Automated Detection of Missing Links in Bicycle Networks

Cycling is an effective solution for making urban transport more sustainable. However, bicycle networks are typically developed in a slow, piecewise process that leaves open a large number of gaps, even in well-developed cycling cities like Copenhagen. Here, we develop the IPDC procedure (Identify, Prioritize, Decluster, Classify) for finding the most important missing links in urban bicycle networks, using data from OpenStreetMap. In this procedure we first identify all possible gaps following a multiplex network approach, prioritize them according to a flow-based metric, decluster emerging gap clusters, and manually classify the types of gaps. We apply the IPDC procedure to Copenhagen and report the 105 top priority gaps. For evaluation, we compare these gaps with the city’s most recent Cycle Path Prioritization Plan and find considerable overlaps. Our results show how network analysis with minimal data requirements can serve as a cost-efficient support tool for bicycle network planning. By taking into account the whole city network for consolidating urban bicycle infrastructure, our data-driven framework can complement localized, manual planning processes for more effective, city-wide decision-making.     

The Power to Plunder: Rethinking Land Grabbing in Latin America

In this paper I rethink land grabbing in Latin America by decentering the rhetoric of novelty and the tendency to focus on large‐scale land transactions. To do this, I attend to the longevity of racial thinking bound up in everyday forms of land control. I look at the ways race is salient in the making of land and territorial arrangements. Drawing on my own research in Honduras and Panama, I situate land grabbing in relation to a range of scholarly insights that disclose how the early postcolonial dichotomy of “civilization” and “savagery”, and its inherently whitening logics, re‐appear in contemporary development projects of biodiversity conservation, land administration, and residential tourism. I argue, therefore, that land grabbing is a longstanding process that is routinely operationalized through the state and naturalized through development practices that are underpinned by ongoing racial hierarchies.     

From Force to Legitimation: Rethinking Land Grabs in Cambodia

This article moves beyond a focus on the brute force involved in high‐profile land grabs to examine the way legitimation, regulation and coercion intersect in Cambodia's property regime. It builds on the ‘powers of exclusion’ framework developed by Hall, Hirsch and Li to argue that increased connections within civil society in Cambodia and engagement with Western commodity markets have motivated state and private concessionaires to use different means of land exclusion, with less outright force and a greater focus on repressive regulation and legitimation. These exclusionary powers work through informal political connections, secrecy and obfuscation, which the authors term the ‘power of informality’. This argument is substantiated with two case studies that illustrate a move away from the dominant narrative of forceful expulsion of land users in Economic Land Concessions (ELC) towards approaches that provide in‐kind compensation and carve out land for smallholders: a recent land titling campaign in ELC areas, and the first oil palm ELC to gain responsible investment certification. While the authors remain cautious of the implications of this shift, given the persistence of the power of informality, these cases illustrate the potential for new forms of state–society relations: a shift from fear of authorities to a demand for greater accountability and responsiveness.     

The Spirits are Crying: Dispossessing Land and Possessing Bodies in Rural Cambodia

In 2009, a land spirit disrupted plantation development within a contested Economic Land Concession in Cambodia. The spirit, along with efforts of a monk and NGO, ultimately persuaded state officials to return 5 ha of land to the local temple. In this paper, we bring together literature on the anthropology of religion, political economy of land possession, and critical development studies; we demonstrate that land spirits continue as members of political patronage chains at both the state and the local level, and show how the non‐capitalist logics of spirit negotiations both challenged and legitimized large‐scale land acquisition projects. The spirit was not subsumed by, but rather shaped, contemporary capitalist expansion in ways that call for a critical examination of the ontological certainty that all land is designed for human production and consumption.     

Missing Links. Indigenous Life and Evolutionary Thought in the History of Russian Ethnography

The history of Russian social anthropology has long been best known for the work of three, late nineteenth-century “exile ethnographers,” each sent to the Russian Far East for their anti-tsarist activities as students. All three men—Vladimir Bogoraz, Vladimir Iokhel'son, and Lev Shternberg—produced voluminous and celebrated works on Russian far eastern indigenous life, but it was the young Shternberg who had perhaps the most profound effect on setting the agenda for the canonic evolutionist line soon to take hold in late Russian imperial and early Soviet ethnography. This essay draws on archival, library, and field research to revisit the life and work of Shternberg in order to tell the story of “group marriage” that he documented for the life of one Sakhalin Island indigenous people, Gilyaks (or Nivkhgu, Nivkhi). Documented in this way by Shternberg, the Nivkh kinship system proved a crucial “missing link” for Friedrich Engels, who had long been eager to provide evidence of primitive communism as man's natural state. For Gilyaks, the die was cast. Their role as the quintessential savages of Engels’ favor made them famous in Russian and Soviet ethnographic literature, and significantly enhanced their importance to Soviet government planners. This essay tracks that episode and its aftermaths as a pivotal moment in the history of Russian social anthropology and of evolutionist thought more broadly.     

Cohesion,Polycentricity, Missing Links and Bottlenecks: Conflicting Spatial Storylines for Pan-European Transport Investments

This article undertakes a discourse-centred investigation of the underlying rationales of European Union (EU) transport-sector investments. Its central contribution is the 'Conflicting-Storylines Proposition', stating that EU transport investments lack consistence and sustainability due to the existence of partially complementary, partially competing EU development objectives which are in turn expressed through four key storylines: 'cohesion', 'polycentricity', 'missing links' and, most recently, 'bottlenecks'. EU decision-making remains deeply conflicted and contested. Transport sector investments have to satisfy different aims related to growth, competitiveness, cohesion and sustainability. The Trans-European Network priority projects violate cohesion and sustainable development goals by concentrating investments in already privileged areas.     

Land Tenure and Food Security: Exploring Dynamic Linkages

Land tenure and food security have each been the subject of extensive—but generally separate—research in the past. Links between the two issues are now receiving increased attention, yet critical links between them remain unexplored. After a brief review of the two concepts, this article combines both issues within a dynamic framework that recognizes not just the conventional link between access to land and access to food in the short run, but also the recursive link between access to food and the ability to maintain sufficient resources to meet long-run needs. Such a framework makes explicit the trade-offs that poor households may face in bad years between consumption and investment in non-labour assets. Perhaps less intuitively, it also suggests that the need for self-insurance may force poor households to choose less efficient crops or production strategies than wealthier households even in good years. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results for equity, efficiency, research, and policy.     

Applying a Systematic Review to Land Use Land Cover Change in Northern Upland Vietnam: The Missing Case of the Borderlands

As Vietnam embraces the market economy, and a number of state policies promote reforestation and rural market integration, land use and land cover (LULC) changes are occurring in the country's northern uplands in increasingly complex and fragmented ways. Yet understandings of the degree and consequences of LULC changes in this diverse agro‐ecological region are incomplete. We conduct a systematic literature review of research reported in academic articles tracing and analysing LULC change in Vietnam's northern regions. We find that these studies have tended to take place away from the most mountainous, northern borderlands. The studies nonetheless highlight a diversity of land use land cover changes caused by numerous causes, making the distinction of overall trends difficult. To complement and extend this body of research, we introduce recent LULC change research we have completed in the mountainous border districts of Lào Cai province, on the Sino‐Vietnamese border. The heterogeneity of causes of LULC change in both the review articles and our case study points to the importance of adapting land use policies to local agro‐ecological and socio‐economic conditions and ethnic diversity, taking into account state–farmer relations, household livelihood decision‐making, and policy implementation at the commune and district levels.     

Protecting World Heritage: Regulating Ownership and Land Use at Angkor Archaeological Park,Cambodia

This paper contemplates whether, and in what ways, proprietary interests in land and land usage are affected by a World Heritage listing, using Angkor Archaeological Park, Cambodia, as the case study. The effect is measured through the identification and synthesis of the national legislative and local regulatory response to the implementation of the World Heritage listing. Such an analysis illustrates that the listing imposes significant restraints on land use and ownership which impact directly on the local resident communities of Angkor. A breakdown of the regulatory response also highlights the limitations inherent in the existing regulatory framework. There is a consideration of the concept of ‘ownership’ in a World Heritage site of ‘outstanding universal value’. In raising these issues, this paper highlights the challenges facing heritage managers in attempting to marry local needs with the demands of international heritage protection in the setting of a post‐conflict Southeast Asian nation.     

柬埔寨华侨华人的历史与现状

柬埔寨是一个多民族国家 ,全国有 2 0多个民族。高棉族是柬埔寨的主体民族 ,约占其总人口的 80 %。华侨华人是当今柬埔寨仅次于高棉族及越侨和越南人的第三大民族集团 ,总人数约3 0— 5 0万人。华侨华人移居柬埔寨已有上千年的历史。他们不但是中柬友谊的使者 ,而且为柬埔寨社会经济的发展作出了重大贡献。然而 ,由于各方面的原因 ,人们对柬埔寨华侨华人的情况特别是近况知之甚少。本文拟在评价柬埔寨华侨华人基本情况的基础上 ,着重对世纪之交柬埔寨政府的华侨华人政策及华侨华人面临的发展机遇和挑战做些分析     

Groundwater Quality in Rural Cambodia: Measures and Perceptions

Two studies of domestic water quality were undertaken in rural Cambodia. The first was a programme of quantitative groundwater quality testing and modelling. The second was a qualitative study of perceptions of groundwater quality. This research aimed to compare and contrast findings of these studies in two communes in rural Cambodia. The quantitative study found that in both communes, there is a high risk of encountering bore water with levels of chemical contamination that are detrimental to human health. The qualitative study found that messages from water users is mixed – 60% of bore water users thought their groundwater was of good quality, but 97% treated their water at the point of use before drinking. Results suggest that villages in rural Cambodia would benefit from a better community understanding of groundwater quality and safe water, and the development of more informed domestic water options.     

Borrowing Across Borders: Migration and Microcredit in Rural Cambodia

This article explores an unexpected and overlooked consequence of the expansion of microcredit: how it interacts with migration patterns. Drawing on qualitative research in northwest Cambodia, this study explores the uses, meanings and implications of ‘migra‐loans’ — microcredit loans that are used in tandem with household strategies of international migration. Using microcredit in combination with migration allows households to immediately meet consumption goals and utilize the credit being actively promoted by microfinance institutions, while also retreating from insecure and less profitable local livelihood strategies. These strategies problematize expectations about the developmental potential of microcredit, and highlight the importance of local context in framing rural livelihood choices.     

Precarious Debt: Microfinance Subjects and Intergenerational Dependency in Cambodia

This paper tells a story of debt within a rural Cambodian family in order to understand how microfinance produces more‐than‐individual financial subjects that are entangled in changing social relations of dependency. We draw upon 20 months of joint ethnographic research in Cambodia, where the microfinance industry is one of the largest per capita in the world. Informed by Judith Butler's notions of precariousness and precarity, we argue that even in the context of deepening financialisation, people's lives remain dependent upon others, especially within families. We analyse how these family relations of dependency are reworked along generational lines and spatially stretched due to precarious economic conditions of indebtedness, household migration, and distant labour markets. We conclude that reframing financial subjectivity in terms of precariousness helps us to analyse the relationship between households and financial markets, as well as inform a critical politics of finance.     

Grabbing the commons: Forest rights,capital and legal struggle in the Carpathian Mountains

In this paper we show that formalizing communal rights is a process riddled with struggles leading to a partial or total grabbing of commons. Drawing on long-term research and using interviews, surveys, and historical sources, we analyze struggles that emerged from processes of formalizing rights to commons, occurring one century apart in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. The first wave of formalization, initiated by the state in 1910, institutionalized a model of hybrid commons in which individual rights to communal forests and pastures were understood as inheritable and tradable shares. This generated never-ending contention and a vulnerability to capital, allowing timber companies to grab shares and dispossess rightsholders. The second formalization, post-1989, enabled local communities to regain rights to forests that had been nationalized by the state at the beginning of the socialist rule. However, this resurgence of mountain commons unleashed again a suite of legal struggles, bringing back to life previous vulnerabilities and dispossessions. We argue that the formalization of rights often does not bring clarity and security to commons rightsholders. Instead, it creates a suite of vulnerabilities, ambiguities, and complexity within regulatory texts, begetting the grabbing of the commons.     

Cross-cultural Links in Ancient Iberia: Socio-economic Anatomy of Hospitality

This study is concerned with hospitality in central Spain during the Late Iron Age. First the main characteristics of this Indo-European institution are presented, paying especial attention to the background of indigenous tesserae hospitalis (small epigraphic plaques referring to social links among different communities). An attempt is then made to juxtapose hospitality with the economic basis of Celtic Hispania and with other possible systems of regional interaction, such as transhumance.     

The Underside of Microfinance: Performance Indicators and Informal Debt in Cambodia

Microfinance is a dominant strategy used to promote rural development around the world. Rather than directly track its impact on borrowers, however, microfinance institutions rely on indicators of financial performance adopted from commercial banking as proxies for positive social impact. Yet, as critical research has shown, the industry depends on coercive peer pressure, social shaming and various forms of gendered exploitation to achieve its high rates of loan repayment. This article maintains that there is a need to investigate how the microfinance industry's own indicators of impact contribute to the ways microfinance can harm borrowers. Based on qualitative research in Cambodia during 2021 and 2022, the article demonstrates how financial performance indicators, most notably portfolio quality, both hide and exacerbate the ways that borrowers juggle debt between formal and informal lenders. In making this argument, the article advances critical scholarship on microfinance by showing how microfinance repayment structures debt-juggling practices in ways that put borrowers at greater risk of over-indebtedness. As a result, the microfinance industry is able to claim that it successfully helps to alleviate poverty, even as it accumulates profits by appropriating wealth from poor and low-income households across the global South.     

The Missing Generation: Grandparents and Agency in Early Modern England

Grandparents have been largely overlooked in the otherwise rich historiography of the family in early modern England. This article shows how many were able to play significant roles in family life, in both emotional and practical terms. Some forged close bonds with their young grandchildren, or took them in for a period to relieve hard-pressed parents, while others were willing to raise and educate the orphaned. Some also provided moral or religious guidance, assuming responsibilities conventionally assigned to godparents, and in some cases even challenging parental decisions of which they disapproved. Grandchildren were almost always remembered in wills, with testators also careful to protect the interests of any potentially at risk. The article then turns to explore the role of grandparents acting as welfare providers, whether voluntarily or through a court order, for grandchildren left as orphans or born to unmarried mothers. It assesses the often contentious issue of grandparents’ moral and legal responsibilities under the parish relief system established by the Poor Law in 1601, and disputes between the paternal and maternal kin. Finally, the article touches briefly on grandparents as repositories of information, whose memories and experience could be of value to their community as well as to their own families.