Enrolling the Private Sector in Community Development: Magic Bullet or Sleight of Hand?

The role of the private sector in international development is growing, supported by new and evolving official programmes, financing, partnerships and narratives. This article examines the place of the private sector in ‘community development’ in the global South. It situates corporate community development (CCD) conceptually in long‐standing debates within critical development studies to consider the distinct roles that corporations are playing and how they are responding to the challenges and contradictions entailed within ‘community development’. Drawing on field‐based research across three different contexts and sectors for CCD in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and South Africa, the article suggests that caution is required in assuming that corporations can succeed where governments, non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) and international development organizations have so often met with complex challenges and intractable difficulties. We argue that four specific problems confront CCD: (a) the problematic ways in which ‘communities’ are defined, delineated and constructed; (b) the disconnected nature of many CCD initiatives, and lack of alignment and integration with local and national development planning policies and processes; (c) top‐down governance, and the absence or erosion of participatory processes and empowerment objectives; (d) the tendency towards highly conservative development visions.     

Planning the Neighbourhood Economy: Land-Use Plans and the Economic Potential of Urban Residential Neighbourhoods in the Netherlands

This article investigates the relationship between zoning by-laws, as put forward in governmental land-use plans and the viability of urban residential neighbourhood economies. The Dutch planning tradition has long been characterized by strict separation of functions and top-down planning. We argue that profound changes in social and economic structures make land-use planning practices less suitable for the current policy formula of “mixed urban milieus”. Although the residential neighbourhood might not be the location of large firms, it definitely attracts small ones, and facilitates starting businesses whose presence (and potential growth) can be beneficial to the city as a whole. We present a typology of spatial patterns of neighbourhood economies based on land-use plans and describe whether these are related to the distinctive economic development of the neighbourhood over the period 1999–2007.     

Social Capital and Community Strategies: Neighbourhood Development in Guatemala City

This article uses a social capital framework to analyse the strategies employed by two low–income communities in Guatemala City to improve their physical and social environment. The case studies provide examples of poor communities, without access to any form of insurance or welfare benefits, struggling to achieve neighbourhood development. They also demonstrate the way in which strategies can be defined by the issue of land tenure. Key strategies for development were found to be mobilization through community organization, informal links (including clientelistic relations) with powerful groups, and protest. The author concludes that social capital (within communities and between stakeholders) and some degree of security (land tenure) are critical ingredients for communities to develop effective strategies for neighbourhood development with other stakeholders.     

Gender,Vulnerability, and the Experts: Responding to the Maldives Tsunami

This article examines the initial response by national and international agencies to gender issues during the aftermath of the Maldives tsunami, arguing that it was, in general, inadequate. Some agencies took a gender blind approach, ignoring different impacts on men and women, as well as the effects of complex gender relations on relief and recovery efforts. Other agencies paid greater attention to gender relations in their response but tended to focus exclusively on the universal category of the ‘vulnerable woman’ requiring special assistance, whilst at the same time ignoring men's vulnerabilities. This article argues that such language entrenched women as victims, excluding them from leadership and decision‐making roles and as such served to reinforce and re‐inscribe women's trauma. It is suggested that it is partly because of the nature of international bureaucracies and the fact that this disaster drew foreign ‘experts’ from around the world that the response neglected or over‐simplified gender issues.     

The Politics of Crisis: Deconstructing the Dominant Narratives of the Housing Crisis

This paper considers how dominant narratives of the housing crisis, since the 2008 banking crisis in England, have been created and what actions taken in its name. The paper deconstructs the term “crisis”, highlighting that its meaning has evolved from a critical moment to a protracted narrative which must be understood historically. Through discourse analysis into housing and party political policy, media and think tank reports, we argue that the employment of housing crisis by the government and others perceives it as an outcome of housing supply constraints and over-regulation—narratives that have justified subsequent policy actions aimed at propping up the housing and financial systems, opening new avenues for housing commodification, deregulation and financialisation and reproducing crisis anew. However, we note that these narratives can also break down and space can be created for the articulation of new narratives which refocus housing crises as emerging from inequality and class divisions.     

Emergence and Growth of Mjärdevi Science Park in Linköping,Sweden1

The development of science parks constitutes an interesting example of policy to enhance the technology-based development of a region. These parks, it is argued, contribute to fostering technological innovation and transfer and stimulating the growth of high-level economic activities. This article examines the role that science parks play in the promotion of regional development with particular reference to one of Sweden's most successful science parks, the Mjärdevi Science Park. During the 1990s, Mjärdevi was recognized as one of Northern Europe's most rapidly growing science parks, and it has an enviable record with respect to the launching of local, new technology-based firms. This article traces the historical events related to the creation of Mjärdevi Science Park that have influenced its technological and industrial development. It then outlines the park's path of development and subsequently addresses key factors affecting the growth dynamics of the park.     

The changing Neolithic household: Household autonomy and social segmentation, Tell Halula, Syria

While households are widely held to have existed as the fundamental building block of early agricultural villages, researchers have only a limited understanding of the local social and economic trajectory of Neolithic households. Expanding our archaeological understanding of the Neolithic household beyond architecture, settlement organization, and subsistence practices, in this paper we explore how gradual changes in mortuary practices at Tell Halula, Syria, help us to understand the process of household development around 7500–7300 Cal. BC. Drawing upon high-resolution mortuary data we consider the tempo and mechanisms of change and how these patterns help us understand the organization of the household. Material patterns including the increased use of burial objects, an increased frequency of the placement of burial objects among adults, and the differential use of burial objects between households. These represent subtle, yet observable, small-scale shifts in how social roles were redefined and materialized. We argue that these reflect a series of gradual changes that are suggestive of increased household autonomy and an increase in social segmentation within and between households. The Tell Halula data highlight elements of continuity and how household members adhered to a broadly shared physical and organizational framework of life. Data also illustrate how household members developed subtle means by which practices were personalization, and potentially, reflect growing means by which households and individuals were identified within these communities. Collectively, this research provides a detailed understanding of the grass-roots building blocks of Neolithic households over a short time frame and a more detailed understanding of the local social and economic trajectory of Neolithic households.     

Useful work for idle hands or a brightening and elevating influence? The introduction of the Brabazon Employment Scheme to Glasgow’s public institutions in the late 19th century

Women’s ability to effect changes in welfare policy during the later workings of the new Poor Law has been presented as a ‘marginal influence’ within past historiography. This perspective is contested in recent empirical work, which argues for a more positive view of female agency. The Brabazon Employment Scheme was a charitable initiative, which occupied the poor unable to take part in the routine work of public institutions. Findings from its operation in Glasgow demonstrate how women drew upon philanthropic experience as well as elected positions in the management of institutions to secure the scheme’s introduction in these settings. While the initiative originated in the English workhouses, local women extended the Brabazon activities to address gaps in welfare provision for asylum patients. In doing so, the article shows how organised charity continued to function as an avenue of support for the poor alongside municipal relief into the early 20th century.     

Buddhist buildings in England: the construction of ‘under-represented’ faith heritage in a multicultural and post-Christian setting

Until recently the ‘heritage industry’ in England overlooked buildings of minority faith traditions. Little has been written about this ‘under-represented’ heritage. Drawing on data from the first national survey of Buddhist buildings in England, we examine the ways in which Buddhist heritage is beginning to be incorporated into the state-funded ‘heritage industry’ as well as how Buddhist communities in England construct heritage through these buildings. First, we draw upon spatial theory in the study of religion to examine three dimensions of minority faith buildings in England and what this tells us about the communities involved: ‘location’ (i.e. the geographical location of the buildings); ‘space’ (i.e. what the buildings are used for and their relationship to local, national and transnational scales); and ‘place’ (i.e. what types of buildings are selected by different communities and why). We then turn to theories of memory that have become popular within the study of religion as well as heritage studies. Religion understood as ‘a chain of memory’ plays an important role in heritage construction via faith buildings, and an analysis of faith buildings, their spatial dimensions and role in ‘memorywork’, helps us think through the dynamics of modern religious belief in a multicultural and post-Christian setting.     

War Trauma and Alcoholism in the Early Writings of Charlotte and Branwell Brontë

During and after the Napoleonic Wars, there was an outpouring of military-based biographical writing never before seen in British history. Over 200 military memoirs were published either as standalone entities or in periodicals such as Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and The United Service Journal. As a result, the experiences of ordinary soldiers were brought to the forefront of Britain’s public consciousness. Although many of these memoirs glorified war, a number revealed the psychological damage war inflicted on the British male population and explicitly exposed the horrors of combat to a domestic readership. Furthermore, this explosion of life writing also exposed a connection between suffering and alcoholism, consolidating trauma as a post-war, national problem. The Brontës, typically recognized as canonical, Victorian authors, first participated in this military-based literary movement. This article attempts to reposition and establish two of the siblings – Charlotte and Branwell – as significant post-war commentators. By focussing on their military reading, it will become clear how they vicariously processed and reimagined war trauma and addiction through their Glass Town and Angrian sagas. Not only will this article argue that the introduction of military biography into British society generated wide-scale recognition of war trauma, despite its absence within contemporary medical discourse, but it will also argue that the young Brontës’ literature is an important historical source for understanding and re-evaluating the public response to post-war military masculinity.