COVID-19 is expanding global consciousness and the sustainability of travel and tourism

Abstract

The sustainable development model has largely failed to address the social and environmental challenges of the 21^st century. True sustainability will only occur when it is valued as a part of the taken-for-granted daily life of individuals and cultures across the globe. This has not yet happened because humanity has not evolved a global consciousness quickly enough to match the global advances in telecommunications and transportation technologies that have created a socially and economically ever-shrinking planet. Travel and tourism contributes to the expansion of global consciousness, although only in a haphazard and unintentional manner. The COVID-19 pandemic is a result of planetary time-space compression and is forcing an expansion in human consciousness that will make humankind better able to address global problems. There will still be considerable diversity on the planet, as now, but the pandemic will stimulate growing numbers of people, businesses and governments to adopt new ways of thinking, behaving and operating that are more closely aligned with the goals of sustainable development. This could be further enhanced if travel and tourism were to adopt the expansion and awakening of global conscious as a fundamental and transformational value in the products and experiences that it offers.     

Gendered politics of empire: the female explorateur and natural histories of the Amazon basin 1899–1901

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Brazilian Amazon was experiencing a moment of heightened exploration, mapping, border creation, and contestation. This article examines the production of the French explorateur and geographer Octavie Coudreau through analysis of the natural history/travel narrative, Voyage au Trombetas (1899), and her subsequent narrative Voyage au Cuminá (1901). Octavie Coudreau initially went to Amazonia to travel with her husband, Henri Coudreau, already a renowned explorer of the French and Brazilian Amazon. After Henri Coudreau’s death on their first voyage, Octavie Coudreau continued working under contract for the Brazilian state and published natural history narratives after each of her four exploratory and mapping missions. These travel narratives include suggestions for increased colonization along with observation of local populaces, supported by a multitude of maps and photographs. Using feminist approaches to the historiography of travel, empire, and geographical work, I look at the female European explorer’s view of imperialism during this significant period in Amazonian history and development. I examine the unfixing of gender identity as it relates to movement within a liminal space. I think of this as the in-between place in which Octavie finds herself – as a grieving widow, thrust into a position of power abroad, while still dealing with the limitations of her gender during this time period, and the space of the Amazon itself, a region in flux where multiple races and imperial powers interact in a contact zone.     

Negotiations of Irish identity in the wake of terrorism: the case of the Irish in Birmingham 1973–74

This article explores the Irish migrant experience in Birmingham during and in the wake of terrorist campaigns carried out in Britain between 1969 and 1975 and attributed to the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Beginning with a discussion of the competencies with which Irishness was associated at the close of the 1960s in England, many of which were hinged on a notion of the Irish predisposition towards violence, the article continues on to take the political, cultural and religious “temperature” of the Irish community in Birmingham between 1969 and 1975, and follows on with a discussion of the specific strategies sought out by Irish immigrants to come to terms with the effect of events such as the “Birmingham Bombings” on their daily lives. Principle findings that emerge from the study indicate that IRA terrorism forced the Irish in Birmingham to engage with and adopt a number of distinct linguistic and cultural strategies in the post-1974 period, the cultivation of which indefinitely altered their relationship with Ireland as “home”, their visibility in the public British sphere and their associational patterns and practices within the migrant enclave.     

Access to culture in Croatian cultural policy: moving towards explicit policies

In this paper through the analysis of the access to culture issue in the Croatian cultural policy agenda, we illustrate the current cultural policy developments in Croatia in the broader European context. Taking the differentiation between explicit and implicit policies at both macro and micro level we analyse discourses on access to culture in the Croatian cultural policy at the constitutional level, parliamentary political parties’ level, the governmental level and the level of cultural organisations. On the one hand the policies regarding access to culture remain mostly implicit and revolve around traditional models connected to instruments dating back to socialism; while on the other selected cultural organisations develop instruments for fostering it where European projects have an influence. The orientation more towards cultural production issues and less to access to culture and cultural participation issues draws similarities of cultural policy developments in Croatia with the general European cultural policy framework.     

An Informational Right to the City? Code,Content, Control,and the Urbanization of Information

Henri Lefebvre talked of the “right to the city” alongside a right to information. As the urban environment becomes increasingly layered by abstract digital representation, Lefebvre's broader theory warrants application to the digital age. Through considering what is entailed by the urbanization of information, this paper examines the problems and implications of any “informational right to the city”. In directing Tony Benn's five questions of power towards Google, arguably the world's most powerful mediator of information, this paper exposes processes that occur when geographic information is mediated by powerful digital monopolies. We argue that Google currently occupies a dominant share of any informational right to the city. In the spirit of Benn's final question—“How do we get rid of you?”—the paper seeks to apply post‐political theory in exploring a path to the possibility of more just information geographies.     

Long-Term Regional Landscape Change in the Northern Tequila Region of Jalisco,Mexico

The Tequila Valleys, in Jalisco, Mexico, are well-known in archaeology for an early complex society known as the Teuchitlán tradition (350 b.c.–a.d. 450/500), but later developments have received little attention. Here I report on the first systematic, full-coverage survey of the Tequila region north of the Tequila volcano. I explore the ways in which the societies that occupied this territory experienced sociopolitical change diachronically by investigating settlement scale, integration, complexity, and boundedness. Through the use of these core features, I analyze how each changed in varying ways, resulting in patterns that do not conform to static societal categories. Interestingly, there is no evidence that a large polity controlled the entire region at any point in the sequence. Results indicate a dynamic sociopolitical landscape that did not develop along any predetermined pathway.     

Children's daily travel to school in Johannesburg-Soweto,South Africa: geography and school choice in the Birth to Twenty cohort study

This paper has two aims: to explore approaches to the measurement of children's daily travel to school in a context of limited geospatial data availability and to provide data regarding school choice and distance travelled to school in Soweto-Johannesburg, South Africa. The paper makes use of data from the Birth to Twenty cohort study (n?=?1428) to explore three different approaches to estimating school choice and travel to school. First, straight-line distance between home and school is calculated. Second, census geography is used to determine whether a child's home and school fall in the same area. Third, distance data are used to determine whether a child attends the nearest school. Each of these approaches highlights a different aspect of mobility, and all provide valuable data. Overall, primary-school-aged children in Soweto-Johannesburg are shown to be travelling substantial distances to school on a daily basis. Over a third travel more than 3 km one way to school, 60% attend schools outside of the suburb in which they live, and only 18% attend their nearest school. These data provide evidence for high levels of school choice in Johannesburg-Soweto, and that families and children are making substantial investments in pursuit of high-quality educational opportunities. Additionally, these data suggest that two patterns of school choice are evident: one pattern involving travel of substantial distances and requiring a higher level of financial investment and a second pattern involving choice between more local schools, requiring less travel and a more limited financial investment.     

‘It's for the best’: child movement in search of health in Njabini,Kenya

Previous studies produced on the movement of individuals with HIV/AIDS for the obtainment of medical services have rarely been conducted in the Global South and have neglected the experiences of child patients. This article presents a new type of travel for medical care, where HIV+ children in Kenya are being placed or choose to be placed in orphanages in order to obtain constant access to antiretroviral (ARV) therapy, proper nutrition, and education. Through participant observation and photo-elicitation interviews with children in orphanages and their immediate family members in the surrounding Njabini community, this study focused on documenting children's agency in influencing movement decisions to orphanages for better health outcomes. Photo-elicitation interviews in particular allowed for greater insight into children's lives, their motivations for moving to an orphanage, and as a tool to facilitate discussion. Qualitative methods utilized with family members similarly privileged their interpretations of how child movement out of the house would help achieve the ‘best’ possible future for their children, particularly those living with HIV. Study findings shed light on the active role played by children in decisions to move to orphanages, the visualization of these facilities as the best place to secure access to ARV therapy and ensure proper child health, and the interaction that continues to take place between children and their family members once they enter these spaces.     

英国新社会史思潮的兴起及其整体社会史研究的国际反响

“新社会史研究”作为一种史学新思潮,与西方史学的整体化趋势,几乎同时出现于现代国际史学舞台。英国新社会史思潮具有广泛和深刻的国内外史学渊源。英国新社会史学派宣扬的核心问题是坚持“自下而上”史学观念,它彰显了由此观念指导下的整体社会史取向和研究实践。从较广泛的分析角度看,在国际史学发展格局重新调整的现时背景下,英国马克思主义新社会史学派引起国内外史学界的广泛注意和效仿。它对国际史学发展的推动性作用是不可忽视的,这集中体现了该学派及其整体史学研究的国际反响。     

20世纪50年代中国在引进基础上的技术创新

20世纪50年代中国的技术引进和技术创新活动集中在“一五”时期和“大跃进”时期,虽然这两个时期在引进基础上的创新活动都是在重工业优先发展战略下的体制框架内进行的,但在引进技术的行业构成、规模、项目建设的实施和技术的消化乃至技术创新机制、成效等方面都有所不同。“一五”时期采用了全面、系统、灵活多样的方式和重点攻关,在消化、吸收引进技术方面取得了明显的成效,某些领域实现了技术再造,技术创新能力得到了迅速积累,但从总体上看仍处于对引进技术的翻版、修改阶段。“大跃进”时期的技术创新机制被严重干扰,群众运动代替了深入细致的科学研究,在群众性技术革新运动中引进基础上的创新活动格外活跃,通过技术革新运动学会了自行制造一些成套设备、生产工艺,但并没有从产业部门或行业整体上真正实现引进基础上的再次创新,其整体水平依然停留在对引进技术的“初级模仿”阶段。