Dis-placed voices: sense of place and place-identity on the Sunshine Coast

The geographical literature on place interrogates, amongst other notions, sense of place, place identity, and their connections or disruptions. Although notions of place are multiple and very fluid, place transformation in rural and regional areas may be more rapid than the changing understandings of place held by residents. This research examines notions of place held by residents on the Sunshine Coast of Australia, one of the fastest growing ‘sea change’ regions in the nation. It presents a reading of empirical material that suggests sense of place and place-identity cannot be easily equated in the region. Sense of place was more important to rural and long-term residents than was the place-identity. Landscape change in the region is narrated, and images of place-identity interpreted, to suggest that place-identity has been created and imposed by the globalising forces of development, rather than emanating from many resident's perspectives. Those local voices have been, and continue to be, successively displaced and disrupted. Thus discursive power in various ways shapes and is shaped by dominant place-identity in the region, and some voices are blocked by the discourses of urbanisation. The unequal geographies of power shaping the regional landscape need to be acknowledged within place transformation processes. These geographies of power suggest that sense of place can be thought of as a ‘view from the bottom’, while place-identity primarily functions as a ‘view from the top’.     

Ukrainian Economic Policy after the Orange Revolution: A Commentary on Åslund's Analysis

One of the leading Western observers of Ukrainian affairs, before and after the dis-integration of the Soviet Union, discusses the preceding paper by Anders Åslund devoted to the economic policies of Ukraine after the Orange Revolution. The commentary covers in some detail the pervasive corruption, largely traced to Ukrainian oligarchs but also endemic in the administration and among the military. Relatively recent 2005 polls are cited to illustrate the citizenry's support for some of the government's policies and regulations pertaining to prices, privatization, and organized crime, as well as those showing presidential and ministerial approval ratings. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, H80, O52, P30. 16 references.     

The Service Sector in the Chinese Economy: A Geographic Appraisal

A U.S.-based economic geographer and observer of China's economy examines the rapid expansion of the country's largely overlooked service sector, at both the national and regional levels. A particular focus of the author's research is on identifying regional variations in the development of services within the country and exploring some of the more important contributing factors. Based on the findings, the paper also discusses structural shifts that occurred in China's regional economies, disclosing inter alia that inequality in the contribution of services to GDP did not follow the same trajectory as that of employment in services. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: L800, O180, P230. 6 figures, 4 tables, 82 references.     

New Horizons for Regional Geography

Two prominent U.S. geographers outline the framework and mandate of an emerging new regional geography as a tool for understanding rapid and profound changes in the contemporary world. In so doing, they differentiate this new approach to the geographic study of regions from both (a) the traditional practice of regional geography prevailing in the discipline from the mid-19th century and (b) accounts of geography's role in contemporary affairs offered by non-specialists in the mass media (e.g., Kaplan's "revenge of geography"). The authors provide recommendations for, and note the benefits of, a strengthening of regional research and training in geography, while mapping out an expanded role for Eurasian Geography and Economics in disseminating new regional research whose scope extends beyond disciplinary boundaries to embrace current public and political debate. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O100, O180, P000, R110.60 references.     

Eating Hawai'i: local foods and place-making in Hawai'i Regional Cuisine

In this paper, we look at what it means to ‘eat Hawai'i’ and examine how Hawai'i Regional Cuisine (HRC) imagines, produces, and consumes place through particular constructions of local foods. The term ‘local’ attaches to foods as a marker of numerous positive attributes such as seasonal, sustainable, and community-based. Drawing upon ongoing ethnographic research on Hawai'i Island, we examine spatial and discursive constructions of local and how this particular cuisine places itself in local food networks while simultaneously using place to localize itself within the Island's food networks. Using a case study approach to carefully contextualize localness, we show how Merriman's Restaurant and HRC complicate notions of alternative and local food systems in its discursive and material production and reproduction of Local food and locally grown food.     

Following the plot of Bengt Pohjanen's Meänmaa: narrativization as a process of creating regional identity

This paper discusses the artistic and cultural work of one minority author and regional activist, Bengt Pohjanen, and how it constitutes a means for mediating regional identity narratives, constructing Meänmaa, the region straddling the border between Sweden and Finland in the Tornio River Valley. We will approach narrativization as a creative social action, focusing on the performative, social and political aspects of regional stories, and by this means impugning the division between territorial, bounded, and networked, unbounded, conceptualizations of regions. We will follow the narrative plot of Bengt Pohjanen's Meänmaa, pointing out how an artistic and cultural region becomes part of our social reality and how regional consciousness and identity become established and constantly renegotiated within and across national borders.     

Narrative claims on regions: prospecting for spatial identities among social movements in Finland

Regions have been regarded as processes, artefacts and discourses, and recently as ‘brands’ that various stakeholders use in marketing. Discourses on institutional regions are typically promoted by media, governmental bodies and planning organizations that draw on reputed collective regional identities—the expressions of past and current social discourses and cultural practices. However, such institutional regional discourses are often incongruous to spatial imaginaries of everyday life. This article scrutinizes the meanings of spatial attachment to citizens and explores to what extent regional identities are meaningful in everyday life. To avoid biased assumptions, focus-group interviews were carried out within four Finnish provinces among the members of four social movements. The results show that provincial spaces are not actively thought-and-practiced. Spatial identities are rather structured around personal experiences that typically accumulate in several locales, since personal histories are increasingly characterized by mobility. This article also recognizes that the everyday meanings of a socially constructed region are often generationally read and combine different historical narratives.     

Universities in inclusive regional innovation systems: Academic engagement and uneven knowledge use in Brazil

The purpose of this paper is to spatially and regionally examine academic engagement within Brazil, identifying patterns. Moreover, our investigation can contribute to a better understanding of how knowledge can be turned into a tool to fight regional inequality. We depart from two hypotheses: first, universities situated in peripheral regions interact more with companies from relatively more dynamic regions, and second, in the absence of industrial knowledge demand, universities tend to collaborate more closely with a diverse range of stakeholders in the region. To evaluate these hypotheses and find empirical evidence, we consider 4497 research groups and 4603 nonacademic organizations as “nodes” connected by 8830 collaborations throughout all Brazilian regions. Social network tools are used to illustrate the spatial and regional dimensions of academic engagement more accurately. The results show that academic engagement is not regionally homogeneous, demonstrating essential differences regarding local nonacademic partnerships. Innovation policies, which encourage only university–firm interactions, perpetuate regional inequality.     

旅游产业集聚会影响地区收入差距吗？——基于中国省际面板数据的门槛回归分析

本文利用中国30个省市区1999年～2009年面板数据,分别从线性和非线性两个角度实证检验了旅游产业集聚对地区收入差距的影响,估计结果显示：一方面,旅游产业集聚对地区收入差距具有显著线性负向影响效应;另一方面,通过构建非线性面板门槛模型,进一步检验了旅游产业集聚对地区收入差距影响效应的门槛特征,具体而言,旅游产业集聚对地区收入差距负向影响效应不仅存在基于旅游产业集聚的单一门槛特征,而且也存在基于经济发展水平、基础设施建设与产业结构升级的三重门槛特征。     

Modelling the cultural industries

Alternative definitions of the cultural industries lead to the construction of different models of the cultural production sector of the economy and hence to a different array of specific industries which are contained within the sector. In turn this implies not just differing estimates of the contribution of the cultural industries to output and employment in the economy but also significant differences in the way economic analysis can be applied to the cultural sector as a whole. This paper begins by discussing the way in which an economic approach to interpreting the scope of the creative and cultural industries can lead to a reasonable basis for defining them. It then goes on to examine the content of six distinct models of these industries, asking the question: is it possible to find a common core group of industries on which all of the models agree? The paper then considers the implications of the models for economic analysis of the cultural sector, and finishes with some conclusions for cultural policy.