The importance of location and scale in rural and small town tourism product development: The case of the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre,Manitoba, Canada

This paper begins with a review of the literature on tourism in rural economies, to establish a framework for analyzing large‐scale tourism products in rural and small town regions. The review is followed by the development of a typology of large‐scale attractions in rural and small town regions, including parks, casinos, events, heritage, and cultural products. The typology leads into the example of the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre (CFDC) in Manitoba, Canada. Located in an agricultural region of south‐central Manitoba, the community of Morden is located 125 km from the provincial capital city, Winnipeg, which had a population of 811,900 in 2016. Morden is also located 35 km north of the border with North Dakota. Thus, while a small town in a traditionally rural region still dependent upon an agricultural economic base, Morden has been recently successful in diversifying its economy, including through manufacturing, services, hospitality, and tourism. In part, this success is due to a south‐central Manitoba location; however, it is also the result of innovative local leadership, including the prioritization of hospitality and tourism related to the CFDC. This paper describes the case study as an example of successful tourism development within an already economically and socially diversifying region.     

Land Reforms at Centre Stage: The Evidence on West Bengal

The debate on the agrarian problem in developing countries has alternated between a stress on the necessity for land reforms and an emphasis on the introduction of productivity-enhancing technology, leading to a trickle-down effect. In the Indian state of West Bengal, the former strategy has been pursued since the mid-1970s. Most observers agree that this approach has stimulated a ‘virtuous circle’, leading to higher production, a decrease in poverty and in polarization, and a perceptible improvement of the human development index. This article addresses the causality sequence, namely, whether land reform or irrigation has acted as the kick-start mechanism to these improvements. The irrigation figures are not impressive, either in comparison with the outlay in other Indian states, or in terms of crop coverage. The explanation for activation of a virtuous circle may therefore be found in land reform, at least if land reform is considered and implemented in its comprehensive meaning: intervention in the relations of production, the forces of production and the broad social and political parameters.     

Political Time in a Westminster Democracy: The Canadian Case

Stephen Skowronek’s idea of political time is tested by applying it to Canada. Skowronek identified a recurring cycle in US presidential politics, in which a coalition was forged around a distinctive set of ideas, dominated the political scene, and then crumbled, making way for a new coalition; a president’s ability to act as an agent of change depended on his place in this cycle. The concept of political time offers insights for the study of Westminster democracies, but Skowronek’s typology cannot be transplanted from the US to the Canadian context. A political orthodoxy cannot be easily identified in Canada, and prime ministers cannot be clearly labeled as affiliated with or opposed to the ideas of a given era. Some seem determined to play a corrective role, accepting much of the orthodoxy but reconstructing some elements of it. This problem of classification is amplified by the very short term of some prime ministers, by the very long term of others, and by a multiparty system, which has meant that Canadians often end up with prime ministers who are out of synch with the dominant ideas of their age. When applying Skowronek’s ideas to Canada, they emerge as overly structural and not sensitive enough to the possibility that leaders can fail to perform according to type.     

History and Ideology of an Akan Centre: The Cosmological Topography of Wiawso

This article documents in a specific setting, the Sefwi variant of the Akan civilization of West Africa, the complex interplay between history and ideology in the establishment of settlements’ hegemony. The text scrutinizes sources on specific historical circumstances concerning the transformation of Wiawso, the town chosen for this exercise of cosmological topography, over the last three centuries. The demographic, social, ritual and urban dynamics are discussed with reference to the semantics of the spatial dimension of Akan settlements’ hegemonic ambitions. The focus on the interplay between history and ideology elucidates two issues. First, the importance of strategic and historically‐specific evocation and display of objects, sites and narratives claiming reference to the past, in generating and mobilizing structures of signification sustaining Wiawso’s recognized prominence. Second, the persistence over time of certain Akan ideological features concerning principally what the past entails and the standards for evaluating settlements’ success in centralization.     

Postmodern patriotism: Canadian reflections

Canada is an evolving human geography that has nurtured difference and made a unitary state impossible. In this short essay I allude to the historical-geographical construction of Canada and the type of confederation it encouraged. I show how deeply different identities are ingrained in the fabric of this country. As the state cannot provide equally for all these identities, I consider the special claims of Native peoples and French speakers, particularly in relation to those of multiculturalism, and argue that the country has a particular responsibility to those societies that were here before the Canadian state, and found it superimposed upon them. Overall, I try to show that Canadian patriotism, based less on an overriding meta-narrative (which the country had never found) than on an appreciation of difference and the responsibilities of citizenship, provides a welcome alternative to either an exclusionary ethnic nationalism or a borderless electronic postmodernity.