Migration,common property,and communal labor: cultural politics and agency in a Mexican village

This article examines the politics of migration in an indigenous Oaxacan village (Mexico), and finds that the village acts, with measured success, to shape the timing and rhythm of migration. Villagers regard migration as necessary yet problematic. Migration provides income for village families yet undercuts traditions of community service and disrupts the integrity of local development networks that link the community to NGOs, state bureaucracies, and product markets. As a consequence, villagers engage in a cultural politics of negotiation and contestation that moulds both the meanings of migration, and the village social practices that regulate migration. Regulation operates via the setting of norms for village communal labor participation: those who do not undertake assigned tasks (cargos and tequios) face loss of usufruct of communal lands. This finding of strong sending community agency is contrasted with recent migration studies that emphasize the agency of migrant networks and transnational spaces. The paper presents a case study of migration that examines the exercise of community agency via collective labor participation, and the study concludes by calling for a greater analytical focus on the cultural politics of sending communities.     

From ‘Traditional’ to Collectivized Reindeer Herding on the Kola Peninsula: Continuity or Disruption?1

Abstract

The article turns critical attention to the process of Kola Sami land-use changes that had occurred in the century immediately preceding Soviet collectivization drives of the mid-1930s. Particular attention is turned to influences brought by Izhma Komi settlers at the end of the 19th century. The overall argument is that Kola Sami land-use adaptive patterns had shown signs of orienting towards reindeer-driven, market-oriented form of husbandry well before collectivization. In this sense, there are grounds to see collectivization – in its expansive strategy for ever-rising production of reindeer meat – as part of a sufficiently long period of continuous changes, rather than an abrupt disruption of ‘traditional’ patterns – the latter reading occurring as a popular theme in Kola Sami related literature. Attention is turned also to post-Soviet forms of re-orientation in land-use. Here the problematic point of intra-community tendencies for ‘hidden privatization’ of extant collective assets is discussed in its current local controversy with foreign-supported experiments in private, clan community (obshchina) reindeer-husbandry.     

Performing space across time: a 520-year anniversary in a western Ukrainian village

Abstract

Festivals and celebrations have special significance for the foundation of community and collective memory. They are part of social practice and, at the same, also reveal much about current and historical social structures, traditions and rituals. Festivals contrast with everyday life, taking participants away from it; celebrations, conversely, celebrate and reinforce social hierarchies, the role of individuals in the community and the characteristics of the community. This is clearly demonstrated in this contribution on the example of the festivities of two western Ukrainian village communities celebrating 520 years of existence. The communities’ notable peculiarity lies in the fact that they were founded as a single village. Due the partitioning of Poland along the Zbru? River, however, the two sides were situated in Austria-Hungary and Russia, respectively. In the interwar period, they were located in Poland and the Soviet Union. Since the end of the Second World War, they were part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Although they did not have borders for the first time in 150 years, they nevertheless continued to exist as independent villages. Given this starting point, a celebration of the 520th anniversary of the founding of these communities obviously has very complex historical contexts within different past state regimes. The following analysis of the village festival will first demonstrate how such a celebration was achieved. Further, it will examine the extent to which a socio-spatial demarcation was reproduced just as efforts were simultaneously made to eliminate it. The village is a striking example of the manifestation of the experience and perception, design and imagination of present and past spaces.     

从传统农庄到现代城市社区转型的曲折历程——“无保调查”中保定市薛刘营村城市化进程考察

河北省保定市薛刘营村是中国农村经济史上持续80余年著名的"无保调查"中具有特殊意义的研究对象。这个紧邻城市的传统农庄,在新中国成立初期被纳入城市郊区,20世纪90年代末纳入市区,而今即将转变为一个新型城市社区。该村城市化经历了从顺畅起步而后受阻,到快速发展后遭遇产业结构、就业结构和居民身份转换与市民待遇转换长期不同步的"非均衡"发展状况,再到突破旧村拆迁瓶颈,实现建立现代城市社区的曲折历程。这一过程提供了以村为单位研究中国北方城郊传统农庄城市化的完整标本,也为推进北方城郊农村城市化发展提供了宝贵经验。     

Villagers’ agency in the Intangible Cultural Heritage designation of a Korean village ritual

This paper examines how the villagers of Pams?m village in Seoul acted as agents in configuring their own cultural identity which explores issues concerning Korea’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) designation system. It delves in detail how villagers practice their ritual of Pams?m Pugundang kut ? amidst the complex process of continuity and change as a way of sustaining and promoting collective village identity. By examining the implications of this cultural practices in contemporary society, this paper ultimately raises the question of who constitutes the true legatee of traditional culture of Pams?m village. The cultural practice of the Pams?m Pugundang kut carried out by the villagers of Pams?m can be interpreted not merely as a critique of the dynamics of political and cultural heritage, but the reconstruction of villager’s identity through the creation and continuation of their long village history. This study provides a useful case in examining a village community which describes in detail how the subject of this study constructs their cultural identity and faces the complex issues concerning Korea’s ICH designation system.     

边界与想象社区的建构:以广州归侨聚居区为例

城市化进程中,逐渐式微的归侨聚居区呈现被符号化的特点,其物质和文化形态的改变在一定程度上强化了“侨文化”的地方再想象,并加剧了边界随之发生的新变化。本文主要采用叙事研究方法,以广州华侨新村为例,尝试探讨在城市化进程中归侨聚居区边界的演变及其对想象的社区的影响,由此进一步解析归侨聚居区符号化的过程与动因。研究发现：①1954年至今,新村归侨共同体维系纽带经历了从国家利益到对幸福生活的向往,再到集体记忆的嬗变,折射出社会环境、空间形态以及邻里关系的变化与归侨的自我认同感、群体认同感之间的耦合关系;②华侨新村不仅是曾经表征爱国主义的物质载体,在资本与权力的支配下归侨聚居区被片面截取并赋予了其它阶层想象的意义和元素。     

The character of a global transport infrastructure: Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days

Jules Verne’s Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours, serialized in 1872 and published in English in 1874 as Around the World in Eighty Days, displays through its hero the character, in both senses of the term, of the new global public transport system that had transformed long-distance travel in the nineteenth century. Verne’s fiction imagines the community defined by this system in three particular elements: A high-speed public transport network creates a community of people by extending their synchronic collective sense of ongoing separate simultaneous activity and, collaterally, unifies them historically as contemporaries defined by the current mode, form and speed of their transport network; it creates this community of people irrespective of the individual purposes for which they use the transport system; and individuals comprehend this networked community by projecting an omniscient-like perspective through which they imagine themselves and others as circulating bodies in it.     

Chinese environmental activism and the environmental politics of rumors

Rumors are an important yet poorly understood dynamic in environmental politics, particularly regarding their role in environmental activism. Drawing on theories of rumors, environmental information governance, and environmental activism, we analyzed the eco-politics of rumors in a Chinese village that experienced rumor-fueled protests against the construction and operation of a limestone quarry. We make three arguments regarding the condition, control, and content of rumors. First, poor environmental information governance, driven by a development-first and prejudice-rich official narrative and the strategic behaviors of blame and accountability avoidance, provides an important condition for rumor formulation and circulation. Second, the generation and circulation of rumors can be understood as a collective sense-making process driven by the informal communication between external and internal sources of information. The ephemeral nature of communication and group sanctions on government supporters make it difficult for authorities to control rumors. Third, by conceptualizing rumors as information warfare against official narratives, we show that rumors can foster a sense of collective urgency, reframe a land-right protest into an environmental protest that is politically more likely to succeed, and undermine public trust in local authorities. The findings suggest that rumors are an important part of environmental politics in China because of their role in environmental activism.     

Is the classic diaspora transnational and hybrid? The case of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress

Scholars studying migration processes through the transnational prism have expanded the concept of ‘diaspora’ with a new meaning as a transnational, hybrid identity and condition, which has displaced the classical interpretation constructed around ethnicity and territory. By analyzing the activities of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, which represents the organised Ukrainian community in Canada, an old‐type diaspora, this paper argues that transnationality and hybridity have always been the inner attributes of diaspora identity and experience and stresses the importance of an essential characteristic of diaspora: the conscious effort to maintain a distinctive collective identity. Only if a community succeeds in maintaining its collective identity throughout multigenerational change can it qualify as a diaspora. These two dimensions – the self‐consciousness of diaspora as a distinctive group and the survival of its distinctive identity through multigenerational change – set diasporas apart from transnational communities.     

社区居民参与城市会展业发展的社会交换关系研究——以广州琶洲村村民为例

广州的琶洲地区是广州会展业的代表符号,琶洲村是会展业促进城市化发展的典型城中村。本文以琶洲村村民为例,从社区居民的经济影响感知视角解析会展业发展过程中居民的社会交换关系。研究显示:①城市会展业成为社区重要的社会交换关系变量,社区经济对会展业的依赖性增强。②在会展业发展过程中,外来者的进入打破了原来社区交换关系的均衡与稳定,社区参与交换关系的网络呈多元化特征;社区居民之间的内部交换关系发生了变化,正经历竞争与分化的阶段。③社区居民不满足现有的外部交换关系,表现出对更高层次交换关系的热切期盼。     

从困境到理性：村落遗产旅游中的自组织研究——以龙脊平安寨为例

在村落遗产旅游发展中,村民易陷入集体行动的困境。本文以龙脊平安寨为典型案例,分析其遗产旅游从集体行动的“困境”到“理性”从而实现自组织的治理过程。结合公共池塘资源治理与自组织理论,本文提出,自组织整合社区资源,形成了集体的理性,其内发性、参与式发展可以有效地治理村落遗产旅游的公共事务,从而实现村落遗产旅游的可持续发展。     

Le territoire englouti de Mologa

The fate of the people of Mologa, a provincial village in central Russia, was forever marked by two consequences stemming directly from a single major event when the Rybinsk dam went into service in 1941. Not only did the waters of the lake it created cover their homes, but ene entire population was displaced as well. From then on, the inhabitants' new-found mobility was assimilated to the attachment to their territory, which on a symbolic level constituted their collective identity. In this sense, their forced displacement was incorporated into a culture of mobility: based on the spatial overlaying of individual and collective identities, it expressed its true dynamic nature in the principle of a potential return. The case of the community of Mologa is in many ways emblematic of the Soviet redistribution of populations; the bond between identities (personal, familial, or collective) and a territory seems to have been constructed in such a way that the displacement, rather than putting this bond into jeopardy, established or activated it. It did this by stimulating a living relationship within the spatial dimension. This dialectical movement between distance and return contributed to the formation and the preservation of a communal identity taking the form of mobility.     

Special Days of Worship and National Religion in the Australian Colonies, 1790–c. 1914

Throughout the period between 1790 and 1914 the governments of the Australian colonies asked their populations to suspend work and amusements and join in collective acts of prayer. Australia’s special days of prayer have much historical significance and deserve more scholarly attention. They had an enduring popularity, and they were rare moments when a multi-faith and multi-ethnic community joined together to worship for a common cause. This article builds on recent work on state prayers in Britain by considering what the colonial tradition of special worship can tell us about community attachments in nineteenth-century Australia. ‘Fast days’ and ‘days of thanksgiving’ had both an imperial and a regional character. A small number of the Australian days were for imperial events (notably wars and royal occasions) that were observed on an empire-wide scale. The great majority, such as the numerous days of fasting and humiliation that were called during periods of drought, were for regional happenings and were appointed by colonial authorities. The article argues that the different types of prayer day map on to the various ways that contemporaries envisaged ‘Greater Britain’ and the ‘British world’. Prayer days for royal events helped the empire’s inhabitants to regard themselves as imperial Britons. Meanwhile, days appointed locally by colonial governments point to the strength of regional attachments. Colonists developed a sense that providence treated them differently from British communities elsewhere, and this sense of ‘national providence’ could underpin a sense of colonial difference—even a colonial nationalism. Days of prayer suggested that Greater Britain was a composite of separate communities and nationalities, but the regional feelings they encouraged could still sit comfortably with attachments to an imperial community defined by commonalities of race, religion and interest.     

Village and community in early colonial New England

The long-standing correlation between community function and nucleated settlement form in early colonial New England is mistaken. Puritan communities were established, but new communities—often called villages in colonial records—were developed and survived quite well regardless of settlement form. As in England at the time, village meant community and community was a social web. Village status in New England provided a community with land and thus enabled the community to undertake settlement. But the social web that comprised community did not require nucleated settlement, and the dispersed settlement form that many colonists had known in England dominated the village landscape of early colonial New England.     

地方感的研究路径探索：心象运动论的方法

通过多理论思辨，本文认为地方感理论研究中，不同流派之间存在的三对矛盾：流动性与在地性的矛盾，历时性与即时性的矛盾，个体经验与集体意识的矛盾。为调和这三对矛盾，本文探索新的研究方法，即地方感的心象运动路径，主要包括以下内容：①心象与心象运动的概念；②心象运动的认识论；③心象运动论的研究方法。通过这些理论探索，提出地方感研究的新路径，为城市政府的社区管治、提升居民的归属感提供政策参考。     

仪式活动视角下的集体记忆和象征空间的建构过程及其机制研究——以南京大学校庆典礼为例

仪式活动是集体记忆、象征空间与地方认同建构源头,因其研究有助于揭示城市各空间尺度内的公共生活竞争的内在机制,因此已成为西方文化地理学的重要研究命题;但此类以仪式活动为视角,揭示集体记忆、象征空间建构过程及其机制的研究,在国内极少。鉴于其研究重要意义,文章以南京大学校庆典礼为例,运用文献研究、田野考察、访谈等多种定性与定量方法,探讨了自上而下的仪式活动,即校庆建构集体记忆、象征空间、地方认同的过程及其机制,为校园特别是新校园或扩建校园的纪念物建设与规划提供科学依据。     

A community transplanted: the formative experience of a Swedish immigrant community in the Upper Middle West

Nineteenth-century European migration to the agricultural frontiers of the American Upper Middle West established axes of communication and migration between localities on both sides of the Atlantic. This study is a detailed examination of the transplantation of community between two such localities. It traces the emigration of approximately 85 households from the Swedish parish of Rättvik to the daughter settlement they founded in Isanti County, Minnesota, and compares the fabric of life they had known in the old parish to the one they established during the formative years of the new community. While patterns of social life were transplanted to the New World, economic adjustments to a new environment were unavoidable.     

Farmer-fishermen: interior lake fishing and inter-cultural and intra-cultural relations among coastal and interior Sámi communities in northern Sweden AD 1200–1600

Although the productive fishing grounds had long attracted the Crown and the Church to northern Sweden, it was not until the sixteenth century that the judicial and fiscal powers of the Swedish Crown were exercised in full. Records show that the regular fishing in interior lakes formed a prominent enterprise among coastal farmer communities. This paper examines the social and economic context of farmers engaged in interior fishing with respect to the internal organization of village communities, principles of private and collective ownership, land-use strategies and inter-community relations. There are no a-priori assumptions about the coastal population being “Swedish”. Instead of applying ethnonyms, the terms “farmer” and “coastal” are used throughout the paper. The main area of investigation includes the coastal area of northernmost Sweden and the western parts of Finnish Lapland. The study shows that interior lakes fitted into village resource areas, long sanctioned by usage, and that usufruct belonged to village members collectively. A large part of the fishing lakes are situated in interior Sámi territory. Fishermen were internalizing Sámi place names, implying close relations between the groups. Archeological investigations point to subsistence strategies including systemic interior lake fishing being established before AD 1200. The authors propose that coastal and interior communities should be perceived as two economic strategies representing indigenous and pre-colonial land-use schemes.     

基于新制度经济学视角的学生化社区房屋租赁现象研究——以广州南亭村为例

本研究以广州大学城南亭村为例,从新制度经济学视角解释"学生化"社区的房屋租赁现象,以期填补国内对"学生化"社区房屋租赁现象的制度环境及其形成机制的研究不足。通过实地调研发现,由于城乡二元体制和城中村过度依赖村集体组织的管理模式,各级政府的正式制度安排没有得到充分的落实,正式制度的约束作用不显著。在与正式制度磨合的过程中,基于交易成本的考虑,对不同的正式制度,村民和房东采取了不同的应对策略,有接受、变通、规避、创新,促成了一些非正式制度,部分非正式制度与正式制度相违背。值得注意的是,正是这些非正式制度成为南亭村房屋租赁市场发展的保障与动力,维护着相关利益主体的利益。     

Petsamo: bringing modernity to Finland’s Arctic Ocean shore 1920–1939

In the Peace Treaty of Tartu 1920 Finland was given a corridor to the Arctic Sea. This area of 10,000 km² called Petsamo, was situated along the eastern side of the present Russo-Norwegian border. For many Finns Petsamo was seen as part of a Greater Finland expansionist ideology. Petsamo remained part of Finland until 1944, and during that time tourism was intensified to this new Arctic Ocean part of Finland. However, the most significant single project for bringing modernity and the young Republic of Finland to Petsamo was the Kolosjoki nickel mine. Kolosjoki was a piece in a larger international struggle for natural resources to be used for economic and political gains both in times of war and peace. The Kolosjoki mine can be compared with other similar mining communities in the Arctic and Siberia. When compared with the Soviet Russian Piramid mining community on Svalbard, differences in architectural style also become a signifier. The Kolosjoki mining village was built in a functionalistic style that was eagerly adopted by Scandinavia and Finland at that time. An Arctic dimension, connected explicitly to the Arctic Ocean presence of Finland at that time, is mostly lacking in later Finnish collective history culture.