Absentee Ownership Research Articles

Bantu languages in education in South Africa: an overview. Ongekho akekho! – the absentee owner

The main argument of this overview article is that the Bantu languages of South Africa should have a far more significant role in education. We contend that the strong preference for English as medium of instruction among black learners is largely responsible for their inadequate educational performance, particularly since most of these learners do not have the required skills in English. This is particularly the case in rural and township schools and in what we term ‘lower ex-model C schools’, given the socio-economic realities of the communities in which these schools are located. Were the Bantu languages used for learning and teaching purposes in an effective way, we suggest the educational outcomes of black learners would be significantly better. We accept, of course, that schools, especially secondary schools, cannot immediately implement a policy of using the Bantu languages as media of instruction. Several research and development challenges need to be addressed for this to happen. These include: transforming the socio-political meanings attached to these languages; their further corpus development as well as their status, prestige, acquisition and usage development; the development and implementation of language-in-education policies which address the basic educational and sociolinguistic realities; and the effective distribution of information to school governing bodies about the issues relevant to the selection of a medium of instruction. In our view, South Africa will not become a developed, effectively multilingual and nationally integrated country if linguistic equity and parity of esteem are not established in a meaningful way for all official languages, which includes provision for their use as media of instruction throughout.

Emotional bonds as obstacles to land sale—Attitudes to land among local and absentee landowners in Northwest Estonia

Despite the importance of the emotional attachment to land among landowners affected by Soviet collectivisation, relatively few studies have focused on this question. In Estonia, the land restitution process in the 1990s made it possible to return nationalised property to its former owners or their heirs. Many of these now live abroad or in other parts of the country. This paper shows that the opportunity to own restituted property may create strong emotional bonds to land. This study also attempts to discuss what these bonds mean to different categories of landowners and how this can affect attitudes to land and plans for the future. The study is based on a postal survey and interviews. One implication of a strong attachment to land can be reluctance to sell the land. A group of absentee owners wants to keep the land as preventive owners without using it. This non-active land ownership has implications for the area, with its potential for tourism and second homes. A historically rooted emotional attachment to land among owners of restituted property is most common among the locals and the Swedish owners. Memories associated with the land in question are identified as one important aspect of the evolvement of such emotional bonds. On the basis of the results I argue that those among the next generation of absentee owners who lack these kinds of memories could be more inclined to sell family land in the future.

Local ownership of ethanol plants: What are the effects on communities?

Abstract The rapid expansion of ethanol plants across the U.S. state of Iowa has fueled debate about the burdens and benefits of local (in-state investors) versus non-local ownership of biorefineries. Central to these concerns is the extent to which non-local, absentee owners might reap the benefits of the ethanol industry at the expense of local communities. A key argument within the rural development literature is that local ownership of firms has a positive effect on the long-term well-being and sustainability of the communities in which they are situated. This literature asserts that firms operate at different scales, with local firms embedded within local supply chains and institutions, and non-local firms embedded within national and international networks and institutions. Conversely, there is a growing body of work within the alternative agrifood systems literature that cautions against the ‘local trap’; the assumption that the local scale is inherently good and therefore advantageous. Despite this broader debate, the literature on local ownership and renewable energy remains limited. This paper addresses this gap by drawing on case study research of the community effects of ethanol plant ownership structure from the perspective of community leaders. My findings suggest that differences between the structure and effects of local versus non-local ownership of firms on communities are rather more ambiguous than the literature asserts. Therefore, assumptions about the benefits of local ownership may be overstated and concepts of ‘local’ and ‘non-local’ may be inadequate for considering firm outcomes on the civic welfare and socioeconomic well-being of a community.

Forest days as an educational method in Swedish family forestry

Swedish forest owners are a diverse group with regard to activity, education and experience of practical forestry. Urbanization and increased gender equality have also changed the composition of forest owners and their involvement in practical forestry work. Yet, many forest owners perform some kind of practical work on their property. The combination of dangerous work and untrained practitioners has led to a number of serious accidents. As a part of a larger safety campaign, a forest day for absentee forest owners living in the Stockholm area was carried out. Safety and safe working with chainsaws was a core message. To assess the immediate learning effect among different categories of forest owners, a questionnaire and a before-and-after test were used. The results show that those who knew less, female forest owners and non-chainsaw users, learned the most. The study also shows that the use of safety equipment is limited among absentee forest owners and that forest days and courses are important for their conception of safety. During the forest day, men were central experts and women appeared as servants, demonstrating the presence of a masculine hegemony. As the forest owners learned from each other it is important that professional communicators are seen to be the most reliable and trustworthy.

A CONTINGENCY THEORY PERSPECTIVE ON MANAGEMENT CONTROL SYSTEM DESIGN AMONG U.S. ANTE-BELLUM SLAVE PLANTATIONS

This paper examines the management control-system design of mid-19th century U.S. slave plantations using a contingency theory framework. Large rice plantations that relied on forced labor and tidal-flow agricultural technology were very profitable for their owners. This paper presents a model that links these favorable operating results to a close fit between the control-system design and three key contingent environmental variables. Absentee owners hired managers to provide on-site oversight and periodic operational reporting. These managers relied on slave drivers to assign individualized daily tasks to the plantation's field hands and monitor their performance. Productive field slaves were rewarded with greater free time each working day. In addition, many slaves worked cooperatively with their masters to obtain better jobs outside the rice fields and cash income. Ultimately, however, it was the institution of chattel slavery that kept the slaves working in the rice fields under oppressive and unhealthy conditions.

Impact of Retained Ownership, CEO-Chair Duality, and Foreign Equity Participation on Auditor Choice of IPO Firms: Evidence from an Emerging Market

In this paper we study the impact of corporate governance characteristics on IPO firms’ auditor choice in an emerging market setting. We use three corporate governance attributes – CEO-Chair duality, retained ownership, and foreign equity participation to test the impact of ownership structure on auditor choice of 129 Bangladeshi firms that went public during the period 1990 to 2005. Our findings from logistic regression suggest that CEO-Chair duality and the degree of foreign equity participation are significant determinants of auditor choice while proportion of board ownership is not. In addition, issuer size and whether the issuer is a green field operation also influence auditor choice while the length of a firm’s operating history does not seem to matter. Our findings support agency theory prediction that (at least one category of) principals (foreign shareholders in this case), are likely to trade-off higher monitoring costs (of hiring a higher quality auditor) with agency costs arising from asymmetric information, primarily borne by absentee owners. It also supports the signaling role managers of green field operations play by hiring higher quality auditors to mitigate the uncertainties associated with their offerings.

How our absentee landlord lost the hospital plot

How our absentee landlord lost the hospital plot

Sociodemographic effects on place bonding

Patterns of amenity migration and recreational home development in much of the USA since the 1990s are changing the local sociodemographic make-up and the relationships formed among people and place. We use the psychological constructs of place attachment, place identity, and place dependence to assess differences in these relationships among new and long-time residents and absentee and local residents in three rural counties in the Inland Northwest. We measured place bonding using data from a mail survey of local (n=531) and absentee (n=239) property owners. We compared structural models suggested in the literature on the psychology of place, and found that a two-dimensional model representing place attachment and place identity was appropriate for both local and absentee property owners. Local owners exhibited stronger place attachment and place identity than absentee owners. Place bonding constructs were also substantially less impacted by the total number of years a property owner had resided on his or her property than by the number of months per year they lived on the property. The findings indicate that sociodemographic changes such as those manifested in second-home development may lead to a population that is less emotionally, behaviorally, and cognitively connected to the places in question, while sociodemographic changes from permanent in-migration may have a substantially smaller effect on place bonding.

Rebels, Rent, and Tao Xu: Local Elite Identity and Conflict during and after the Tai Ping Occupation of Jiangnan, 1860–84

Rebels, Rent, and Tao Xu: Local Elite Identity and Conflict during and after the Tai Ping Occupation of Jiangnan, 1860–84 Jeremy Brown (bio) Between 2004 and 2009, the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee issued six consecutive “number one directives” (yi hao wenjian) about reducing the peasant burden and increasing rural incomes.1 In response, several Chinese scholars have suggested that the writings of an obscure late Qing grain shop owner named Tao Xu (1821–91) can be applied to the rural problems of the twenty-first century. According to Chen Yue of Anhui Normal University and Chen Shaohua of the South-Central University for Nationalities, implementing Tao Xu’s plan to bolster rural incomes would help increase China’s overall consumer spending and expand the domestic marketplace today.2 This is not the first time Tao Xu has been mentioned during national debates on rural issues. Tao’s writings first circulated widely in 1927, when his son republished them in support of a Nationalist proposal to reduce rural rents by 25 percent.3 Tao felt ignored during his lifetime, but he may not have appreciated being invoked in Nationalist or Communist proposals. Tao, who was from a merchant family in Zhouzhuang, a town in Jiangsu’s Yuanhe county, distrusted urban efforts to reshape the countryside. Rescuing Tao’s story from [End Page 9] the narratives of China’s modern political parties requires close attention to his context and biography. Tao is best known for his authorship of Zuhe (Inquiry into Rents, first published in 1884), a reform tract that attacked the advantages seized by city-based landlords in the post-Taiping period. In Zuhe, Tao expressed moral outrage that wealthy elites from Suzhou, twenty miles northwest of Zhouzhuang, depicted themselves as the bearers of benevolent postwar reform while mercilessly exploiting poor tenant farmers. Tao wrote passionately about cruel rent collectors acting at the behest of oppressive absentee landlords from Suzhou, beating indigent tenants until their “flesh and blood flew everywhere.”4 Wherever Tao looked he saw “depression and withered wasteland.”5 In Tao’s mind, nobody cared but him. Only he was willing—or qualified, for that matter—to speak up on behalf of poor tenant farmers and offer a striking proposal that aimed to keep the agricultural surplus in the countryside and out of the hands of city landlords. Tao Xu’s perspective on the Taiping occupation and its aftermath complicates our picture of late Qing local elites. During the years of Taiping control (1860–64), many elites from Suzhou fled to the relative safety of Shanghai. Tao Xu stayed behind in Zhouzhuang, coordinating and financing local defense efforts, forging alliances with gunboat bandits, and reaching an uneasy accommodation with the Taiping occupiers. As a result, Zhouzhuang stayed intact while surrounding areas were burned and pillaged. During the Taiping years in Zhouzhuang, a town of about four thousand people, Tao Xu was able to play an important leadership role and considered himself part of a military team linked to Li Hongzhang. Yet after the Qing victory over the Taiping in 1864, Suzhou gentry returned from exile and reasserted their control over the region. This angered Tao Xu, especially when representatives of city-based rent collection bureaus demanded rice and cash from the Zhouzhuang area. His response to city extraction was to write Zuhe, which proposed more equitable compensation for tenant farm labor. Tao Xu self-consciously presented himself as consistently grounded in local, agricultural concerns (one friend wrote that Tao was a recluse who never went to the city).6 Tao sought the moral high ground against such Suzhou luminaries as Feng Guifen, who departed when the Taipings threatened but then claimed credit for lessening peasants’ burden in the 1860s.7 In one sense, Tao’s writings [End Page 10] and experiences are unsurprising, given Philip Kuhn’s still-convincing picture of a devolution of state power during the Taiping Rebellion, when local elites assumed enhanced military and political leadership roles and state influence declined.8 Tao’s family was prominent in Zhouzhuang before 1860, became more involved in local leadership during the Taiping years, and continued to thrive afterward. Yet Tao’s description of urban gentry...

Managing common pool resources in the Kafue Flats, Zambia: from common property to open access and privatisation

Governing common pool resources in floodplains is a challenge due to high variability between seasons. Nevertheless, the case of the Kafue Flats in southern Zambia illustrates how local groups (Ila, Balundwe and Batwa) have developed common property institutions governing access to fisheries, wildlife and pasture. After the colonial and post-colonial periods these institutions were altered or eradicated by state control. State institutions have failed for the following reasons: complex economic and political processes and lack of knowledge have made state management ineffective; local rules have been eroded or severely altered by more powerful actors; immigrant groups (seasonal fishermen, commercial hunters, absentee herd owners) have increased their bargaining power as citizens; and neither local nor state institutions are enforced due to limited state capacity. This has led to open access situations and partial privatisation, both of which are major causes of unsustainable use of the commons.

A whole farm approach to planned animal health and production for sheep clients in Australia

This paper reviews some of the key aspects of an animal health and production service in New Zealand and Australia after 35 years of personal experience. The objective of that veterinary advisory work is to increase production and profitability of sheep farms. Properties serviced grazed between 3000 and 28,000 breeding ewes. A certain amount of knowledge and understanding of sheep farming systems is necessary before a veterinarian can offer such programmes. Much of that knowledge can be learned. Programmes can grow from small beginnings, such as good animal health advice, and then expand into other areas of sheep management. The provider should be comfortable giving advice on agronomy, nutrition, genetics and economics. This information can be sourced or be provided by another professional. The veterinarian is a source of practical information. When change is contemplated, the options are presented and the most viable options should be considered. It is essential to listen to the client, so that the advice recommended is most likely to be adopted. After each visit a report should be written for the client, so that all recommendations are clearly explained and can be referred to when necessary. The type of clientele serviced varies, but all farmers want to increase production and efficiency in their operation. Some want major structural change, while others may only want to be reassured that the contemplated change will improve their performance. There is an increasing opportunity to work for absentee owners and corporations that have profitability as their goal. Most clients could be serviced intensively for 3–5 years and then are visited for an annual review. The areas in which the greatest gains are made are in increasing lambing percentage and in growing better young sheep. Minimizing wastage can be significant on some properties. The results achieved vary with the ability of the sheep producer to introduce changes. However, on many properties an initial small change is all that is required to increase income to allow further development to occur. Most of the gains made in production do not incur increased costs. On larger properties, income can be increased by up to AUD 250,000 annually. The rewards from being involved in this work are huge. Sometimes one has to wait to see the change, but that waiting is worthwhile. It is not only the production and income increase, but the change in confidence of the producer that is most rewarding. The change in family well-being is another reward, which is difficult to measure.

Shane Leslie: Sublime Failure

Reviewed by: Shane Leslie: Sublime Failure Geert Lernout (bio) Shane Leslie: Sublime Failure, by Otto Rauchbauer. Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2009. 320 pp. €40.00 If Joyceans know Shane Leslie at all, it is as the author of two extremely negative reviews of Ulysses, one of which appeared in the Catholic journal Dublin Review under the name of "Domini Canis," in which the anonymous "dog of the Lord" (or heretic-hunting Dominican) called for extreme censorship, a type of reaction that Joyce may well have welcomed as the correct religious interpretation of a book that opens with a blasphemous version of the Catholic Mass.1 Although Leslie is now forgotten, between the two World Wars, he was not just a prolific and successful writer but also a major Catholic intellectual with connections in the highest political and ecclesiastical circles in London and New York. Despite his fame and despite a stunning output as a writer, Leslie has all but disappeared. The Modern Language Association bibliography lists only three articles about him,2 two of them on his role as reviewer of Ulysses; it is more than a little ironic that Leslie's only reason for survival is as part of a footnote in the biography of a writer he so totally condemned. Shane Leslie was born as John Randolph Leslie, the son of a protestant Anglo-Irish landlord (with holdings in County Monaghan that included Saint Patrick's Purgatory, the pilgrimage site at Lough Derg). His mother, Leonie Jerome, was one of three daughters of an American businessman, all of whom married into English society; one of the other sisters was Winston Churchill's mother, which made the future British Prime Minister Leslie's first cousin. As a scion of an absentee landlord family, Leslie enjoyed the correct kind of English education: first Eton, then a year at the Sorbonne, and then King's College in Cambridge, where he came under the double influence of the Oxford Movement and of the Irish Revival. His conversion to Catholicism was nothing if not methodical: first he joined the Anglo-Catholic (or "high-church") movement within the Church of England; then he embraced and practiced Christian socialism (visiting Leo Tolstoy, one of the movement's prophets, in Russia). Ultimately he made the big jump, even changing his name from the English John to the Irish Shane, while seriously contemplating becoming a Dominican friar. Today we can no longer imagine the import of Leslie's conversion, but at the time it must have been close to social and cultural suicide. It [End Page 164] is a pity that, despite access to the complete archives, Leslie's biographer, Otto Rauchbauer, has not managed to throw more light on this decision, which Leslie, in later life, refused to comment on because he felt that it was beyond rational explanation. As pointed out by his Anglican bishop, Leslie's conversion came at a most difficult time for the credibility of the Church of Rome—right in the middle of the so-called modernist crisis, when the authoritarian Pope Pius X steered the Church away from the historical study of the Biblical texts and the Christian past and away from all political, social, and cultural accommodation to the modern age (and to other Christian churches). Socially the decision meant that Leslie lost the right to the baronetcy, which went to his brother instead. Yet after his father's death in 1944, Leslie did become the third Baronet of Glaslough after all, and he was succeeded by his son, Sir John Leslie, the fourth and current Baronet, who in 2002 enjoyed a brief brush with fame when he inadvertently revealed that Paul McCartney and Heather Mills were going to get married at Castle Leslie. Leslie's social suicide did not lead to abject poverty either. He became an old-fashioned man of letters or "scholar-squire," as his biographer calls him (8). Becoming a Catholic was one thing, but joining the Celtic Revival and running for Parliament on John Redmond's nationalist Irish Party ticket in 1910 Ulster was an entirely different affair; it did not help that Leslie lost the election. He sent a sarcastic telegram to his parents...

Fleeting fame and groundwater: isolation and water in Kings River Valley, Nevada

This article examines how crop irrigation with groundwater briefly transformed the image of the Kings River Valley, a remote arid valley in northern Nevada, US, and captured state and national attention during a brief period in the mid-twentieth century. The valley’s short time in the limelight reveals the appeal of finding and recovering abundant water in arid places, bringing to light how groundwater use, technology, and regulation may be connected with alternating cycles of remoteness and popularity in a place. Coupled with improvements to infrastructure was the backdrop of a successful place; success, in this case, being associated with the know-how and capacity for massive withdrawals of groundwater and the ability to use this water to enhance agriculture. However, agriculture dependent upon groundwater in an arid place is complicated and uncertain, made more so when isolation is involved. As the technologies that supported large-scale groundwater pumping became more commonplace throughout the country and as groundwater became less readily accessible in the valley, attention to the Kings River dwindled and it slipped back into obscurity. Although groundwater has not completely disappeared, heavy groundwater pumping has altered the Kings River Valley, the place itself changing in the process. There are, however, some who gain advantage from isolation. The economic and political advantage of greater isolation accrued principally to absentee landowners, whose roots in Western cities were removed from daily life in the King River Valley. Isolation allowed less regulatory oversight of existing groundwater users, resulting in financial benefits which accrued primarily to those who supplied the cash and expertise for crops, cows, and groundwater, but did not actually reside in the valley. Absentee ranch owners generally had this capital, having the requisite connections and motivations to operate skillfully in the more structured and regulatory environment. Thus, this article analyzes water history coupling it with questions that are geographic in nature. What is it that makes a place isolated and how does groundwater figure into changes in isolation? How do cycles of isolation fit with changes in water technologies and regulation? And while the consequences of isolation may be apparent, what are the advantages of isolation to those using groundwater?

Financialisation and Derivatives: Constructing an Artifice of Indifference

This paper accords derivatives a central role in defining the character and dynamics of financialised accumulation. Under the guise of financial precision and a progressive innovation spiral, financial derivatives have instrumentalised risk so that ownership and property take a novel form. The advent of limited liability and absentee ownership in the second half of the nineteenth century marked the start of this process of transformation. At that stage, ownership became fleeting and its relationship to the underlying technical process uncertain, loose and complex. Risk management through derivatives takes this a stage further. Derivatives imply that ownership can take a form wherein there are no direct ties to a particular asset, and therefore no possibility of a conceptual link between property and stewardship. Instead, ownership proceeds on the basis of disengagement and financialisation proceeds via the construction of indifference to the exigencies of ‘real’ economic competition.

Inward investment: does IP really matter?

A popular debating point among both supporters and opponents of IP concerns the strength and reliability of domestic IP rights in developing countries: which is the best way to attract inward investment into a developing economy? (i) establish a regime of strong IP rights that are easy to enforce, in order to protect investment in innovation and its commercial exploitation; (ii) keep IP to the bare minimum that is necessary for TRIPS compliance in the hope that, freed from the restraints of IP monopolies that are generally exercised by absentee landlords, the local economy will become more competitive and generate its own export-driven momentum. It is assumed for the purpose of this debate that the attraction of inward investment is the desired objective, so this discussion will exclude for this purpose the third, fairly popular option; or (iii) take protectionist steps to control the exploitation of indigenous and collectively held rights in, for example, geographical indications, traditional knowledge, folklore, and bio-materials, while allowing a more laisser-faire approach towards the West’s ‘traditional’ creator-based rights in inventions, designs, and copyrights. While opinions are passionately expressed on this debating point, it is frustratingly difficult to create a methodology for attributing inward investment to any particular set of IP policies. This is because the strength or otherwise of IP rights is not an isolated criterion for determining where foreign investors place their confidence: it is part of a web of interrelated criteria so complex that it is almost impossible to tease out any strand from it and attribute to it any causative function. Some investment criteria are quite unrelated to the excellence or deficiency of domestic IP rights. These include the domestic tax regime, the ability (or otherwise) to remit foreign earnings, the political stability of the target market, and the availability and quality of its skilled labour. Thus, it makes more sense to invest in software development in India, where there is already a vibrant software culture within the workforce, than in countries where familiarity with programming techniques is absent. And countries suffering from substantial civil unrest or economic turmoil, of which Zimbabwe is a sad epitome, are unlikely to attract any sort of foreign investment even where local skills are present. The size and potential of a market may make it attractive for investors too. Thus, China enjoyed a large volume of joint ventures with foreign IP-rich businesses even when the local laws were relatively rudimentary, and their interpretation and enforcement untested, since overall business benefits outweighed any IPrelated risks. Another criterion appears at first blush to be more IP-related. Is the country which seeks foreign investment a member of the major IP conventions and treaties that provide for international filing of registered rights? But does membership of the right club guarantee, or even offer, a promise of inward funding? The Patent Cooperation Treaty and the Madrid and Hague schemes have brought transnational filing within the grasp of many businesses in the developed world, but WIPO statistics suggest that developing countries that crave inward investment do not receive it on the basis of the availability of protection through these systems since the number of rights that are protected in those countries is a small fraction of the scale of protection sought in developed markets. The good news for developing economies may be that, if the possession of a good IP system does not attract inward investment, its absence may not act as a positive deterrent. If this is so, what lessons does this teach us? First, the experience of the past 40 years or so teaches us that you can no longer justify IP rights in developing economies by suggesting that there is any direct causative link between having a good IP rights system and attracting foreign investment. Given the efficiencies of manufacturing in the age of cybernetics, with regard to many products the output of a single plant will be sufficient to satisfy global demand, no matter how many countries provide it with patent protection. Secondly, the internet provides a medium for the delivery of copyright works that is effectively unrelated to local legal, manufacturing, and market conditions. Particularly, where digital rights management is employed, copyright can be effectively and conveniently exploited without the need to establish a presence in each target market. Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice, 2009, Vol. 4, No. 4 225

THE ISSUES OF MANAGEMENT ON THE LEASEHOLD FLATS IN ENGLAND

This study examines the issues of management on the leasehold flats in England. There are approximately 1.5 million units of flats. They are owner-occupied housings, and are divided into freehold and long leasehold. Long leasehold flats are common. There are many problems in long leasehold flats which are pointed out such as; depreciating asset, imbalance of stake holding, landlord abuses, poor management, lessee ignorance, noise, insufficient of knowledge concerning the management company and the board of director, troubles between the management company and managing agents, lack of cost of maintenance, absentee owners (leaseholder), freehold purchase and leasehold extension, service charge and so on. And then, freehold purchase and new management system was established in 1993 .And commonhold system was established as a new tenure of block of flats in 2002. One of big differences between commonhold and leasehold is tenure of unit. The commonhold has unit with freehold, on the other hand, the leasehold has unit with leasehold. Central government makes law and regulation.. for commonhold, and then establishes the organization for advices.

An Inspector Calls: John Johnson's Reports on Slavery

John Johnson acted as special visiting attorney for absentee planter James Adam Gordon between 1824 and 1825. In addition to his detailed reports on Gordon's estates in Antigua and St Vincent, Johnson's private journals and correspondence have survived. Through detailed analysis of these records and related source material, it is possible to assess the impact of amelioration policies and review the practical operation of plantation management systems at the beginning of slavery's final decade in the British West Indies. The failure of Johnson's mission indicates that absentee owners were obliged to accept regulatory limitations, including restrictions on the use of independent inspection, at a time when the plantation system faced serious problems.

Living on the edge: financing post-displacement housing in urban redevelopment projects in Seoul

This paper examines the displacement experiences of urban poor tenants in Seoul, South Korea, and the constraints on their financing of post-displacement housing. Since the mid-1980s, urban renewal of slums and dilapidated neighbourhoods in Seoul has been geared towards clearance and wholesale redevelopment. This approach is accompanied by legalization of land tenure for dwelling owners without de jure property rights, and is based on profit-led partnerships between property owners (both on-site dwelling owners and absentee landlords) and developers. Since the end of the 1980s, tenants have been given the option, if eligible, of in-kind compensation (access to a public rental flat) or cash compensation. Neither choice, however, reflects the needs of poor tenants who still find it difficult to finance inevitably increased housing expenditures. Policy measures are necessary to increase the range of options available to tenants upon displacement.

:Return to Dragon Mountain: Memories of a Late Ming Man

Zhang Dai (1597-ca. 1680) was an esthete, connoisseur, essayist, historian, lavish party-giver, dramatist and drama director, zither player, collector and displayer of lanterns, cock-fighting enthusiast, boatman, huntsman, tourist, admirer of actresses and courtesans, and much else. His lineage, the Zhang of Shaoxing prefecture in southeast China, numbered several earlier winners of the jinshi degree who became Ming officials. As did many other rich rural lineages during the sixteenth century, the Zhang moved from the countryside into the city (of Shaoxing, in the case of the Zhang) where, as absentee landlords, they enjoyed a lifestyle of what to us appears to be astounding affluence. Zhang Dai wrote about all this in later and poorer times with little embarrassment or regret. Indeed, he forcefully stated that a flawed piece of jade is better than a perfect piece of common stone. And he, together with some half dozen of his male relatives, lived up to the idea that all that mattered in life was to pursue one's heart's desires with every ounce of one's passions and energy. Then came the Ming collapse.

Family Forest Stewardship: Do Owners Need a Financial Incentive?

Abstract This study assessed family forest owner interest in formally committing to the types of land use and management practices that characterize good stewardship if compensated for doing so, using Minnesota's Sustainable Forest Incentives Act (SFIA) as a proxy measure of forest stewardship. The SFIA provides an annual payment in return for obtaining and using a forest management plan and adhering to Minnesota's timber harvesting and forest management guidelines, among other requirements. Results of a mail survey indicate the typical Minnesota family forest owner has relatively small acreage, owns the land for a long time, lives in a rural area, is an absentee owner, considers hunting the most important reason for forestland ownership, and is not an active forest manager but supplies timber to the marketplace. Analysis of the survey data using a logit model found landowner interest in enrolling in the SFIA program was significantly influenced by the SFIA payment amount, acres of forestland owned, intention to obtain a forest management plan, opposition to the program's covenant requirement, and familiarity with the program. The model also estimated considerable compensation is needed to secure substantial participation of family forest owners in the SFIA program—nearly $24/ac per year to enroll one-half of the owners surveyed. Marketing efforts to increase the program visibility and extolling the virtues of a forest management plan should be part of a strategy to increase family forest owner participation in the SFIA program.