Taxing the indigenous: a history of barriers to fiscal inclusion in the Bolivian highlands

Following the electoral success of left wing and pro-indigenous President Evo Morales, the indigenous poor in Bolivia find themselves at the centre of a new vision of the state, echoed by a fervent citizenship project to include them as contributing participants in this new Bolivia. The state is working to initiate these hitherto informally employed subjects into an individualized fiscal regime: to make them into “taxpayers”. While the highland indigenous population have supported Morales’ political project, they resist inclusion into the broader state-sponsored project. This is not simply about avoiding financial obligations; their resistance is instead firmly rooted in the historical experience of fiscal exploitation, general suspicion of any state-run scheme as well as a clash of exchange models. I argue that in order to overcome these barriers, the Tax Office has to succeed in separating fiscal expansion from its association with an abstract state concept, and instead link it to palpable everyday life and politics, such as the union structure and Morales’ project of indigenous inclusion.     

Determinants of Net Migration to Rural Areas,and the Impacts of Migration on Rural Labour Markets and Self-Employment in Rural Sweden

Abstract

Across most of Europe, the countryside seems to show a polarized development in which large districts are depopulating, while certain areas, mainly around big- and mid-sized cities, are increasing in population. The latter development is often described in concepts of “rural gentrification” and “rurbanization”, symbolizing a transformation of rural communities to communities with urban values and lifestyles. Most studies of the effects of these processes have focused on social and cultural consequences, as e.g. the displacements of lower-income households with higher-income residents and of rural culture and values with urban ones. This paper examines the phenomenon from another perspective, namely the effects of the “rurbanization” processes on countryside's labour markets and economic life. This paper aims at analysing the determinants of net migration to rural areas in general and to different types of regions, and the impacts of in-migration on rural labour markets, self-employment and other socio-economic conditions in Sweden for the period of 2003–2005. We find that net migration into rural areas increases with the size of adjacent local and regional centres, whereas net migration decreases with the average commuting distance of workers in the rural areas. When comparing in-migrants to rural areas with rural area stayers, our results indicate that the former has lower incomes, a lower employment ratio and a lower degree of entrepreneurial activities. These differences could—at least partly—be explained by the fact that rural area stayers were on average 6 years older than rural area in-migrants, i.e. the two groups were in different stages of their life cycles.     

Exploring children's foodscapes

In this article, we discuss children's becoming as food consumers in the intersection of various foodscapes. We draw from a project, Children as co-researchers of foodscapes, where we have been working with children as co-researchers, using basically ethnographic methods, and as co-designers in a collaborative design effort. This article focuses on the findings from a theoretically inspired perspective, using the concept of foodscapes. These are food-related structures of different kinds, which evolve as the child explores them and where children as food consumers are generated. In this article, we highlight the scapes of taste, routines, people, things, commerce, child (as opposed to adult) and health and give brief accounts of the way the children related to them. Finally, we turn to the benefits of working with foodscapes for a better understanding of children's becoming as food consumers in the intersection of various foodscapes. This article is based on data gathered by the children, but also on our fieldwork notes and observations following the children in their foodscapes.     

Empowering marginal lifescapes: the heritage of crofters in between the past and the present

There is a rich, but unacknowledged, heritage of rural subalterns, crofters, in Scandinavia. A Swedish-Norwegian interdisciplinary research-network investigated the most prominent category – the remains of crofts. Due to industrialisation, urbanisation and the modern welfare state, the institution of crofting was abolished, and many crofters left for opportunities elsewhere. The welfare state transformed a landscape of living and working people into a one filled with relicts mostly from the nineteenth century. Although numerous and important to local citizens, these sites fall outside the authorised heritage discourse (AHD) in terms of both research and heritage management. This paper takes an environmental justice perspective to challenge the AHD. Three themes are in focus: (1) bringing out the history of a subaltern and marginalised group of people; (2) promoting crofts as heritage of importance to local citizens and demanding complex management due to the various historical narratives and risks; (3) considering the crofting landscapes in relation to the (economisation) framing of heritage in development processes, especially in relation to fair development in present rural communities.     

Gendering boundary work: exploring excluded spaces in supermarket job rotation

The article explores the establishment of gendering divides in organisations by bridging Hernes' (2004) typologies of physical, social and mental boundary work with notions on the practice of gender as negotiated in everyday organisational activities. In the investigated Swedish supermarket, the pre-store, a narrow, front-stage space in which only women worked, was excluded from the job rotation that otherwise dominated the organisation of work in the store. This study examines: (1) how and on what grounds the divides of the pre-store were established in the supermarket and (2) how spatial divides were incorporated into the practice of gender and work in the supermarket. The findings suggest that the divides that are visible through the exclusion of the pre-store from the job rotation involved not only the allocation of work and space but also multiple and complex physical, social and mental spatial negotiations undertaken by both employees and managers. Together, these factors neutralised the divides as an aspect of the activities. First, the notion that gender was irrelevant for organisational decisions makes gender a non-issue for the organisation of the pre-store activities. Second, the notion that women and men are essentially different provided a ground for explaining why, despite being an organisational non-issue, work and workers were in fact organised along gendered lines in the supermarket. The study contributes with qualitative insights regarding the micro-political practices that make gender into a neutralised non-issue in organisations and, in particular, the intertwinement of spatial practices and negotiations.