Search results for "Regional"
showing 10 items of 2216 documents
Electoral opportunism and water pricing with incomplete transfer of control rights
2020
One of the forms of intervention in public services that lie beyond market forces is price control. While such regulation is justified by the need to achieve social goals, empirical evidence has sh...
Whose Narrative is it Anyway? Narratives of Social Innovation in Rural Areas – A Comparative Analysis of Community‐Led Initiatives in Scotland and Sp…
2020
Social innovation is a process in which local communities build social and cultural capital to address challenges and social needs. The diffusion of social innovation requires compelling narratives that encourage people to join them. Using qualitative techniques and a multiple case study methodology, this paper examines the content of narratives of social innovation in rural areas and how actors construct, spread and change them. We propose a narrative analytical framework comprising four key components: problematisation; solutions and goals; actors; and plot, which we apply to three initiatives in Scotland and Spain. Our findings suggest that marginalisation, the natural environment and co…
Empowered by stigma? Pioneer organic farmers' stigma management strategies
2019
Abstract Pioneers of organic farming often faced social challenges as their innovative ideas on agriculture not only encountered opposition in the conventional farming community, but led to stigmatization of organic farmers as social deviants. In this study, we examine what kind of stigma management strategies pioneer organic farmers engage with in order to cultivate an alternative positive image of themselves. Our research is based on the interviews with 14 pioneer organic farmers. Based on a qualitative analysis of the interviews, we provide a model of those strategies that the creation from a stigmatized to valued identity requires. Our study increases the understanding of the institutio…
Reviewing 15 years of research on neoliberal conservation: Towards a decolonial, interdisciplinary, intersectional and community-engaged research age…
2021
Abstract In this paper, we undertake an extensive review of the neoliberal conservation literature with the aim to explore and substantiate the principal ways in which conservation is neoliberalized in practice as well as who has studied these processes and through which collaborative patterns. Using descriptive statistics and thematic content analysis, we explore selected characteristics of the peer-reviewed scholarship, including most commonly used concepts, methods and topics, geographical and co-authorship patterns, critical readings of key processes of neoliberalization, including commodification, privatization, dispossession, governance rescaling, governmentalities, and its engagement…
Political patterning of urban namescapes and post-socialist toponymic change: A quantitative analysis of three Romanian cities
2020
Abstract Critical scholars of place-name studies have compellingly demonstrated that significant transformations in a society's namescape follow suit major power shifts and regime changes. However, despite the wealth of particular case studies existing in the literature, scarce efforts have been made to examine street name changes in a comparative framework using statistical modeling techniques of multivariate analysis. This paper aims to overcome these shortcomings by developing a comparative approach to analyzing post-socialist street-naming transformations in three Romanian cities from Transylvania (Brașov, Cluj-Napoca, and Sibiu). Based on comprehensive data collected from multiple sour…
The role of local government in rural communities: culture-based development strategies
2019
This paper discusses local development and various governance strategies that local governments can use to engage actors in rural communities and resources from a broader environment to achieve des...
“Splendid Isolation”: embracing islandness in a global pandemic
2022
Islandness is often considered to be a disadvantage. However, it has helped the residents of islands to delay, deter, and, in some cases, totally insulate themselves from COVID-19. While islanders have been quick to lock themselves down, this has had a tremendous impact on their connectivity and on tourism, which in many cases is their major economic sector. Yet, the association of islands with being safe, “COVID-19 free” zones has helped these spaces to be among the first destinations to restart the tourism economy once travel restrictions were lifted. After several weeks of lockdown, and with the COVID-19 threat still looming, social distancing remained the norm. Travellers we…
The assemblage of culture-led policies in small towns and rural communities
2019
Abstract The mobile global discourse on culture’s prominent role in driving development policies is increasingly influencing small cities and rural communities. Global networks of information and ideas flow through space and become reconstructed as place-based and territorial narratives or policy assemblages; meanwhile, communities are increasingly producing local policies within these networks. The policy mobility literature has been occupied with perspectives on how to follow policies; it has only to a limited degree addressed empirical questions about how such policies are constructed from a situated perspective. Therefore, an analytical approach is needed to analyze the empirical constr…
The Five-star Movement inside the institutions in Sicily: from ‘swimming the Strait’ to institutionalisation in local politics
2019
This article considers the institutionalisation of the Five-star Movement (M5s) in regional and local councils. It discusses the process of the Movement’s institutionalisation, analysing the development of its internal organisation; its local platforms and political performance; its institutional repertoire of action, and the several internal and external conflicts between its own rules and the ‘others’. In particular, the article investigates the changes affecting the M5s after its engagement with the Sicilian regional assembly and Sicilian municipal councils, and the ways in which the specific institutionalisation process it underwent was influenced by the complexities of the political an…
Monopolizing Asia: The politics of a metaphor
1997
Abstract The metaphor of Asia is frequently used nowadays as a concept for regional identity, but it is very problematical because geographic Asia contains such a large piece of humanity in all cultural, political and economic forms. Historically Asia also has negative connotations, and at times other regional concepts have been preferred over it. Pan‐Asianism, Greater East Asia, Asian‐African cooperation, Asian Socialism, Southeast Asia, Western Pacific, Asia Pacific, and East Asia are some of the regionalist permutations of the metaphor of Asia during this century, but thus far no strong institutional structures have emerged to fill the concepts with lasting and effective political power.