Dynamic Resistance: Third‐Sector Processes for Transforming Neoliberalization

This paper proposes a holistic framework called dynamic resistance for analysing and animating third‐sector organizations’ contestations of neoliberalization. It argues that the third sector constitutes a rich terrain for transforming neoliberalization processes to promote human flourishing and social justice. Dynamic resistance comprises four elements—rejection, resilience, resourcefulness, and reflexive practice—within a cyclical process which can occur simultaneously at different organizational scales. Four vignettes, drawn from participatory action research, illustrate these processes at Oblong, a grassroots community group in Leeds which now runs a community centre. Despite engagement with neoliberal mechanisms, Oblong provides an example of dynamic resistance in practice, avoiding “mission drift” and prioritizing self‐defined core values of equality, collectivity, empowerment, sustainability, respect and care, and being community led. Dynamic resistance suggests third‐sector organizations’ capacity to construct transformative social empowerment through ever‐changing practices which are proactive and self‐directed as well as responsive.     

Facilitating native land reacquisition in the rural USA through collaborative research and Geographic Information Systems

A large proportion of American Indian reservation lands are owned by non‐Indian entities. A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a powerful tool for visualising land tenure changes, and public participation GIS (PPGIS) is one approach for using spatial technologies to facilitate the identification and reacquisition of reservation lands by tribes. While some tribes have successfully harnessed GIS for land management and for systematically identifying lands for reacquisition, others struggle to implement land management systems such as GIS for these purposes. This paper situates PPGIS in relation to other forms of participatory action research and outlines our use of a PPGIS framework to engage undergraduate geography students in the mapping of land tenure status on ten rural Minnesota Indian reservations as part of a collaborative partnership with the Indian Land Tenure Foundation (ILTF). A PPGIS framework allowed us to collaboratively define research goals in response to tribal community needs and provided structure for student work with partner reservations to develop and implement tailored mapping and analysis techniques. Two sets of findings are significant. First, the assembly of a standardised set of maps for American Indian reservations in Minnesota provides a tremendous visual and analytical resource for ILTF and individual tribes to pursue land reacquisition within reservation boundaries. Second, from a PPGIS perspective, we found that working with a coordinating or ‘bridging’ organisation provided key benefits by enabling education of both the student–faculty partners and the individual tribes. The PPGIS model empowered both partners by allowing tribes to harness a powerful technology to assist in visualising land‐based assets and allowing students to contribute to native land reacquisition efforts through application of their GIS skills. This mapping helps facilitate economic and cultural viability in tribal communities by providing an important visual catalogue of existing land‐based assets, in support of future land acquisition and economic development planning.     

Developing tourism products and new partnerships through participatory action research in rural Cameroon

At present, several obstacles to tourism development have been identified in developing countries. These include: poor infrastructure; shortage of facilities; a weak tourist image; a lack of know‐how with regard to how to welcome visitors and market tourism services; and the scarcity of available capital. In the research reported on in this paper, we explore the involvement of microcredit institutions to alleviate these issues. Because tourism is not yet developed in our study area of West Cameroon, action research was considered the only way to validate (by action) the recommendations of both the actors and the researchers. Action research permits the researchers to study the complex issues that typify the management of tourist destinations, including, for example, governance problems. It allows for networking and capacity to change the ways in which actions are carried out. The paper explores possible synergies between microfinance institutions (MFIs) and small and medium tourism businesses in an African rural community. First, we emphasise the obstacles to the formation of partnerships between MFIs and tourism businesses and we suggest ways to minimise them. Second, we describe how we facilitated networking between tourism actors and MFIs, which enabled the development of tourism products through new partnerships. As a result, four businesses are currently operating. From a research perspective, we point out the strengths and weaknesses of different types of associations and list the challenges. The results indicate that asymmetry of information and a lack of entrepreneurial spirit emerge as key concerns. The action research has promoted place and community based development. However, we underline that proper tourism development also requires the participation of stakeholders acting at different spatial scales.     

The integration of action research and traditional field research to provide sustainable solutions to maintaining periurban agriculture

Maintaining periurban agriculture and prime periurban farmland has become a leitmotiv in land use planning and management around many cities in North America and Western Europe since the 1960s. This article focuses on the changing perspectives associated with these planning and management initiatives as well as changing research approaches. Initially, periurban farmland was often seen by planners as a land reserve for urban development. Subsequently, concern was expressed about maintaining the prime agricultural land resource via farmland protection programmes, especially in North America in the 1960s and 1970s. Early research into periurban agriculture involved statistical analyses of farmland losses and changing agricultural production systems, and farmer interviews to identify pressures and opportunities facing periurban agriculture. Gradually, it became clear that maintaining farmland resources and farm activities required more than just ‘protecting’ them from urbanisation. Two types of initiatives developed: (1) the construction of agricultural development plans to ensure sustainable farm development, e.g. in Quebec since 2008, in France since the mid‐1970s and more recently in Wallonia (Belgium) in 2014; and (2) a change in the research approach to support periurban agricultural sustainability. While still using interviews with farmers and other actors, more important is the emergence of action research to provide support to farmers, their neighbours, elected officials and professionals in developing agricultural development plans, with the aim of achieving a better integration of periurban agriculture into the regional urban system. This paper develops this reasoning using research in Canada, France, and principally Belgium to illustrate the argument.     

Negotiating Colonial Violence: Spaces of Precarisation in Palestine

This paper examines the ways in which colonial violence is transformed and spatialised into negotiated precarities at the occupied Palestine. The notion of “negotiated precarity” is developed herein, to refer to two aspects in particular. First, to spatial compartmentalisation, which shows how the settler colonial power operates by creating precarious administrative zones, where the life of the colonised becomes prone to several flexible, negotiated uses of power. Second, negotiated precarity is used to refer to the conduct of the colonised that counters, transforms, redirects, cancels or hampers the colonial spatialisations of power. By focusing on the “negotiated precarities” in a singular West Bank village, I exemplify how the colonial governing is entwined with spatial compartments that enable several informal, indirect and ad hoc techniques of colonial violence, but also how the colonial governing is constantly mobilised, negotiated, countered and redirected in/through the everyday Palestinian spaces.     

Ripping the Heart out of Ancoats: Collective Action to Defend Infrastructures of Social Reproduction against Gentrification

The article exposes attacks on infrastructures of social reproduction as a prime gentrification strategy, but also as an effective focal point for community resistance. We exemplify this through the conflict over Ancoats Dispensary, a Victorian hospital at the heart of one of the UK's most deprived communities in East Manchester, which faced demolition following the 2000 New Islington Regeneration Plan. Using ethnographic and archival data we show how 200 years of community struggles for healthcare became catalytic for establishing Ancoats’ working class identity and how Ancoats Dispensary became the spatial/material and symbolic infrastructure for community continuity. The building's socially embedded history became key for articulating anti‐gentrification struggles as its planned demolition was seen as a symbolic demolition of the community itself. Local citizens formed the Ancoats Dispensary Trust and utilised tactics from historical struggles and entrepreneurial strategies to envision an alternative future in the defence of social reproduction infrastructures.     

Ethics of care,emotional work,and collective action of solidarity: the Patronas in Mexico

In this paper, we examine the mobilization of the Patronas, a group of Mexican women who have fed thousands of Central American migrants over the past two decades. We argue that the Patronas’ work of feeding and caring for migrants goes beyond essentializing these women’s work as just housewives, mothers, and caregivers. Furthermore, we assert that through these care activities, the Patronas exert a feminist ethic of care that is understood as a set of practices based on trust, reciprocity, and solidarity. The Patronas’ praxis of caring for the migrants resonates with people and attracts hundreds of volunteers to join these women’s emotional and nurturing work leading these women and volunteers to participate in a political practice of solidarity. In this paper, we articulate three key findings: (1) the interplay between the Patronas’ emotional work and the ethics of care, (2) the emergence of a collective act of solidarity around the Patronas’ caring work that leads hundreds of volunteers to visit these women and join them, and (3) the kitchen as a place where the collective act of solidarity begins and where the Patronas experience their personal transformation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this study contributes to further our understanding of the interplay between Latin American women’s participation in social movements, emotional work in these movements, and the ethics of care.     

“The Agitator’s Wife” (1894): the story behind James Connolly’s lost play?

The centenary of the Easter Rising in 2016 and the 150th anniversary of James Connolly’s birth in 2018 afford an ideal opportunity to reappraise this unique figure. Rightly renowned for his polemical journalism and political theory, Connolly is less celebrated for his creative writing. His 1916 play, Under Which Flag?, long considered lost, resurfaced fifty years ago without causing significant ripples in Irish literary circles, but interest in Connolly’s role in the struggle for Irish independence continues to grow, and critics are becoming increasingly aware of the fusion of feminist and socialist thought that shaped his particular anti-imperialist agenda. In this context his creative writing takes on new significance. A second lost play of Connolly’s, The Agitator’s Wife, has never been found, but its discovery would surely deepen our understanding of this gifted radical thinker. In this essay we suggest that an anonymous short story bearing that very title, published in a short-lived Christian socialist journal of the 1890s, may be a crucial missing piece in solving the puzzle of Connolly’s forgotten drama.     

Kant on Hobbes,peace, and obedience

Kant's essay ‘On the common saying: “This may be true in theory, but it does not apply in practice”’ contains a chapter ‘On the relationship of theory to practice in political right’ to which he added, in brackets, ‘(Against Hobbes)’. The problem is that Kant leaves his Hobbes-criticism implicit. The main point seems to be the Hobbes's citizens are without any rights. We explore the differences and similarities between Kant's and Hobbes's political views and evaluate the effectiveness of Kant's criticism. We pay attention to Nominalism and Platonism, the idea of happiness in social life, the use and role of the Golden Rule (Categorical Imperative) in political thought, the quest for freedom, and the principle of political non-resistance. Especially freedom of speech is important for Kant as an Enlightenment thinker. This is the only right Kant's citizens may have, independently of the sovereign's will. Our conclusion is that both Kant and Hobbes emphasize peace and order under sovereign power although they do not agree on how such an ideal can be achieved.     

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。