Paradoxes,Protests and the Mujeres de Negro of Northern Mexico

On November 25, 2002, thousands of people marched through the streets of Mexico City and demanded, in the name of social justice, an end to the violence against women in northern Mexico. ‘Ni Una Más’ (not one more) was their chant and is also the name of their social justice campaign. Their words referred to the hundreds of women and girls who have died violent and brutal deaths in northern Mexico and to the several hundred more who have disappeared over the last ten years. These Ni Una Más marchers, many working with human rights and feminist organizations in Mexico, are protesting against the political disregard and lack of accountability, at all levels of government, in relation to this surging violence against women. And the symbolic leaders of their movement are the Mujeres de Negro (women wearing black), who are based in Chihuahua City. In this article, I examine how the Mujeres de Negro demonstrate how feminist politics so often plays upon the negotiation of spatial paradoxes in order to open new arenas for women's political agency. For while the Mujeres de Negro of northern Mexico are galvanizing an international human rights movement that is challenging political elites, they are also reinforcing many of the traditional prohibitions against women's access to politics and the public sphere. And I explore how the Mujeres de Negro devise a spatial strategy for navigating this paradox in an increasingly dangerous political environment.     

From the School Yard to the Conservation Area: Impact Investment across the Nature/Social Divide

In the face of planetary crises, from inequality to biodiversity loss, “impact investing” has emerged as a vision for a new, “moral” financial system where investor dollars fund socio-environmental repair while simultaneously generating financial returns. In support of this system elite actors have formed a consensus that financial investments can have beneficial, more-than-financial outcomes aimed at solving social and environmental crises. Yet critical geographers have largely studied “green” and “social” finance separately. We propose, instead, a holistic geography of impact investing that highlights the common methods used in attempts to offset destructive investments with purportedly reparative ones. This involves interrogating how elite-led ideas of social and environmental progress are reflected in investments, as well as deconstructing the “objects” of impact investments. As examples, we use insights from both “green” and “social” literatures to analyse the social values embedded in projects of financialisation in schooling and affordable housing in the US.     

‘Green cities’ going greener? Local environmental policy-making and place branding in the ‘Greenest City in Europe’

A growing number of cities around the world have taken advantage of their green image of the purpose of place branding. In the research literature, it is suggested that these practices are motivated by place-based competition over financial and social capital, combined with more holistic motives of sustainable urban development. However, although an increasing number of green cities are engaged in place branding, few studies have researched the impact of place branding on environmental policy-making in a city, building up to the question: how is local environmental policy-making affected by green place branding? Addressing this issue, this paper critically investigates how the continuity of local environmental policy-making is affected by place-branding practices. To tackle this task, the paper firstly develops an analytical framework aiming to understand how green cities emerge and become famous based on their policy-making. Secondly, using that framework, this paper present an in-depth case study of a city branding itself as the ‘Greenest City in Europe’. Drawing on the growing body of work on green cities, this paper investigates the ‘understudied’ practice of using policy for the purpose of place branding as well as the impact of place branding ‘on the environment’.     

Transforming the (tourism) world for good and (re)generating the potential ‘new normal’

Abstract

With or without the global COVID-19 pandemic to promote and envision a meaningful and positive transformation of the planet in general, and tourism specifically, a wake-up call is long overdue. The 300-years old industrial and modern paradigm of ruthless and selfish exploitation of natural resources has separated us from nature and ultimately ourselves to such an extent that the crises of our economic, political, environmental, social and healthcare systems do not come at any surprise. Yet, in juxtaposition to (post)modern pessimistic views, the positive transmodern paradigm shift with its holistic perspectives and practices can be observed. Led by ‘the silent revolution’ of cultural creatives, new worlds are emerging, although still kept at the margins. ‘Transformative travel and tourism’ as an ever-growing trend, appears to be an important medium through which these cultural creatives reinvent themselves and the world they live in. Inner transformation is reflected in the outer world. New ways of being, knowing and doing in the world are emerging as conscious citizens, consumers, producers, travellers, entrepreneurs, and community leaders are calling and acting upon the necessary transformation towards the regenerative paradigm and regenerative economic systems. Based on the natural cycles of renewal and regeneration, this circular approach is underpinned by regenerative land practices. The vision of connecting regenerative agriculture and transformative tourism is offered to reset the global tourism system for good.     

城市居民健康生活方式研究的时空行为视角

在宜居城市和健康城市的建设背景下,健康生活方式成为政府和公众共同追求的重要目标。已有的环境-行为-健康关系的研究主要从静态时空间的视角出发,探讨邻里环境要素与居民健康水平的相关关系,并分析健康相关行为或活动特征的中介作用。本文立足于个体导向和强调制约与企划的时间地理学、基于活动-移动模式的活动分析法、以及移动性转向下情境单元的选择问题,以个体整日活动-移动模式作为生活方式的外在行为体现,从时间、空间、个体行为和群体行为的角度,构建了基于移动性的城市环境暴露-日常活动移动模式-个体健康效应三者关系的综合分析框架,以期促进城市环境与社会的可持续发展。     

The environment becomes a political issue. Highlights of the Brundtland Commission Report

The Report of the Brundtland Commission (World Commission on Environment and Development) has been released by the UN. The Report points out that environmental survival requires development and development is only possible if the resources of the global environment are conserved. Although the UN and the World Bank must make commitments to development, each nation must devise its own strategy because development is inextricably linked to political, economic, and social factors such as poverty, overpopulation and the status of women. The Report makes 3 specific recommendations: 1) An independent body should be set up to assess global risks; 2) A universal declaration on environment and development should be made and followed by a convention; and 3) The UN General Assembly should set up a UN Program on Sustainable Development. The highest priority should be given to finding alternatives to nuclear energy as well as making the use of nuclear energy safer. Other major environmental problems include desertification, acid rain, the "greenhouse effect" and its impact on global climate and sea levels, and the destruction of the ozone layer with concomitant increase in cancer.     

绿色发展的基本内涵及重大意义

从传统的＂黑色发展＂转向现代的＂绿色发展＂,是近半个世纪以来人类对自身以牺牲资源环境为代价的发展模式深刻反思的结果。面对全球＂绿色工业革命＂的重大机遇,青海作为一个欠发达地区也只有抓住这次绿色发展的机会,才能实现跨越式发展。     

Pepperoni or Broccoli? On the Cutting Wedge of Feminist Environmentalism

Feminist environmentalism has become a significant intellectual and social policy force across fields as diverse as public health, political economy, philosophy, science, and ecology. Feminist environmental theory and activism together are challenging and redefining foundational principles, from animal rights to the environmental economy of illness and well-being, from global political economy to the role of Big Science as the primary arbiter of the state of the environment. Animal rights is one of the most intellectually challenging and innovative areas of intellectual activity and social activism, and within feminist environmentalism is one of the most radical subfields. This paper provides an overview of activity in this subfield, starting from the observation that feminist environmental scholarship and grassroots activism on animal rights pivot around three concerns: elucidating the commonalities in structures of oppressions across gender, race, class, and species; developing feminist-informed theories of the basis for allocating "rights" to animals; and exposing the gendered assumptions and perceptions that underlie human relationships to nonhuman animals. At the same time, the serious contemplation of animal rights makes a considerable contribution to destabilizing identity categories and adds new dimensions to theorizing the mutability of identity.     

国外健康地理学研究进展

传统医学地理学研究从自然生态学角度出发,着重探讨自然环境对人类身体健康的影响。随着社会经济的发展,自然环境对人类健康的作用逐渐减小,社会文化环境成为影响人类健康,特别是城市居民身体健康的主要因素。本文回顾了20世纪70年代社会文化转型以来,医学地理学研究的重点转向以社会文化视角探究社会文化环境对人们身体健康,特别是心理健康的影响,以及医学地理学向一门新的健康地理学转变的过程,并梳理了新的健康地理学理论和研究内容的变化,总结了当前学科存在的一些问题,最后对新时期我国健康地理学的发展提出了展望。     

Is Fish Health Food or Poison? Farmed Fish and the Material Production of Un/Healthy Nature*

Abstract: This paper contributes to scholarship on health and environment by focusing on connections between human health and political economy of seafood. The contemporary rise of aquaculture is an effort on the part of the seafood industry to escape the contradictions of capital that create crisis in capture fisheries. Yet intensive aquaculture may also create human health problems that contribute to new crises. Aquaculture practices not only increase production of healthful fish, but also lead to fish burdened with chemical pollutants about which there are a variety of health concerns. These health concerns pose problems for producers who may not be able to sell contaminated seafood. By examining the intertwined biochemical and social processes that produce multiple natures (fish bodies, human bodies and the aquatic environment), the paper shows that concerns about health are not only an outcome of political economic processes, but are also an explanatory factor in these processes.     

季节性退休移民的日常行为与身心健康关系——候鸟老人的绿色空间暴露分析

在中国人口老龄化背景下,退休老年群体出于追求身心健康的动机向环境更好的地方季节性流动的现象越来越普遍,这类季节性退休移民被称之为"候鸟老人".本文运用时空行为的环境暴露测量,采用混合研究方法探讨候鸟老人日常行为中对迁入地绿色空间的实际使用与身心健康的关系.研究发现:候鸟老人在迁入地的日常活动范围主要集中在以家为中心的1...     

COVID-19, indigenous peoples and tourism: a view from New Zealand

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact is predicted to be long-lasting with intergenerational impacts for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples offer untapped potential for understanding how we are shaping resilient solutions to COVID-19 and similar threats in the future. In New Zealand, the Māori people occupy diverse leadership and occupational roles throughout society. As a result of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi) they are recognised, through Acts of Parliament, as government partners who work in governance and planning processes, including the COVID-19 response. Such recognition can result in the inclusion of Māori values such as whanaungatanga (kinship and belonging), kaitiakitanga (environmental guardianship and responsibility) and manaakitanga (respect, care, and hospitality) within policy and Acts of Parliament. Māori leaders and spokespeople are stressing that environmental and social welfare needs of all communities should be prioritised as part of the COVID-19 solution and that tourism responses cannot be separated from social needs. Government responses and planning efforts that incorporate diverse cultural values ensure more equitable futures and positive experiences for tourism providers, travellers and the hosts. In this way Indigenous-informed approaches would positively contribute to transforming business, health and education for a more positive global society.     

环境史中的欧洲特殊道路问题

欧洲为什么率先进行工业革命是一个永恒的问题,从东西方环境史比较的角度可能会对此得出独特的解释。当然,这种比较必须建立在坚实的实地研究的基础上。本文要分析的十个问题是：谨慎对待精神观点,环境史的制度分析,耕地与牧场的平衡与失衡,西欧的婚姻模式,延续、持续性和自给自足,森林和权力,欧洲多中心主义的优势,魏特夫“亚细亚生产方式”的绿色复兴,欧洲殖民主义的环境影响,环境史上是否存在一个“欧洲奇迹”。从这十方面的比较中会对“环境史中的欧洲特殊道路问题”有更清楚的把握,进而揭示出一个辩证的历史逻辑,即“长期的成功恰恰加剧了危机”。这或许就是东方前现代的繁荣昭示给现在西方文明的前景。     

Spatial imaginaries and collective identity in women’s human rights struggles in Honduras

In recent years, geographic analysis on social movements has emphasised the influence of actors’ concepts, lived experiences and perceptions of space on the emergence of collective action. Cultural approaches to social movements in Latin America as well as feminist scholarship have revealed that women’s collective action is shaped by their perceptions of institutional and societal challenges, which are rooted in authoritarian and patriarchal culture prevalent in their society. This article combines geographic and cultural approaches to social movements as well as transnational feminist theories to explore women’s human rights mobilisation in Honduras after the coup d’état in 2009. It investigates how a group of urban and rural activists that included feminists, rural women, students and community leaders, adopted human rights discourses and practices to respond to the coup. The article draws on interviews and focus group discussions to suggest firstly, that protests in response to the coup shaped the interviewees’ spatial imaginaries and particularly considers how urban feminists’ spatial imaginaries were merged with those of rural women under the collective framework of human rights. Secondly, the study demonstrates that a collective identity as women human rights defenders was crucial for the emergence of collective action and also prompted the establishment of a national network. This case study contributes to research on women’s collective action to negotiate women’s rights, human rights and social justice in changing political processes.     

Inter‐Indigenous development aid: markets,corporations, and biases

The Canadian government and the Meadow Lake Tribal Council sponsored a forest extraction corporation in eastern Nicaragua that restructured 16 Miskitu and Mayangna villages and transformed local human‐environment interactions. The Central American aid project demonstrated paternalistic and interventionist tendencies and exposed biases in inter‐Indigenous aid that rendered it inseparable from conventional aid. This case encourages reflection on social and ecological impacts from the marketing of collective resources, the creation of Indigenous development corporations, and the decision‐making criteria and processes driving foreign aid. The case study demonstrates how foreign aid programs targeting Indigenous Peoples may actually thwart the self‐determination that they set out to encourage. Aid agencies and business partners, who had limited knowledge of local cultures and institutions, created externally defined rules that instigated resource conflicts and undermined the authority of customary leaders without resolving poverty or uneven development.     

Collecting,Collections, and Practice in the Anthropologies of Health and Disease

Anthropologists studying health and disease collect data ranging from human remains to peoples’ lived experiences. Each of the books reviewed here reveals the social processes that shape how disease phenomena are observed, assessed, classified, and interpreted, both by the individuals who experience them and the researchers who study them. The classic anthropological themes of collection, exchange, circulation, social relations, and reciprocity resonate throughout. Theoretical and methodological differences aside, anthropologists remain united by a commitment to holistic and integrative approaches and the shared goal of providing historically and socially contextualized, nuanced understandings of the human condition.     

Corporate social responsibility in tourism post-2015: a Development First approach

Most large tourism businesses have corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives that advance environmental, economic and social sustainability. Existing research shows that initiatives often tend to be ad hoc, however, and linked to cost-savings and the reputation of the business. We suggest that this approach equates with Tourism First planning. In response to the greater demands being placed on businesses to act responsibly in the post-2015 era, we propose a Development First framework for CSR that is adapted from Peter Burns’ tourism planning model. This framework has a holistic, sustainable and people-centred focus and enables geographers and other social scientists to analyse the potential for initiatives to lead to positive, long-term development outcomes in different localities.     

从低碳旅游到洛哈思旅游:可持续旅游理念的又一次深化

发展可持续旅游不仅应该重视旅游过程中节能减排的环保问题,更应该解决旅游活动本身的"亚健康状态"。一种来源于反消费主义的思潮---洛哈思旅游,是后现代社会对享受型传统旅游的一种反思。低碳旅游以节能减排为出发点,重点在环境,洛哈思旅游以个人健康为出发点,重点在人。文章从洛哈思旅游的九要素进行解构,并将其和传统旅游、低碳旅游进行对比,提出洛哈思旅游具有健康性和包容性的特点,认为其所倡导的旅游方式十分符合旅游活动的本源,是一种继低碳旅游之后更人性化、更容易被接受的可持续旅游方式,是对低碳旅游的进一步发展和深化。通过倡导健康旅游消费的观念、产业链的开发、恰当地营销,洛哈思旅游能从环境和以人为本的双重角度引导现代人改变以往的旅游习惯,重构自己的旅游行为方式。     

The influence of the 'spaces of everyday life' on pregnancy health

Given the recent focus of medical geography on the social influences of health and illness, this paper draws upon a socio‐theoretical framework to show the link between pregnancy health and the spaces of everyday life. The health of pregnant women is becoming increasingly important given that 85 percent of women work during their pregnancy. Employment during pregnancy is consistently linked with good health for infants; however, large discrepancies exist on the effects for employed mothers. This study estimates the health effect of women's employment during pregnancy with data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. Findings show that women's involvement in paid employment has a beneficial impact for infants compared to women not involved in paid labour. Women who work one job or more per week experience more health problems than women who work less than one job per week. Finally, women who work in male‐dominated and gender‐neutral workspaces experience significantly more prenatal problems than women in female‐dominated workspaces. In conclusion, there is evidence to support that differences in employment status, number of workplaces involved in and gendered workspaces influence the experience of health and illness that are negotiated in the spaces of everyday life.     

城市绿地服务功能的居民认知度研究

城市绿地作为城市中公共场所和自然元素,担当着多种功能。而居民对城市绿地各种服务功能的认知度受到自身主观因素和所处绿地环境因素的影响。本文通过问卷对南京市居民绿地服务功能认知进行调查,从居民绿地服务功能重要性认知、服务功能感知两方面分析居民认知度及其影响因素。结果表明:居民对各服务功能的感知程度与其重要性认知结果大体一致,对绿地的生态环境功能感知度低于其主观重要性认知水平;居民自身主观因素中的年龄和文化程度、所处绿地数量和植物种类对居民的感知程度和重要性认知有显著影响。