Intra-community Relations Research Articles

Future ordinaries: Assembling place-based knowledges and literacies in real and imagined harmscapes

This paper explores the role of the everyday in real and imagined responses to climate-changed landscapes emerging from South African and UK-based activities in a project exploring local knowledges and resilience. We analyse photographs and captions created by co-researcher residents in three climate-stressed settlements in South Africa. We then use participant-generated stories created in the UK to explore imagined future landscapes. We demonstrate important commonalities between the real and the imagined, and between Global South and Global North, including three key dynamics to involved in responses to harmscapes of the present that also animate imagined futures: intra-community relations, the development of place and landscape literacies and adaptations. Our process reveals the centrality of the ordinary to both present realities and future imaginaries.

Rodzina jako wspólnota na przykładzie potrydenckiej społeczności zakonnej norbertanek zwierzynieckich w Krakowie

The subject of the article is to present the post-Tridentine community of the Norbertine nuns of Zwierzyniec in Cracow, characterized by a spiritual bond based on common values, beliefs, ideals, and goals. It is argued that the internal life of this community was determined by rules and constitutions, defining tasks and areas of specific activity, adapted to the requirements in force after the Council of Trent. Attention is focused on intra-Community relations expressed in the commonly used “family” nomenclature (prioress, subprioress, circus worker, librarian, sacristan, cellarer, vestiress, guest sister, doorkeeper, mother, spiritual daughter), presented in the manuscript Acts of the splendid Premonstratensian order… The community of Norbertine nuns in Zwierzyniec was based on a spiritual bond, responsibility for each other, duties that were religiously motivated, modeled on the family, and built on the basis of sisterly love and obedience. The reflection also covered the handwritten meditations of Norbertine nuns and printed ascetic and mystical writings from the 17th century, stored in the archives of Zwierzyniec, testifying to the religious fervor of the artists and the need for collective prayer effort of the community.

The Last Harvest? From the US Fentanyl Boom to the Mexican Opium Crisis

For decades, farmers in the most marginalised regions of Mexico have depended for survival on the illicit cultivation of opium poppy for the US heroin market. In 2017 they could earn up to 20,000 pesos ($950–$1,050 dollars) per kilo of opium, which channelled around 19 billion pesos ($1 billion dollars) into the country’s poorest communities, sustaining regional economies, religious ceremonies, and intra-community relations while stemming out-migration to Mexican cities and the US. With the recent upsurge in fentanyl use in the US, however, the demand for Mexican heroin has fallen sharply, meaning that farmers are now being paid around 6000 to 8000 pesos ($315–415 dollars) per kilo of raw opium. Thus the total money being paid to opium producing villages has dropped to an unprecedented low of 7 billion pesos ($370 million dollars). Drawing on fieldwork conducted in two poppy-producing regions of Mexico – one in the State of Nayarit, one in the State of Guerrero – this article shows that today, farmers cannot make a profit from opium once fertilizers and other capital inputs have been taken into account; village economies are starting to dry up; and out-migration is on the up. But this economic emergency opens the possibility of wrestling Mexico’s opium-growing regions from the control of Mexico’s Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs). This article concludes by addressing several possible solutions to what we term ‘the Mexican Opium Crisis’ – including crop substitution or opium legalization for medicinal use – and evaluates how realistic they are in the Mexican context.

The Elections to Nonterritorial Autonomies of Central and South Eastern Europe

AbstractIn managing ethno-cultural diversity, several countries in Central and Eastern Europe refer to the notion of nonterritorial/cultural autonomy in their legislation and policies, and in some of them, namely Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Serbia, and Slovenia, registered minority voters are granted the right to create their own representational, consultative, or decision-making bodies by direct or indirect elections. While a growing body of literature has examined the functioning of these elected minority councils/self-governments at various levels, numerous features of their elections have not been addressed. Elections, commonly understood as formal group decision-making processes, may fulfill various functions both in theory and practice, and these are highly context-dependent. In this regard, little is known about the role played by minority elections in intra-community relations, and whether and how these elections can contribute to increasing legitimacy and accountability and strengthening the political weight and influence of the respective minority groups. This article seeks to address these issues. Written from a theoretical perspective, but based on electoral statistics and country experiences, it comparatively explores the main issues related to the special minority elections in the five countries of analysis and assesses whether they can be considered successful forms of diversity management.

Русская эмигрантская община в Тулоне в 1920—1930-х годах: формирование и состав

The process of formation of the Russian emigrant colony in the South French city of Toulon in the period between world wars is considered. The relevance and novelty of this study is determined by the fact that it is based on an extensive set of archival documents, first introduced into scientific circulation, the history of the formation of a new center of Russian emigration in France is examined. Analyzing the process of formation of the Russian community in this region, the author pays attention to the political events that preceded the appearance of Russian immigrants in the city. The article describes the economic and socio-cultural context of the city at the time of arrival of refugees. The paper presents the results of a comparative analysis of statistical data on the quantitative and gender composition of the Russian community of Toulon in the studied period. The question of social and professional belonging of this group of immigrants is raised. It is shown that the process of formation and change in the composition of the Russian colony in Toulon is inscribed in the overall economic context of the region. It is emphasized that one of the important factors that influenced the development of the Russian community was the lack of stable links between the labour integration of immigrants and the choice of place of residence. The author dwells on the problem of intra-community relations and external factors that influenced the changes in the quantitative composition of the Russian community.

Prospects and pitfalls of a university-community partnership using Jatropha for sustainable rural development in a Nigerian community

Jatropha (Jatropha curcas) has been widely touted as a feedstock for biofuel production and way to combat rural poverty. In some cases, using Jatropha for rural economic development has led to unfulfilled expectations and failed programs. I investigated the expectations of an agricultural community in Nigeria toward a Jatropha biodiesel development project initiated by a private university and how community and project leaders perceived the impact of the program’s eventual abandonment. Willingness to adopt the project appeared largely due to its association with the university and expatriate staff. Community leaders’ enthusiastic support resulted in high expectations of poverty alleviation and community improvements. Given the community-perceived slow progress of the project and its ultimate dissolution, the community–university relationship and intra-community relations, including potential disempowerment of community leaders, were affected. The overall impact was, however, mitigated by other university-backed community programs and continued support by community leaders for using Jatropha for development.

Inter-communal institutions in medieval trade

This article examines the institutional structure of medieval overseas trade to explain why trade thrived even in the absence of the state. The literature has dealt mainly with intra-coalition or intra-community relations. However, the literature does not answer the question of how institutions could be created that could support interaction between a large number of distant communities and between merchants who did not necessarily know one another. This article presents such an institution that prevailed in the Baltic Sea region in the late middle ages, referred to here as the inter-communal conciliation mechanism. In case of a dispute, conciliation took place between town councils, rather than the merchants involved in the dispute, thus combining individual liability and communal enforcement. Exploration of the documents reveals a task-specific regularity of behaviour, which was the general practice among merchants to turn to the council of their own community when they had problems in a foreign town, instead of being obliged to solve disputes by themselves. This institution provided a permanent, centralized, and relatively impartial enforcement mechanism to respond to breaches. It was therefore well adapted to large, at least partially anonymous markets, such as the Baltic Sea region, with dozens of towns and thousands of merchants.

Collaboration, suspicion and traitors: an exploratory study of intra-community relations in post-war Northern Sri Lanka

This paper explores the manner in which the post-war strategy of militarisation, in particular surveillance and the recruitment of informants used by the government to control the conflict-affected population, has impacted Tamil society in the North. This strategy, which mirrored strategies used by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in areas under their control, created suspicion, deepened existing intra-community cleavages and hampered efforts to rebuild trust and social relations in post-war Northern Sri Lanka. Despite this, communities found ways to construct alternate, albeit limited, spaces of trust to foster intra-community bonds.

Community relations and child-led microfinance: a case study of caregiving children in Kenya

Rampant levels of AIDS and poverty have made many children in sub-Saharan Africa the primary caregivers of their ageing or ailing guardians. This paper reports on a social action fund initiative that brought caregiving children together to set-up and run income generating activities as a group with the aim of strengthening their coping capabilities. To further our understanding of child-led microfinance activities, this paper explores how intra-community relations can both facilitate and undermine child-led activities, and how these activities in turn can further strengthen some intra-community relations. Twenty-one children (aged 12–17) and six guardians participated in this study. Data included draw-and-write compositions (n=21), essays (n=16), workshop notes and proposals (n=8) and in-depth interviews (n=16). A thematic analysis revealed that the children actively drew on the expertise and involvement of some guardians in the project as well as on each other, developing supportive peer relations that helped strengthen their coping capabilities. However, the children's disenfranchised position in the community meant that some adults took advantage of the child-led activities for their own personal gain. Some children also showed a lack of commitment to collective work, undermining the morale of their more active peers. Nevertheless, both guardians and the children themselves began to look at caregiving children differently as their engagement in the project began to earn them respect from the community – changing guardian/child relations. The paper concludes that microfinance interventions targeting children and young people must consider children's relationships with each other and with adults as key determinants of Project success.

War, Judgment, and Memory in the Basque Borderlands, 1914–1945 (review)

Reviewed by: War, Judgment, and Memory in the Basque Borderlands, 1914–1945 John Bieter War, Judgment, and Memory in the Basque Borderlands, 1914–1945. By Sandra Ott. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2008. 288 pp. $39.95 (cloth). One of my favorite college professors used to say, “If you want to see how you will respond during especially trying times, observe how you react during normal times,” and “The values we honor in our everyday lives are the ones that we draw upon during times of crisis.” Sandra Ott, in her work War, Judgment, and Memory in the Basque Borderlands, 1914–1945 argues that locals or “here people” relied on protecting the house (etxea) and community (herria) when threatened. She traces the diverse decisions made by individuals in four communities (Maule, Ospitaleku, Sustary, and Ordos) from the province of Xiberoa in the Basque country of southwestern France during the years of the world wars, particularly during the Vichy and Nazi periods of control. Ott targets four main goals: to contextualize how Xiberoan Basques managed conflict and justice prior to German arrival in 1942; to trace their actions in these areas during the Occupation and its aftermath; to study ways in which Xiberoans responded to the various groups of the time—the Germans, other strangers living there, and particularly to one another during the first half of the twentieth century; and to reveal the contemporary contested memories of this period. She largely succeeds in all of these areas. Specifically, Ott explores issues of denunciation, local betrayals, and collaboration with the enemy during the tumultuous times when “the [End Page 616] boundaries of legitimate judgment and legitimate behavior became increasingly blurred” (p. 201). She accurately depicts the broad array of threats Xiberoans felt during this period: communists, radical socialists, extreme right-wing activists, elements of the Resistance, local collaborators, the Gestapo, the Milice, and Jewish fugitives, among others. Ott maintains that by the 1940s various communities in Xiberoa shared a habitus—a “compliance with certain moral codes and behavioral norms, and validation by public opinion” (p. 5). This popular justice was “inextricably linked to a person’s emotional and jural attachment to particular sociophysical spaces (the Basque house, neighborhood, community and local pays)” (p. 202). Secondly, Ott claims that “conflict within a household constituted the greatest internal threat of harm in Xiberoan society” (p. 202). Ott argues that the roots of this habitus formed the basis of an individual’s right to judge a fellow citizen. In the diverse responses of four communities, Ott documents the broad responses of people during this time. In Maule, the most populated of the four, Ott claims that German arrival did not unite this internally divided community until violence began to affect people’s lives. Instead, their presence exposed ruptures in the community that previously existed. For example, legislation that mandated work service by Maule locals in Germany resulted in almost all of the men sent there originating from the town’s Navarrese community (migrants from across the border on the Spanish Basque side). Moreover, rival Resistance groups further divided intracommunity relations. As one Ott interviewee explains, “I couldn’t decide who was the most dangerous enemy: the Germans, the communists, or the men of the ‘other’ Resistance” (p. 201). The rural hamlet of Sustary did not have the industrial or ethnic-based divisions of Maule. However, they endured their own versions of internal personal and professional rivalries. Citizens who housed German officers at times established friendly relationships with them, yet these relationships were often manipulated by both sides in an attempt to advance their agendas. Many of Sustary also claimed that their area remained one of the most dangerous within the Occupation and experienced one of the highest levels of denunciation in the province. In Urdos and Ospitaleku, neither of these places had the same level of divisiveness that Sustary and Maule endured. During the Occupation and later in the process of “denouncing the denouncer,” these communities relied on traditional practices such as the first-neighbor relationship (a permanent reciprocal relationship of shared goods and services) and religious rituals, like the giving of blessed bread, to encourage a high level of communal cohesion. In Ospitaleku...

The Precautionary Principle and its Policy Implications

The European Commission is actively promoting the precautionary principle as a ‘key tenet’ of Community policy, as well as a general principle of international law. This article explains why this promotional effort is likely to fail or to produce unanticipated and undesirable consequences. The principle has a legitimate but limited role to play in risk management, for example whenever there is an imminent danger of irreversible damage. As a general approach to risk regulation, however, it suffers from a number of shortcomings: it lacks a sound logical foundation; it may distort regulatory priorities; it can be misused to justify protectionist measures; it undermines international regulatory co‐operation; and it may have undesirable distributive consequences. What is perhaps an even greater cause for concern is that the principle, as interpreted by the Commission, tends to favour a double standard for what is permissible internationally and in intra‐Community relations.

Bones for Sale: 'Development', environment and food security in East Africa

Maasai pastoralism has been characterized historically by highly developed herd and rangeland management techniques and social and cultural institutions at the intra- and inter-community levels that have provided security against shocks such as drought, crop failure and epidemic disease. Key to pastoral production was that herd management and milk production were the domain of the individual domestic units--the household or the homestead--while rights to pasture and water resources were communal so as to guarantee access to both dry and wet season grazing. It is this combination of individual and communal resources and inter- and intra-community relations that enabled pastoralism to thrive for millennia. It will be argued that the failure of colonial and neocolonial 'development' policies to recognize these key features of Maasai pastoralism has been at the root of both the crisis of land degradation and the undermining of Maasai and East African food security.

Maya History and Agency in Colonial Yucatan

Conquistador. MATTHEW RESTALL. Boston MA: Beacon Press, 1998; xvi + 254 pp. The World: Yucatec Culture and Society, 1550-1850. MATTHEW RESTALL. Stanford CA: Stanford university Press, 1997; xiv + 441 pp. Over the last two decades students of Mesoamerica have increasingly turned their attention to theorizing indigenous agency and intentionality. This is perhaps most evident in the number of ethnohistorical studies that seek to recover native voices long excluded from the historical record and that offer a counterpoint to accounts which privilege Spanish expansionism at the expense of noting the active role Indians played in the development of colonial society. For the region, such revisionist historiography has been largely confined to reading agency between the lines of Spanish colonial documents. While this work has provided a valuable antidote to one-sided accounts of Spanish conquest, it remains at best only a partial and distorted view of indigenous protagonists. Here I review two recent books by Matthew Restall that add a much-needed complement to such work. conquistador and The world are both well-written ethnohistorical accounts of colonial society in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. In the introduction to The world Restall characterizes his larger goal (if the reader will permit such a conceit) as to the Maya (p. 10). Indeed, his research is based on some 1600 Mayan language documents and he extensively cites sources, thus representing voices by letting the speak for themselves. Yet it is important to note that this is representation in Raymond Williams' dual sense of the word: a re-presentation that attempts both to make present for the reader events that occurred in the past and to use those events to symbolize the larger processes of which they are a part- In both books Restall is very much present as our guide and interpreter, and it is as much his as voices that we hear throughout the texts. Ironically, although he is narratively giving voice to a particular subaltern population (the Yucatec Maya), his documentary evidence forces him to focus on a sample of mostly older and relatively wealthy individuals. Even given the corporate nature of communities, which Restall emphasizes, we are left with an unclear picture of the nuances of intra-community relations. But Restall seems well aware of the limitations of his data, and he is able to deftly tease from the documents a surprisingly rich view of everyday life. The world is a tour de force through 300 years of history spanning the Yucatan peninsula. Based largely on documents written by the in their native tongue, Restall is able to include revealing descriptions of mundane as well as extraordinary events. The book's four parts are organized topically, as are the chapters within them. Chapters are short and readable, and the organization is, for the most part, logical. Part I (Identity and Organization) introduces the book's thesis that the cah (indigenous community, pl. cahob) is the primary nexus of self-identity and political organization. Second in importance to the cah (and yet subordinated to it) are localized patrilineal groups known as chibalob (sing., chibal); cah leaders (batab) are drawn from prominent chibalob. Together, the cah and the chibal provided not only common references for self-identification but also act as vehicles for individual and collective political maneuvering within the colonial system. In Part 11 (Society and Culture) Restall is at his best in reconstructing quotidian experience and practical worldview. In chapters on gender, class, and religion, he reveals not only normative patterns but also subtle resistance to Spanish impositions. In this regard the chapter on sexuality is especially noteworthy. Organized around an anonymous 1774 petition to Spanish authorities protesting the reportedly lewd behavior of local priests, the chapter demonstrates the deftness of satire and punning while partially revealing autochthonous norms of acceptable behavior. …

Community Development Approaches to Heart Health Promotion: A Geographical Perspective

This paper reports results of a qualitative study of community development approaches to heart health promotion in Ontario. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) represents a substantial proportion of the burden of illness experienced by western industrialized countries. Biomedical research has implicated lifestyle choices and socioeconomic conditions as primary determinants of CVD. There has been a resultant shift from curative to preventive/health promoting strategies to reduce this burden of illness. The Canadian Heart Health Initiative-Ontario Project (CHHIOP), a two-stage (quantitative and qualitative) longitudinal study, was designed to address issues of heart health promotion through the investigation and strengthening of community-based heart health activities in both the formal and informal public health systems. The study reported on in this paper forms one part of the qualitative stage and focuses on how community relationships and community development approaches play out in local contexts to shape the reality of (heart) health promotion practice. Analysis of key informant interviews using Ethnograph illustrates the centrality of community context, the lack of a common understanding of key concepts (e.g., community development), and the emergence of a shift in health agencies' ways of doing business characterized by increased partnering and collaboration in the delivery of (heart) health promotion programs. Local perspectives and the dynamics of intra-community relations were allowed to emerge through the use of qualitative approaches implying a need for place-sensitive (heart) health promotion strategies.