Assessing Socio‐Economic Vulnerability to Climate Change Impacts and Environmental Hazards in New South Wales and Queensland,Australia

This article systematically reviews and synthesises academic, peer‐reviewed literature to assess the state of knowledge concerning socio‐economic vulnerability to climate change impacts and environmental hazards in New South Wales and Queensland, Australia. It focuses upon empirical research that identifies socio‐economic factors associated with vulnerable subpopulations. Using systematic review methods, 35 articles met the inclusion criteria. These articles are analysed according to their general characteristics, the methods used, and the factors reported to be associated with socio‐economic vulnerability. This body of evidence reveals that (1) the majority of the knowledge about socio‐economic vulnerability in New South Wales and Queensland has only recently emerged; (2) more knowledge has been published about Queensland; and (3) extreme temperature is the most researched environmental hazard. Despite increased research activity over time, the number of factors repeatedly demonstrated to influence socio‐economic vulnerability is small. Age, gender, place of residence, and pre‐existing illness were the most commonly reported factors, although the influence of these factors upon socio‐economic vulnerability is complex. There is scope to extend the empirical research base across a broader range of climate‐related hazards and to better link findings from the domains of climate change vulnerability and population health.     

Strategizing for Autonomy: Whither Durability and Progressiveness?

What should autonomous formations work towards? How might they strategize to get there? This paper considers these what and how aspects in tandem—a necessary pursuit if clearer pathways to emancipation are to be realized. First, it conceptualizes the relationship between objectives of durability and progressiveness. I introduce “the durability trap”, a situation whereby autonomous formations achieve durability at the expense of their progressiveness, as well as the principles to overcome this. Second, it evaluates how autonomous formations might act collectively and vis‐à‐vis the state to achieve, or not, both durability and progressiveness. I compare the strategies two autonomous formations adopt in response to the development of Media Spree, a redevelopment project in Berlin. I show how symbiotic strategy results in the durability trap and how an interstitial approach works to overcome this. I end by conceiving strategies of interstitiality, symbiosis and rupture as sequential steps to wider transformation.     

Persistence of innovative activities in times of crisis: the case of the Basque Country

By drawing on a large sample of Spanish manufacturing and service sector firms, the changes in firms’ innovation expenditures that have taken place since the onset of the 2008 economic crisis are analysed, as is the relationship between such changes and the location of the company. Special focus is placed on firms in the Basque Country. Compared to other Spanish regions, the Basque Country differs in terms of its fiscal status, its earlier experience of crises, its innovation performance and its greater focus on innovation-related policies. Our results show that the impact of the crisis on firms’ innovation expenditures in the Basque Country has indeed differed from that in comparable Spanish regions. Even after controlling for sectoral differences and for detailed characteristics at the firm level, firms with R&D employment in the Basque Country showed a significantly lower probability of abandoning innovation activities and even a somewhat higher probability of increasing their innovation efforts. This regional effect is especially significant for small and medium-sized enterprises.     

Do behaviours in cultural markets affect economic resilience? An analysis of Italian regions

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation between the economic resilience and cultural behaviour, resorting to the evidence provided by 20 Italian regions at the time of Great Recession. We consider specific cultural behaviours, which provide a specific meaning of culture; its relation with the economic resilience of regions is analysed. We document that higher levels of supplied and demanded quantity of cultural goods in a region are associated with higher regional economic resilience as measured by the ability of limiting employment drop; the relation with the considered cultural behaviours is weaker in the case of economic resilience as measured by the ability of limiting income drop. We propose possible explanations for this asymmetry.     

Researchers,bureaucrats and the lifeworlds of cultural policy

This paper reflects on the value of cultural policy research, particularly when such research forms part of projects that seek to produce insights or ‘outcomes’ that are useful to non-university research partners. The paper draws from the author’s involvement in a project examining cultural diversity in the arts that was funded as part of the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Project scheme. It addresses Eleonora Belfiore’s provocation that this kind of instrumental cultural policy research routinely amounts to ‘bullshit.’ However, in order to understand the critical function of such research, there needs to be greater attention to the lifeworlds of cultural policy and the multiplicity of the policy-making process. This multiplicity both complicates the possibilities for usefulness in policy research, at the same time that it enables such research to be generative in unpredictable ways.     

Operationalizing a contested concept: indicators of territorial cohesion

European territorial policies increasingly refer to broad goals such as sustainability, well-being and cohesion. For their operationalization as political goals, there is a need to create indicators. But how can an indicator be meaningful in relation to a complex concept that is not well defined? If the creation of an indicator is primarily aimed at quantifying a concept and making it more operational, in the case of a contested concept (such as territorial cohesion), the process of building indicators also helps stabilize it, allowing a potential decontestation. A participatory constructivist approach – as used by the ESPON project Indicators for Territorial Cohesion (INTERCO) – is considered to be the most suitable for building indicators of contested concepts. While ensuring computability of the indicators, it allows more flexibility and reconciles the different meanings of the concept in order to stabilize it. Ultimately, the validity of indicators of contested concepts lies in pragmatic criteria: usability, usefulness and use.     

Queering disasters: on the need to account for LGBTI experiences in natural disaster contexts

This article seeks a queering of research and policy in relation to natural disasters, their human impacts, management and response. The human impacts of natural disasters vary across different social groups. We contend that one group largely absent from scholarly and policy agendas is sexual and gender minorities, or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual and intersex (LGBTI) populations. To demonstrate that these minorities have particular experiences that need to be addressed, we critically review five case studies that comprise the limited scholarly and policy research on LGBTI populations in disasters to date. Building on this, we offer some specific ways forward for queer disaster research that accounts for the vulnerabilities, needs and resilient capacities of LGBTI populations. In doing so, we recognise and urge researchers, policy-makers and aid agencies to acknowledge that LGBTI populations are not homogeneous and have different needs wrought by intersections of socio-economic resources, gender, race/ethnicity, age and regional or national location.     

Cultural Capital and Place: Coles Bay and the Freycinet Peninsula,Tasmania

This paper poses the question: what is the role of cultural capital at the interface of environment, economy and society, and what other factors affect this role? A review of Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital and later developments of this concept by ecological economists serves to establish the values that comprise cultural capital, and its relationship to natural capital and economic capital. These relationships are investigated through a case study of a small coastal community, Coles Bay and the Freycinet Peninsula, in Tasmania. Three study groups are identified which comprise the communities associated with this place; long‐term residents, repeat visitors and tourists making a single visit. The complexity of the relationships of people with place are revealed through an examination of the different forms of capital (social, cultural and economic) relating to the different study groups. The dynamics of the social, economic and environmental realities of Coles Bay and the Freycinet Peninsula are seen to be complex and interlinked, with the potential to provide a model for action in communities of similar character and location.     

游地社区恢复力认知测度与影响因子分析——以千岛湖为例

人是社会-生态系统的主要决定性因素,旅游地社区恢复力提高是旅游地可持续治理的关键。运用通径分析方法,从治理、社会、经济及生态系统4个维度建立社区恢复力认知测度模型,定量测度千岛湖社区认知恢复力,识别脆弱性及应对能力认知对社区恢复力的复杂影响。结果表明：①社区恢复力认知可提取8个因子,政府治理在社区恢复力中的作用最为显著,是社区恢复力提高的主导力量。②千岛湖恢复力认知综合平均值为2.42,处于中等偏下水平。社会子系统恢复力认知值最高,生态和经济子系统恢复力认知值最低,系统发展应关注生态资本的积累与保护以及经济发展的多样性与稳定性。③社区脆弱性、个体和政府应对能力的各变量对社区总恢复力及各维度认知呈现出错综复杂的关系,政府应对能力对总恢复力及各维度认知的影响相对最强,个体应对能力对多数恢复力认知维度未产生明显影响。需进一步发挥个体作用,促进个体和政府的共同参与,提高社区恢复力。