Aquatic Identities,Fluid Economies: Water Affinities and Authenticating Narratives of Belonging in East Timorese Myth and Ritual

ABSTRACT Customary land tenure claims provide a useful analogy for customary access and usage rights to critical water resources. In an increasingly water‐constrained future, such rights are at risk of political and economic contestation and local communities may find themselves abruptly divested of critical water resources just when they need them most. The new nation of East Timor is not abundantly endowed with water and inland sources are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of reduced rainfall and groundwater contamination. Recently McWilliam (2003) has suggested that in future disputes over Timorese sea tenures, the recognition of customary access or exclusive property rights to specific water resources will depend upon clearly articulated evidence of longstanding cultural associations and interactions with the aquatic landscape. The ethnographic literature provides substantiating accounts of the centrality of water in the local cosmologies of various East Timorese ethnic groups. This paper extends McWilliam's marine argument to inland water resources by reviewing the salient ethnographic evidence for Bunaq, Mumbai and Eastern Tetum populations to show that water is a key organising metaphor in the expression of Timorese kingroup affiliation, social identity and power relations. Local ritual practices further affirm customary rights of access and water use. There is an urgent need for such customary rights to water to be recognized in the current redistribution and demarcation of internal boundaries in East Timor, as well as in future struggles against vested economic and political interests.     

The Symbolic Politics of Belonging and Community in Peri‐urban Environmental Disputes: the Traveston Crossing Dam in Queensland,Australia

This paper examines a recent dispute generated by the Queensland State Government proposal to build the Traveston Crossing Dam on the Mary River in southeast Queensland, Australia. It is particularly concerned with the ways in which interrelated issues of belonging, community identity, and social diversity were negotiated during the anti‐dam campaign. As an unusual alliance of farmers, environmentalists, urban retirees, some Aboriginal people and others, it takes a view of the anti‐Traveston Crossing Dam campaign as a fluid network of people and approaches the notion of community identity as the symbolic construction of similarity. Locally specific, the paper describes pertinent aspects of community politics in the context of rural socioeconomic change, and the mobilisation of heritage. With regard to local senses of belonging, it also discusses the involvement of Aboriginal people during the campaign. More broadly then, this paper attempts to make an ethnographic contribution to the study of environmental disputes and the politics of alliance in peri‐urban areas of settler‐descendant societies such as Australia.     

Generations,Mobility and Community: Geographies of Three Generations of Greek and Italian Ancestry in Sydney

Geographies of three generations of Greek and Italian ancestry in Sydney totalling 245 000 people in 2001 are identified. A model of community sequences is developed within a conceptual framework of intergenerational spatial, occupational and social absorption. Considerable intra‐ and inter‐generational occupational mobility took place and the third generations showed higher proportions as managers, professionals and associate professionals than persons of Australian ancestry. Second and third generations had occupational profiles which were much closer to the host society than the first generations. Despite occupational mobility, employment, residential and social trends associated with the first generations affected the adult second generations and to an extent the third. Several thousand members of three generations re‐grouped into successive local communities, patronised facilities in core communities, and maintained place identities.     

Narratives of Community and Change in a Contemporary Rural Setting: The Case of Duaringa,Queensland

Contemporary rural communities are being affected by a range of changes and processes in Australia, including major changes in demographic patterns; the organisation and performance of primary industries; levels of government support for economic and social infrastructure; and wider developments in technology and changing socio‐cultural values. The impact of these processes has been felt unequally and small communities which have had a traditionally close relationship with agricultural industries are particularly challenged. The current paper reports on one such community and provides the opportunity to analyse both the the substance and cultural understandings of such forms of rural change/uncoupling. The paper presents local narratives of community and change in Duaringa, Central Queensland and responds to recent international literature suggesting that the meanings and politics of rural change are as significant as the economic trends that are occurring. The Duaringa narratives demonstrate both the substance and dynamics of expressions of community (and loss). And the paper concludes that these meanings are also influenced by wider processes including consumption‐oriented lifestyles and national interests in South East Asian relations.     

印尼棉兰的华人：历史与特征

论文以调查和访谈资料为依据,阐述了印尼棉兰华人社会发展与历史变迁的过程,并在此基础上总结出棉兰华人因受周边华人社会影响,兼及殖民种植经济传统与移居型城市特点而形成的独有社会特征：政治参与具有华人社会传统特性;坚守中华传统文化并吸收了西方文化、土著文化;闽南语或普通话日常使用较普遍;经济上居于印尼社会和华人群体的边缘,实力有限;与其他族群相处较为融洽;以横向分化为主的华人社会,各群体间互动频繁,边界较为模糊。     

社区归属感对乡村旅游地居民社区参与的影响——以浙江安吉为例

乡村旅游地居民是社区参与的主体,社区参与是乡村旅游地可持续发展的重要前提,目前社区归属感对乡村旅游地居民社区参与的影响机制和路径研究较为薄弱。基于文献回顾,引入旅游获益中介变量,构建乡村旅游地居民的社区归属感——社区参与结构方程模型。以浙江安吉为例,通过实地问卷调查采集数据,探讨社区归属感对社区参与的影响机制及路径。研究表明：乡村旅游地居民社区归属感对旅游获益和社区参与均有显著正向影响,旅游获益是社区归属感影响社区参与的中介变量;社区归属感对社区参与既有直接效应又有间接效应,其直接效应（0．48）远远高于通过中介变量旅游获益对社区参与的间接效应（0．55×0．27）;旅游地居民对个人职业与旅游业的关系的重视程度要高于家庭成员职业与旅游业的关系。最后提出了促进乡村旅游发展的若干建议和研究不足。     

Voluntary Environmental Programs in the Public Sector: Evaluating an Urban Water Conservation Program in California

Solving conflictual environmental policy problems is increasingly falling under the purview of local governments and public agencies. Nonregulatory approaches, such as the development of voluntary environmental programs (VEPs), could offer a useful policy alternative as they often have greater political traction and flexibility. However, there has been little work examining the use of VEPs in the public sector. This article uses a new dataset from California to examine how political institutions affect decisions by local governments and public agencies to participate in a voluntary urban water conservation program and whether this program has improved the water conservation performance of its members. The results show that special district governments, private utilities, and water suppliers dependent on purchased water are more likely to participate in the program and to join early. However, urban water agencies that have joined the program have not reduced their per capita water use more than those that have not. These results underscore the influence of political institutions in public‐sector decision making and demonstrate that, as in the private sector, commitment to a VEP by local government and public agencies does not guarantee implementation or environmental improvements. While voluntary programs offer political and administrative advantages, in order for VEPs in the public sector to be effective they must be accompanied and supported by credible enforcement mechanisms, performance standards, and rigorous monitoring programs.     

被边缘化的群体：印度华侨华人社会的变迁

针对国内外印度华侨华人研究边缘化的现状,从人口特征、职业特征、文教事业及社团、宗教信仰及族际通婚等方面对20世纪50年代的印度华侨社会进行了分析,对印度排华运动、由此造成的印度华人社会的衰落,以及中国政府接侨及归侨的安置情况进行了阐述,认为印度社会经济的快速发展和两国关系的改善和发展,将会对印度华人社会产生积极的影响。     

西方社区旅游概念:误读与反思

本文对西方社区旅游概念在中国的4种误读进行了梳理,包括社区尺度模糊导致参与范围的变形、社区旅游是产品还是理念、参与的目的是否局限于经济利益、受益方应该主要是社区成员还是地方政府.如果中国学者要在社区旅游的理论发展和实践应用方面做出更大的贡献,既要排除以上种种误读的负面影响,也要清醒地认识到西方社区旅游本身在实施过程、适用范围、评价指标等方面存在的局限性.     

Awareness and Action: The ethno-gender dynamics of Sri Lankan NGOs

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are the modus operandi in the development arena at this juncture. Many, including feminists, place much faith in these actors for creating a progressive space for social, political, and economic activities to be undertaken. This article employs fieldwork evidence from eastern Sri Lanka, carried out in 1998–1999 and early 2004, to challenge this simplistic reading. The primary social group that was studied during the fieldwork period was female-headed households. This article argues that there are different types of NGO working in multiple ways in the region, and it is important to distinguish between these differences. NGOs that primarily execute development-oriented projects without considering the ethno-nationalist and gender politics are culpable of the violence of development. It is only when NGOs are in local communities for the long haul that they are able to develop a commitment to reassess and evaluate the social transformative potential of their activities. Using a feminist political economy perspective this article argues that it is important and necessary that NGOs confront social, political, and economic structures, including ethnic identity politics, if their activities are to lead to transformative feminist politics. In other words, NGOs would have to do more than pay lip service to gender mainstreaming, as is more often the case. These actors need to recognize and understand the potency of ethno-nationalist politics, social structures, social exclusion, and social injustice in order to create social spaces that are enabling of women's agency in the local communities within which they work and operate.     

Pressures on Urban Water Resources in Russia: The Case of St. Petersburg

An American geographer evaluates the process of water resources planning and management in the city of St. Petersburg, Russia, based on regional government documents, interviews with local water management officials, and follow-up field observations in 2007. St. Petersburg is a microcosm for challenges to assessing and managing water resources in urban environments in transition economies more broadly, and thus the present study yields insights into obstacles confronting water planners in many large cities in the post-Soviet realm, and augments the body of empirical data on the impacts of economic transition on environmental management. 3 figures, 46 references.     

Private Profits – Public Drought: The Creation of a Crisis in Water Management for West Yorkshire

This paper examines the political and corporate constructions of the 1995–96 drought crisis in West Yorkshire, when an unprecedented public furore was provoked by the threat of water-supply cut-offs. A key outcome of this process was a profound crisis of confidence over the governance of water resources, which can be linked to the privatization of the industry and, more broadly, to the processes of redrawing the boundaries of the state. The water industry illustrates the contestability of neoliberal reforms seeking to inspire market-led growth with minimal government intervention. In particular, political dogma about the anticipated benefits of market competitiveness failed adequately to take into account public concern for the 'common good'.     

Community and conservation land ownership in highland Scotland: A common focus in a changing context

Legislation on the topic of land reform will enter statute during the lifetime of the first administration of the Scottish Parliament. It is thus timely to review types of land ownership that have evolved in Scotland in the recent past. This paper briefly reviews the context of the current land reform debate. It considers the characteristics of community and conservation ownership, exemplified in case studies of the North Assynt Estate (owned and run by the Assynt Crofters Trust) and the Sandwood Estate (owned by the John Muir Trust). Positive and negative aspects of these two management structures are illustrated and a convergence in management approaches, towards a focus on community interest and involvement, is demonstrated. The emergence of a social sector in land ownership is considered.     

Contesting land,creating community,in the Highlands and Islands,Scotland

This paper draws on research in four communities in the Highlands and Islands, Scotland, to explore how the notion of community and community identity are re‐worked in the political spaces created as communities claim collective rights to land. In the cases of the Assynt Crofters’ Trust, the Bhaltos Community Trust, and Laid, this has concerned land under crofting tenure; in the case of the claim of the North Sutherland Community Forestry Trust, the land on which the Naver Forests stand is the responsibility of the Scottish Ministers and is managed by Forest Enterprise. The four case studies differ with respect to membership and institutional practices and thus provide fertile ground on which to examine, comparatively, collective struggles for the land and the search for sustainable futures.