Experiments in Cross‐Scalar Labour Organizing: Reflections on Trade Union‐Building Work in Aceh after the 2004 Tsunami

Abstract: As part of the post‐tsunami reconstruction effort in Aceh, international labour movement organizations “jumped scale” in an attempt to revitalize a moribund local labour movement. This article provides a close analysis of the four internationally sponsored trade union building projects undertaken as part of that process. This unique intervention sheds light on the crucial role of local context and the extent to which the principles of international solidarity and the pragmatics of trade union diplomacy are mediated through money, institutions, individuals and day‐to‐day activities. The Aceh case underscores the importance of contingency and the agency of individuals in shaping an international intervention of this kind. In doing so it demonstrates how circuits of labour activism can be affected by constraints and opportunities unrelated to trade union politics or the relations of production.     

幸福地理学研究中的时空间尺度陷阱

尺度是地理学的核心概念,但是在近年兴起的关于幸福地理学研究中对尺度问题的讨论仍属空白。本文在借鉴此前地理学尺度研究成果的基础上,结合现有幸福感的理论和实证研究,分别从现实尺度、分析尺度和实践尺度出发,系统反思了幸福感研究中的尺度陷阱。首先,对区域幸福感水平的度量需要选择汇总尺度和方法,影响幸福感的地理因素本身和地理环境对幸福感的影响也有其特定尺度。第二,分析地理环境对幸福感的影响时,既要合理处理研究结论的尺度变异性和不同时空间尺度上研究结论的整合问题,也要防止出现真实尺度与分析尺度之间出现错位。第三,个人会通过家庭内部成员间取舍、社会比较等尺度重构和尺度政治方式提升幸福感,而政府在试图改善居民幸福感时也需要选择合理的空间干预尺度。幸福感研究必须跳出各类尺度陷阱,探究影响幸福感的地理要素的真实尺度及合理的分析尺度,并妥善解决个人和政府在提升幸福感时面临的尺度政治争端。     

Multi‐Scalar Practices of the Korean State in Global Climate Politics: The Case of the Global Green Growth Institute

The paper examines the significance of state territoriality and the related multi‐scalar practices of the state in the light of the symptoms of post‐politics exemplified in global environmental governance. The focus rests on the South Korean government's Green Growth (GG) strategy and the efforts to export this strategy as a role model to emerging economies worldwide through the establishment of the Global Green Growth Institute. We begin with the question why the Korean government is going global with a political program that is heavily disputed at home. We then study the practices by which the state manages to maintain its territoriality under the conditions of global climate change. Lastly, we discuss how multi‐scalar practices of environmental governance in the GG strategy are applied by state and non‐state actors both in Korea and abroad.     

Make good choices,kid: biopolitics of children's bodies and school lunch reform in Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

In recent debates surrounding childhood nutrition and US school lunch reforms, the child's body serves as a contested battleground in a destructive politics of blame over obesity and diabetes. Scalar discourses of the body play a significant role in constructing food-related problems and their solutions. We illustrate our claims through a critical analysis of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution; a celebrated national television program centered on chef Oliver's attempts to address childhood nutrition through school lunch reform. Informed by Foucault's biopolitics, our analysis highlights how moralizing scalar discourses of the body frames nutrition as an individual problem of personal choice. Food politics, when played out at the scale of young bodies, masks class divisions, marginalities, and governmental policies that structure access to nutritious food in the US school lunch system. Increased attention to biopower, scalar politics, and the political economy of childhood nutrition in the space of US public schooling challenges naturalized ideologies of food choice that regulate and delimit change to the scale of the body.     

变革中的西方经济地理学:制度、文化、关系与尺度转向

1980年代以来,在社会科学日益走向多元化和"后现代主义"的背景下,西方经济地理学开始了一个前所未有的急剧变动时期,无论是研究的主要论题,还是研究的内容、理论和方法以及表述的方式与风格,均经历并正在经历深刻的变革。与上一世纪50-60年代的"计量和理论革命"和70- 80年代的"马克思主义转向"相比,这次变革不仅发生在方法论和认识论层面,而且许多也发生在本体论层面,它使西方经济地理学的视角走向了高度的多样化和复杂化。本文在分析这次变革的起点:马克思主义转向及其批判的基础上,从制度转向、文化转向、关系转向、尺度转向4个相互交织的方面,系统勾勒了西方经济地理学理论视角变动的主线,讨论了这些视角变动的方向、成因、意义和局限性。     

Regional Planning in Queensland's Rangelands: Challenges and Prospects for Biodiversity Conservation

In Australia, the Commonwealth and State governments are increasingly devolving natural resource management (NRM) responsibilities to regional bodies. This move has led to the development of regional NRM plans. Native vegetation and biodiversity conservation, along with soil, pasture and water resources, are key components of the regional NRM plans in Queensland's extensive rangelands. This paper outlines and applies a set of criteria for evaluating the native vegetation and biodiversity content of accredited regional NRM plans for Queensland's rangelands. The evaluation showed considerable variation in the comprehensiveness of the information and knowledge base and management action targets among plans, including the poor articulation of impacts of excessive grazing pressure on biodiversity. The NRM plans lacked effective integration of natural resource, native vegetation and biodiversity conservation targets and actions. Several regions had too many biodiversity targets, many of which were poorly integrated. This is symptomatic of a limited understanding of rangelands as ecological systems and the lack of an integrated planning framework. We conclude regional NRM planning is not a ‘silver bullet’ for biodiversity conservation in the rangelands, but rather, it is the beginning of a long road to address complex, multi‐scale problems at a regional level.     

Scales of regional income disparities in the USA, 1955 2003

This article examines multiple dimensions of regional per capitaincome disparities in the USA between 1955 and 2003 with a particularfocus on scalar effects. It combines various exploratory analyticaltools of spatial disparities, including inequality indices,mobility indices, kernel density estimation, spatial autocorrelationstatistics and scale variances, to analyse regional averageper capita income distributions at multiple spatial scales,ranging from counties to multi-state regions. The analysis revealspreviously unrecognised systematic patterns of cross-scalardynamics, whereby spatial income disparities are increasinglymore pronounced at smaller scales in the last few decades.     

地缘环境评估中的尺度陷阱

地缘环境评估是政治地理学的一个重要研究方向,对于地缘风险评估和地缘战略制定具有重要意义。但是,现有研究较少论及地缘环境评估中的尺度问题。本文基于地理学中的尺度研究,尤其是王丰龙所提出的尺度陷阱理论,系统归纳了地缘环境评估中面临的 4 类尺度陷阱。首先,在地缘环境评估中,分析的空间范围和单元划分与地缘环境的评估结果存在相互依赖关系,从而造成分析尺度选择陷阱;第二,地缘环境评估需要涵盖不同尺度上的因素,从而产生多尺度耦合陷阱;第三,地缘环境评估需要将不同尺度形式的因素同时纳入,从而面临不同尺度形式的叠合陷阱;第四,地缘环境评估需要兼顾指标的综合全面与分析问题的重点突出两个相矛盾的需求,进而产生了综合化尺度陷阱。建议后续研究在认识到这些尺度陷阱的基础上,选择更优的分析尺度,提升评估结果的稳健性,从而增强相关研究结论对于地缘风险判断和地缘战略制定的参考价值。     

Regional spaces, spaces of regionalism: territory, insurgent politics and the English question

Amid the globalization of economic life and a myriad of powerful challenges to Westphalian traditions of political statehood, it is now routinely contended that regions are 'in resurgence'. Nonetheless, much of the debate on this purported regional renaissance is bedevilled by confusion over what scholars and activists mean by regions and an analogous mystification as to why some regions are 'successful', 'lagging' or 'different'. Our paper aims to instil some coherence to this debate by distinguishing between what we term regional spaces and spaces of regionalism . It then draws on this distinction to explore the institutionalization of England's South West region, highlighting some tensions which prevail over its economic future, its political representation, its territorial shape and cultural vernacular. In undertaking this, we demonstrate how the formation of any given regional map is reflective – and indeed constitutive – of an unevenly developing, often overlapping and superimposing mosaic of economic practices, political mobilizations, cultural performances and institutional accomplishments. This prompts us to question the currently fashionable inclination to fully jettison a scalar and/or territorial approach to the theory and practice of spatiality in favour of relational/topological/non-territorial approaches.     

ENVIRONMENTAL AND EVOLUTIONARY ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY: TIME FOR EEG2?

This article argues that recent proposals for environmental and evolutionary economic geographies (EEG 1 and EEG2) should be integrated; EEG² is used as “passing convenience” to make this case. EEG1's emphasis on environmental imperatives is loosely framed and needs a theoretical socio‐economic evolutionary base that is the central thrust of EEG2. Meanwhile EEG2 would be empowered by incorporating environmental concerns within its mandate. Moreover, both EEG1 and EEG2 share common roots in institutional methodologies, emphasize cumulative causation and path‐dependent behaviour, have strong interests at regional scales of analysis, and both are intimately tied to the causes and consequences of innovation. This article provides a rationale and suggests an integrative conceptual approach for developing EEG². In particular, the article outlines a conceptual framework that interprets EEG² in terms of co‐evolutionary socio‐ecological and multi‐scalar processes that are situated within a reasoned history interpretation of economic development. This framework further highlights the roles of path dependency, innovation, multinational corporations and value chains. How this multi‐scalar framework may be elaborated is then discussed around three themes: extending placed‐based analysis of localized clusters; broadening the scope of global value chain analysis; and re‐engaging the analysis of core–periphery relations. Ultimately the case for EEG² is to ensure that economic geographic perspectives are fully incorporated in debates over the co‐evolution of economy and environment, in research and policy terms one of, if not the, central challenges of development in the 21st century.