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Local knowledge is recognised as a critical element of global energy transition and energy justice. This paper explores the roles local knowledge in the formation of a community organisation responsible for monitoring the nuclear facility operations, governance, and public risk communication. Our case study examines a local nuclear oversight organisation in the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa region in Japan, where suggestions have been made to consider nation-wide institutionalisation of organisations similar to French Commissions Locales d'Information (Local Information Commissions). Our findings reveal the critical roles of three forms of local knowledge, with a particular emphasis on the nuanced yet crucial impact of everyday-life knowledge (seikatsu-chi), a facet not extensively explored in existing studies, in facilitating the establishment of the local organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postnuclear land conversion has gained attention as more civilian nuclear power reactors reach their design life. To date, most former nuclear power plant sites have been converted into another power plant or are sitting idle, often with spent nuclear fuel on site. However, a former nuclear power plant site in the town of Haddam, Connecticut, presents an alternative possibility: land conversion into a nature conservation area. We adopt theoretical vantage points of the geographical political economy literature to analyze the evolution of different discourses and actions relating to the former nuclear site, and examine why and how nuclear-to-nature conversion has gained momentum. The study reveals that the nuclear-to-nature proposition emerged as a political leverage to resolve conflicting interests over land reuse and spent nuclear fuel problems, which eventually engendered active local agency for land conservation. We argue that recognizing multiple articulations of space and associated agency is essential to understand the seemingly contradictory juxtaposition of nature and nuclear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature on the videogame industry has to date revealed the importance of pre-existing cultural and technological foundations, firm-level innovation management strategies, interactive innovation with end-users, and uniqueness of national production/innovation systems. There are few theoretically informed empirical studies, however, that investigate geographical dimensions of innovation dynamics, particularly the role of spatial agglomerations, in this ‘hits-based’ cultural industry. This paper focuses on the console videogame industry in Japan, drawing on the extensive research on secondary data, corporate questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews with representatives from videogame firms and organizations in the country. Our premise is that redundancy – a diverse range of often indistinguishably similar outputs, most of which end up as commercial failures – is critically important for innovation in industries that are characterized by fundamental demand uncertainties. We then argue that agglomeration (in the sense of both industrial and urban agglomerations) can play a vital role in accommodating, or ‘tolerating’, such redundancy by allowing constituent firms, whose practice may seem inefficient in the short run, to remain in business. The findings of our study lead us to be cautious about policy initiatives to identify and implement ‘best practices’ for innovation, which may end up replacing critical redundancy with increasing efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) in the United States as a type of agri-tourism and volunteer tourism. WWOOF is an international movement in which host farms provide room and board in exchange for labor by tourist-volunteers. The study examines the supplier side of this phenomenon, investigating the locational characteristics and motivations of WWOOF host farms in the USA. A statistical analysis of WWOOF host locations is complemented by a survey and interviews of WWOOF host farms in upstate New York. The study finds that, of the 1232 WWOOF hosts with available zip codes, WWOOF host distributions are highly skewed spatially, with none in 2533 of continental USA's 3108 counties, but concentrations along the west coast and across Appalachia, plus outlying clusters. It suggests that lifestyle considerations are important factors, with WWOOF host locations in high environmental/scenic quality locations and “bohemian” cultural settings, but few in conventional farm regions, especially those with large farms and dominant “modern” agricultural practices. Potential conflicts between the motivations of WWOOF hosts and guests are revealed. For many hosts, cheap/flexible labor is an undeniable attraction, while WWOOFers may have potentially unrealistic expectations about their stays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines contemporary Japanese overseas tourism from a supplier-side perspective using the concept of production systems. We first outline characteristics of the evolving structure of Japanese overseas tourism, with an emphasis on the global spread of Japanese travel companies. This provides a frame for presenting an empirical account of the transactional relationships in the Japanese package tour production system in Whistler, British Columbia, where Japanese tour operators play a pivotal role. We conclude that the recent expansion of Japanese travel companies is fostering the functional integration of the global tourism production system and exhibits increasing reflexivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the characteristics of contemporary Japanese package tourism, through an analysis of tour brochures. The brochures are analyzed in terms of functional components of the tours, as well as the visual images that are represented. Drawing on a sample of 15 brochures that contain winter ski package holidays for Japanese travelers in Whistler, British Columbia (Canada), this study identifies several key elements in the promotion of Japanese package tourism. These elements include the lean and flexible nature of the functional components of package tours, and the use of both concrete, and abstract images of tourists and tour experiences in the brochures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]