DIE ERDE – Journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin
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Globalisation, indigenous tourism, and the politics of place in Amaicha (NW Argentine Andes)
Get PDFArgentina is a country that has represented itself over centuries as white and European. Over the last decades, however, indigenous movements have increased strongly in visibility and importance. This investigation considers this background in analysing the complex relationship between the growing importance of tourism and indigenous politics for self-determination and autonomy in the Andean village of Amaicha (NW-Argentina). The annual Pachamama celebration held by the indigenous Amaicha community presents the ideal setting for this research as it has simultaneously become a ‘national tourist festivity’ in the context of recent government efforts to promote a culturally diverse Argentina for tourism development. Through long-term ethnographic field work and by applying a methodological framework that combines the interpretation of visual material with careful empirical research this study presents a differentiated analysis of the political implications of indigenous tourism. The findings show that conflicts between the indigenous community and governmental institutions tend not to be about tourism and place promotion as such, but rather tourism has become a central arena where struggles over political control are manifested and mediated. Furthermore, cultural politics in Amaicha have recently been reassembled through both embodied practices and the use of cultural symbols during the Pachamama festivity. Finally, while relational conceptualisations of place as constituted through wider connections have gained momentum in academia, the results from this investigation show that an essentialised understanding of culture and identity as rooted in place is promoted for tourism, and emphasised by the indigenous community in order to legitimise claims for territorial and political rights. The goal of the paper is thus to contribute to a nuanced picture of emergent indigenous geographies in Argentina
Home dispossession: the uneven geography of evictions in Palma (Majorca)
Get PDFAffordable housing, either owner-occupied or rented, is regarded as a key element of social reproduction. However, processes of housing commodification and financialization have increasingly resulted in precariatization of the population and the loss of the right to housing. In the Spanish case, neoliberal policies geared to the revalorization of built environments had caused a housing bubble of historical magnitude. Since it burst, a large number of households have been dispossessed of housing, clearly reflected in the avalanche of foreclosures and evictions that hit Spanish cities as the crisis unfolded. This paper focuses on the urban area of Palma (Majorca) by analyzing the foreclosures exerted on homeowners and the evictions of tenants who, from the start of the crisis of 2008, have not been able to afford their mortgage payments or rents. These evictions and foreclosures are correlated with the social status of the urban areas affected. The results show that the increase of evictions and foreclosures has emerged unevenly around the city. While tenant evictions have affected all types of urban areas, foreclosures have become much more evident in urban areas of low social status
Finding the tomb of Suleiman the Magnificent in Szigetvár, Hungary: historical, geophysical and archeological investigations
Get PDFExploration in search of the tomb of Sultan Suleiman I and the buildings around it in the vicinity of Szigetvár, Baranya county, southern Hungary, has been going on for some one hundred years and on a number of sites (on the banks of Almás stream, at St. Mary’s Church in Turbék). On the basis of newly discovered documents and map representations, the authors have carried out a reinterpretation of earlier known sources and have abstracted from these information appropriate for a renewed geographical identification of the site of the tomb. The results have been construed in a reconstructed end-17th-century landscape using geoinformation methods. Identification of the Ottoman settlement at Turbék, which can be associated with the construction of the Sultan’s türbe (tomb), was made possible through the collection of finds on the surface of the archaeological site at the Turbék vineyard, the increased intensity of finds and through geophysical examination. The little town was a unique settlement in occupied Hungary, standing between 1574 and 1692 as a symbol of the Islamic conquest of the regio
Assessment of future agricultural conditions in southwestern Africa using fuzzy logic and high-resolution climate model scenarios
Get PDFClimate change is expected to have a major impact on the arid savanna regions of southwestern Africa, such as the Okavango Basin. Precipitation is a major constraint for agriculture in countries like Namibia and Botswana and assessments of future crop growth conditions are in high demand. This GIS-based approach uses reanalysis data and climate model output for two scenarios and compares them to the precipitation requirements of the five most important crops grown in the region: maize, pearl millet, sorghum, cassava and cow pea. It also takes into account the dominant soil types, as plant growth is also limited by nutrient-poor soils with unfavorable physical and chemical properties. The two factors are then combined using a fuzzy logic algorithm. The assessment visualizes the expected shifts in suitable zones and identifies areas where farming without irrigation may experience a decline in yields or may even no longer be possible at the end of the 21st century. The results show that pearl millet is the most suitable crop in all scenarios while especially the cultivation of maize, sorghum and cow pea may be affected by a possible reduction of precipitation under the high-emission scenario
Managing and governing commodity chains: the role of producer service firms in the secondary global city of Hamburg
Get PDFThis paper is motivated by the observation that our understanding of global cities in Germany and beyond is limited because the practices through which producer service firms (PSFs) are involved in managing and governing their clients’ global commodity chains (GCCs) have barely been studied. Based on interviews with representatives of PSFs in the secondary global city of Hamburg, the paper scrutinises whether and how service professionals contribute to the functioning and the control of their clients’ cross-border operations. It also analyses why clients choose global PSFs located in Hamburg, and it discusses which place Hamburg occupies in the network of German global cities. The paper concludes that because PSFs fulfil management functions for their clients’ global operations Hamburg is, beyond the role of its port, a critical node in many GCCs. Secondly, PSFs influence their clients’ decision-making processes. They are part of economic governance processes, though this impact cannot be straightforwardly equated with ‘command and control’. The paper also confirms that (and explains why) the world city network is the spatial correlate of a globalising economy. Finally, there is no such a thing as a ‘global city hierarchy’ because the division of labour between the offices of PSFs is functional. As regards further research, a first task is to verify this paper’s findings through interviews with clients of PSFs to consolidate our knowledge on the role of PSFs in GCCs. Secondly, the contention that the world city network is flat has to be re-examined against the backdrop of an evident clustering of PSFs in specific cities. Finally, the discussion of whether and how PSFs are involved in the governance of their clients‘ GCCs needs to be continued and deepened
Squatting to end domicide? Resisting bulldozer urbanism in contemporary Shanghai
Get PDFFor millions of Shanghainese on the lower rung of society, the history of the great urban transformation in the city since the 1990s is written with their tears for the loss of their homes, communities and livelihood. In this paper, I argue for squatting as a straightforward, effective and potentially radical strategy to redress the displacees’ suffering, to take a more active and progressive control of the violent accumulation process and to challenge the hegemonic discourse of private homeownership that underpins the rapid transformation of Shanghai’s urban landscape. The argument is built upon an in-depth study of a family evicted by the World Expo 2010 and squatted in a resettlement apartment. Their framing of justice and entitlement, embedded in local cultural and moral universes, not only lends legitimacy to their squatting but also mobilises popular sympathy, both of which are conducive to effective resistance
Social mixing through densification? The struggle over the Little Mountain public housing complex in Vancouver
Get PDFIn times of peak-oil and the on-going ‘urban renaissance’ (Porter and Shaw 2009), urban densification becomes increasingly more important. Densification is promoted not only for environmental reasons – in the sense of developing more compact and thus more sustainable cities – but also, as is the case in Vancouver, in the name of ‘social mixing’. Taking the conflict over “Little Mountain” – the oldest public housing complex in the province of British Columbia, Canada – as example, the article shows the conflicts that can arise in the process of densification. Despite the protests of residents and their supporters and without any concrete plans for redevelopment, almost all of the once 224 social housing units were demolished in 2009 to make room for at least 1,400 market condos (besides the 1-for-1 replacement of the social units). The example shows that densification processes that lack social measures for securing tenure for long-time residents lead to the displacement of poorer people, and to increased socio-spatial disparities. Furthermore, densification will not alleviate the affordability crisis but intensify it, if all the additionally created housing units will be market-housing only. Based on this example, the article shows that a purported social-mix policy is mainly motivated by recapturing prime real-estate, and identifies the rhetoric of ‘social mixing’ as ‘gentrification by stealth’ (Bridge et al. 2012)
Heterotopia and cultural activism – the case of Hamburg’s Gängeviertel
Get PDFThis paper investigates the Gängeviertel movement in Hamburg and the place which the activists have (re)constructed since its occupation in 2009 through the lens of Foucault’s (1986) concept of heterotopia. In the light of the recent debate about the role of cultural activism in the contemporary struggle about urban development, it explores the question which spatial practices and structures have evolved as oppositional to or in alignment with the neoliberal status quo of Hamburg’s spatial policy. Based on a qualitative case-study approach, the research was carried out in 2013. By using the analytical categories built environment, social practice and neoliberal normalisation, it illustrates that the Gängeviertel is characterised by practices that position it simultaneously both in- and outside of the neoliberal logic