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The article discusses various reports published within the issue including power, subjectivity, and livelihoods from Northern and Southern Thailand, the Central Philippines and Eastern Indonesia to New Zealand and Kiribati.

Power has long been recognised as crucial to the sustainability of community development interventions; however, the way in which space affects power relations within such interventions has remained relatively under-theorised in the development literature. Many practitioners continue to regard power as located centrally and as embedded in particular institutions, networks, knowledge and resources. According to this logic, processes of empowerment involve the redistribution of these resources to marginalised groups through their participation in development interventions such as microfinance and sustainable livelihood initiatives. The danger inherent in such development approaches is that they can discourage the potential for participants to use their own agency by overemphasising an existing lack of resources locally and inadvertently feeding a sense of dependency on formal development interventions initiated by external agencies. This paper suggests that a post-structural conceptualisation of power as dynamic, multiple and mediated at the local level offers a more productive starting point for thinking about approaches to empowerment. Drawing on data from an action research project designed to initiate community enterprises in a small rural municipality in the Philippines, I suggest how a post-structural approach to power can be enacted by building on the existing local resources and practices of everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on an analysis of in-depth interviews with returned migrant women from East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, this paper considers the links between migration, religious beliefs and subjectivity. Low-skilled migrant women, including domestic workers, have often been represented as marginalised. This paper argues that in the context of migration, women constantly move through trajectories of power using religion as a spiritual resource. Against the commonly patriarchal characteristics of their religion and community, the women employ cognitive strategies to face challenges in migration. In each stage of their transnational migration, the women's experiences reveal the multitude of ways in which they continue to invest in their beliefs through everyday practices, rituals and networking. These experiences highlight the women's strategies in accessing different forms of power. This study demonstrates the significance of focusing on these women's experiences, including their everyday religious practices and their shifting sense of self, as a way of broadening the conceptual basis of our understanding of female migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the effects of different representations of informal economies in Third World settings. Both the neoclassical and political economy approaches have represented the informal economy as a transient entity, and the non-capitalist practices it comprises as being remnant economic forms, or as already capitalist. Mainstream development discourse (that reflects the neoliberal paradigm) continues to ignore the value and potential of non-capitalist practices and to represent them as inconsequential to development outcomes. Meanwhile contemporary livelihood studies across the social sciences have documented the continuing vibrancy of different and hybrid economic forms in the Asia Pacific. In this paper, I use a diverse-economies approach to explore the complexities of the village economy of Oelua in Rote, in the so-called lagging region of Eastern Indonesia. Drawing on anti-essentialist Marxist theory in economic geography, I describe the multiple, locally specific and coexisting practices that comprise Oelua's diverse economy, which include distributions of surplus labour to promote social and economic well-being. I argue that recognising informal village economies as an important development resource could begin a process of building diverse development trajectories in Eastern Indonesia, complementing mainstream development proposals to attract foreign direct investment, shore up development assistance and source out-migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the evolution of the dominant politico-economic paradigm over the past 80 years in two ‘resource periphery’ nation states that have become ‘models’ of economic reform, New Zealand and Chile. Analysing the forces that have driven change, it traces the shared transition from a neoclassical model, through structuralist/Keynesian principles, and on to neoliberalism. The paper discusses whether the contemporary convergence around neostructural policy represents a paradigm shift or an adaptation of the neoliberal model designed to sustain free-market principles in a form that is acceptable to electorates. The paper concludes that the broad commonalities in the transitions are remarkable and come about as a result of shared external shocks as well as similar historical insertions into the global political economy. Notwithstanding the parallels, the comparative approach reminds us of the contingent unfolding of economic paradigms across space, a point that counters arguments that assert that neoliberalism, and the globalisation to which it gives rise, create a homogenous global political economy. This comparative study is timely, as the two countries have recently signed a bilateral strategic trade partnership. This agreement indicates continued pursuit of neoliberal agendas in both countries rather than, as respective governments have heralded it, a move to foster South–South cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Papua New Guinea, with its heavy dependence on natural resources, limited economic development in the past two decades, poor record of governance and high-profile separatist conflicts such as the Bougainville civil war, appears to be an exemplar of the ‘Resource Curse’ theory – the notion that natural resources actively undermine economic development. Using a number of examples from a range of scales, this paper argues that what appear to be ‘resource’ conflicts in Papua New Guinea are actually better conceived as conflicts around identity and social relationships. The very different conceptualisation of natural resources in most Melanesian societies – as elements of the social world as much as any external environmental sphere – means that resources become a conduit for local social and political agendas and tensions to be expressed. The nature of traditional conflict in Melanesian societies is discussed as a guide to the better management and resolution of what appear to be ‘resource’ conflicts in Papua New Guinea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a political ecology perspective to examine relationships between violence and territory in West Kalimantan, focusing on the violent incidents of 1996–1997 and 1967–1968. Besides a regional account, the paper examines some of the ways residents of one village were drawn into and chose to participate in violence. The author concludes that while regional analyses can identify broad patterns, local analyses enable a greater understanding of both variation and the processes by which ethnic categories are constructed through violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although India's Jharkhand movement resists classification as either an ethnic or an environmental movement, it has, at different times, mobilised clear elements of both with frequently violent outcomes. This paper examines the movement from a political ecology perspective and focuses on violence arising from natural resource-related grievances, notably land alienation, forest policy and employment from Jharkhand's mines. Drawing from political ecology's emphasis on the need to examine conflict from a range of different spatial scales, the paper emphasises the importance of a micro-political ecology approach for understanding how locally based conflicts over natural resources can harden into more established grievances that can be mobilised politically as part of a wider and potentially violent protest movement. It is also suggested that micro-political ecology approaches can assist participatory resource management initiatives in ameliorating local conflicts over access to resources, thus helping to prevent them from escalating into more widespread violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the interaction between transport improvements and the rural economy. An institutional approach, based primarily on the new institutionalism theory, was used as the theoretical basis for the analysis. Using the evidence from Ambeso Village of Tana Toraja District, Indonesia, the paper examines the way transport improvements have been introduced and provided opportunities for positive change as well as individual responses to these opportunities. The paper ends by emphasising the role of institutions in the interaction between transport and the rural economy and the need for transport policy and research to transcend its traditional boundaries and address the complexities of institutions and institutional change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nature conservation efforts are often reactive to encroaching development plans and systematic conservation planning that is integral with development is not only uncommon, but is often fraught with difficulties even where it is actually attempted. Such obstacles to conservation are especially apparent in developmental states where state legitimacy is largely derived from the state's ability to develop the country. Among other things, developmental states place a premium on physical and economic development. This paper critiques, through the standpoint of nature conservation, the inadequate conceptualisation of ‘development’ in the developmental state thesis. Specifically, this paper argues that the seemingly value-free (but ultimately economically based) underpinnings of development goals pushed by the developmental state needs to be tempered with a broader concern for the ethics of development. To that end, I draw on two case studies of nature conservation tussles in Singapore to show how alternative extra-economic visions of development have been articulated, notwithstanding the developmental state's monopoly on the discourse (and practice) of progress and development. The case studies, set in the heady economic growth of the early 1990s, will critique two related aspects of the developmental state: its ‘amoral’ economistic conception of development and its use of growth and materialism as legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that post-structural political economy (PSPE) offers geography and geographers interesting potential for the development of a style of geographic inquiry that has qualities that may be constitutive of progressive spaces. This new style of inquiry is seen as adding to the repertoire of political strategies and potential geographies of responsibility and extending notions of ethical behaviours. Issues relating to the assemblage of PSPE as a distinctive approach to knowledge production are considered and situated in the Australasian context. Discussion focuses especially on insight about the use of PSPE derived from three illustrative research case studies (a project on learning challenges in sheep meat and dairy supply chain realignment, tensions around fisheries management in New Zealand and an international workshop series on the topic of governmentality). The case studies provide a lens on the socio-spatial relationships between globalisation and governance and interrogate the value of PSPE for understanding the connections between individual choices, governing practices and the construction of the globalising economy. The PSPE approach if actively incorporated into research processes may have important implications for future relationships between social responsibility, national economic development and globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the largest archipelagic nation in the world, with distinctive environmental conditions and biodiversity, Indonesia on the one hand has tremendous natural and environmental riches while on the other hand faces a variety of environmental problems. After three decades of the New Order era, 1967–1998, Indonesian society is in a crucial transformation process towards a more democratic era. At the same time, as indicated in that country's decentralisation laws No. 22/99 and 25/99, Indonesia is also shifting its style of government, from a centralistic to decentralised one. These two trends are happening simultaneously with globalisation prompting a flow of global capital that directly increases pressure on the Indonesian environment. This paper evaluates the decentralisation of environmental management programmes in Indonesia and focuses on the implications of these changes. The weaknesses of current environmental policies and programmes in Indonesia, which give too dominant a role to the government and neglect civil society's involvement in natural resources and environmental management, are analysed. Further, the paper addresses the lack of attention to date to issues of environmental rights and justice that create many complex environmental and social conflicts throughout Indonesia. We conclude by recommending some fundamental changes to environmental policies and programmes in the decentralised system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2004 elections in Indonesia were incredibly complex logistically, resulted in reshaped representative institutions, and allowed presidential elections by direct vote for the first time. This paper analyses the reform processes that surrounded these elections, including reforms to the representative institutions, and the legislative and presidential elections. The different strategies of the main political personalities are analysed, and the results of the legislative elections, and both the first and second presidential election rounds, are evaluated. The paper demonstrates that the elections hold several important messages for Indonesian politicians regarding electoral expectations, and how these are changing rapidly in the post-Suharto era. Accountability, good governance and social development are among the key factors that are seen to have been important in swaying political votes, rather than traditional voting loyalties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through reviewing South-East Asia’s recent economic engagement with the global economy, this paper points to profound recent transformations in the scope and character of the region’s development. Foreign direct investment was the key driver of regional growth in the pre-1997 period, yet currently, the region faces a more difficult and multifaceted economic arena from which to attract such funds. Foreign direct investment is more selective, both geographically and by sector, than was the case in that earlier period. This paper explains the confluence of economics, business practices and politics that are giving rise to these outcomes, and concludes from this that development trajectories in South-East Asia will become more diverse between the countries of the region, with implications for how we understand regional economic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the theme of governance as it relates to the evolution of global commodity chains in agro-industry and their incorporation of wine firms in two countries of the semi-periphery, New Zealand and Chile. The paper goes on to specifically examine the upstream and downstream relationships of selected New Zealand and Chilean wine firms to the wider commodity chains in which they are involved. Brief case studies will analyse the downstream and upstream links to the commodity chain of key wine firms in both countries. Such cases provide indicative evidence of the underlying processes of the commodity chain that are constantly changing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the discrepancies between the official rhetoric on Malayness and the emerging discourse on national identity among the urban Malay (Melayu) youth of the Indonesian province Kepri. The population of the Riau Archipelago is multiethnic, with Malays as the majority and Kepulauan Riau represents an important historical centre for the whole Malay World. Because of this, local leaders have engaged this newly formed province in a series of attempts to revitalise a transnational ethnic awareness based on an inclusive Malay identity framework. However, most of the students I met during my recent fieldwork in Tanjung Pinang’s public schools tend to reject most ideas of reinforcing the bridge with the Malays of neighbouring nations, and prefer to perceive themselves primarily as Indonesian. This should not come as a surprise. Since 1998, the popular culture scene has been largely influenced by reformasi movements all over Indonesia. For the Tanjung Pinang youth, urban Indonesia, represented especially by Jakarta, is synonymous with dynamism and democratisation, while Malaysia and Singapore are regarded as moralistic and patronising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent dialogues in geography and the social sciences have reminded researchers of the extent to which academic and policy knowledges are socially and spatially embedded – that is, they circulate through formal and informal systems of publishing, exchange, commodification and cultural influence. Academic and policy knowledges are, in short, very much a part of the creative economy. In light of this, our paper surveys knowledges of the creative economy itself, as reflected in a geography of industry reports and government policy statements in selected Asian countries. Using a post-positivist framework adapted from diffusion theory, we critically interpret the circulation, mutation and adaptation of knowledges of the creative economy, claims to its significance, areas of emphases and notable silences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, international education has become a source of considerable political, academic and media debate in New Zealand. This is nowhere more the case than with regards to Auckland, the New Zealand city that has hosted the greatest number of international students. This paper focuses on the media debates around international students in Auckland with particular emphasis on the representations of the largest group of international students, those who originate from countries within the North-East Asian region. The media representations of these students have fixed a diverse group of individuals within a singular racial identity that is known by stereotypical economic, cultural and social characteristics. As a result, these representations have further problematised the interaction between international students and the host population in Auckland while simultaneously implicating a cohort of young New Zealand citizens and permanent residents who are of similar descent within the same discourses. This process of othering the Asian student, regardless of citizenship, has consequences not simply for the practice of exporting education in this city but also for the future of a multicultural Auckland and New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its rubber-stamp image, the involvement of China’s unicameral legislature (People’s Congress, PC) in the country’s environmental governance has become more visible in recent years. Using an environmental dispute taking place in the county-city of Sihui, Guangdong Province as a case study, this paper examines how the congress deputies at the provincial level were involved in the domestic environmental controversy, which comprised a landmark congressional inquiry into the provincial environmental authorities. Through dissecting the practice and behaviour of the Guangdong Provincial PC and its deputies in relation to the environmental dispute settlement, the paper recognises the inquiry as an achievement test, and unravels the political and institutional roots of China’s environmental governance from a congressional perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rarely does one come across critical analysis which looks at islands as the strategic and candid promoters of a role as political and economic usufructuaries over external resources. This paper is premised on the proposition that a small territory is especially obliged to use extra-territorial resources as its hinterland for economic success. Such resources extend over a whole range of goods and services and include access to investment, welfare, security, stable currency, international relations, specialised labour power, transfers, markets and higher education. The MIRAB syndrome is one way of articulating this condition. This paper proposes a second cluster of features that are, or can be, deployed by small territories in a manner somewhat different from MIRAB; this second cluster has a more proactive policy orientation and a disposition towards carving out procedural and jurisdictional powers. It is thus proposed to consider a small territory's engagement with the external hinterland as a position on a sliding scale, a strategic mix of options located between two distinct development trajectories, of which MIRAB is one and the PROFIT model the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that an important requirement of the MIRAB model, economic success in the host country, is a characteristic of Pacific Islander migrants to the USA and their offspring. Pacific Islanders improved their economic lot in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. Part of this improvement was due to increases in their human capital: Pacific Islanders acquired more education, work experience and better English language skills. This upgrading allowed more workers to acquire white-collar jobs and to increase their earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remittances sent home by seafarers employed on international merchant and fishing ships are a significant income component for the Kiribati economy, with immediate benefits for families and communities. This paper explores the strategies used and the amounts sent by seafarers to their family members by drawing on different data sets, such as remittances data kept in the form of allotment lists by employment agencies, and comparing these with interview responses from seafarers and their families. Remittances are spread throughout extended families and communities firstly via direct allotments sent to individual bank accounts, and secondly through channels of family and community obligations. This paper shows that the general flow of seafarers’ remittances into Kiribati is continuous and has increased over the years with more people engaged in seafaring employment. Families, however, were found to be dependent on individual decisions made by seafarers of how to share their remittances. Kiribati has no institutionalised social welfare system, and as a consequence remittances function as a private safety net for seafarer families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes political and cultural-economy perspectives to the critique of the MIRAB model 20 years on. In it, we celebrate the politically grounded reading by MIRAB analysts of development in the small island nations of the Pacific and their attention to both the empirical and the structural in their treatment of the economies of these countries. We address aspects, however, of one of the common critiques of MIRAB analyses: their failure to capture accurately the nature of small island socio-cultural economies. We focus on the workings of remittance systems on two of the Cook Islands, Mauke and Manihiki, as the basis for a more thorough critique. We argue that rather than living economically and nationally determined lives, Cook Islanders live in rich networks of flows of goods, people, labour and meaning that the MIRAB model does not fully capture. The microeconomics of the transnational kin or household unit and the remittance decision are deeply embedded in such networks. These networks generate their own, temporary constellations of responsibility, economy and decision-making, which may or may not materialise at any point as household economy. We consider some of the consequences of a network view for MIRAB analyses and for development in small island nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 1960s, Harold Brookfield and Doreen Hart were ‘startled’ by the order of magnitude differences in incomes from village cash cropping in different parts of Papua New Guinea (PNG). This paper traces these differences, back into a pre-colonial past and forward to the present and concludes, as Brookfield did in the 1960s, that severe environmental constraints, rather than market forces, are the primary cause of the pattern of spatial inequalities observable in PNG. Brookfield noted the existence of an ‘acute dilemma’ in 1960s development funding: should funds be invested where the returns will be highest, or where the need is greatest. This dilemma is as acute today as it was then. However, in the meantime, people from poor places are moving to better-off places, seeking access to markets for their produce and health and education services for their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tropes of borderlessness are pervasive both in discourses concerning the spread of HIV/AIDS and the Growth Triangle, a transnational economic zone that ideally binds together the Indonesian island of Batam, the Malaysian province of Johor and Singapore. This paper considers how the emergence of HIV as a problem in the Growth Triangle, and on Batam in particular, has been framed as a problem to be addressed in context of the nation-state rather than as a transnational problem that demands cooperation across borders. In conjunction with this, it focuses on further attempts to create boundaries around HIV, through the identification of risk groups, the localisation of prostitutes and the distribution of condoms. The paper focuses particular attention on the relationship between Batam and Singapore, and how non-governmental organisations and governments have dealt with HIV/AIDS issues in both places. Furthermore, it problematises these activities by paying ethnographic attention to other forms of cultural and economic logics that often are odds with prevention models. This raises important questions concerning, most specifically, the problems of HIV prevention and cross-border cooperation, and, more generally, the regulation and formation of new kinds of borders in a‘borderless world’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emphasizes the disjuncture between images of traditional practice and commercial reality in North Thailand in the context of community forestry legislation. Adoption of different approaches to production of commodities by smallholder; Development of common identity among customary landowners; Details on the nature of capitalism.

Internal conflicts at the local and national levels in several South Pacific countries have revealed the fragility of national unity and the difficulties nations face in governing and managing their own economic development. In Papua New Guinea, the focus of this paper, an uncertain economic future for many rural and urban communities, and rising inequalities in income opportunities and access to resources, have coincided with greater intolerance of migrants at sites of high in-migration by customary landowners and provincial and local authorities. This paper draws on fieldwork undertaken in the major oil palm growing regions of Papua New Guinea where migrants from densely populated regions of the country have settled on state land alienated from customary landowners. We examine how struggles over land, resource control and development are polarising migrant and landowner identities resulting in increasing tensions and episodic communal violence. A settler identity is emerging based on a narrative of nation building and national development, while an ethno-regional identity amongst customary landowners is undermining the citizen rights of migrants and challenging the role and authority of the state in land matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines the role of outside powers, particularly Australia and New Zealand, in meeting the challenges to democracy in Melanesia. The shortcomings of the Westminster political system in the fragmented societies of Melanesia are contrasted with the possible advantages of a Presidential system. The ‘good governance’ requirements of aid donors are considered, along with more direct forms of intervention – including armed forces in the case of the Solomon Islands. The paper concludes that democracy cannot be imposed, and that attempts to do so makes nonsense of the term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper highlights the contribution of women and children to the sugar industry in Fiji by examining the importance of family labour in the historical development of the smallholder system and describing the present situation for the study participants. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted during 1996–97, on the island of Vanua Levu in the northern region of Fiji. The twenty smallholder households in the study comprised both Fijian and Fiji Indian respondents who relied primarily on selling sugar cane for their cash income. How inequalities within the household in terms of allocation of labour and resources are legitimated is outlined. Resource distribution within the household in regards to two important issues for the sugar industry, land and trade liberalisation, are examined. In light of global trends in trade liberalisation and probable falls in sugar prices, future strategies for survival identified by Fijian and Fiji Indian smallholders are also discussed. The case study demonstrates that the sugar industry is still largely reliant on family labour and, particularly for low socio-economic smallholders, the unremunerated labour of family members makes an essential contribution to the production of sugar cane. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: With the emergence of the real estate market since 1990, the operation Beijing's economy has led to a re-shaping of its inner city. By reviewing the Old and Dilapidated Housing Redevelopment (ODHR) programme in Beijing in the 1990s, this paper seeks to uncover the forces that led to the prevailing large-scale urban redevelopment which induced serious environmental and socio-economic problems. By analysing conflicts between major stakeholders of the ODHR programme, the paper finds that the root cause of these problems was embedded in the ‘mismatch of plan and market’ by which local officials and local developers utilised their privileges inherited from a planned economy to benefit from the emerging real estate markets. As a result, the hidden agenda of local elites was facilitated during the urban redevelopment process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large floating population is moving around in China. This is a challenging demographic, social and economic issue for the country. But the knowledge about this particular population group remains incomplete and fragmentary. This paper uses a recent set of statistical data covering a registered temporary population of 37 million to assess the status of the floating population in China. It is found that the majority of the registered floating population is employed or self–employed in one way or another. But the housing conditions of the rural migrants are generally poor. Institutional and market forces are playing an important role in shaping the working and living space of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the work of NGOs broadens and becomes more complex, concerns about their capacity and sustainability will loom much larger and have more significant implications for development processes. The main issue addressed in this paper is how NGOs and donors variously view the relationship between capacity building and financial and organisational sustainability. To this end we firstly explore varying definitions of capacity building, highlighting distinctly Pacific perspectives of the concept and subsequently look at emerging practices used by Pacific NGOs to create sustainable organisations. The role of donor organisations in Pacific NGO capacity building is critiqued. We conclude that despite considerable rhetoric about the need for donors to adopt more coordinated approaches to capacity building, there is limited evidence to suggest that donors are prepared to act together to set up, for example, joint capacity building funds. Donors must accept that the long–term processes of development and the roles played by Non–Governmental and Community Based Organisations require a rethinking of the standard funding cycle and the focus on ‘exit strategies’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Women in Development’ aid–funded credit schemes in the Kingdom of Tonga were designated as ‘failures’ by the funders because the recipient groups of textile producers, who were meant to be engaging in commercial handicraft production as development, were instead making and seemingly ‘retaining’ textile koloa (indigenous wealth). It is my contention that rather than making low–valued, low–priced textiles for tourist consumption the women made koloa textiles for the Tongan ceremonial economy where a greater range of ideological, spiritual and material gains including cash were available to them. Even though the default rate on the loans was low, and the women were engaged in a Tongan notion of development known as fakalakalaka, the funders and the critics of the schemes were either unable to or would not recognise development taking place, so driven by macroeconomic indices were their criteria and assessment. This paper looks at the implications of this disjuncture and the funders’ lack of understanding (and/or rejection) of indigenous global economic systems and hybrid notions of development inherent in the women textile producers’ actions. It explores a contemporary reality where indigenous wealth is thriving in the global economy, contributes to the literature on hybrid economic systems and challenges macroeconomically driven development policy in the Pacific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving national average income and reducing regional income inequality often serve as dual goals of economic development in a country. After over twenty years of economic reforms, China has been fairly successful in achieving the first goal, but failed in the second. This paper uses recent data with a sharper resolution to examine the variation of average wages across Chinese cities 1989–1997. Widening wage inequalities across cities are observed during the period. This research also seeks to explain the variation of wages between cities by factors such as agglomeration (density and city size), location advantages (distances from central cities and from the coastline), educational attainment, industrial structure and administrative hierarchy. Many of the factors are found to be important in explaining wage differences in Western countries but are yet to be tested in China. Some factors such as distance from the coast, industrial structure and administrative hierarchy are considered because of China’s unique social and economic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores China’s in situ urbanisation and its implications for the paradigm of extended metropolitan areas. Based on preliminary results of the 2000 census, field surveys and interviews, government statistics and documents, and direct observation in Fujian Province of China, a region without much influence of mega-cities, the analysis shows that in situ urbanisation resulting from the transformation of rural settlements has played an important role since the 1980s. The paper examines major factors contributing to the process of in situ urbanisation, especially the development of township and village enterprises, government policies and foreign investment. Some underlying conditions, such as local historical and geographical conditions and cultural characteristics, high population density and improvement in transport and communications, are also discussed, and the future prospect of the urbanisation pattern in the context of local economic restructuring and urbanisation strategies in the new century is gauged. The paper also assesses the relevance of the paradigm of extended metropolitan areas to the urbanisation pattern, and suggests the need for a conceptual framework focusing on the urbanisation process resulting from bottom-up rural developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes issue with the desakota model developed by Terry McGee by elucidating the illegal land use and construction in the rural–urban transition zone in China, with the additional case study of Tianhe Village in Guangzhou City. The paper emphasises the need to examine the geography of illegal activities along the approach of geographies of difference. It has shown that illegal land use and construction is prevalent in rural China. In rural areas where cultivated land has been converted to non-agricultural purposes, peasants are left with no alternative but to use land and construct buildings illegally. Some have increased their income by leasing out flats to migrant workers, whereas others have not been able to do this. This study has revealed that underneath the positive and integrative picture portrayed by the desakota model is its negative and disintegrative counterpart. Illegal land use and construction is one such example. Unless we incorporate both into our studies, we will not be able to comprehend the urban morphology of Chinese city regions in the new millennium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the value held by the concept of intensification in agricultural production for researchers seeking to account for transformations in smallholder production in the newer nations of the Asia-Pacific region. Degree to which technology is applied to land to economize its use; Association between population densities and agricultural intensity; Implications on studies of land use and agricultural intensification.

This paper provides an overview of the ways in which villagers have intensified agricultural systems in Papua New Guinea, focusing on the last 60 years. The intensification techniques used by villagers include: adoption of more productive staple crops, in particular sweet potato, cassava, Xanthosoma taro, Solanum potato and maize; adoption of more productive cultivars, especially of banana and sweet potato; shortening the fallow period; extending the cropping period; certain soil fertility maintenance techniques, other than natural regrowth fallows (composting, managed tree fallows, especially using casuarina, a legume/root crop rotation, and soil erosion control); and some other intensification techniques including soil tillage, drainage, construction of garden beds, garden segregation, mounding and irrigation. People often use more than one technique and the techniques used vary between the major agricultural zones. The adoption of new food crops and more productive cultivars of existing food crops has facilitated many of the other changes, particularly longer cropping periods and shorter fallow periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extremely high population densities conventionally demand a preliminary look at intensification in Java, in both lowland and upland agriculture. However, the major focus of this paper is on intensification processes under more moderate population pressure on the islands outside Java. Government initiatives during the Suharto era often constrained land use decisions at local level. Of particular importance were restrictive forest classifications and intrusion by outside companies into the lands of indigenous groups. Timber plantations and oil palm estates occupied large areas, thus forcing intensification of swidden agriculture. Elaboration of this concept of ‘forced intensification ’ examines the impacts on local systems and notes indigenous responses of compliance or resistance. The processes of independent intensification have revolved around the move from dryland swidden to managed agroforest, sometimes with accompanying wet rice. Government slowness in recognising agroforests, plus the commodity export boom during the economic crisis, have tended to favour monocultures over more complex systems. Recent price declines, exposing monoculture vulnerability, are encouraging a return to mixed tree crops. A final section examines intensification in response to a niche market, as a tourism industry which values the pseudo-cultural images evoked by indigenous roof thatch has induced intensive management of Imperata grass in Bali and Lombok. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1990s represented a decade of immense changes in environmental management in New Zealand. This paper outlines the challenges of implementing the widespread reforms started in the 1980s. In terms of the environment, reforms came in the form of a large volume of new legislation and a new system of decentralised planning and management. This paper discusses these changes in the context of a shift toward a new environmental paradigm. Key issues and initiatives of the 1990s are discussed which address sustainability, integration, environmental leadership, and public involvement. Specific strategies are outlined in reference to biodiversity, which has been identified as New Zealand's most pervasive environmental issue. Ongoing challenges for the future include how to better involve stakeholders to incorporate alternative values in decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The value of environmental regulation through command and control measures has been questioned because of inflexibility and high cost. Voluntary environmental initiatives have been proposed as an alternative approach to save costs, overcome problems of inadequate enforcement and monitoring and to take advantage of the environmental leadership of transnational corporations (TNCs). Amongst voluntary environmental initiatives certified environmental management system standards have so far had most impact in Singapore and the rest of Southeast Asia. This paper investigates the environmental policy statements of 52 ISO14001 certified organisations in Singapore and shows that the environmental commitments being made are no substitute for traditional environmental regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mining in Papua New Guinea has caused considerable controversy, largely due to its environmental impact. This paper examines the debate around the downstream environmental impact of the Porgera gold mine, located in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. It is demonstrated that the greatest international concern and environmental protest is focused on an area that has, by the scientific accounts, the lowest environmental risk. In seeking explanations for this, attention is drawn to the marginality (in absolute and relative terms) of the affected communities, the intermingling of pre and post-colonial discourses of environment and development, and the role of both international mining companies and environmental non-governmental organisations in ‘re-colonising’ rural Papua New Guinea. The communities are seeking to reduce their marginality by actively reworking the material and imagined landscapes (social, environmental, political and economic) they inhabit, drawing on a range of resources, both old and new. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Travelling, as movement, has always been a tradition of atoll islanders. Their travels continue to identify the ways in which atoll peoples understand, appropriate, and manipulate space and boundaries. This paper argues that travelling is as relevant to islanders today as in the past and examines meanings in Chuuk islanders' travel. ‘Horizon’, the space ‘out there’, is a metaphorical model of space for atoll peoples with many traditions of travel. ‘Horizon’ is also a dual concept. The horizon is the space within which the islander traveller is located that is ‘strange’ and ‘foreign’. It is also the horizon, as a defined space, that locates and brings those strange and foreign forces into the places of atoll residents and across familiar boundaries. The narrative traditions of Chuuk islanders will be used to explore these dual formulations of horizon and the different terms for travelling among an atoll people. Discussion will focus on how islanders define the boundaries of their horizon in their travels and the meanings that these boundaries give travelling or movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to situate the study of international labour migration, and especially the policies of labour export, within a gendered geopolitical framework. In so doing I open avenues of inquiry into the complexities of political ideologies that guide state apparatuses. Specifically, I examine how the Philippine state negotiates and operates within contradictory capitalist spaces through discourses of scale. Spatial scales are politically and socially constructed to legitimise power relations and to justify particular policies and programmes. In its support of capital accumulation, the Philippine state tends to adopt a discourse of globalisation; when confronted with charges of migrant exploitation, the Philippine state couples a discourse of the global with a discourse of the body. This corporeal discourse attempts to deflect attention and criticism away from the state, thereby maintaining its political hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to provide an understanding of how the gap between the ‘global’ and the ‘local-peripheral’ is bridged in the everyday life of the peasantry at a coffee pioneer front. The networks of connectivity between the spontaneous migrant-peasants at the coffee pioneer front in the province of Dak Lak in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, and the global coffee market are explored. This set of linkages helps the peasantry to settle, despite the harsh conditions of life on the frontier. This is illustrated through a brief ethnographic account of the ‘peripheral’ characteristics of life on a coffee pioneer front. By borrowing analytical tools from actor-network theory, the paper also illuminates the (actor) networks through which coffee finally reaches the export gate. This account suggests that global commodity production processes are often embedded in local dynamics, in this case, the political-economy of the frontier. Further, it implies the need to transcend scales when inquiring about peasant-market relationships in export agro-commodity production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents the uneven experiences of decollectivisation, using Thai Nguyen province as a setting for an exploration of divergent outcomes of, and local responses to, land allocation. Ethnicity, blood relations and settlement history are identified as emerging axes of differentiation in new patterns of vulnerability regarding access to land. This trend is evidenced by the phenomenon of farmers who migrated to the region during the collectivisation period and were subsequently left landless as longer term residents from other ethnic groups reclaimed their ancestral lands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research on the formation of Asian medical travel destinations has highlighted a variety of activities that attract and accommodate patients from abroad. This paper contributes to the literature by drawing insights from an Indian case study, a major transnational health-care hub in Asia that has gained little scholarly attention thus far. Using connectivity as an analytical lens, we understand medical travel destinations as a contingent product of relating, connecting and assembling. We study how connectivity is embodied and how it unfolds in care encounters at corporate hospitals in the capital of New Delhi and surrounding urban areas. The following entities are the most effectual in the networks that constitute medical travel destinations in the National Capital Region: (i) circulating narrations of personal experiences; (ii) language interpreters; and (iii) commission fees. We further elaborate on how these connectors work to link foreign patients with Indian hospitals and how they affect itineraries as well as patients and other involved actors. Finally, we suggest that the approach deployed provides a suitable framework for future research aimed at gaining a better understanding of the wider impacts of medical travel by following these connections and examining their workings at places both close and distant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International medical travel may be viewed as an 'assemblage' of various components such as infrastructure, hospitals, finance, transport, technologies, staff, facilitators and patients. In this paper, we focus on the articulations of medical travel facilitators (MTFs) and private hospitals in producing international medical travel in the context of the neoliberalising processes that had led to the rise of corporate hospital care in Malaysia in the 1990s. We draw from three hospital case studies for a comparative perspective. We highlight the shifting, unstable and contingent relations and interactions of the MTFs, as one component of the assemblage of international medical travel, with hospitals and medical travellers. We identify the practices of MTFs in providing patients with information and advice about hospitals and doctors as efforts to shape patients' choices in the selection of health-care providers and in decision-making. The assemblage approach allows us to see how the MTFs emerge and stabilise as a collective identity for individuals and companies performing particular functions through their multifarious articulations with other components in various sites of assemblage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Singapore has one of the tightest regulations over assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) in Asia, a consequence of Singapore's strong state, the priority it gives to reproduction, and the numerous religious groups in the country and their direct and indirect influence on the Bioethics Advisory Committee, which recommends ART regulations for the country. Together, these key actors give shape to the 'local moral worlds', which undergird ART governance in the country. Drawing on in-depth interviews and data from online forums, we illustrate Singaporean fertility seekers' attempts to juggle myriad and sometimes confusing obligations to the state, society and religion in making reproductive choices. We then explore the limits and possibilities for fertility seekers to circumvent the restrictive rules and 'moral safety valves' set in place in their home country simply by stepping out to another jurisdiction across national borders. The paper goes on to show how the Internet communities serve as a bridgespace, propelling fertility mobilities by enabling Singaporeans to see creative possibilities in patchwork regulations. At the edges of state and religious power, fertility-seeking subjects take advantage of liminal spaces, grey areas, or permissive regimes to gain several degrees of freedom to practise adaptive fertility strategies that may be 'unofficial' but 'licit' or 'socially acceptable'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past three decades, we have seen a flourishing of scholarship which explores the emerging political spaces and variegated scales of governance in China. This research draws on political economic tradition to argue that the way in which cities and regions are governed is indeed infused with socio-political struggles which are proliferating at a range of spatial scales. Such theoretical interpretation is illuminating, but it has been subject to increasing criticism from the poststructuralist approach that views scale as an epistemological construct. This paper uses the Pearl River Delta Intercity Railway System (PRD-ICRS) as a case study to challenge the onesidedness of both the political economy tradition and the poststructuralist approach in reading scale. It employs the 'scale politics' thesis to argue that scale is more than a material existence (or institutionalised structure) that represents a particular arrangement of political power, being subject to perpetual transformation through regulatory projects and strategies. It is also a 'representation trope' deployed in political discourses to acquire persuasive power to frame and legitimise these projects and strategies. Scale is thus both material and discursive. Understanding the two moments of scale enables a fuller dissection of political transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]