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.     

Warped by the field: the gravity of the margins on West Forty-Sixth Street

Reflecting on a recently completed ethnographic research project, I try to understand how things that may seem marginal to my central question nonetheless remain active within my arguments in unanticipated ways. I begin with an overview of my original research aims and activities before presenting eight marginal examples from fieldwork. I conclude with a meditation on the epistemic force that the marginal must be understood to exert on projects of knowledge production.     

Neurognostics Question

Abstract

Dopamine is among the most well‐researched neurotransmitters at the present time. For the first half‐century of neurotransmitter research, however, interest in dopamine was minimal, and only a few scattered groups of researchers studied it. It was their research that stimulated current interest, and provided the background for our present understanding of this important substance. By the late 1950s, it was clear to these individuals that dopamine served an important physiological role in mammalian brains, and that its role was most likely that of a central nervous system agonist. Soon after this, dopamine, or more specifically the depletion of dopamine, was clearly implicated in Parkinson's disease. This paper looks at the early history of the physiological roles of this intriguing compound.     

Towards Liveable Cities: Progress in the European Union Urban Environmental Agenda

The 2006 “Thematic Strategy on the Urban Environment” is the first piece of official European Union (EU) policy solely focused on the urban environment. It follows a process of several years in which the EU has tried to promote an integrated approach to urban management. During the 2005–2007 “Liveable Cities” project, reflection was given to the “Thematic Strategy”. This resulted in important critiques on the EU's approach to the urban environment. Explaining how the initial top-down approach chosen by the EU contributed to the perceived “failure” of the “Thematic Strategy”, suggestions are made for alternative approaches to the creation of liveable cities in Europe.     

Recategorizing ‘Public’ and ‘Private’ Property in Ghana

In the course of political struggle in northern Ghana, the classification of land and resources has shifted between the two ‘master categories’ of public and private. Despite the fact that master categories may be wholly inadequate in accounting for the actual complexity of property objects, social units and rights, they are not divorced from the agency of people who have something at stake. Laws, rules and by‐laws are referred to as important markers and fashion the local political struggles over the rights to and control over resources. This article offers a general account of conflicts and the recategorization of resources in the property system of small‐scale irrigation. It examines the logics and positioning of the different stakeholders, and discusses how different levels of public policy have provided opportunities for such changes. A case study presents the opportunity to examine the details of a particular controversy demonstrating the social and political powers involved in the recategorization of property.