In/out of Nigeria: transnational research and the politics of identity and knowledge production

Abstract

This article explores the murkiness of fieldwork and writing that often comes with simultaneous positioning as insider/outsider. I engage with two key themes: First, identity, legitimacy and representation and, second, the gray spaces between theory and reality. The first theme examines the contradictions of being perceived as both an insider and outsider; the complexities of identity and language while at ‘home’ in the field, and the challenges of performing the native informant role while back ‘home’ in Canada. The second theme explores the uncomfortable dilemma of engaging with the ‘Rush to Theory’ from the global south. I will examine how the theories are sophisticated and provocative, yet prove unsatisfactory in terms of having practical applications. I conclude the article by positing that, despite the challenges of doing transnational work, transnational subjects invariably contribute to the creation of a new politics of knowledge production and to the attainment of social justice.     

中国行政区划改革的内卷化风险及其生成机制

透过对行政区划调整现象与文献的梳理，发现中国部分政区有“改而不变”的倾向，本文借用“内卷化”的概念对这种现象及其效应进行探讨，指出政区改革在行政层级、运行逻辑、空间关系、职能配置等方面都存在着“内卷化”隐忧。在此基础上，通过对国家结构、行政区划的资源属性和行政区经济之间关联的分析，阐释了政区改革内卷化的生成机制，认为行政区划配置资源的功能可能是政区改革陷入内卷化的一个重要前提。最后以常州武进和海南政区改革为例，探讨了本研究的分析框架与逻辑，并建议构建面向市场经济的行政区划调整框架，为继续深化行政体制改革提供空间支撑。     

The ‘creative township’ in the post-apartheid: globalisation,nation building or gentrification?

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the ambiguities of post-Apartheid public cultural policies in South Africa by focusing on the case of the Red Location Museum and Cultural precinct (RLMCP), a multisectoral project for socio-economic development, based on tourism, art, culture, heritagisation and urban regeneration, implemented in Red Location, one of the oldest townships of Port Elizabeth. In the post-Apartheid period, cultural policies have been employed as catch-all policies that could lead to urban renewal, desegregation and development. The case of the RLMCP drives home how efforts to use art and culture as leverages to transform townships into the core of the creative city and into the prototype of a new form of neighbourhood led to exclusionary representations and patterns; moreover, it is an example of how cultural policies enforce gentrification dynamics at the local level, in the name of restructuring urban governance and rescaling the city to the global dimension.     

INTEGRATING INDIGENOUS AND SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE BASES FOR DISASTER RISK REDUCTION IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

In investigating ways to reduce community vulnerability to environmental hazards it is essential to recognize the interaction between indigenous and scientific knowledge bases. Indigenous and scientific knowledge bases are dynamic entities. Using a Process Framework to identify how indigenous and scientific knowledge bases may be integrated, three communities impacted upon by environmental hazards in Papua New Guinea, a Small Island Developing State, have established how their vulnerability to environmental hazards may be reduced. This article explores the application of the framework within the communities of Kumalu, Singas and Baliau, and how this could impact upon the future management of environmental hazards within indigenous communities in Small Island Developing States.     

Comparison of two cluster life stages in a synthetic knowledge base

ABSTRACT

Knowledge flows in clusters are highly important since they are related to innovation. Types and spatial levels of knowledge sources have been studied by many scholars. This study examines knowledge sources from evolutionary perspective. Evolutionary Economic Geography suggests that regional industries and their dynamics co-evolve. While conceptual and empirical studies argue that network characteristics take different characteristics throughout time, and that knowledge sources are subject to change, little is known about in what way they change in a synthetic knowledge base. In this study, we examined the knowledge sources in a specific knowledge base throughout time. The study was applied to two clusters in Turkey in a synthetic knowledge base yet in different life stages: emergence and maturity. The network structure was analysed by social network analysis, hypotheses were tested by Mann–Whitney U-Tests. The findings show that although network structure and density change through maturity, the types and spatial levels of knowledge sources do not vary between the two life stages, they keep the same characteristics of their knowledge bases.     

On Reading Patrol Reports – 2: Travels in East Awin

ABSTRACT

Reports of patrols through remote areas of Papua and New Guinea led by officers of the Australian administration must be read with care. We discuss the case of a patrol report from the mid 1960s where the patrol cannot have travelled the route indicated on the accompanying map. By cross-referencing to reports from later patrols, we provide both an improved reading of the report in question and, more generally, an appreciation of motivations that influenced the knowledge patrol officers produced.     

Trans/national knowledge production through difference: dilemmas of doing research on veiling in Amman,Jordan

Abstract

This article examines some dilemmas I experienced while doing research on fashionable veiling in Amman, Jordan. My fieldwork experience and the knowledge I co-produced with the participants were shaped by each layer of my identity as a Jordanian, Muslim, non-veiled woman, with a particular classed, spatialized Ammani heritage and affiliation with western feminist academia. The article engages with the implications my positionality had on my insider-outsider status and the knowledge the participants and I co-produced. I argue that the research setting, while fraught with difference, constituted a site for transnational solidarity and knowledge production. The participants and I had divergent understandings of, and aspirations for, Jordanian Muslim femininity shaped by our varying positions within the Global North-Global South. I argue that we practiced solidarity by collaborating and co-constructing a transnational site to unpack and defend their viability. I found that our collaboration was not fuelled by a shared sense of injustice and did not produce a shared outlook on Islam, Jordanianness or femininity. Rather, it created a site where we were able to emphasize our divergent sense of these paradigms as women positioned differently within the trans/national, cultural, and religious spaces we shared.