Non-local Actors Research Articles

Beads and Stamps in the Middle Orinoco: Archaeological Evidence for Interaction and Exchange in the Atures Rapids from AD 1000 to 1480

AbstractThe area of the Atures Rapids in the Middle Orinoco River (Venezuela), where multiple Indigenous communities gathered to trade goods, has been identified as a prominent center of commerce since early colonial times. However, the exchange activities taking place there between local and nonlocal actors before European colonization are poorly understood, based only on the ethnohistoric record. This article presents an archaeometric analysis of stone beads and ceramic roller stamps, items previously associated with trade practices, from two recently excavated sites in the region, Picure (AD 1030–1480) and Rabo de Cochino (AD 1000–1440); it assesses their provenance, production, and value. We propose that Picure was a site of a bead-manufacturing workshop and a place where roller stamps were exchanged. The stamps were acquired and produced by different potting groups. Analysis of the chaîne opératoire and production techniques shows processes of adaptation and emulation associated with the multiple, multiethnic communities during the period from AD 1000 to 1480. Both beads and stamps are linked to identity regalia that were likely used as part of ceremonies taking place in the area of the Rapids, as indicated by the numerous and monumental petroglyphs found on the islands.

Innovation platforms as a tool for anchoring non-local knowledge: smart specialisation strategies in Guangdong, China

ABSTRACT Innovation platforms can be useful for promoting the diversification of regional industrial paths. Until recently, the literature had depicted such platforms primarily as a tool for enabling local knowledge recombination – and not for anchoring non-local knowledge. In many regions, however, ‘smart specialisation strategies’ for modernising and transforming industrial structures are difficult to implement without transplantation of non-local knowledge. This paper explores innovation platforms as a tool for anchoring non-local knowledge. We elaborate on recent Chinese experiences by studying diversification-oriented regional innovation policy in Guangdong province. We employ an embedded single-case study design, involving a regionally typical diversification strategy, which we substantiate by tracing platform development with two non-local actors, a university and a technology firm. The paper reveals that non-local actors can play an important role in unlocking regional industrial development potential, especially if platforms enable these actors to relate to local industry by performing desired intermediary functions.

Nature and composition of rural innovation actor networks in South Africa: the case of agro-processing enterprises in the Mopani District

ABSTRACT Rural innovation processes are deeply embedded in actor networks, and their successes and failures are influenced by the nature and composition of such networks. While South Africa has adopted the National Systems of Innovation (NSI) framework since 1996, the participation of key recognised knowledge producers such as science councils and universities in rural innovation networks is underdetermined. Nevertheless, an explicit policy shift in the national strategy in 2019 toward socially inclusive and grassroots innovation calls for a more rigorous understanding of innovation in rural settings. As a contribution to this imperative, our study explores the nature and composition of rural actor networks of agro-processing enterprises in the Mopani District in the Limpopo Province. The analysis demonstrates that linkages between non-local actors, such as public agencies and large private firms, and local actors are often top-down and limited in strength. However, local linkages are characterised by locked-in, but free movements to search for new knowledge. We also find that previously overlooked actors, namely, civil society, play a crucial role in the innovation process. Consequently, we suggest that science, technology and innovation policy implementation should better integrate local conditions and capabilities, and judiciously combine external and internal resources in rural actor networks.

‘Doomscrolling’ in my backyard: Corrosive online communities and contested wind development in rural Ohio

Wind energy development in the rural U.S. remains locally contentious across geographies and social groups. These development decisions are often debated on social media sites, where individuals seek out information and share ideas related to risks and benefits of development. This research examines content from two anti-wind Facebook Community Pages (FCPs) focused on northwestern Ohio. We apply the corrosive community framework to categorize discourse around the framework's three major themes of health risk, recreancy, and litigation, and observe differences in numbers and types of social media activity before and after development and among local and non-local actors. We describe the role social media plays in mediating public discourse in local siting decisions and acts to situate online networks within physical places. We find the corrosive community framework a useful lens to analyze online-community conflicts around wind energy and categorize discourse around wind energy opposition. As public discourse moves increasingly to social media networks, understanding FCPs as a form of community can provide a framework for organizing and analyzing social conflicts and their local-nonlocal connections.

Managing sustainability risks of bioenergy in four Nordic countries

BackgroundBioenergy plays a key role in the transition to a sustainable economy in Europe, but its own sustainability is being questioned. We study the experiences of Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway, to find out whether the forest-based bioenergy chains developed in the four countries have led to unsustainable outcomes and how the countries manage the sustainability risks. Data were collected from a diversity of sources including interviews, statistical databases, the scientific literature, government planning documents and legislation.ResultsSustainability risks of deforestation, degradation of forests, reduced carbon pools in forests, expensive biopower and heat, resource competition, and lack of acceptance at the local level are considered. The experience of the four countries shows that the sustainability risks can to a high degree be managed with voluntary measures without resorting to prescriptive measures. It is possible to add to the carbon pools of forests along with higher harvest volumes if the risks are well managed. There is, however, a marginal trade-off between harvest volume and carbon pools. Economic sustainability risks may be more challenging than ecological risks because the competitiveness order of renewable energy technologies has been reversed in the last decade. The risk of resource competition harming other sectors in the economy was found to be small and manageable but requires continuous monitoring. Local communities acting as bioenergy communities have been agents of change behind the most expansive bioenergy chains. A fear of non-local actors reaping the economic gains involved in bioenergy chains was found to be one of the risks to the trust and acceptance necessary for local communities to act as bioenergy communities.ConclusionsThe Nordic experience shows that it has been possible to manage the sustainability risks examined in this paper to an extent avoiding unsustainable outcomes. Sustainability risks have been managed by developing an institutional framework involving laws, regulations, standards and community commitments. Particularly on the local level, bioenergy chains should be developed with stakeholder involvement in development and use, in order to safeguard the legitimacy of bioenergy development and reconcile tensions between the global quest for a climate neutral economy and the local quest for an economically viable community.

Multiscalar moral economy

This article addresses the relevance of the moral economy concept in light of unequal socioeconomic relations between a European agribusiness and rural residents in Zambia. It argues that the moral economy concept offers a helpful heuristic device for analyzing how relationships are constituted, negotiated, and contested among interdependent actors with “opposing” socioeconomic interests. To explain the dynamics of their relationships, however, the moral economy concept has to extend beyond its usual, spatially restricted (i.e., local) focus. Instead, “external,” distant, non-local actors, such as foreign critics concerned about “land grabbing,” also influence the local character of moral-economic exchanges between the agribusiness and rural residents. Hence, the article proposes a multiscalar perspective to account for the influence of a wider array of actors.

A insustentável invisibilidade do nuclear: os processos de publicização dos problemas sociais e ambientais decorrentes da exploração do urânio em Caetité, BA

O artigo discute os processos de publicização dos problemas do nuclear em Caetité, Bahia. Desde o início da operação da mina de urânio na região, no ano de 1999, uma série de atores locais e não locais tem produzido evidências dos problemas decorrentes da extração do mineral para combustível das usinas nucleares brasileiras. Neste artigo argumenta-se que esse processo, ao mesmo tempo que constitui o nuclear e o urânio como uma situação problemática, também transforma os atores a ela concernidos, construindo os processos através dos quais questões do nuclear se tornam visíveis. Para isso, baseia-se em documentos, relatórios técnicos, materiais publicados em jornais e observação de campo de parte dos atores envolvidos nas questões do nuclear. Concluímos que as exigências dos atores passam a ser construídas a partir de evidências que seguem constrangimentos metodológicos próximos daqueles produzidos pela operação da mina, baseado em monitoramento e avaliação de dados técnicos. Mas, diferente da manutenção do nuclear como uma caixa preta, os atores publicizam o urânio e o nuclear como um problema público.

Emerging regional innovation policies for industry 4.0: analyzing the digital innovation hub program in European regions

Purpose Industry 4.0 or digitization, from a regional innovation system (RIS) and policy perspective to improve regional innovation, is over-looked. Specifically, this paper aims to focus on analyzing the nascent European Commission (EC) digital innovation hub (DIH) program, designed for fostering transition into Industry 4.0 in regions and facilitating new path development. Design/methodology/approach Empirically, 10 Spanish DIH is explored through interviews and secondary data analysis. Findings The results suggest that DIHs despite their emerging and trial-and-error stage are designed for promoting multi-actor collaborative platforms including non-local actors to stimulate transition into Industry 4.0 by promoting place-based collaboration alliances that respond to local/regional contextual specificities and demands. These regional-based platforms facilitate public-private partnerships that co-design policy initiatives resulting from co-participation and negotiation of spatially-bounded oriented initiatives for digitizing. Originality/value The authors answer: what are the key characteristics of emerging European-level regional innovation policies aimed at facilitating Industry 4.0 in regions? This is the first study on the topic.

Lodz City Tour: The Changing Nature of the Urban Restructuring of a Post-Socialist Industrial City

This paper describes the restructuring of Poland’s third-largest city, Lodz (Łódź). Once a thriving metropolitan hub of textile and clothing manufacturing, Lodz was confronted with the closure of its numerous factories in the early 1990s with Poland’s transition from a planned to a global market economy. The city suffered an abrupt and dramatic decline followed by a redefinition of its economic, spatial and social structures. The paper focuses on the major economic and spatial phenomena taking place in the city in the three decades after the economic collapse. Using an evolutionary approach, it identifies and discusses the gradual shift of Lodz’s restructuring. We claim that the restructuring initially involved mostly organic and spontaneous initiatives of dynamic local and non-local actors, with minor and circumstantial involvement from the local authorities. However, over time, the restructuring of Lodz has become influenced and driven by nationally and EU-set objectives and targeted urban policies, with urban and infrastructural projects as driving vehicles.

Oyster Tourism in Postdisaster Japan: Towards an Understanding of Human-Mollusk Relations in the Miyagi Prefecture

This article is a qualitative, ethnographically informed exploration of the relations between the Miyagi Oysters (Crassostrea gigas) and the diverse social actors of northeastern Japan (Tōhoku), namely local sea farmers, domestic immigrants, and tourists, in the aftermath of the 2011 “triple disaster” (the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and related nuclear plant meltdown). I contend that the processes of post-disaster reconstruction have been significantly informed by the specific frames of human-oyster relations as they are developed in the sea farming bays of the municipality of Ishinomaki (Miyagi Prefecture). Individuating four fields of interest (environmental purity, experientiality, emic timeframes, and authenticity), I analyze the ongoing transformations prompted by the disaster on discourses of locality and self-representation and the interactions among local producers and non-local actors (visitors, volunteers, entrepreneurs) with the cycle of life of the Crassostrea. Within the interactions between locals and non-locals, the discursive characteristics of oyster sea farming in Miyagi are negotiated, shared, and contested through instances of transformative resilience during the progressive shift from “classic” modes of production towards the economies of domestic tourism, and the overlapping of local, bottom-up initiatives with organized top-down structures.

Multi-stakeholder Platforms and Protected Area Management: Evidence from El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve, Mexico

This article analyses the potentials and limitations of multi-stakeholder platforms (known as advisory councils in Mexico) involved in protected area and resource management in peripheral regions. Qualitative, in-depth expert interviews conducted in 2015 at one of the world's most prominent Biosphere Reserves focused on the sources of effective and inclusive stakeholder participation through collective decision-making and joint implementation. Results identified three key interrelated factors that explain the performance and effectiveness of the advisory council at the El Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve: 1) comparatively favourable socioeconomic and political conditions at the outset; 2) efficient internal organisation that fosters informed decision-making by consensus; and 3) the ability to influence governmental institutions through collective lobbying. As a result, the council has been able to exclude several non-local actors from resource use, obtain public funding, and participate in diverse management activities. Due to the lack of a well-defined mandate; however, it still depends on centralised institutions and has no decisive stake in the governmental decision-making process yet. Therefore, despite notable progress, genuine stakeholder participation in protected area management still faces limitations in Mexico and probably other countries as well.

Challenges of multi-level water governance at micro-watershed level – A case from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The micro-watershed level can be a promising unit for the integration and coordination of water management functions that affect sustainable water use and livelihoods of local communities such as farmer groups. Recent projects in the state of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil have advocated interventions at this level. However, micro-watersheds are still not adequately incorporated in the multi-level governance systems of water and related ecosystems in Brazil. Further, a complex landscape of non-local actors and higher-level policies interact and determine resource use patterns at the micro-watershed level. This paper maps stakeholders and shows their influence areas on key water issues using the example of micro-watersheds in Rio de Janeiro. It also highlights the key challenges arising from the governance practice and the institutional framework related to micro-watersheds.

Who Manages Space? Eco-DRR and the Local Community

The notion of ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction (DRR) has only recently emerged in Indonesia. The Indonesian central government now adopts some policies related to ecosystem-based DRR with formal commitments from local administrations. At the implementation level, various activities have taken place, such as mangrove planting and restoration along the coastline to address the rising sea level and the “one billion trees” program to address the urgent issue of deforestation. These governmental activities have involved local communities that reside in the high-risk area, while nonlocal actors, particularly from the private and the nongovernmental sectors, have contributed as a third element to development. This paper examines space management in the context of Eco-DRR, paying special attention to uncertainty and anxiety in the local communities as the government and private sectors engage in development activities that have significant impacts on their present and future lives. The present study pursues this purpose by means of in-depth interview and focus group discussions (FGD) with local leaders in mangrove planting and restoration programs. The study took place in a small island community in a part of the Jakarta Megapolitan Region, Indonesia. The results point out that the community feels left behind due to lack of trust in managing the conservation space. Another issue to be addressed is how to improve the democratization of environment management and livelihood base of the local community. Therefore, building confidence and ameliorating relationships between actors within/without the local community should lead to a better Eco-DRR initiative.

Land for food or power? Risk governance of dams and family farms in Southwest Ethiopia

We use the concepts of riskscapes and risk governance to analyze the tensions between land use for food (farms) and energy (dams) in Southwest Ethiopia. We analyze the linkages between risk perception, risk assessment and risk management for local and non-local actors. We distinguish, after empirical analysis, as main riskscapes the riskscapes of landlessness, food and energy insecurity and siltation. For the Ethiopian case, and more generally, we reflect on the potential of spatial planning as a site of risk governance, where risk perception, assessment and management can be discussed in their linkages, where different actor-related and topical riskscapes can encounter, can be deliberated and result in policy integration. We finally reflect on the ethical implications of our perspective and reconsider the idea of social cost.

Devolution, coordination, and community-based natural resource management in Ghana’s community resource management areas

Two key trends in efforts to deliver linked social and ecological protected area outcomes are (1) the development of governance models that devolve decision-making authority and responsibility to the local level and (2) linking protected area ‘islands’ to larger governance landscapes. This paper centers on Ghana’s Community Resource Management Area (CREMA) protected area model, and assesses how CREMAs are evaluated at the local level, which actors are perceived to be important in CREMA management, and how linkages to non-local governance structures may influence CREMA outcomes. Using a mixed method approach, results show that CREMAs are generally seen as a mechanism by which local people can more transparently and freely participate in decision-making processes related to resource management. Respondents also felt that Chiefs and associated customary tenure institutions should play a central role in CREMA governance. On the other hand, links to non-local state actors were described as ineffective because of inadequate fiscal decentralization, weak/absent lower level governance structures and inattention to conservation and development as a distinct dual project. Respondents also noted that while CREMA governance structures provide a way to build linkages to non-local actors, there are missed opportunities to embed CREMA considerations in other non-local decision-making processes.

Palestine-Israel and the Neoliberal Ideal


 
 
 The following study envisions the modern history of the Palestinian- Israeli conflict through the application of previously underutilized theoretical frames. Beginning with the unprecedented political and social upheaval wrought upon the Middle East after the end of World War I, the article unfolds in three distinct sections. The first section provides an historical introduction to the global, transnational forces that guided the developing infrastructure of political conflict within the region. The second section articulates the ideological parameters of the international political and economic forces (“neoliberalism”) that connect the past and present of political conflict in the region as well as the local (state and non-state) and non-local actors involved in its contemporary manifestation. The third and final section reconceptualizes the Palestinian-Israeli conflict not exclusively as a territorial dispute or as a nebulous clash of cultures, but rather as a deliberate, operational casualty enduring in the service of an aggressive, transnational, and indeed historical force whose trajectory spans the length of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: neoliberalism. In each sphere in which the neoliberal ideal has been applied – one, an historical fait accompli, another, a contemporary situation en cours – an important, connective element persists: the distinctly non-local origin of both the historical forces and the contemporary economic manifestations under examination.
 
 

Palestine-Israel and the Neoliberal Ideal


 
 
 The following study envisions the modern history of the Palestinian- Israeli conflict through the application of previously underutilized theoretical frames. Beginning with the unprecedented political and social upheaval wrought upon the Middle East after the end of World War I, the article unfolds in three distinct sections. The first section provides an historical introduction to the global, transnational forces that guided the developing infrastructure of political conflict within the region. The second section articulates the ideological parameters of the international political and economic forces (“neoliberalism”) that connect the past and present of political conflict in the region as well as the local (state and non-state) and non-local actors involved in its contemporary manifestation. The third and final section reconceptualizes the Palestinian-Israeli conflict not exclusively as a territorial dispute or as a nebulous clash of cultures, but rather as a deliberate, operational casualty enduring in the service of an aggressive, transnational, and indeed historical force whose trajectory spans the length of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: neoliberalism. In each sphere in which the neoliberal ideal has been applied – one, an historical fait accompli, another, a contemporary situation en cours – an important, connective element persists: the distinctly non-local origin of both the historical forces and the contemporary economic manifestations under examination.
 
 

Multi-Scalar Pathways to Smallholder Adaptation

Smallholder farmers in the Loess Plateau Region of China are highly vulnerable to climate change. Effective adaptation governance requires in-depth, situated understanding of how adaptation is embedded in particular environmental, social, political, economic, and institutional contexts. Drawing on 93 qualitative interviews with smallholder households in five counties across three provinces on the Loess Plateau, we use a multi-scalar pathways approach to analyze two particular adaptations (planting maize and adopting drip irrigation). Our results show (1) how historical and ongoing multi-scalar, social–ecological processes interact to shape smallholder adaptation decision-making, leading to synergies, tensions, and contradictions across risk management domains and social institutions; (2) whether an adaptation strategy persists over time is in part determined by the extent to which the strategy allows smallholder households to manage various forms of risk and uncertainty in both the present and future; and (3) how past and ongoing multi-scalar adaptation pathways determine not only smallholder exposure to current stressors but also possible choices for future adaptation. Specifically, we find some smallholder adaptive strategies, such as planting maize, stabilize over time because they enable smallholders to manage market risk, climatic risk, and water pollution challenges, allow them to take advantage of opportunities to diversify their livelihoods through local wage work and labor migration, and, at the same time, fit the local social institutions that guide their agricultural management decisions. We also find some adaptive strategies promoted by non-local actors, such as drip irrigation, are abandoned because they create tensions with the ways smallholders construct their livelihoods to manage various forms of uncertainty and risk, and contradict the local social relations and cultural values embedded in their day-to-day lives. Together, these results provide insight into why particular smallholder adaptation pathways become stabilized and reproduced over time, and the cross-scalar environmental, social, political, economic, and institutional processes that underpin them.

Well-being in Alternative Economies

Alternative economies are built on shared commitments to improve subjects’ well-being. Traditional commercial markets, premised upon growth driven by separate actors pursuing personal material gain, lead to exploitation of some actors and to negligible well-being gains for the rest. Through resocializing economic relations and expanding the recognition of interdependence among the actors in a marketing system, economic domination and exploitation can be mitigated. We define shared commitments as a choice of a course of action in common with others. We empirically demonstrate the existence of shared commitments through an in-depth study of a spatially extended alternative food network in Turkey. Finally, we offer an inductive model of how shared commitments can be developed between local and non-local actors to bring new economies into being and improve the well-being of consumers and producers, localities, markets, and society.

Commentary: From capital landing to urban anchoring: The negotiated city

This commentary article proposes three ideal types of ‘anchoring of finance capital into the city’, i.e. the way in which capital, as it is valued in financial markets, is transformed into real capital and vice versa. Some contexts will allow market finance s visions of the city to become reality without great alteration, and this produces the ‘financialised city’. In this case, the value of the city corresponds to trading on the financial markets and largely depends on the financial operators’ comparative and mimetic criteria. Second, the ‘entrepreneurial city’ corresponds to a tangible and localised vision of the city, outside the trading rooms. This requires interactions between intermediary and allied actors so that urban value can be translated into real profits and tangible urban objectives while mobilising market finance. Third, some contexts may promote debate, the creation of interdependencies and the genesis of multiple externalities, particularly around major urban development projects. This is what we call the ‘negotiated city’. Here, urban value depends much more directly, and more exclusively, on more or less complementary interactions between local and non-local actors, users, consumers, public actors, tourists, etc.