Alternative Pathways to Community and Economic Development: The Latrobe Valley Community Partnering Project

Conventional approaches to development in areas that are experiencing economic decline invariably focus on business growth through interventions such as incentives, infrastructure development and job readiness training. This paper reports on a pilot project aimed at developing an alternative approach to community and economic development in the context of the Latrobe Valley, Victoria, a resource region that has experienced downsizing and privatisation of its major employer, the state‐owned power industry. The project was shaped by a poststructuralist concern with the effects of representation. It sought to challenge familiar understandings of disadvantaged areas, the economy, community and the research process in order to open up new ways of addressing social and economic issues. The resulting four‐stage research project was informed by the techniques of asset‐based community development and action research, as well as by discourses of the diverse economy and communities of difference. During the two‐year span of the project, four community enterprises were developed. The varying degrees of success they have met with in the four years since the project concluded highlight the critical role of local agencies such as the council in providing ongoing support for such endeavours.     

Between Survival and Revolution: Another Community Development System is Possible

Abstract: The tensions between capitalism and community have created a situation where, from the depths of multinational corporate headquarters to the diverse urban streets of America, the latter is now being co‐opted by the former. Couple this with the current neoliberal order being imposed on the world by multilateral institutions, high‐ranking government officials, and the corporate elite, and you have an economic imperial agenda being carried out in all corners of the globe. In this article, I take a dialectical and investigative approach in critiquing the neoliberal ideology that dictates how the work of community development corporations is funded and controlled. Much of today's reality within community development consists of an environment where funding restrictions undermine community power, community development trumps community organizing, professionalization creates a disconnect between community development staff and community members, and competition for funding forces organizations to spend more time on funders' needs than the needs of the communities they serve. J P Morgan Chase is profiled to illustrate how economic neoliberal globalization and so‐called community capitalism shape the modern community development movement. I conclude with an analysis of how empowerment, organizational democracy, and collective ownership have the potential to open up spaces of hope for urban communities in the United States who have been forced to live under the hegemony of economic neoliberal globalization.     

Why Every Cluster Cannot be a Successful Community?

The study of clusters is an important area of academic research. Clusters are also an important tool for public sector economic development. Historically, many organically developed clusters were based around a community of like-minded people. This may have led to a commonly held assumption in the literature that all clusters are communities. We suggest that not every cluster is also a successful community, based on empirical findings for four biotechnology clusters. Three issues of interests to practitioners are causes for clusters not being communities, the link between cluster success and development of “community” and policy failure at creating community within clusters. The discussion also aims to extend theory, first, by dealing with the rarely discussed question of the lack of collaboration “across” communities, and secondly, by attempting to help develop a theory of community formation in clusters.     

The evolution of the civic–ethnic distinction as a partial success story: Lessons for the nationalism–patriotism distinction

This article brings, for the first time, two of the most pivotal distinctions in nationalism studies into extended dialogue: the civic–ethnic distinction (CED) and the nationalism–patriotism distinction (NPD). By reviewing both the evolution of those distinctions over the previous decades and the ways in which they have been used in quantitative empirical research, we argue that the CED's evolution has been a partial success story, whereas discourse around the NPD has not seen substantial development. Despite lingering inconsistencies, researchers drawing on the CED have been successful in addressing different lines of critique and in using the CED as a heuristic for investigating notions of nationhood as expressed in public perceptions. In contrast, there has been only limited dialogue between theoretical and empirical approaches to the NPD. The article illustrates how research drawing on the NPD could profit from the CED's evolution. We close by providing a conceptual roadmap to guide the path towards more terminological clarity and to construct more theoretically robust measures for nationalism and patriotism. We specifically suggest that nationalism and patriotism should be consistently understood as ideal types that citizens can simultaneously hold to varying degrees.     

Telling stories: Exploring research storytelling as a meaningful approach to knowledge mobilization with Indigenous research collaborators and diverse audiences in community‐based participatory research

A growing number of geographers seek to communicate their research to audiences beyond the academy. Community‐based and participatory action research models have been developed, in part, with this goal in mind. Yet despite many promising developments in the way research is conducted and disseminated, researchers continue to seek methods to better reflect the “culture and context” of the communities with whom they work. During my doctoral research on homelessness in the Northwest Territories, I encountered a significant disconnect between the emotive, personal narratives of homelessness that I was collecting and more conventional approaches to research dissemination. In search of a method of dissemination to engage more meaningfully with research collaborators as well as the broader public, I turned to my creative writing work. In this article, I draw from “The komatik lesson” to discuss my first effort at research storytelling. I suggest that research storytelling is particularly well suited to community‐based participatory research, as we explore methods to present findings in ways that are more culturally appropriate to the communities in which the research takes place. This is especially so in collaborative research with Indigenous communities, where storytelling and knowledge sharing are often one and the same. However, I also discuss the ways in which combining my creative writing interests with my doctoral research has been an uneasy fit, forcing me to question how to tell a good story while giving due diligence to the role that academic research has played in its development. Drawing on the outcomes and challenges I encountered, I offer an understanding of what research storytelling is, and how it might be used to advance community‐based participatory research with Indigenous communities.     

Community perceptions to place attachment and tourism development in Finnish Lapland

Tourism in the Arctic is increasing rapidly and affecting local communities through land development pressures. In addition to providing economic opportunities, this development trend is affecting more intangible areas of life such as place attachment. The aim of this paper is to examine place attachment in tourism-dependent communities in the Arctic through place dependence and place identity. This is done through mapping sites with personal meanings and locally valued tourist sites in two communities in Finnish Lapland. The attachment is expressed in two different ways: currently, the economic activities are manifested almost exclusively through tourism development in Kilpisjärvi and Saariselkä, of which the most important sites are located in the natural landscape. As a result, the communities’ dependency on the natural surroundings is evident. The attachment also occurs through non-economic activities and is present through consumption-related actions, (e.g. fishing) as well as through less tangible issues, such as connecting with nature. The economic and consumption-related activities link with place dependence, whereas the more intangible factors with place identity. Mapping and calendar exercises helped to identify where the intensities of place attachment are located, and how they vary in space and time. Whilst considering place attachment and future tourism development, this paper also draws attention to changes in the local environment as a result of human activity, which may be amplified by climate change. When considering future tourism (or any) development, place attachment should carry a larger role in community and development planning.     

The disciplining of scientific communities

Abstract

Amidst ongoing concern with training students in the skills and knowledge necessary to contribute towards a knowledge-intensive economy, we explore how particular ‘epistemic subjects’ are produced within specific epistemic communities. We examine how social studies of science have probed the ‘disciplining’ practices that constitute scientific knowledge production, but have tended to overlook how students participate in, and become members of, epistemic communities. We propose that training contexts provide a window onto the disciplining processes through which scientific fields and their practitioners are co-produced. We offer an empirical example of an emerging scientific field that is working to establish community boundaries through the recruitment and training of university students. We explore how newcomers’ practices, values and identities are disciplined through participation in this nascent community whilst remaining open to negotiation and resistance. The conclusion calls for more scholarly attention to educational trajectories as processes through which disciplines and their disciples are produced.     

Loggers,Development Agents and the Exercise of Power in Amazonia

Many believe that Amazonian communities could benefit from the growing market for timber through self‐governed approaches to forest management. However, there is no clear understanding of how communities are to develop such approaches given logging frontiers that are characterized by informal negotiations with loggers and community forestry initiatives that are promoted by development agents. This article reports on research from four study areas in Bolivia, Brazil and Peru which reveals that external players exercise considerable power over communities. First, loggers and development agents impose forest management schemes directly on communities, hindering them from developing their own approaches. Second, paternalistic relationships with loggers and development agents prevent communities from identifying common interests and expressing these through their representative organizations. Finally, loggers and development agents use powerful discourses to shape acceptable schemes in forest management, silencing communities’ voices in debates. Through these different power mechanisms, external agents thwart the emergence of self‐governed community management approaches.     

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。     

Tourism global production networks and uneven social upgrading in Kenya and Uganda

This paper addresses how the growth of tourism global production networks (GPNs) based in Kenya and Uganda created uneven social upgrading outcomes for workers and communities. A tourism GPN and social upgrading framework follows a global political economy approach to analyzing tourism development and labor in diverse tourism geographies. Two tourism GPNs are investigated: Mombasa, Kenya, and Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda. Four main findings emerge: (1) governance relationships between tour operator and accommodation firms directly impacted social upgrading outcomes for hotel workers and indirectly for excursion workers; (2) excursion workers and community members had precarious connections to tourism GPNs; (3) public governance and collective power were key components to social upgrading while supporting its unevenness; and (4) societal embeddedness constructions around gender and regional space influenced worker and community social upgrading potential. Social upgrading is shaped by a confluence of firm, institution, geography, and labor conditions that differentially materializes in specific tourism GPN arrangements.     

The Italian white-goods industry and the European Common Market during the years of the ‘economic miracle’ (1958–63): quantitative evidence and interpretative hypotheses

The white-goods industry is one of the key fields of Italian economic development following the Second World War, and it represents the most resounding example of how, in just a few years, Italian entrepreneurs managed to reach the top of a market already occupied by the largest foreign multinationals. This article offers a quantitative view of the role played by foreign markets during the ‘economic miracle’, which is generally taken to be the first five years of the European Common Market (1958–63). There is a lack of an aggregate study of this subject for the Italian white-goods industry. As well as supplying some starting points for new research into the rapid international success of Italian producers, this study has allowed two inter-connected objectives to be reached. Firstly, it has highlighted how intense the inter-dependence of foreign markets was when the Common Market was set up, and therefore before the date claimed by the literature: the first important process of the rationalisation of the sector and the consequent formation of a national oligopoly was the result of the battle with competitors in foreign markets. Secondly, it seems to confirm how the process of European integration was not a substitutive factor, but the accelerant for a process of development that had already started.     

Community sustainability and resilience: similarities,differences and indicators

Sustainability has been a core conceptual framework for community development since the approach was popularized in 1987, although in its essence it reflects a long history of environmental conservation reactions to industrialization. Resilience, as a framework for understanding and approaching community development, emerged more gradually out of ecological studies in the 1980s, but has only recently, since the mid-2000s, emerged as a focus of public interest as a way of responding and adapting to the planet's growing anthropogenic changes. For many, sustainability and resilience are slightly nuanced perspectives on the same phenomenon. For others, however, there are distinct differences between them, with sustainability's conservation goals being in opposition to the adaptation goals of resilience. Two major reasons for these confusions are (1) both concepts are defined and used in many different ways to achieve a variety of political goals that may not reflect their core definitions, and (2) both concepts share similar goals and some common approaches, such as a focus on climate change and seeking a balance between humans and nature. Returning to the core definitions of conservation and adaptation helps to clarify their similarities and differences, as well as to articulate indicators for understanding how each applies to community tourism development. Indicators from research in rural Taiwan tourism communities were therefore based on responses to the questions: What does the community want to conserve and how do they want to do it (sustainability)? What do they want to change and how do they want to do it (resilience)? Preliminary results suggest that the new ideal community is the one that is both sustainable and resilient.     

Applied archaeology: revitalizing indigenous agricultural technology within an Andean community

Abstract

In many parts of the world European colonization, and more recent social and economic change, has radically altered and, in some cases, decimated both the social structure and the subsistence base of indigenolls communities. Archaeologists have often demonstrated the sophistication and practicality of prehistoric technologies, but only rarely have they developed long-term projects to evaluate the continuing relevance of these technologies to present-day communities. In this article the first experience of applied archaeology by The Cusichaca Trust is described, showing how a rural development project was developed within specific environmental and social contexts. The Trust's main research focus was the study of the agricultural infrastructure of the Incas and their predecessors in the Cusichaca and Huallancay side-valleys of the Urubamba Valley, Cuzco, Peru. This was paralleled by a rural development project to restore to full productivity some of the abandoned terraces and canals to the benefit of the local community. Attention is drawn to the relationship between conserving and using ancient agricultural infrastructures and the degree to which community organization is central to the maintenance and use of such technologies.     

How green is the valley? Foreign direct investment in two Norwegian industrial towns

Since the early 1900s, foreign direct investments (FDIs) have greatly affected Norwegian society, especially peripheral communities. This article analyses how transnational corporations (TNCs) use territory down to the local level, and how this complex relationship between firms and spaces is shaped by attributes related to the TNC and the characteristics of the local economy. An extensive literature discusses different types of effects and spillovers, such as vertical supply linkages and spin-offs, but theoretical explanations of outcomes are more difficult. The literature links positive as well as negative outcomes to local conditions and to the investment motives of the entity making the FDI, but says little about how these vary with types of business, communities and national economies, and how these interactions generate different outcomes. We conclude that FDIs have different abilities to transform an area. We argue that FDI can trigger path-dependent dependency when it is dominated by economic capital and path-dependent development when it consists of a balance of economic capital, social networks and knowledge. This variation in the effects of FDI is illustrated by an empirical analysis of two industrial towns in Western Norway, one with natural resources and the other with intangible technology resources.     

巴马盘阳河流域季节性移民社区类型与形成机理

季节性移民聚居现象受到西方学术界的极大关注,而我国鲜有研究。采用观察法和访谈法,对巴马盘阳河流域"一地多类"的季节性移民社区的形成过程、类型特征与作用机理进行归纳与揭示。研究表明：①季节性移民社区演变历经萌芽、快速参与和转型发展三个阶段,社区人口结构、聚居空间、经济业态、景观设施及人文氛围在不同时期呈现出不同的特征;②季节性移民社区形态存在差异,可以归类为交融性社区、优势性社区,共享性社区,纯粹性社区。③季节性移民社区是差异化的"美好生活"需求、独特的长寿资源及乡村生活环境、外来商业资本、地方政府调控和利益共生等"五力驱动"的结果,不同发展阶段其主导动力和作用方式存在差异。     

Public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS): challenges of implementation in Churchill,Manitoba

Public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) increasingly are utilized in geographic research, yet researchers rarely are provided with guidance on how to implement PPGIS in an appropriate and effective manner. This article reports on the process of research that explores responses to current and future local tourism development offered by a sample of residents using a modified PPGIS approach called ‘community action geographic information system’ (CAGIS). The conceptual development of CAGIS is reported and the challenges encountered during its implementation in Churchill, Manitoba during 2005–2007 are reviewed. It is suggested that researchers wishing to conduct similar research should undertake thorough preliminary fieldwork to assess the likelihood of finding agreement on a common problem; acquiring adequate resources; establishing collective responsibility for the project's outcome; attaining stakeholder support; developing trust and meaningful relationships; and incorporating indigenous knowledge appropriately. Feedback of results to community members also should be an integral part of the research process. A number of feedback mechanisms are reported, including an interactive weblog, which helped facilitate communication between heterogeneous groups in Churchill. Although ambitions for a truly participatory GIS approach to this project have been set aside, it is held that PPGIS can yield positive outcomes for communities and academia. Sharing this research experience will be useful to others who venture into PPGIS research, especially in northern communities.     

Understanding Local Leadership in Building the Capacity of Rural Communities in Australia

Current approaches to rural community development in Australia provide for limited government intervention. Such intervention is usually housed within programmes that seek to build the internal capacity of communities to achieve long term socio‐economic sustainability. A fundamental implementation strategy for capacity building has been developing local leadership. The underlying assumption of this approach is that good leadership will result in existing resources being mobilised for a more sustainable function and new resources attracted. What though is good leadership in terms of building the capacity of rural communities to develop sustainable socio‐economic futures? This paper compares the conceptualisation of leadership within rural development policies and leadership training programmes with the nature of local leadership as it exists in on‐ground community building projects. From an in‐depth review of the role and nature of local leadership within six Australian rural communities it was found that local leadership could result in improved adaptive capacity if the leadership is similar in nature to Burn's (1978 ) transformational model of leadership. Within policy, local leadership was most often conceptualised as being similar to this transformational model. However, rural leadership training programmes tended to conceptualise leadership as a top‐down process, similar to Burn's (1978 ) transactional model. While this study of leadership within rural communities revealed that transactional skills, as taught in leadership training programmes, were important for successful project management, such skills did not necessarily result in improved community adaptive capacity. It is suggested that, while transactional leadership can have an important role in influencing the development of rural communities, greater attention needs to be given to developing strategies to support transformational leadership.     

The Practice of Participatory Planning at Mapoon Aboriginal Settlement: Towards Community Control,Ownership and Autonomy

The practice of participatory planning in discrete Indigenous settlements has been established since the early 1990s. In addition to technical and economic goals, participatory planning also seeks community development outcomes, including community control, ownership and autonomy. This paper presents an evaluation of one such planning project, conducted at Mapoon in 1995. The Plan successfully improved physical infrastructure and housing, but had mixed success in terms of community development. Despite various efforts to follow participatory processes, the Plan was essentially a passing event, community control progressively diminished after its completion, and outcomes fell short of notions of ownership and autonomy. This suggests some misunderstandings between the practice of participatory planning and the workings of governance.     

乡村社区可持续性研究进展与展望

伴随着全球气候变化和粮食危机出现,乡村地区成为可持续性转型研究的新焦点。乡村社区可持续性是可持续发展研究的重要领域,对促进我国乡村振兴、城乡融合和可持续发展具有重大意义。根据世界可持续发展历程,结合国内外研究文献分析,乡村社区可持续研究可以划分为起步、拓展和逐步深化三大阶段。可持续性、脆弱性、韧性是可持续发展理念下演变的不同研究主题,是当前城乡发展研究的三大热点议题。乡村发展多功能、多维度、多主体等趋势下,乡村社区可持续性包含社区生态、社区产业、社区空间、社区规划、社区治理等多维度实施路径。未来的乡村社区可持续性研究,要重视多维度综合的乡村社区可持续性评定、乡村社区风险识别与监测、乡村社区可持续性转型、乡村社区生活质量与乡村吸引力提升和现代化治理等问题的深入探讨。实现中国乡村社区可持续性,应综合考虑较优越的政治背景、较大的地域环境差异等基本特征与现实问题。     

Urban Community Gardens as Spaces of Citizenship

A growing body of literature conceptualizes urban agriculture and community gardens as spaces of democratic citizenship and radical political practice. Urban community gardens are lauded as spaces through which residents can alleviate food insecurity and claim rights to the city. However, discussions of citizenship practice more broadly challenge the notion that citizen participation is inherently transformative or empowering, particularly in the context of neoliberal economic restructuring. This paper investigates urban community gardens as spaces of citizenship through a case study of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It examines the impacts of community gardens on citizenship practice and the effects of volunteerism on the development of community gardens. It explores how grassroots community gardens simultaneously contest and reinforce local neoliberal policies. This research contributes empirically and theoretically to scholarship on urban food movements, neoliberal urbanization, collaborative governance, and citizenship practice.