Rural regeneration strategies for declining regions: trade-off between novelty and practicability

ABSTRACT

Innovation comprises both novelty and practicability. These two dimensions of innovation correlate partly negatively in our analysis of survey data about planning processes in declining rural districts. As argued in the literature, declining regions need innovative concepts beyond traditional counteracting strategies to ‘shrink smart’. Competitions are suggested as feasible-to-initiate innovative local concepts by the state. The German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture invited 39 particularly affected rural districts to participate in such a competition among the best concepts. We address the questions of how the districts dealt with the requirements for novelty and practicability in their concepts and how the rules of competitive bidding procedures influence those concepts. Answering these questions, we conducted a survey and statistically tested hypotheses deduced from governance and innovation theory. Moreover, we analysed the bidding documents. The results show that most districts came up with hardly novel and only partly practicable concepts because the organization of the competition, and local bargaining processes impede innovation. Furthermore, the ministry’s requirements for the competition overburdened local actors with a lack of resources in declining regions. As a policy implication, we propose to integrate external experts in local networks and to accompany declining regions over a longer time instead of short-term competitions and projects.     

Qenja: child fostering and relocation practices in the Amhara region,Ethiopia

In this article we discuss temporary relocation and informal labour of children in rural Ethiopia. We respond to the call ‘to understand the wider logic underlying child relocation and non-parental residence among populations experiencing poverty’ (Boyden, J. 2013. “We're Not Going to Suffer Like this in the Mud: Educational Aspirations, Social Mobility and Independent Child Migration among Populations Living in Poverty.” Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education 43 (5): 580–600. 582). Drawing on the perspectives of children and families involved in the practice of qenja (meaning ‘teaming’ or ‘forming a coalition’) we examine how – in contexts of uneven distribution of rural labour – children's involvement in transient agricultural labour outside the home is a fundamental feature of social reproduction. We argue that qenja is a social coping strategy that co-exists alongside gendered and generational relations of household production and reproduction. An understanding of the practice as merely transactional and exploitative ignores long-standing community strategies of labour acquisition and redistribution. We stress that child protection campaigns by non-governmental organizations and national legislations that intend to criminalize the practice are not in the interest of children, families, and communities.     

Neocolonial Urbanism? La Rénovation Urbaine in Paris

This paper analyses the programme of redeveloping housing estates in France overseen by the Agence Nationale de la Rénovation Urbaine (ANRU). Under this programme social housing reconstruction is undertaken in a nationally coordinated fashion in order to “valorize”, “secure” and socially “mix” estates. The paper highlights the political and neo‐colonial aspects of this programme and the wider state spatial strategies it is part of. Redevelopment projects not only further gentrifying land‐rent valorization, state rescaling and territorially stigmatizing symbolic violence; they also reorganize territorial relations of domination in multiple, also racialized, neo‐colonial and partly hegemonic ways. In a longer view, they respond to the “urban revolution” of 1968 (Garnier) and to the “anti‐colonial revolution” of independence and anti‐racist movements (Khiari). The paper builds on a framework that articulates marxist (Lefebvrean) and anti‐colonial (Fanonian) lineages while drawing on research on the neo‐colonial aspects of the French state.     

Competition and conflict in the Upper Belize River Valley: Insights from the ancient Maya minor center of Callar Creek,Belize

Political relationships typically entail competition and conflict. Within the ancient Maya world, the Upper Belize River Valley (UBRV) offers one example of an arena of intense political contestation, and recent investigations at the minor center of Callar Creek offer insights into this complex and occasionally antagonistic political landscape. During the Late and Terminal Classic periods (a.d. 600–900), for example, those living at the Callar Creek center appear to have affiliated themselves with the larger center of Buenavista, but not to have developed political ties with those in surrounding hinterland communities. Indeed, Callar Creek provides an example in which the political fortunes of a minor center and its surrounding hinterlands followed divergent paths. Furthermore, a termination event suggests that part of the Callar Creek center was purposefully destroyed by adversaries in the Terminal Classic period, and that discordant relationships in the UBRV at times turned violent.     

Competition or cooperation? Jewish day schools,synagogues and the (re)construction of young people’s Jewish identities in England

Diasporic synagogues have historically provided a number of educational and social functions. However, the growing popularity of state-funded Jewish schools in England necessitates analysis of these institutions’ changing roles and their implications for performances of Jewishness. Drawing upon interviews with rabbis, and interviews and focus groups with parents and students at a Jewish school, this article demonstrates three challenges for synagogues associated with the recent growth in Jewish day schooling: the instigation of instrumental attendance at services in order to secure a school place; and the co-option of synagogues’ traditional functions as both education and social centres. In the process, it illustrates how conceptualisations of Jewish identity are contested, resulting in discrepant attitudes towards Jewish education. Consequently, the article contributes to understandings of the spaces in which young people practise their Jewishness, and highlights the challenges for community leaders in ensuring that Jewish schools and synagogues cooperate rather than compete.     

The Use of a Large-Scale Seismic Vulnerability Assessment Approach for Masonry Façade Walls as an Effective Tool for Evaluating,Managing and Mitigating Seismic Risk in Historical Centers

ABSTRACT

The vulnerability assessment of the building stock in a given territorial area, such as a city or an entire country, is a key prerequisite for evaluating risk, not only because of the potential physical consequences resulting from the occurrence of an event, but also because it is one of the few aspects in which engineering research can intervene. In fact, the rigorous vulnerability assessment of existing buildings followed by the implementation of appropriate retrofitting solutions can help to substantially reduce the levels of physical damage and economic impact of future events. Particularly regarding the seismic vulnerability assessment of historical centers, the amount of knowledge that has been accumulated over the past decades, together with the broad damage data obtained from post-earthquake damage surveys, provides a singular opportunity to develop and calibrate innovative large-scale seismic vulnerability assessment approaches, which can be used to outline and support risk mitigation and management strategies. This article addresses this issue by discussing the use of a large-scale seismic vulnerability assessment methodology for masonry façade walls as a tool for evaluating the potential benefit resulting from the application of different seismic retrofitting strategies, both considering their contribution to reduce post-event urban losses and accessibility.     

Changes in reindeer body part representation at Grotte XVI, Dordogne, France

Foraging theory models are used to examine changes in reindeer body part representation in the Middle and Upper Paleolithic ungulate assemblages at Grotte XVI (Dordogne, France). Previous research suggests that climate change resulted in progressive increases in reindeer abundances throughout the region. If increased forager encounter rates with reindeer resulted in decreased transport distances and search times, central-place forager models predict that field processing at the kill site will decline and reindeer body part transport will become less selective. This prediction is supported, and reindeer skeletal element abundances are shown to become increasingly even and incorporate higher frequencies of low utility elements through time. The progressive shift in reindeer transport strategies operates across technological and hominin species boundaries including the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition.     

Skeletal element abundances in archaeofaunal assemblages: economic utility,sample size,and assessment of carcass transport strategies

Economic utility indices provide a means of interpreting butchery and transport decisions reflected in the relative abundance of skeletal elements. Because of destructive taphonomic processes, interpreting skeletal element abundances in terms of carcass transport strategies requires that faunal analysts consider only those elements which accurately reflect their original abundances following human discard. In this study we use resampling techniques to examine the impact of sample size on correlations between high-survival skeletal element frequencies and economic utility in four simulated population assemblages reflecting distinct carcass transport strategies. Correlations alone do not accurately reflect the true relationship between bone abundance and economic utility as particular transport strategies have a tendency to generate high frequencies of Type II errors as sample size decreases. We show that the Shannon evenness index can be used as a quantitative means of distinguishing between bone assemblages characterized by subtle variations in skeletal element abundances. The evenness index can also be used to evaluate whether observed correlations reflect sampling error. Results from our simulations are applied to three published faunal assemblages to evaluate likely carcass transport strategies.     

Discursive Agency: (Re‐)Conceptualizing Actors and Practices in the Analysis of Discursive Policymaking

Interpretive discourse analysis commonly claims to address the interrelation between actors and discourses. However, the analytical focus of most approaches is on structures (discourses) while much less attention is paid to agency. This paper explicitly addresses discursive agency in two steps. First, we systematically review theoretical and analytical dimensions of agency in existing interpretive discourse analysis approaches. This review reveals a set of shared assumptions; most notably a concept of “trialectic” agency emphasizing the constitution of agency among the individual, the (discursive) structures, and the researcher's interpretation. Second, we propose an analytical heuristic, the Discursive Agency Approach, which is developed on the basis of the review and own empirical data. The proposed approach consists of four elements: (1) policy discourses, (2) political institutions, (3) agents defined via a set of characteristics, and (4) strategic practices. This approach is meant to facilitate a systematic exploration of agency under a discourse perspective, tackling the question of how a policy is constituted through the agency ascribed to its proponents in dynamic discursive processes, and how actors acquire political relevance through discursive means. To enable this goal, we propose distinct research steps and associated methods that link the approach to existing means of analysis.     

Carving out the nation with the enemy's kin: double strategy of boundary‐making in Transnistria and Abkhazia

The 1992–1993 civil wars in Moldova and in Georgia ended with a de facto separation of Transnistria and Abkhazia, respectively. These de facto states are both inhabited by the kin to the ‘enemy’ across the administrative border: Moldovans and Georgians/Mingrelians. How do the de facto authorities foster a collective identity in support of their claim for legitimacy and statehood? Engaging with Wimmer's taxonomy of boundary‐making, this article argues that nation‐building involves not only expansion but also, simultaneously, contraction. Transnistria constructs a higher‐level identity category and co‐opts and contracts the Moldovan category, separating it into ‘our’ and Bessarabian Moldovans in order to incorporate the former into the Transnistrian people. In Abkhazia, the nation‐building project establishes the Abkhazs as the titular nation allowing, however, for the construction of an Abkhazian people that would include minorities, with Gal/i Georgians said to be Mingrelians, distinct from Georgians. These cases show that elites combine different ethnic boundary‐making strategies in order to implement their favoured identity project and to legitimize the claimed statehood.