Nunavik and the Multiple Dimensions of Inuit Governance

ABSTRACT

Over the last five decades, the emergence of a sophisticated and multidimensional set of governance institutions in the predominantly Inuit regions of Canada and the circumpolar north has had a profound impact on the lives of Inuit peoples and the states in which they live. The region of Nunavik in northern Québec has played an important role in the political development of the Canadian and circumpolar Inuit, serving as both an institutional innovator and a key source of leadership at the regional, national, and international levels. Using a multilevel governance framework, this article explores the vertical and horizontal dimensions of Inuit governance in Canada and the circumpolar north. In particular, the article will focus on Nunavik’s contribution to and place in this multidimensional governance structure.     

Democracy,decentralization, and district proliferation: The case of Ghana

In many developing countries, a rhetorical commitment to decentralization often superficially manifests through the creation of new or smaller administrative units at the sub-national level. In democracies in particular, this raises the question of whether sub-national unit proliferation is intended for winning popular support in elections or addressing the concerns of local citizens. This paper analyzes the motivations for district creation by focusing on Ghana, which is oft-considered one of Africa's more committed countries to decentralization. At the same time, successive governments repeatedly have divided the country into more districts in an espoused effort to more effectively bring services closer to citizens. With an in-depth focus on the most recent increase from 170 to 216 districts between 2008 and 2012, this paper employs national and district census, socioeconomic, and electoral data to examine which districts were split and why. Instead of representing a source of patronage to swing voters or a divide-and-rule strategy in opposition strongholds, the study finds that the incumbent party at the time, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), used re-districting as a tactic of malapportionment and predominantly targeted non-competitive districts where gaining an additional legislative seat in subsequent elections was more likely. Evidence suggests that this pattern is not specific to the NDC and that previous district splitting under the New Patriotic Party (NPP) also focused disproportionately on that party's safe seats. Overall, the paper emphasizes the need for according greater consideration to underlying institutional aspects, particularly electoral rules and executive-legislative relations, when analyzing the motivations for territorial reforms.     

Power and the material arrangements of a river basin management plan: the case of the Archipelago Sea

The drive towards collaborative governance has raised critical questions about the hidden forms of power practised in consensual planning processes. In the field of water governance, the issue has been analysed in terms that treat power as an intrinsic property of actors or planning settings. Alternatively power is located in the discursive means mobilized by the human participants. Drawing from actor-network theory, this paper calls attention to the material arrangements constitutive for the practicing of power in target-driven, consensus-seeking planning. It sets focus on the obligatory passage points and factual closures through which a planning task links, for example, to ecosystems, policy principles and trajectories of governance. In the meantime, some other entities and issues may lose their planning-steering potentiality. As shown by the analysis of a river-basin planning process, the arrangements that end up steering consensus-seeking cannot be treated as merely discursive outputs operating upon a passive non-human reality. Materialities and living processes contribute to the outcome. However, the link is not deterministic. With different means of arrangement, the planning reality can – and, in the studied case, could have – end up different.     

One for all,or all for oneself? Governance cultures in regional public transport planning

Due to the fragmented organizational landscape characterizing public transport, it is important to study and explore how regional governance of public transport adapts to national institutional reforms. By employing the term ‘governance cultures’ to a comparative case study of regional public transport planning in Sweden, we contribute to theories of governance by cultural sensitization. Combining governance theory with cultural analysis, we apply a cultural perspective to understand the two cases. We conclude that public transport planning in the Stockholm region is defined by ‘negotiations’ between stakeholders, whereas in the Västra Götaland region it is characterized by a governance culture of ‘collaboration’. The evidence from our case studies emphasizes the importance of understanding local governance practices as situated in cultural contexts as well as of viewing governance cultures as an important factor affecting the purpose, degree and outcomes of collaboration in planning practices.     

Governing system innovation: assisted living experiments in the UK and Norway

Debates on how to address societal challenges have moved to the forefront of academic and policy concerns. Of particular importance is the growing awareness that to deal with issues such as ageing, it will be necessary to implement concerted efforts on technological, social, institutional or political fronts. Drawing on a number of theoretical perspectives – including socio-technical transitions and embedded state theory – the aim of this paper is to identify and understand different approaches to the governance of such system innovations by comparing state responses to assisted living in two contrasting national systems of care, namely that of the UK and Norway. Its findings highlight that state-supported and funded experimentation projects have been instrumental in designing and implementing system innovation: through their emphasis on co-design and co-creation, these projects demonstrated the value of early implementation pilots to explore the ‘fit’ between novel technologies and prevailing practices and institutional structures in national systems of care. Still, competition, biases or conflicting interests should not be ignored between well-established agents and institutions and experimental solutions whose efficacy remains relatively untested and which involve a combination of new technical, social, organizational and institutional solutions.     

From folk history to empathy: contesting heritage values in Chinchero,Peru

In the small Peruvian, Quechua-speaking town of Chinchero, processes of heritagization of the Pre-Hispanic legacy encouraged by the State and supported by the tourist industry have been trying to create among the population an obligation of historical and emotional identification with their Inca ancestors. This operation has been mainly effected through the territorial transformation of the vernacular space of the Inca ruins into an archaeological site for tourism consumption. The operation has left out other histories grounded in grassroots events, like the struggle for the land against the abusive landowners that took place during colonial times. More than the distant history of the Incas, it is this kind of more recognisable and meaningful folk history what people remember the most and what largely constitutes the fabric of social memory in Chinchero. It is precisely folk history what forms the basis for local heritage values that, unlike what happens with the Inca remains, express intense affective ties with the physicality of other non-archaeological spaces. In light of these developments, the author explores how the people of Chinchero are contesting official versions of heritage and history by foregrounding the emotional power of their own heritage values.     

Commemorative events at destination memorials – a dark (heritage) tourism context

In the past, sites and events related to war and atrocities were viewed in the wider context of heritage tourism. The term ‘dark’ was added with the aim of recognising heritage sites closely related to death and suffering. Given that commemorative events as part of dark heritage are not prevalent in heritage and tourism literature, there is a need to understand the behaviour of visitors involved in visiting these sites or attending this type of event, which presents a special challenge. Public commemorations, especially those that mark particularly disturbing occurrences, such as ‘The Great School Hour’ – an event which is presented in the artistic form of a ‘school class’ – are unique form of tourist activity that has not been thoroughly investigated previously. Thus, the aim of the study is to explore the influence of the main motivators on revisit intention and willingness to recommend for those who attended the commemorative event ‘The Great School Hour’ in Kragujevac, Serbia, with a particular focus on younger people. The results suggest that learning, emotional response and uniqueness have a significant positive effect on revisit intention, while emotional response and uniqueness have a significant positive effect on willingness to recommend.     

Ethics of heritage: locating the punitive state in the historical penal landscape of Taipei

Research into prison tourism and prison heritage has not taken enough time to understand how historical change has left impacts in urban contexts, which sometimes continues even after the prisons are decommissioned. This paper discusses the punitive state in the context of the historical penal landscape of Taipei through an exploration of how an historical prison was designed, built, partially demolished, preserved and redeveloped under three political regimes. It draws attention to the neglected relationships between punishment, colonial modernity and heritage. Drawing on the literature of dissonant heritage and dark tourism it argues that the way in which the government erased the heritage and evicted squatters without regard for colonial histories and large-scale, post-war migration is yet another way of writing imprisonment into the landscape and ‘othering’ the punished. Furthermore, in tracing the place memories, both within and outside of the high prison walls, it demonstrates the possibilities offered by ethics of heritage, with which we may counter the culture of punishment in the remaking of cities.     

Beach Boys Do It Too: Subculture and Commoditised Desire in a Transnational Tourist Site in Kerala,South India

This article is based on an ethnographic study of a group of Scheduled Caste (SC) male youth in a globalised tourist site in Kerala, South India, who participate in situational sexual and romantic relationships with predominantly tourist women from the global north. We first aim to expand on the “sex and romance tourism” literature of such encounters to provide an Indian context. Secondly, we aim to highlight how young men involved in such encounters undertake complex mediations of localised and global forms of consumption and commoditisation to participate in the neoliberal tourist market place. Mainly by way of a subculture known as the Jungees, we describe how young men utilise the former processes to seek economic and social mobility for themselves and their families but also to valorise and re-imagine their identity along racial, gendered, caste and class-based dimensions. Finally, we explore the young men’s articulation of a hierarchy of preferred encounters that draws on gendered, sexualised and racialised local and global imaginaries of commoditised desire(s) of tourist women from the global north. We highlight the ways in which participants actively utilise the neoliberal context to engage in a range of self-generated livelihood strategies and to contest their marginality.     

A “Supertanker” Against Bureaucracy in the Wake of a Housing Crisis: Neoliberalizing Planning in Netanyahu's Israel

This paper critically questions the state's hostile takeover of planning regulation followed by experimentation initiated by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has been seeking to subordinate the planning apparatus to market calculus and to short‐term political ends. To substantiate this argument, I have examined a large corpus of documents (official government documents, planning records, and court appeals and rulings, and NGO reports) and analyzed the media coverage between 2011 and 2016. By introducing fast‐track planning that is firmly controlled by the central state and focusing on the fictitious delivery of housing units, the structure of the planning regulation has dramatically changed. Further, two already‐dominant government ministries (Finance and Defense) have been significantly empowered, becoming the supervisors of the reformed planning system. In a state captivated by neoliberal fixation and embroiled in a housing crisis, the restructuring of planning governance has been a means to an end.