Constructing the Port: External Perceptions and Interventions in the Making of Place in Port Adelaide,South Australia

Port Adelaide, South Australia has been stigmatised as ‘Port Misery’ for over one hundred and fifty years. The origins of this stigmatised discourse can be traced prior to actual colonisation, having their genesis in wide political debates. This reflects the complex and contested nature of landscape, revealing that ‘Port Misery’ constitutes a powerful meta‐narrative that has been projected onto Port Adelaide by powerful and often external actors. This stigmatising discourse may lie dormant for prolonged periods of time, only to be remobilised to serve specific political, social and economic objectives. Recently, the ‘Port Misery’ discourse has been remobilised to justify the redevelopment of Port Adelaide from an industrial to a post‐industrial landscape.     

Power and Scale: The Shifting Geography of Industrial Relations Law in Australia

Abstract: In an increasingly complex literature exploring the geographies of socially constructed scale, interest has focused on the relationship between scale, power and the contested political terrains through which these relations are played out. In this paper, I argue that these interactions must be understood in specific contexts, where shifts in scale are inextricably linked to shifts in the sources and instruments of power. By applying a scale perspective to the analysis of recent industrial relations legislation in Australia, I show that the nature and direction of rescaling is “fixed” by the powers of institutional actors and the scope of their jurisdictions. I then draw on the distinctively scaled relations of the Australian context to assess the extent to which Australia's national rescaling processes can be seen as representing a process of convergence toward universal “spaces of neoliberalism”.     

The Socio‐Nature of Local Organic Food

Abstract: The concept of socio‐nature asserts that social relations are inherently ecological and that ecological relations are inherently social. This paper examines how, and with what consequences, discourses and practices of support for local and organic food reflect this idea. It argues that proponents of local organic agriculture view the food they promote as simultaneously social and the product of human labor. However, advocates’ understanding of the concept is partial and constrained by social privilege. It does not extend to industrial agriculture or paid farm labor. The literature on socio‐nature coheres around the revelation that what is understood as natural is also social and vice versa. In contrast, this paper takes a new approach, examining socio‐nature as a practice‐shaping discourse already embedded in social life. Investigating the on‐the‐ground ideological work performed by the concept also allows for assessment of its political consequences.     

Interpreting Industry's Impacts: Micropolitical Ecologies of Divergent Community Responses

Where governments have failed to protect their citizens from the environmental and social impacts of industrial development, social movements have often arisen in response. However, other community members may defend — sometimes violently — the same corporations that are targeted by their peers. The contributions to this cluster explore some of the ways in which communities disagree about how to respond to the ecological impacts of industry, their reactions inflected by differential concerns about economics, landscapes, indigenous rights and human health. The three studies illustrate the heterogeneity that communities display in their interpretations of, and responses to, industrial development, and demonstrate how this diversity informs, in crucial ways, grassroots activism against the development, or acceptance of it. In particular, this cluster examines how community‐scale actions, and the interpretations of industry's impacts upon which these actions are based, are contested through multiple discourses centred around community identities and boundaries.     

Rent,Real Estate,and Flood Mitigation in New Orleans East

This paper presents results from a study of environmental harm created in the collision of real estate speculation and the political process that governed extension of the urban frontier of New Orleans into its eastern wetlands. Near term concerns of rent‐seeking real estate capital and the contested politics of urban infrastructure expansion challenged a fragmented state charged with regulatory oversight and protection of investments in land and citizens. The paper engages theoretically the relative inattention of urban political ecology theory to rent as a way to theorize how capital flows through land, and argues for increased attention to the problem of land rent and the multiple scales of political engagement that manage ecological crisis immanent in the metabolism of nature and society under capitalism.     

Photography and Latin American Ruins

Ever since the nineteenth century photographers have regularly turned to Latin American ruins to express a diverse range of scientific, colonial, aesthetic and spiritual desires. This article looks at photographs of Latin American ruins from the nineteenth century through several archaeological expeditions in Central and South America over the course of the twentieth century. Focusing in particular on photographs of ruins that include human subjects, I argue that the human-material interactions evident in these images undermine the traditional view of a split between the archaeological subject and the material object, serving as a reminder of the political actuality of ‘classical’ ruins, sites that have sometimes been left out of the West’s contemporary fascination with the dark underbelly of modernity. Acknowledging that such politics is by no means always innocent, sometimes reflecting as it does the embedded power relations of neo-colonial desires, I argue nonetheless that ancient ruins in Latin America continue to be spaces around which social relations can be formed, not least through humour and pleasure.     

DWELLING WITHIN: THE INHABITED RUINS OF HISTORY1

Addressing the recent call to rethink history as a form of presence, the essay works toward a recovery of a space in which such presence of history is encoded. I argue that history as a form of active perception is akin to virtual witnessing of the past in the moment of our encounter with historical artifacts, be they texts, photographs, or buildings. To this end, I engage with the conceptual and material aspects of historical perception, deriving a model of history as “inhabited ruins,” the way it emerges together with historical consciousness and finds an especially dynamic expression in Georg Simmel's philosophy of culture. Throughout, I work with the notion of distance and trans‐dimensional presence as the forces that shape and reshape historical awareness. Ruins, intimately connected to the modern historical imagination, are approached not as sites of commemoration or nostalgia, but as spaces of active exchange between presence and disappearance. As such, they are taken to be the models for the transitive character of history itself, blurring the division between perception and thought. In other words, ruins are taken as structures that evoke and summon the past to an encounter with contemporary reality—a type of co‐appearance that opens the possibility of virtually witnessing the past. I conclude that the logic of “inhabited ruins” constitutes the event‐horizon of modern identity, always placing history right at the threshold of fragmentation.     

The Danube‐Rhine water system as a European regional integration structure

This article explores the role of two large European rivers — the Rhine and the Danube — in the structured development of the European territorial system. The water resources of the Rhine river, the tributaries and connecting canals have created the greatest industrial megalopolis on the continent. In this process and under contemporary conditions, the area is connected with the Danube basin by the newly built Rhine‐Main‐Danube canal. As a result, new structures are forming, having the character of an ecological‐economic system. It is in this direction that part of the European territorial system connected with the Danube is developing. As physical‐geographical and ecological factors accelerate economic development and integrate new economic structures, new opportunities arise. With the link to ecological and water resources, development of the Danube as Europe's newest, prospective zone of expansion is predicted.     

论生态文化与生态文明

文章分析了生态文化和生态文明产生的背景,指出技术文明经历的物理过程、化学过程、生命过程成就和所带来的环境危机。论述了生态文化和生态文明的内涵和区别。生态文明是人类最普遍、最重要的进步。指出个性原则具有永恒的价值,克服现代西方文化冲击下的文化多样性危机是人类文化发展的迫切任务。论述了生态文化与生态文明研究的方法论,认为文明过程的环境影响、地域生态文化资源的保护与开发、生态文明建设,是生态文化与生态文明研究的主要课题。     

The Hollowing Out of Brazilian Metropolitan Governance As We Know It: Restructuring and Rescaling the Developmental State in Metropolitan Space

Despite regulatory and financial rollout of the state at a number of scales, and a strengthening of the institutional framework that guides territorial planning and management, Brazilian metropolitan governance continues to be characterized by fragmented and relatively competitive organizational structures. Likewise, the Brazilian metropolis is marked by economic dynamism and intense socio‐spatial and environmental contradictions. Much of the mainstream literature on metropolitan governance has emphasized a natural “optimum” scale for planning and management in city‐regions, articulated by public and private stakeholders aimed at the coordinated delivery of economic, social and environmental services. Combining the literature on new state spaces and critical Brazilian urban‐regional studies, this paper provides an alternative framework to understand the impasse of Brazilian metropolitan areas, which is grounded within a geo‐historic reading of the contradictory projects and strategies of the developmental state and the contested nature of metropolitan scale itself.     

Remembering an Industrial Landscape

Abandoned industrial factories and decaying communities have become a common sight in many places throughout the western world. Since the beginning of the postindustrial age communities have needed to make decisions about how to deal with these industrial landscapes. The celebration and interpretation of these places become important in a region's heritage. The struggle between labor and capital to control the meaning of the past is ongoing. Often, when under the control of government agencies, the story of labor is overshadowed by the benefits of industrial and engineering feats. Working-class histories, which are readily available for public interpretation, are omitted or downplayed in an industrial site's official memory.Virginius Island, located in Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, is one example where a working-class history is available for public interpretation, although the park continues to promote industrial heritage over working-class heritage. While archaeological investigations over the past several decades on the island have mainly focused on recovering signatures of its industry, recent work has explored the lives of the workers and their families who toiled in this industrial community. The latest effort to stabilize above-ground ruins that continues into the early twenty-first century has concentrated exclusively on the industrial sites. The interpretation of the island and the development of trails have made many of the industrial ruins accessible to the public. Today the National Park Service spends considerable time protecting, stabilizing, and interpreting the industrial sites on the park's landscape. It is obvious that the histories fading from the official memory are those that belong to the craft-oriented and working-class community.     

Curated Ruins and the Endurance of Conflict Heritage

Abstract

Architectural ruins created by bombing, artillery, and fire are a common feature of post-conflict urban and extra-urban environments, serving as stark reminders of the material impact of warfare and violence. Over time most of these ruins are either restored, demolished, or reclaimed by nature. This paper examines another, more unusual category: sites that are carefully maintained in a freshly ruined state, suggesting that their destruction was more recent than it actually was. These sites — most often configured as memorials — raise interesting questions about memorialization, conflict heritage, authenticity, ethics, and whether or not there is a ‘natural’ lifespan or lifecycle for architectural ruins. To illustrate this argument I will draw on case studies of the Frauenkirche in Dresden, Germany, and the ruins of Oradour-sur-Glane in France.     

Land suitability assessment for locating industrial parks: a hybrid multi criteria decision‐making approach using Geographical Information System

Industrial areas play a critical role in urban and regional planning, especially for developing countries where reliable strategies for these areas can promote economic and environmental efficiency. The present study provides an integration of hybrid multi‐criteria decision‐making (MCDM) theories and Geographical Information System (GIS) processes in order to assess the suitability of an industrial location. Unlike traditional models, an efficient decision analysis demands handling uncertainties and considering dependencies between criteria. The proposed MCDM framework uses fuzzy theory because of the vagueness of experts' judgements. Moreover, Decision‐Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) is employed to investigate interrelationships among the criteria. In the proposed empirical solution, analytic network process (ANP) principles are used to deal with systematic interactions. We considered several factors such as accessibility, topography, proximity, and socioeconomic characteristics in the decision‐making procedure for a sustainable industrial park. The system is applied to Hamadan province, Iran to determine appropriate locations that are the results of the aggregation of criteria maps in a GIS environment. The results demonstrate that accessibility and economic indicators are essential for choosing an industrial park's location. Additionally, the proposed method can be applied for an efficiency evaluation of available industrial parks.     

Visualising Traces of the Past in Latin America*

The articles included in this special issue address the shifting relationship between traces of the past and photography in Latin America from the nineteenth century to the present day. Looking at different forms of materiality and trace in Latin America, from pre-Columbian remains to body art and industrial ruins, this issue also understands photographs as material objects that ‘act’ within particular visual economies. In this introduction, we offer some brief reflections on ruins and ruination in Latin America, and on the relationship between photography and the past.     

Presidential address given to the Folklore society,March 2004[1]

Glastonbury, a small town in the south‐west of England, is considered significant by a variety of religious groups and spiritual seekers. While there is a large degree of peaceful co‐existence between people holding radically different worldviews, the contested nature of Glastonbury as a spiritual centre is occasionally played out by means of public displays of religiosity, the most obvious example of which is the procession. This paper compares Christian and Goddess‐oriented processions as case studies in the use of traditional means to assert historical, spatial and spiritual claims in contemporary Glastonbury.     

The contested interpretation of heritage landscapes in northern Ireland

Abstract

Because the nature of society is both negotiated and contested, cultural artefacts, including heritage landscapes, will be invested with differing and conflicting meanings by various social groups. This is but one aspect of what might be termed the dissonance of heritage. The present discussion is framed within the context of the argument that relics of the past are a resource to be selectively exploited in accordance with contemporary political and cultural demands. The paper uses the example of Ulster's Folk and Transport Museum to examine these issues. It concludes that while consumers do appreciate the cultural complexity of the Museum's role as one medium of communication of identity in a contested society, the institution's effectiveness in this regard is undermined by the middle‐class bias of those consumers.     

The collision of heritage and economy at Uxbenká, Belize

The relationship between the Mopan Maya community of Santa Cruz and the Classic period Maya site of Uxbenká in southern Belize has had a lasting impact on archaeological investigation and conservation at the site over the last generation. Community members, long the ‘stewards’ of Uxbenká, believe they have an economic right to the ruins that translates loosely into ‘ownership’. Although they seek to maintain the relationship between Santa Cruz and Uxbenká, archaeologists with the Uxbenká Archaeological Project (UAP) challenge the legitimacy of the community’s claim via the power vested in them by the state to conduct scholarly investigations at the site. For both the UAP and the state‐affiliated Institute of Archaeology, Uxbenká belongs not to one village but to all Belizeans. This paper is a data‐driven analysis of the interactions and expectations of community members, archaeologists, and the state as they interact within the archaeoscape of Uxbenká.     

Sonic geography in a nature region

This paper considers the sonic geography of a region since the late nineteenth century, taking material from the Norfolk Broads, a wetland region in eastern England. This area has been defined through competing cultures of nature and leisure, with the presence, absence and nature of sound a key concern. The theme of sonic geography is set within debates concerning the nature of regional identity, moral geographies of conduct in landscape, and uses of the term ‘soundscape’. The paper draws on surveys of sound, travel guides, press reports, private journals and fictional accounts, showing how in the contested valuation of a regional landscape the aesthetic, ecological and social are enfolded through sonic geography.     

Decision-Making on Transport Infrastructure and Contested Information: A Critical Analysis of Three Approaches

Information is highly contested in virtually all decision-making processes on large infrastructure projects, leading to the delay or cancellation of projects. Contested information has two characteristics: uncertainty and ambiguity. The uncertainty of information refers to the lack of reliable knowledge about the characteristics and future effects of infrastructure projects. The ambiguity of information means that different actors have different (legitimate and valid) perspectives on the characteristics and effects of infrastructure projects. Information is contested if both uncertainty and ambiguity apply. In this paper, we develop a theoretical framework based on different perspectives on rationality and the role ascribed to information in decision-making. We then use this framework to analyse three approaches aiming to deal with the contested nature of information. The analysis shows that none of the approaches can fully deal with the contested nature of information, because no practically feasible approach has yet been developed to effectively address the ambiguity of information. We end with a brief discussion of the possible responses to this finding.     

CONTESTED GROWTH: THE DEVELOPMENT OF NORWAY'S TEMPORARY STAFFING INDUSTRY

In this article we mobilize a variegated capitalism approach to understand the development of the Norwegian temporary staffing industry. From this perspective, national temporary staffing industries are understood as contested multi‐actor and multi‐scalar institutional fields. The analysis explores the key actors and regulatory conditions that have interactively produced this field in the Norwegian context since initial deregulation in 2000, paying particular attention to the active role played by agencies and their collective organizations. In our account, the tight regulatory conditions for temporary staffing in Norway emerge as the main mobilizing issue for the agencies, as well as other political actors such as trade unions. It is argued that the nature of national labour laws, and struggles thereon, are defining characteristics which set the Norwegian market apart from the neighbouring Swedish staffing market. The Norwegian case enables us to contribute to the wider economic geography literature on temporary staffing markets by demonstrating the fundamental importance of national regulatory processes and the contested political processes that underlie regulatory change. It also demonstrates how national distinctiveness is actively produced in relation to extra‐national dynamics in terms of both regulatory imperatives (e.g. via the EU's Temporary Workers Directive) and processes of migration. Overall, we demonstrate how national staffing markets are highly dynamic, multi‐scalar institutional configurations whose particularities and complexities defy attempts to generalize across groups of seemingly “similar” national economies.