Legal Geographies of Intellectual Property, ‘Traditional’ Knowledge and Biodiversity: Experiencing Conventions,Laws, Customary Law,and Karma in Thailand

This article explores the existence of customary laws relating to ‘traditional’ knowledge of plants in Thailand through micro‐ethnographic case studies. This is juxtaposed against global and national frameworks of intellectual property laws that have a privatising effect on knowledge under the rubric of discovery or ‘invention’, as well as liability rights approaches of compensation and benefit‐sharing for research access. By understanding scale and legal jurisdiction as socially and politically constructed phenomena, we explore how laws at different scales and in different jurisdictions may override each other, discriminate against foreign laws and practices, and ignore customary laws. In doing so, the paper presents complex legal geographies of plants and associated knowledge, which suggest that the customary laws and norms of Indigenous groups and traditional healers are often ignored by ‘outsiders’. The paper notes that the possibility of ‘injury’ to traditional healers remains considerable without appropriate consent and given the discriminations surrounding knowledge made by patent laws. However, the ethnographies also point to the possibility of local remedies to these injuries through ritual processes, and we note resistant co‐constitutions of law and scale through the Nagoya Protocol.     

Scale politics,vernacular memory and the preservation of the Green Ridge battlefield in Kampar,Malaysia

In the now burgeoning scholarship on memory, there is a discernible shift from considering the politics of dominant public memory towards sites of counter-memories where vernacular forms of memory activism take place. This paper contributes to this by focusing its attention on plans to preserve Green Ridge in Kampar, Malaysia, a tract of forested hill that was the location of a fierce battle fought between the Japanese and Allied forces in the Asia-Pacific theatre of the Second World War. Specifically, it details the rescaling strategies of one particular individual to enhance the reach and relevance of the site for Malaysians writ large, primarily aimed at lobbying for Green Ridge to be officially marked as local and national heritage. This paper then interrogates issues that have hindered this process with the potential to ultimately thwart the preservation of the site for posterity. In doing so, the paper exemplifies memory activism as ‘work’, where local actors–through the mobilisation of scale politics–represent proactive agents in effecting change in public memory from below. Second, it highlights the fragmented nature of vernacular remembering and how this can impede memory work as much as champion memory formally obscured.     

Natural flood management: small-scale progress and larger-scale challenges

ABSTRACT

Management of fluvial flood risk in the UK is undergoing a paradigm shift, with a change in emphasis from solely working with structural defences to considering catchment-based measures which attenuate flood runoff. Natural Flood Management (NFM) is promoted as a method that can reduce flood risk through the alteration, restoration or use of landscape features. Here we highlight the potential to manage runoff locally in the rural landscape using NFM by targeting flow pathways and utilising floodplains and riparian zones. Using two case study examples from the UK, we show that by accumulating dispersed small-scale storage in small catchment areas (<10 km²) can assist in attenuating flood runoff. However, there is currently a lack of evidence of measure effectiveness at larger catchment scales and for managing extreme flood events. Nevertheless, there is a strong evidence base to suggest many of these measures deliver a range of different ecosystem services if installed in the correct location in the landscape.     

Meeting places: drivers of change in Australian Aboriginal cultural institutions

Since the 1970s, there has been a fraught yet hopeful Aboriginal cultural resurgence in Australia. An element of this movement has been the establishment of Aboriginal art centres and cultural centres across Australia. Using a comparative approach to Aboriginal art centres, this paper analyses the appearance and characteristics of the more recent Aboriginal cultural centres. The methods used are a review of the literature on Aboriginal art centres, and for the less-researched Aboriginal cultural centres, a case study. This paper posits that cultural centre characteristics are shaped through the formation of alliances made possible by the advent of land rights, an Aboriginal cultural turn amongst Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, and changing approaches to regional development. While not themselves a movement that will lead to socio-economic change, these types of arts and heritage projects are aligned to such movements. With a larger scale and more central locations, Aboriginal cultural centres open up opportunities for larger and more diverse alliances, and therefore new opportunities for Aboriginal people’s participation, activism and expression.     

Problematizing Labour's Agency: Rescaling Collective Bargaining in British Columbia Pulp and Paper Mills

Abstract: This paper focuses on the contradictory nature and sometimes unintended consequences of workers’ efforts to defend particular communities against the ravages of capital restructuring. In the past decade, pattern collective bargaining in the highly unionized British Columbia pulp and paper industry has faced enormous strains due to intense industry restructuring. Our analysis focuses on the repercussions of actions taken by union locals in two British Columbia towns—Port Alice and Port Alberni—to try to secure the survival of their pulp and paper mills and, even in the case of Port Alice, the continued existence of the community. Our analysis resonates with recent debates surrounding worker agency as well as writing in the 1980s which addressed the often contradictory and problematic nature of workers’ struggles to “defend place”; writing largely neglected in more recent work in labour geography.     

Organizing European Labour: Governance, Production, Trade Unions and the Question of Scale

This paper addresses two main debates: the recent geographical literature on trade union strategy and structure, and contemporary accounts of European labour market governance. Geographers have begun to take notice of organized labour just as it has faced a series of unprecedented challenges, which are partly derived from ongoing changes in the organization of production. In interpreting these debates I focus on the process of scaling – the ways in which the politics of labour market governance are constituted in, and are at the same time constitutive of, one geographical scale or another. These issues are explored through two key recent developments: the changing status of the European Trade Union Confederation, and the creation of European Works Councils. The ETUC and EWCs are particularly significant because they pose a challenge to existing arrangements, and potentially enable a re-configuration of the relation between capital and labour at different scales. I conclude that further exploration of European labour geography could re-connect the diversity of forms of organization of production with the scope and potential of trade union strategy; and that thinking in terms of scale is useful because it highlights the significance of both political and relational issues.     

首府集中度和西部城市化模式探索

城市首位度是最早提出来对城市规模状况的指标描述,但随着经济的发展,处于第二位城市的人口数量的增加,首位度日益无法得力地描述城市体系的特征状况,更无法表述出地区人口在首府城市的集中程度,为此本文提出了城市首府集中度的概念,将首府集中度划分为不同的等级层次。对比中国与世界平均及中、俄间的首府度分布曲线,从而得出结论:中国大城市的发展潜力仍然很大,应进一步扩展和完善大城市。西部地区地广人稀,对比分析俄罗斯和西部的首府度状况,相应地提出西部开发模式。     

幸福地理学研究中的时空间尺度陷阱

尺度是地理学的核心概念,但是在近年兴起的关于幸福地理学研究中对尺度问题的讨论仍属空白。本文在借鉴此前地理学尺度研究成果的基础上,结合现有幸福感的理论和实证研究,分别从现实尺度、分析尺度和实践尺度出发,系统反思了幸福感研究中的尺度陷阱。首先,对区域幸福感水平的度量需要选择汇总尺度和方法,影响幸福感的地理因素本身和地理环境对幸福感的影响也有其特定尺度。第二,分析地理环境对幸福感的影响时,既要合理处理研究结论的尺度变异性和不同时空间尺度上研究结论的整合问题,也要防止出现真实尺度与分析尺度之间出现错位。第三,个人会通过家庭内部成员间取舍、社会比较等尺度重构和尺度政治方式提升幸福感,而政府在试图改善居民幸福感时也需要选择合理的空间干预尺度。幸福感研究必须跳出各类尺度陷阱,探究影响幸福感的地理要素的真实尺度及合理的分析尺度,并妥善解决个人和政府在提升幸福感时面临的尺度政治争端。     

中国著名旅游城市旅游业的效率研究

追求更高的效率是旅游城市发展旅游业的目标之一.本文采用三阶段DEA方法,选取2010年50个著名旅游城市为研究对象,对旅游业效率值进行测算.研究表明,剥离环境因素和随机因素的影响,城市旅游业效率从0.661下降到0.559,规模效率值从0.865下降到0.634,纯技术效率值从0.761上升到0.872,42个城市的旅游业规模效率值下降,33个城市的旅游业纯技术效率值上升.从调整的数据可以看出,规模效率对综合技术效率的影响和制约程度最强,纯技术效率相对较弱.最后针对旅游业效率值分析,提出扩大生产规模,实现资源集中配置的建议.     

Building survey forms for heterogeneous urban areas in seismically hazardous zones. Application to the historical center of Valparaíso,Chile

ABSTRACT

Building survey is an essential data-collection procedure to feed large-scale seismic vulnerability assessment. The available strategies usually consider survey forms to gather information about the urban buildings. The application of the available survey forms poses important challenges for the case of the heterogeneous urban centers including different structural typologies. This work proposes four specific survey forms for traditional structural typologies constructed with masonry, reinforced concrete, mixed steel-reinforced concrete, and timber. The proposed forms request essential information on the parameters necessary for seismic vulnerability assessment, by evaluating the lateral-load resistant system, regularity, condition of conservation, and existing damages. The survey forms were applied to the study of 111 buildings of the historical center of Valparaíso, Chile. The proposed methodology was complemented with the use of Geographic Information Systems to obtain a complete database with the structural characterization of the most representative typologies for future works of large-scale seismic vulnerability assessment.