地理学的发展:模式、动力与趋势

地理学以地理环境、人类需要或社会发展、科学技术、哲学思想和科学共同体以及大地理学家的综合作用为动力系统,形成了兼具有归纳主义的科学发展模式、证伪主义的科学发展模式和库恩的科学发展模式等诸多特点的发展模式。21世纪的地理学将通过"人地关系地域系统的协调共生"这一基本概念的确立与运用而更好地体现地理学的"综合性",具有与相邻科学交叉更加深入、学科内部的发展更加合理、微观机制进一步深入、应用领域不断拓宽和方法不断更新以及思想方法论得到特别重视等发展趋势。     

After Post‐Development: On Capitalism,Difference, and Representation

The post‐development school associated with the thought of Arturo Escobar treats development as a discursive invention of the West, best countered by ethnographic attention to local knowledge of people marginalised by colonial modernity. This approach promises paths to more equitable and sustainable alternatives to development. Post‐development has been criticised vigorously in the past. But despite its conceptual and political shortcomings, it remains the most popular critical approach to development and is reemerging in decolonial and pluriversal guises. This paper contends that the post‐development critique of mainstream development has run its course and deserves a fresh round of criticism. We argue that those committed to struggles for social justice must critically reassess the premises of post‐development and especially wrestle with the problem of representation. We contend that Gayatri Spivak's work is particularly important to this project. We review some of Spivak's key texts on capitalism, difference, and development to clarify the virtues of her approach.     

From Reconstruction to Development: The Early Years of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Conceptualization of Rural Welfare, 1945–1955

This paper examines the early years of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and its conceptualization of ‘rural welfare’, an approach that foresaw the modernization of agricultural societies and the alleviation of poverty through improvements in labor, housing, health, education of people working in agriculture. Based on the correspondence of FAO officials and experts, the paper shows how in the late 1940s, the Rural Welfare Division, under the leadership of its Director Horace Belshaw, promoted a low-modernist and local-sensitive approach to rural development that emphasized the subjectivity of welfare and that was skeptical of top-down development programs. As the paper argues, Belshaw's holistic understanding of rural communities was abandoned in the early 1950s in favor of an increasingly technical development consultancy, characterized by short-term interventions rather than by an intellectual and scientific debate about the larger implications of development.     

An Asian Drama: The Asian Relations Conference, 1947

The Asian Relations Conference has long served as a historical footnote to the more famous Bandung Conference of 1955. In this paper, however, I argue that this Conference needs to be read and analysed independently. As the opening act of decolonial solidarity, this Conference juxtaposes the moment and the movement of decolonisation, alerting us to the promises and pitfalls of both. In particular one needs to be conscious of its Eurocentric readings which almost always place the ‘Third World’ within the context of the Cold War project and thus are incapable of understanding its historical relevance.     

The politics of self-help: The Rockefeller Foundation,philanthropy and the ‘long’ Green Revolution

While scholars of contemporary philanthropy have observed a concerted interest in the promotion of ‘self-help,’ little has been said about the political history of this investment and its significance in determining both domestic and international development priorities. We locate this modern conceptualisation of self-help in early twentieth-century philanthropic practice that sought to ‘gift’ to individuals and communities the precious habit of self-reliance and social autonomy. The Rockefeller Foundation promoted rural development projects that deliberately sought to ‘emancipate’ the tradition-bound peasant, transforming him or her into a productive, enterprising subject. We begin by documenting their early agricultural extension work, which attempted to spark agrarian change in the US South through the inculcation of modern habits and aspirations among farmers and their families. These agrarian schemes illustrate the newfound faith that ‘rural up-lift’ could only be sustained if farming communities were trained to ‘help themselves’ by investing physically and psychologically in the process of modernisation. We then locate subsequent attempts to incentivise and accelerate international agricultural development within the broader geopolitical imperatives of the Green Revolution and the Cold War. While US technical assistance undoubtedly sought to prevent political upheaval in the Third World, we argue that Rockefeller-led modernisation projects, based on insights gleaned from behavioural economics, championed a model of human capital – and the idea of ‘revolution within’ – in order to contain the threat of ‘revolution without’. Approaching agricultural development through this problematisation of the farmer reveals the ‘long history’ of the Green Revolution – unfolding from the domestic to the international and from the late nineteenth century to the present – as well as the continuing role of philanthropy in forging a new global order.     

The Role of Universities in Regional Development: Conceptual Models and Policy Institutions in the UK,Sweden and Austria

The literature on universities’ contributions to regional development is broad and diverse. A precise understanding of how regions may draw advantages from various university activities and the role of public policy institutions in promoting such activities is still missing. The aim of this paper is to provide a framework for analysing universities’ contributions to regional economic and societal development in differing national contexts and the policy institutions that underpin them. To do this, we review four conceptual models: the entrepreneurial university model, the regional innovation system (RIS) model, the mode 2 university model and the engaged university model. The paper demonstrates that these four models emphasize very different activities and outputs by which universities are seen to benefit regional economy and society. It is also shown that these models differ markedly with respect to the policy implications and practice. Analysing some of the public policy imperatives and incentives in the UK, Austria and Sweden, the paper highlights that in the UK, policies encourage all four university models. In contrast, in Sweden and Austria, policy institutions tend to privilege the RIS university model, whilst at the same time, there is some evidence for increasing support of the entrepreneurial university model.     

Green,red, yellow and purple: gendering the Kurdish Question in south-east Turkey

This article discusses the role of women in the contemporary ethno-territorial struggle of Kurdish Question in Turkey. I argue that gendered development has become the primary terrain where Turkish and pro-Kurdish political groups articulate their nationalist interests. The Kürt Sorunu (Kurdish Question) – the enduring debate over the political status and rights of Turkey's Kurdish population – is Turkey's largest geopolitical challenge to date. In the last decade, Turkish government policy towards the predominantly Kurdish south-east region has shifted from military intervention to gendered and socio-economic development. Simultaneously, the popularity and growth of a formal pro-Kurdish political movement has given the campaign for Kurdish rights an institutionalized voice and stronger role in regional affairs. The primary work of both the Turkish national government and local pro-Kurdish municipality of late has focused on women. Drawing on historical analysis and participant observation of development activities, I describe the symbolic and physical role women play in the contemporary Kurdish Question. Geographically, this pointed focus on women marks a territorialization of political power upon gendered spaces of the home and neighbourhood. I describe this process of territorialization through an examination of education curriculum, neighbourhood mapping and nationalist landscapes.     

Sold Futures? The Global Availability of Metals and Economic Growth at the Peripheries: Distribution and Regulation in a Degrowth Perspective

In recent years, the strategic role certain metals play is seen as central to the geopolitics promulgated by state agents in the North. While a switch to renewable energy and an increase in energy efficiency might be instrumental to reducing dependence on fossil energy, it increases dependence on metals. This paper starts from an analysis of the likely availability of metals in the near future and then proceeds to investigate political concerns raised by considering the geological fundamentals of social development at the peripheries of the capitalist world‐system. The inequality of metal stocks, future metal requirements and the ensuing political challenges are investigated, taking copper as an example. The final section is dedicated to the discussion of regulatory challenges in view of multiple constraints on metal extraction. This section also highlights the preconditions of a socially legitimate transition to a renewable energy system in the coming period of socio‐ecological transformation.     

Practising Development at Home: Race,Gender, and the “Development” of the American South

Drawing on a range of works that extend from gendered historical analyses of colonialism to critical histories of development, and based on archival research in Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi, I argue in this paper that what we now call international development—a form of hegemony different from but related to colonialism—needs to be understood not only as a geopolitical tool of the Cold War, but also as a technique of governance that took shape within the realm of the domestic and through a racialized gaze. I do so by tracing some of the key elements of the US international development practices in the postwar era to a different time and place: the American South, a region considered “undeveloped” in the first decades of the twentieth century, and the agricultural extension practices that targeted the rural farm home and farm women, particularly African‐American women.