Service as a Subversive Activity: On the centrality of service to an academic career

In the normative view of academic life, service is presented as an unfortunate inconvenience, a dull distraction from the real work of the academy, which is taken to be teaching and research. Service is also presented to the novice academic as an activity that is completely unconnected with the real work of teaching and research. Jan Monk has made service central to her academic career. A brief overview of her service activities shows how closely intertwined they have been with her scholarship and teaching. Moreover, I believe that Jan's service work demonstrates not only how service is central to a vibrant, meaningful, and rich academic life; it is also an essential vehicle for creating change within, as well as outside of, the academy.     

Spatial segregation and class subjectivity in Turkey

Drawing on ethnographic research in an upper-class district in Turkey, this article examines social and spatial experiences of young low-wage service workers who travel daily back and forth between their homes in low-income neighbourhoods and their jobs in gated communities, upscale shopping malls and corporate offices. The paper argues that the significance of upper class districts or gated communities for urban inequality lies not in the sites themselves, nor the lifestyles of their elite inhabitants as commonly treated in the literature, but rather in the ways in which they relate to the outside and outsiders. Within this framework, the paper analyses the district’s effect on urban spatial segregation and urbanites’ sense of place in society. While resentment and reaction to inequalities and upper class customers are prevalent in young workers’ narratives, workers’ class subjectivities are also marked by a sense of mobility and liminality between the upper middle classes in their work district and their families, friends and neighbours back home. This sense of socio-spatial ‘in-betweenness’ is reinforced by being young, hence a sense of temporal liminality between youth and adulthood. The study contributes to the understanding of urban inequality at the intersection of spatial, emotional and temporal experiences of urbanites.     

On the service frontline: Israeli Arab-Palestinian men in a call-center

Intersectionality is applied to gender-occupation-minority inconsistent hierarchies, to as to explore the workplace-experience of Israeli Arab-Palestinian men service workers and unveil the multiple-geographies it contains. In-depth semi-structured interviews with 24 suchlike men emphasize complexity as the key feature of their intersectional experience. Whereas masculinity and Israeli-Palestinianess are forged against the feminine and Israeli-Jewishness Others, service work is de-feminized and restructured as a welcome modern development whose traditional Other is cherished. The disadvantages of their national-minority status are compensated by cross-national amity and routine occupational practices in the modern workplace, whereby some of their Othering markers are prized. The national difference appears as a multiple-discursive resource which mainly separates the ethnic component from the political one by which the effects of gender, modern work and class structure, weaken. Four geographies, periphery, home-work links, the sociability of the place of work and the MENA world-region are identified, suggesting that geography is integral to the intersectional experience.     

Classrooms without borders: new spaces and places of learning

This article identifies what can be learned from seeking to adapt teaching and learning styles in a post-disaster environment. It focuses on the development of student research through community-based learning as a means of increasing engagement and contributing to recovery in an earthquake-damaged city. It urges consideration of the socio-political context within which such pedagogies are developed, and highlights the management of expectations amongst students, community partners and academic staff. It discusses some of the benefits and difficulties in developing new spaces and places of learning, and reflects critically on what these initiatives represent.     

The Public Assistance Policies of Cities and the Justice Concerns of Elected Officials: The Centrality of the Floors Principle in Addressing Urban Poverty

City councils are significant, though seldom central, actors in local policy networks providing public assistance to disadvantaged residents. Mayors and council members in 12 American cities more often support than oppose public assistance initiatives. They claim that their own normative judgments are more important to their preferences and voting behavior on such matters than are public opinion, group demands, or economic considerations. While such elected officials hold a variety of justice principles, the most important of these affecting their positions on public assistance issues is the “floors” principle. A broad ethical commitment to providing social minimums enhances support for living‐wage ordinances, for linking subsidies for economic development to assistance to less advantaged citizens, and for exempting spending on social services from budget cuts. We discuss the implications of these findings for major theories of urban politics and policies—collective‐action theory, regime theory, and pluralism—and for advocates on behalf of the urban poor.     

Free Health Clinics,Resistance and the Entanglement of Christianity and Commodified Health Care Delivery

Abstract: Free clinics are an important part of the US health care safety net and their numbers are rising. This article offers a critical analysis of the politics of free health clinics in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It uses the geographies of resistance literature to assess free clinics as a response to the neoliberalization of health care delivery. It underlines the multiple political spaces free clinics occupy as a result of the entanglements of a diverse range of identities and practices within the clinic space. In Milwaukee, the primary entanglement occurs between the progressive Christian identity inspiring the practices of the free clinic's volunteers and the commodified identity of the corporate non‐profit health care systems that dominate health care delivery in the city. This research suggests that understanding the transition from oppositional identities, such as progressive Christianity, to resistance is an important next step in constructing more robust responses to neoliberal capitalism and other exploitive social relations.     

Staying Power: What Influences Micro-firm Survival in Tourism?

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how previous experience and location of entrepreneurs influence the survival of new tourism firms. The paper departs from recent evolutionary economic geography advancements, highlighting the importance of routines and skills as well as location-specific knowledge for firm success. While having been well-researched for manufacturing industries characterized by high entry barriers, little knowledge is currently available on the factors influencing survival rates in service sectors with low entry barriers. A quantitative approach applies hazard models to investigate the survival rates over a seven-year period of a total of 133 new micro-tourism firms started between 1999 and 2001 in the four northernmost counties of Sweden. The geo-referenced micro-database ASTRID links information on firm features (e.g. firm births and deaths, spatial coordinates and industry codes) to characteristics of entrepreneurs (e.g. age, education, previous experience). The main finding is that entrepreneurs with previous work experience in related sectors are more likely to survive and, in this case, entrepreneurs without local experience tend to be less successful. We find no evidence that new firms operating in regions specialized in tourism have a survival advantage. Our analysis also indicates that surviving firms improve performance over time. The paper thus contributes new knowledge on the determinants of micro-firm survival in tourism.     

Some notes on water supply in South India

This Article investigates the assertion by many Indian agronomists that methods of water management advocated by various Research Institutes are not being applied in the field. The sample village studies on the coastal plain around Madras and in the Cumbum Valley to the West of Madurai were carried out in 1969. Particular reference is also made to the Coimbatore Agricultural Research Centre in Tamilnad and the value of informed leadership in the villages of South India. “Although India can boast of her gigantic feats in the storage of water for irrigation and the distribution thereof in well planned channel systems, her performance in the actual application within the field continues to be outdated”. — (A. P. Bhattacharya¹).     

我国旅游服务业营业税改增值税的影响机理及影响状况研究

营业税改增值税是我国实施结构性减税政策的重要改革方向。上海已经开始试点,试点范围将由上海市分批扩大至北京、天津、江苏、浙江、安徽、福建、湖北、广东、厦门和深圳10个省、直辖市、计划单列市,并将选择部分行业在全国范围试点。未来,营业税改增值税很可能向旅游服务业推广。在上述背景下,需要研究下列前沿性理论问题：我国旅游服务业营业税改增值税的影响机理是什么？我国旅游服务业营业税改增值税的影响状况是什么？本文运用不同税收特点及影响分析理论,探讨了我国旅游服务业营业税改增值税的影响机理,并通过对上海典型旅游企业的调查研究,分析了我国旅游服务业营业税改增值税的影响特点与影响状况。针对我国旅游服务业营业税改增值税的影响特点与状况,提出了我国旅游服务业营业税改增值税税率与存量固定资产进项税抵扣等的建议。     

基于入境游客感知的中国旅游服务质量演进特征和影响机制

入境游客感知的旅游服务质量是影响入境旅游规模、衡量我国国际旅游竞争力的重要因素。本研究利用历史统计资料、问卷调查数据和结构方程模型方法分析了基于入境游客感知的中国旅游服务质量演进特征和影响机制。研究发现:1990-2012年入境游客对中国旅游服务质量的评价呈现"初步改善-大幅提升-提升趋缓"的趋势,旅游服务质量仍滞后于入境游客不断增长的需求,交通业、旅行社业、旅游公共服务等行业服务质量不高是主要制约因素。从内在影响机制看,入境游客对旅游服务质量比国内游客更为敏感,对入境游客满意度影响最大的因素是各行业服务和旅游公共服务,此外,旅游地形象对于入境游客的感知质量也有很大影响,旅游地形象、游客感知质量和游客满意度最终将影响入境游客的忠诚度,但旅游价格并不是影响入境游客满意度和忠诚度的主要因素。