alternative Food Economies and Transformative Politics in Times of Crisis: Insights from the Basque Country and Greece

Why and how do alternative economies emerge, how do they develop and what is their contribution, if any, to transformative politics? Alternative economies proliferate in the countries worse hit by economic crisis and austerity, such as Spain or Greece. Yet the existing literature is stuck in a counter‐productive division between celebration and critique. We move beyond this division applying philosopher Daniel Bensaïd's understanding of politics to two alternative food economies, one in the Basque Country and one in Greece. We illuminate the activist strategies and specific conjunctures within which the two alternatives emerged and explain how they develop in the face of political‐economic barriers. Alternative economies, we conclude, can be transformational when they are inserted in activist strategies directed to extend conflict, social struggles and challenge the capital–state nexus.     

Examining social inclusion among pedestrian plans in Canada

Canadian policymakers promote walking to meet several goals related to transportation demand management, public health, and economic welfare. However, unequal pedestrian outcomes stubbornly persist across Canadian society. Recent debates at the intersection of social inclusion and transportation policy underscore the responsibility of stakeholders to address such inequalities and promote social engagement among excluded groups in planning procedures and their outcomes. Pedestrian plans are rare opportunities to strategize across the disparate stakeholders impacting walkable spaces—private developers, transit, parks and recreation—yet the social inclusion measures of pedestrian plans remain understudied in Canada and elsewhere. We examine pedestrian plans from 27 municipalities across the country using a social inclusion framework with participation and policy criteria. Results include that Canadian pedestrian plans fall short in promoting social inclusion with infrequent opportunities for collaborative contributions by the public; lacklustre outreach to socially‐excluded stakeholder representatives; and oversight of socioeconomic groups among accountable policies. We discuss recommendations to augment social inclusion in plan development such that socially‐excluded groups can more substantially benefit from accessible and safe walkable spaces conducive to personal well‐being and engagement with society.     

The Emergence of a Working Poor: Labour Markets,Neoliberalisation and Diverse Economies in Post‐Socialist Cities

Abstract: This paper examines the transformations of urban labour markets in two central European cities: Bratislava, Slovakia and Kraków, Poland. It highlights the emergence of in‐work poverty and labour market segmentation, which together are leading to a reconfiguration of the livelihoods and economic practices of urban households. The focus of the paper is on the growing phenomenon of insecure, poor‐quality, contingent labour. It examines the ways in which those who find themselves in, or on the margins of, contingent and insecure labour markets sustain their livelihoods. We ask how such workers and their households negotiate the segmentation of the labour market, the erosion of employment security and the emergence of in‐work poverty and explore the diverse economic practices of those who cannot rely solely on formal employment to ensure social reproduction. Further, we assess the articulations between labour market participation and exclusion, and other spheres of economic life, including informal and illegal labour, household social networks, state benefits and the use of material assets. We argue that post‐socialist cities are seeing a reconfiguration of class processes, as the materialities and subjectivities of class are remade and as the meaning of work and the livelihoods different forms of labour can sustain are changing.     

Spatially Disaggregated Modelling of Voting Outcomes and Socio‐Economic Characteristics at the 2001 Australian Federal Election

This study uses GIS and spatial modelling to relate voting outcomes at the 2001 federal election for polling booths across Australia with the socio‐economic characteristics of polling booth catchment areas. The data and analysis used are more detailed and comprehensive than previous studies. It is conducted at a fine level of spatial disaggregation across the whole nation to examine voting outcomes for both major and minor political parties. Because the aim of the paper is to distinguish voting outcomes between political parties rather than to predict voting outcomes for particular political parties, a discriminant analysis is used rather than regression analysis. The statistical discriminant analysis identifies two main socio‐economic dimensions that are able to predict polling booth outcomes with a relatively high degree of accuracy. That analysis shows how, at the 2001 federal election, the middle ground, in terms of socio‐economic characteristics, was being claimed by the Liberal Party, Country Liberal Party, The Greens, and, to a lesser extent, by the Australian Labor Party. However, the Australian Democrats, National Party and One Nation had more distinctive constituencies, with the National Party and One Nation Party competing for areas with similar socio‐economic characteristics. Using GIS mapping tools, examples of actual and predicted polling booth voting outcomes are given, along with selected socio‐economic characteristics of booth catchments.     

Networks and place in Montreal's independent music industry

The significance of networks for independent music producers has been well established in the urban‐economic geography literature and the literature centred on cultural industries. In this article, we seek to build on this literature by considering how place‐based attributes mediate network development; that is to say, how the unique characteristics of place (such as historical and cultural attributes) determine networking outcomes among spatially proximate actors. Specifically, we consider the importance of place through an examination of Montreal's independent music industry. Drawing on 46 semi‐structured interviews with key actors in the industry, we illustrate how Montreal's bilingual identity contributes to network dynamics within the industry.     

The Discourse of Maendeleo and the Politics of Women’s Participation on Mount Kilimanjaro

Studies of participatory development and empowerment often fail to place people’s actions and motivations within their wider cultural, social, political and economic context. Drawing on fieldwork which looked at village‐based women’s groups on Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, this article deconstructs the dominant discourse of development on the mountain (maendeleo) to show how women’s participation in their local organizations is used as a strategy to boost their social status and financial gains. Local, national and global discourses on development, modernity and gender are reappropriated by Chagga men and women to produce a normative Chagga developmental subjectivity which women can demonstrate by participating in women’s groups. The over‐representation of better‐off and higher‐status women in these groups suggests that, in excluding the poorest women, participation in women’s groups is serving to legitimate, and perpetuate, existing inequalities within Chagga society.     

Sustainable Development Frontiers: Is ‘Sustainable’ Cocoa Delivering Development and Reducing Deforestation?

Forest frontiers are important areas for sustainable development as they combine the need to halt deforestation with the challenges of rural poverty. In the region of San Martín, Peru, the ‘Production, Protection and Inclusion’ model combines narratives of conservation, economic development and social inclusion in what can be defined as a ‘sustainable development frontier’. This article asks how such sustainable development frontiers change social, economic and ecological outcomes in the localities where they are found. The authors examine the reality of sustainable cocoa production linked to conservation and development goals, as promoted by government bodies, international agencies, cooperatives and chocolate brands in Peru, and show how, paradoxically, sustainability goals intensify production and attract smallholders into forest frontier areas. In doing so, the boom in demand for sustainable commodities has inadvertently created conditions encouraging further colonization of forested areas leading to a continuing rise in deforestation, ecological degradation and economic instability. Narratives of sustainable development can thus reinforce commodity intensification, as they obscure alternative approaches and reproduce traditional frontier dynamics.     

Planning Sustainability: Intergenerational and Intragenerational Justice in Spatial Planning Strategies

Abstract: Subsequent to the Brundtland Report (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, Our Common Future), sustainability has been set up in many countries as a mission statement of cross‐sectoral policies. Sustainable development carries the normative notions of equity, empowerment and environmentally sensitive economic development. Thus, it seems to suggest a fundamentally different vision to neoliberal dogma, which is at the same time described as dominating all socio‐political processes. This paper intends to explore the relation between these two discursive framings of contemporary policies through the example of German spatial planning guidelines. More precisely, it addresses social justice as one pillar of sustainability and how it is operationalised in spatial planning policies in Germany. This may exemplify how the seemingly opposing discourses interact in policy practices. The empirical analysis suggests that the ways in which the German spatial planning report focused on social space in territorial terms promotes an economistic and truncated view of social justice, one which fosters the neoliberal idea of regional competition for global capital and reduces socio‐spatial justice to territorially equally distributed economic inclusion.     

Youthful Creativity in Regional Australia: Panacea for Unemployment and Out‐Migration?

This paper addresses the theme of youth out‐migration from rural Australia, in the context of recent policy discussions about creativity and its role in regional development. Ethnographic fieldwork in one rural location – the New South Wales Far North Coast – is drawn upon to highlight how creative industries are being cast as a potential way of promoting cultural activities and jobs for young people, and in turn, how they might be imagined as a means to mitigate youth out‐migration. Yet, creative industries have contradictory employment and social outcomes. Creative industries are likely to generate higher rates of youth participation in economic activities than public data reveal. However, strategies for future job growth should also consider the limitations and instabilities of creative industry employment. Second, and more broadly, the paper discusses those socio‐cultural dimensions of nascent creative industries that may have a more substantial impact when conceived as part of strategies to stem youth exodus from rural areas. Creative activities may contribute to rural development in indirect ways, especially if linked to policy goals of increased tolerance of youth activities, better provision of cultural services, and improved well‐being for young people. While formal job‐creation may be limited, creative industries could mitigate some of the impacts of youth migration to cities by enriching regional social life and mediating perceptions of the advantages and drawbacks of rural versus urban life. This kind of policy imagination requires a shift in attitudes towards young people and a more genuine commitment to encourage young people to feel that they belong in non‐metropolitan areas.     

China’s cultural future: from soft power to comprehensive national power

The Hu Jintao administration used the ‘four‐in‐one’ wording for the overall arrangement of development in China, that is, economic development, political development, cultural development and social development. The term ‘soft power’ was adopted to conceptualise the cultural development dimension. This paper used a tripartite taxonomy to examine Chinese approaches to soft power, as ‘resources’, as ‘strategies’ and as ‘outcomes’. Soft power in China was mainly used in a domestic policy context to mean cultural resources to be amassed and accumulated. Soft power could be measured as part of its comprehensive national power and compared with the hierarchical status of other nation states. Soft power as strategies meant using power softly in seeking normal economic and political advantages abroad. Soft power as outcomes meant the rise of China and its cultural renaissance.     

Women's Social Networks and Female Friendship in the Ancient Greek City

This paper explores how women used their social networks within the ancient Greek urban environment in two spheres: first with regard to their civic engagement, and second with regard to their social relationships. By examining the types of social networks in which women were involved, how they were used and their impact on social relations, it argues that historians should broaden their conception of women's contribution to the Greek civic environment. Such an approach shows how women negotiated social and economic status within the polis community, how they used their social capital as a resource for social and civic engagement and sheds light on their personal relationships. These relationships not only enhanced women's well‐being and allowed them to determine their own roles in community life, but also formed the basis of their engagement with the polis. Considering the social networks to which women belonged, and the differing types of social capital embedded in them, further enables an examination of female friendship. Recognising the contribution of women to the polis community is necessary in order to understand the wider social and civic relationships within the ancient city.     

The Amenity Complex: Towards a Framework for Analysing and Predicting the Emergence of a Multifunctional Countryside in Australia

There is growing consensus among academics, regional development organisations and rural communities that the future growth and development of rural regions is increasingly dependent upon their ability to convey, to both established and prospective residents, the ‘amenity’ of their local physical, social and economic environments. However, little research to date has sought to identify exactly what comprises ‘amenity’ in the rural context, or has examined how this conceptually slippery quality is distributed across rural Australia, or how it influences local demographic, socio‐economic and land use change. This paper attempts a broad scale investigation of rural amenity in the south‐east Australian ecumene, identifying its core components in this context, mapping its distribution and assessing the nature of its influence over in‐migration rates over the past three decades. The paper finds that, at a macro‐scale, amenity tends to follow a general gradient from high to low according to distance from the coast, and that its relationship with in‐migration rates has increased substantially between 1976–1981 and 1996–2001.     

Unpacking the Neoliberal Approach to Regional Policy: a Close Reading of John Freebairn's ‘Economic Policy for Rural and Regional Australia’

A close reading of a neoliberal intervention in policy debates on ‘the regional economic problem’ is used to throw light on this method. When it is compared to economic geography, the neoliberal approach advances a relatively simplified conception of regional economic and social life that pays little regard to their richness, complexity and grounded realities. Correspondingly, this approach encourages a vision of regional policy that normalises and exonerates the spatially uneven outcomes of market forces. This article argues that policy‐makers’ ends in the field of regional development should be alert to the limitations that arise from the neoliberal tendency to override the evidence of empirical complexity in favour of a more simple narrative.