What's nature got to do with it? A situated historical perspective on socio-natural commodities

Nature(s) have been commodified since the early days of capitalism, but through processes and socio-natural relationships mediated by their times, histories and localities. While the conditions under which nature's commodities are being trademarked today may be new, their potential for commodification is not. Commodifications of nature should not come as a surprise to environmental social scientists and activists. In this article, I argue that commodification of ‘nature's products, places and processes’ produces new sorts of socio-natures. Situated histories of rubber are particularly relevant because, like carbon, ecosystem services and other recently commodified natures, rubber sits comfortably on the line between a fictitious commodity and a commodity produced explicitly for market: the latex alone has almost no use value, and to give it any exchange value, it requires processing. Yet analytically, it is still considered a ‘natural commodity’, different from ‘synthetic rubber’ and other tradable tree latexes in qualities and socio-natural characteristics. However, it is the social relations constituting rubber's production and trade in various rainforest and agro-forestry environments that have given it a positive or negative connotation, rather than its natural properties or the ecological contexts within which it has been produced. By situating rubber in three of its globally important temporal and spatial contexts, I show how it has been subjected to fairy-tale-like stories that masked and naturalized its commodity lives of the moment. Understanding how history is told or remains untold is thus an essential part of the politics of knowledge production, but also of human experience and mobilization for change. It should be part of any political ecology analysis.     

农村空间商品化的理论基础与实现路径

实施乡村振兴战略,产业兴旺是关键。农村空间商品化是农村空间生产转型的主要驱动力,其概念强调农村经济重构,以农村空间商品化研究农村发展问题符合理论与实践要求。本文旨在:(1)梳理西方农村地理学理论发展脉络以支撑农村空间商品化概念与路径探索研究;(2)基于农村空间商品化的概念、理论、实践,参考相关研究方向的发展模式,提出农村空间商品化的多种实现路径;(3)讨论初级农产品生产等四条路径与农村空间商品化的关系及其在全国的分布特征,并对纳入城市建设拓展区等三条路径的特征做了简要说明。     

Real-estate Boom,Commodification and Crises of Social Reproductive Institutions in Rural China

Based on 12 months of ethnographic, interview and archival research in a poor rural county in China, this article argues that three state policies, namely the concentration of rural educational resources in the county seat, the decision to make access to county-seat public schools conditional upon homeownership in school districts, and the (former) one-child policy, have compelled rural households to participate in the real-estate market to meet the reproductive needs of basic education and marriage. The increasing commodification of education and marriage has fuelled a local real-estate boom during the past decade. At the same time, it has put peasant-migrant households under severe economic pressure, forcing them to relocate unpaid female care labour away from the village and to become heavily indebted. These outcomes have had serious repercussions for two other reproductive institutions, leading to a breakdown in intergenerational care and financial support for the elderly, and a sharp decline in the rural birth rate. The Chinese countryside as a social space in which peasant-migrant households were able to reproduce themselves in a relatively non-commodified manner has disappeared.     

Ideologies of consumption: colonialism and the commodification of goods in 18th-century Virginian and Lowland Scottish rural households

During the 18th century consumers in the transatlantic British cultural world began to adopt new ideologies which informed their consumption behaviours. The acquisition of manufactured objects which were highly commodified played an essential part in this new consumer culture. By classifying household goods according to their commodification upon acquisition, the ideologies of consumption which shaped the decisions of historic individuals can be better understood. This paper proposes a method of classifying ceramics in such a way and demonstrates, using five households in the Scottish Lowlands and Virginia as case studies, the utility of commodification analysis in the investigation of British consumer reactions to the unique circumstances of the colonial period.     

国内外服务业地理研究进展

服务业地理学是以服务业活动的地域系统为核心、探索服务业空间活动规律的一门学科,它是经济地理学的重要分支。围绕服务业地理学研究对象对相关文献进行梳理,文章认为:目前服务业地理学尚未形成一套完善的理论体系和研究框架,在理论上需要吸收服务业经济学、地理学及社会学等多学科的理论来丰富和完善;在研究方法上应加强质性研究和定量分析的结合;在研究内容上应深化服务业与区域经济可持续发展、信息技术影响下的服务业区位选择、服务业微区位、服务业贸易对区域产业结构及产业空间组织的影响、服务业地域综合体等议题的研究。     

农区地理学国际研究进展

基于对国际文献和中国实际的分析和思考,总结了农区地理学的发展特点和新近研究动向。认为社会学、人类学和政治经济学对农区研究的关注,从不同角度影响着农区地理学的研究内容和思维变化。人文地理学的文化转向,也带来了农区地理学的相应转向。西方发达国家农区地理学的新近研究方向包括:后生产型农区发展、全球化与农区业发展、农区结构变化、农区基础设施、农区管制等。基于以上分析并结合中国实际,文章对中国农区地理学的研究思路进行了思考。     

RE‐INVENTING TRADITIONAL LAND TENURE IN THE ERA OF LAND COMMODITIZATION: SOME CONSEQUENCES IN PERIURBAN NORTHERN GHANA

In northern Ghana periurban areas are encroaching on rural areas and agricultural land ends up being sold for residential purposes mainly by chiefs and “earth” priests. The changing customary land tenure systems have generated a state of uncertainty and tension as the title and responsibilities of titleholders are subject to the interpretation by those who administer custom. Increasing commodification is taking place that benefits an emerging political‐traditional and economic elite. The centralized systems restrict the benefits of the commoditization process mainly to chiefs and their collaborators, whiles acephalous systems allow more space for objections and struggles by those whose land is expropriated. Neoliberal development policies have shaped the commodification of land and entrenched existing socio‐economic inequalities that marginalize the poor who are unable to seize the opportunities of the emerging urban economy.     

Evolutionary Perspectives on Rural Australia

An enduring concern within Australian rural geography has been to understand the nature and implications of change. Much of the intellectual effort has been focused on interpreting how rural economies, populations, social institutions, cultures, and land uses have been transformed through processes operating across a range of spatial and temporal scales. This paper offers a critical appraisal of recent rural research in Australia and how this body of work has attempted to make sense of change. It argues that despite an ongoing focus on the nature of change, it is often reduced to a relatively simple historical narrative. We suggest that some of the emerging ideas in ‘evolutionary economic geography’ might offer an alternative means of conceptualising the trajectories of rural economies, institutions, and communities. The paper outlines the contours of evolutionary economic geography and the ways in which some of its key conceptual foundations might offer a means of understanding not only rural change, but also continuity.     

Small firm finance and economic geography

This paper argues that firm finance is something of a ‘black-box’in economic geography, a largely take-for-granted aspect ofproduction. Focusing on small firms, the paper argues that firmfinance warrants analysis, not simply to ‘add’ toknowledge and to form another sub-discipline of economic geography,but in order to further develop and refine our understandingof uneven development. The paper explores the neglect of firmfinance in economic geography and highlights some of the contributionsof literatures in eco-nomics and business. Finally, the paperoutlines three points of intersection between these disparate,usually disciplinary-bound, literatures in business, economics,and economic geography: the place-bound nature of firms, thesocial character of economic relations, and third, the powerrelations and asymmetries inherent in financial relationships.These intersections are used to critique existing small firmfinance literatures and to outline the contours of an emergingresearch agenda in economic geography.     

The Green Economy Research Centre – positioning geographical research in Aberdeen to address the challenges of green economy transitions

ABSTRACT

The necessity to address climate change has resulted in a widespread debate about the need for a transition to a ‘greener’ economy. How such an economy emerges, by what drivers and at what scale is a significant source of speculation amongst the geographical research community. In the context of longstanding contributions to environmental geography from scholars working at Aberdeen University, this paper outlines a novel research agenda for the Green Economy Research Centre (GERC). The contours of the green economy are examined in the context of economic sectors of food production, tourism, energy and the blue economy. Cross-cutting themes of green transitions, governance, people and place and ecosystem services inform our academic contribution to this evolving and controversial societal issue.     

THE GREEN ECONOMY AND POST‐GROWTH REGIMES: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

While mainstream economic geography is doing increasing research on green manufacturing and services, with a few notable exceptions, its predominant conceptual approaches to emerging modes of economic orientation continue to examine economic transitions somewhat unreflexively within the context of traditional growth paradigms. The aim of this article is to explore and critically examine neoliberal discourses on the green economy and smart growth by exploring contributions to debates on green economics proposed by ideas linked to post‐growth economies. Based on studies by scholars such as Tim Jackson and Serge Latouche, the article examines the contours of debates on post‐growth, décroissance (de‐growth) and prosperity without growth. We begin by examining growth debates and existing contributions by economic and other geographers to the exploration of alternatives to conventional growth‐centred economics. We then identify some emergent spatial facets of post‐growth transitions and utilize these to explore potential research topics and opportunities for empirical and conceptual contributions by economic geographers to academic and societal debates on economic transitions and post‐growth paradigms. Particular attention is paid to approaches currently discussed in economic geography, such as socio‐technical transition studies.     

Signs of the Post-Rural: Marketing Myths of a Symbolic Countryside

Geography is currently in the midst of reinterpreting the 'rural'. There are calls within tourism studies, rural geography and cultural geography for further investigation into the new meanings represented in rural places, their emergent rural identities, and the need to take postmodernism and the construction of the rural more seriously. This paper presents a critical interpretation of the format, content and signs used to represent, commodify and promote as countryside a landscape adjacent to the eastern coast of Lake Huron in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Following a brief review of the place promotion literature and the postmodern cultural context of contemporary tourism, the socio-semiotic approach employed in the analysis is explained. Using 210 pieces of printed place promotional material, gathered at tourist information booths along a provincially designated tourist route, the slogans, logos (icons), and place myths used to differentiate the rural from the urban are identified, and their role in constructing, commodifying and marketing a symbolic countryside is made clear. It is argued that the tourist landscape signified in the promotional material is a symbolic cultural landscape that draws upon dominant Anglo-American ideals of the countryside to give identity to the material landscape. The advertising discourse is thus a symbolic space where an imaginary, mythical countryside is situated; here the 'rural' is commodified and sustained by 'uneasy pleasures': the tensions created between a consumer's willing suspension of disbelief and their knowledge of an advertiser's persuasive intentions. These signs of the 'post-rural' constitute a 'rural' that is a transferable brand name—a free-floating signifier—used to give meaning, value and character to any place commodity in need of a marketable identity.     

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.     

Teaching (Political) Economic Geography: Some Personal Reflections

Teaching economic geography is not a matter of replicating textbook models. It requires engagement with the ever-changing global economy, which often puts the lie to existing theory. It demands that the teacher break down the economy into its major parts, in a way that students can grasp. This does not mean abandoning theory; on the contrary, it means getting beyond static exchange models to grasp the dynamics of commodity systems, divisions of labour, technology and capital flows. To this, add how geography matters to the way economies work. And always maintain a critical stance toward the world and toward received wisdom.     

经济地理学中的农户研究

中国目前约有2/3的人口生活在农村,农村地区的发展成为中国区域发展中令人关注的大问题。然而,经济地理学在农区发展的研究中,存在一个明显的缺陷,既大多数研究均忽视了农区经济中最基本的单位-农户。文章分析了忽视农户对地理学研究的局限,论述了农户与农区的关系,评述了国内外的相关研究成果,提出在经济地理学的农户研究中,应加强农户发展环境研究、基于农户的农区发展模型研究、农户与地理环境相互作用研究、基于农户的农区发展战略研究。     

中国乡村社会空间的形成与演化

乡村社会空间反映了一定社会经济背景下乡村日常社会生活在地域空间上的分异与组合格局,其归根结底是由乡村社会主体的群体分化形成的。我国乡村发展历史悠久,改革开放以后变化尤其显著,研究其社会空间问题有一定现实意义。本文在对乡村社会空间的内涵进行阐释的基础上,分析了我国乡村社会空间的演变过程及现状特征,揭示了其形成演化的机制与规律,并对我国乡村社会空间的发展趋向进行了探讨。     

共容利益:社区参与旅游发展之利益协调

收益分配问题绝不只是单纯的经济问题,而是涉及政治和社会制度安排的"正义"问题。本文基于对农村旅游发展现实的大量观察和前人对于中国社会问题丰富的研究成果,把宏观制度研究与微观行为分析结合起来,将影响旅游收益分配的政治过程内生化、模型化,展现了在农村旅游发展中,各利益主体——政治精英、商人利益集团、社区农民为实现各自的目标价值,在制度激励和约束下就利益的分配进行重复博弈的动态过程。本文指出,旅游收益不平衡的制度性根源在于国家的政治、经济、法律制度设计偏重于增长而未能有效地维护个人和社会的正当利益。仅仅依靠金钱补偿,或者调整收入分配政策根本不可能达到或实现分配正义的目标。分配正义的实现需要一系列根本性的制度变革,"从顶到底"地建立一个能给予共容利益最大决策权的政治体制和经济机制。     

Working the Waste Commodity Frontier: Metabolic Value and Informal Waste Work

Ambitions for a European “circular economy” imply waste is becoming an important “commodity frontier”. Increased recycling in Europe has been accompanied by a proliferation of informal waste work. “Southern” geographies of informal recyclers provide resources for interpreting this phenomenon but studies of a commodity frontier in urban waste have tended to focus on moments when informal waste workers are displaced by capital intensive waste management systems. I draw on concepts in world-ecology and materialist ecofeminism to explore the proliferation of informal waste workers in Barcelona and the way their (re)production produces “Metabolic Value”. Informal waste work is shown to emerge and persist as part of a commodity frontier process—where the appropriation of unpaid work from non-commodified spaces is the hallmark of how capitalism secures “Cheap Nature”. The study suggests that, rather than internalising ecological costs, recycling often rests on the appropriation of value from uncommodified spaces.     

A Bigger Piece of a Very Small Pie: Intrahousehold Resource Allocation and Poverty Reduction in Africa

Feminist research has convincingly shown that an increase in household income does not necessarily lead to improvement in the well‐being of all members of the household. More questionable is the policy conclusion often drawn from this research for rural Africa: redressing gender imbalance in control of productive resources will significantly reduce poverty. This contribution argues that the evidence and analysis presented by two studies repeatedly cited to show that gender inequality is inefficient are problematic. It is mythical to suggest that tinkering with women's market position by exchanging unequal collective rights to productive resources for individual ones will decisively reduce rural poverty in Africa. That will depend on the restructuring of long‐term and deeply unequal processes of integration in the market, not on a firmer insertion of women within existing patterns of individualization and commodification of productive resources.     

西方经济地理学关于全球化经济的理论演化综述

清晰的理解全球化经济如何演化是一项非常紧迫和艰巨的任务。传统的经济地理学主要通过国际劳动分工理论解释全球化经济。但二十世纪九十年代以来的外购和及时生产等新的生产组织方式的出现,使得全球经济体系变得愈加复杂。西方经济地理学家开始将其他相关学科的理论和方法论(如资源基础理论、嵌入理论、行为者网络理论等),应用于全球化的研究中,构建了一些新的全球经济的分析框架,例如全球价值链、全球商品链和全球生产网络,体现了经济地理学新的发展方向-"关系"经济地理学。这些链/网络的分析框架在多学科领域引起强大的反响,使得西方经济地理学的学科地位得到很大提升。