Refuge In Times Research Articles

Will Allotment Gardening Save Us Again? Allotment Gardens during a COVID-19 Pandemic in a City with a Shortage of Plots

Allotment gardening as element of green infrastructure and integral part of urban agriculture supports the city’s sustainable development and builds urban resilience. The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to revisit allotment gardening in a situation of unprecedented health crisis. Therefore, this study aims to recognise the importance of allotment gardens during the COVID-19 pandemic in Poznań (Poland), a city with a ‘famine of plots’ observed for years. A survey was conducted among allotment holders who had acquired plots during the course of the pandemic and in-depth interviews were conducted with the president of the Polish Allotment Federation of Poznań and the managers of the allotment gardens wherein we had identified the highest proportion of new allotment holders. Information was collected during field research, also using available statistical data. The methods used included desk research and a case study, interviews and a survey. The results of the study show that the pandemic caused a renaissance in allotment gardening. The increased interest in allotments triggered an increase in their price, thus further restricting access. A generational change in the allotment community was also noted, with young people appearing on allotments. However, the survey showed no change in the use of allotments: recreation is still their dominant function, with allotment holders focusing on cleaning and renovation work. For new allotment holders, the plot was a green refuge in times of isolation, a place for contact with nature, loved ones and family, and a safe space for relaxation. Our research indicates that allotment holders also appreciated its positive impact on their physical and mental health.. Moreover, the study indicates that despite the long-standing shortage of allotments in the city, only restorative allotment gardens are being created.

Asymmetric link between energy market and crypto market

This paper examines the nonlinear (NL) asymmetric long- and short-run interconnections between energy indices (S&P 500-ENERGY, MSCI-CHINA, and MSCI-WORLD) and the crypto (Bitcoin) market. The daily data have been used from January 1, 2013, to February 24, 2023, archived from the wind database. We use a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) framework for the research to be empirical. The NARDL test reveals the presence of a nonlinear asymmetric relationship, both in the long-run and short-run, among the MSCI-China, MSCI-World, S&P500-ENERGY indices, and the price of Bitcoin. The S&P 500 energy index and Bitcoin price have an inverse asymmetric connection. The prices of Bitcoin are positively influenced by both positive and negative shifts in the MSCI-CHINA and MSCI-WORLD indices. Overall, this study underscores the growing significance of the cryptocurrency market as a hedge against risks, offering evidence that Bitcoin can be perceived as a safe haven amidst the turbulence of the energy market. This insight holds implications for Bitcoin investors, suggesting its potential as a refuge in times of energy market instability.

Scope and limitations of heritage-based resilience: some reflections from Nepal

Recent risk preparedness and recovery frameworks have focused in particular on the themes of heritage and resilience. It is generally agreed among heritage professionals that heritage can play an important role in postdisaster recovery and resilience. However, heritage (monuments or sites or even intangible heritage) in general is perceived as a fragile resource that needs to be saved instead of as a source of resilience. This raises a question on what resilience means for the conceptualisation of heritage – is it about ‘building back’ the same heritage there was before, or is it also about making heritage relevant to the changed situation (due to disaster etc.)? Is resilience an inherent quality of heritage, or can it also be a process for reconsidering heritage in the postdisaster period? Instead of pursuing heritage as a passive recipient of any response and resilience building process, we can ask (i) how heritage provides refuge in times of crisis, (ii) how heritage can be an agent of distress in some situations, and (iii) what heritage and resilience mean together. Scholars have begun to raise questions about the meaning of heritage for building resilience and the meaning of resilience in relation to heritage. Taking built heritage as an example, while many aspects of built heritage, such as construction techniques, open spaces or resilient materials, may contribute to resilience and recovery, there are also situations where narrow streets and dense built fabric add to disaster risks. Similar dilemmas may be observed in the case of intangible heritage associated with urban areas and everyday life. Thus, this paper challenges the romanticisation of heritage values and explores rationales and critical perspectives that will enable us to conceptualise heritage as a potential source of resilience and recovery. By examining these critical issues, the paper hopes to help enhance the notion of heritage-based urban resilience and recovery rather than loosely promoting it. In doing so, references are made to global frameworks as well as local realities related to the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal.

Economic cycles and self-employment: Synthetic Cohort Analysis for Greater Santiago

Economic cycles affect both unemployment and the composition of employment, which can have an impact on the well-being of individuals if these changes in composition are involuntary or involve a decrease in the quality of employment. In this article, we study the relationship between economic cycles and self-employment, distinguishing between employers and own-account workers, through a synthetic cohort methodology using data for Chile. The results suggest that the proportion of employers is procyclical and that of own-account workers is countercyclical. This suggests that own-account employment is a refuge in times of crisis from the shortage of wage-based employment. This highlights the importance of designing public policies that would improve the conditions of self-employed workers.

Correction to: Peasant Farming, a Refuge in Times of Crises

Due to an unfortunate mistake, the authors’ affiliation has been omitted. Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience; Ryton-on-Dunsmore, UK

Wyobrażenie miasta i mieszczaństwa w języku Sienkiewiczowskiej Trylogii

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the image of the role of the city and bourgeoisie in the seventeenth century, settled in the Trilogy of Henryk Sienkiewicz. The lexemes naming the city appear in the definitions of the various terms of space, they serve its scratching. The reader, however, must complement a spatial arrangement drawn up by the storyteller. Imaging the city is followed by the exploitation of key words, which name the elements of the architecture of the city. The lexemes specifying the residents of the city, their activities and competitions appear sporadically. Quite often H. Sienkiewicz exploits anthropomorphisation efforts and metonymy, applied to the conceptual category of the city, which allows to talk about the features and social functions of the middle class. The lexicon associated with the city shows that, seen from the perspective of a noble, is a symbol of a self-sufficient residence that fills many needs of a noble: it provides money, soldiers, goods, serves as a refuge in times of war or bad weather, can resist the invaders. A noble point of view of the narrator is also expressed in attention to a defensive function of the city and the brave or cowardly attitudes of townspeople. A full overview of the lexical resource serving the definition of the city and the bourgeoisie reveals, in addition to standard and repetitive efforts also non-standard ones, breaking stereotypes, heterogeneous and difficult to classify. It is manifested in the exis by a large group of colocations, which occur at a time. Language creation of the middle class is on the one hand firmly schematic, and surprisingly unique on the other hand.

Peasant Farming, a Refuge in Times of Crises

This article considers a phenomenon seldom analyzed: The return to the roots, to family and friends, to the home village, when hardship hits. It looks into the role of peasant farming as a refuge, for those whose livelihoods have deteriorated, usually due to economic and financial crises for which they have no responsibility and even less say. Listening to the testimonies of those who go back to the countryside, or those returning to the sea (with examples in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Iceland), one hears a mix of struggle and hope, loneliness and fear, success and fulfilment. A destiny not always chosen, an imposed tabula rasa. These movements usually go unnoticed, but some governments provide the means to facilitate them, understanding the potential they hold for the country’s wealth. A few examples are chosen here to inspire policymakers and provide insights into how to revive national economies, particularly in times of financial and economic hardship. These examples also lead us to reconsider our perspectives on the gap between the rural and the urban, and invite us to see what we may consider as a continuum of mutually reinforcing synergies.

A local response to a wider situation: the archaeology of the clan stronghold of Dùn Èistean, Isle of Lewis

Dùn Èistean stands at the end of a long tradition of clan strongholds seen in the MacLeod lordship of the western seaboard of north-west Scotland in the medieval and early post-medieval periods. Excavations on the site have shown that it was in repeated use for refuge in times of trouble in the 16th and early 17th centuries, acting as a power centre caught up in the wider political scene. The inhabitants of Dùn Èistean were a people with a strong local identity, using their traditional building techniques, adapting to available raw materials and drawing on the resources of the surrounding environment to support and defend the inhabitants in the face of incoming attack.

The nation's mantelpiece: a history of the National Gallery

Ever since its conception in 1824, the 'much loved friend' in Trafalgar Square has been part of national life to an extent unmatched by any other great museum. Established, housed and maintained directly by their representatives in parliament, the British gallery was always owned by the people. And they exercised their ownership rights in ways that could surprise and confound the Trustees and staff charged with the Gallery's administration: from Victorian working-class matrons enjoying gin-fuelled picnics to the postwar teenagers who made Trafalgar Square their 'snogging shop'. While the site gave the Gallery a ring-side seat on some of the most violent political demonstrations of modern times, its location at the heart of the capital also made it a place of refuge in times of national crisis - and never more so than during World War II, when thousands of Londoners thronged the famous one-picture shows and free concerts organized by Kenneth Clark.Extensive new research reveals the close personal and often highly political interest taken in the Gallery's affairs by the Trustees, who included many well-known figures: from Sir Robert Peel and William Ewart Gladstone, through Curzon and John Maynard Keynes, to Noel Annan and Isaiah Berlin. But its phenomenal success in becoming a national symbol also made the Gallery a tempting target for those seeking political change - from the Suffragette who slashed Velazquez' Rokeby Venus in 1914 to the Birmingham man who stole Goya's Wellington in 1961. first history of the Gallery ever published, The Nation's Mantelpiece traces the development of an institution whose superlative collections often set the pace in art history, but whose dependence on parliamentary funding regularly implicated it in debates surrounding education, social cohesion and national heritage. story of the Gallery's paintings offers an intriguing opportunity to follow the changes in taste and connoisseurship that have helped create the Old Master canon we know today. building itself has been a test of taste, and its carbuncle-strewn history also receives unprecedentedly close attention.Copiously illustrated with a fascinating selection of previously unseen architectural plans, cartoons and other images that illuminate every aspect of the Gallery's history, as well as sixty of its most significan paintings, The Nation's Mantelpiece deserves a place on the mantelpiece of everyone interested in British history or in the history of art.

Normal Homes

Normal Homes

Recent contraction of wet sclerophyll forest in the wet tropics of Queensland due to invasion by rainforest

Vegetation maps were prepared from aerial photographs taken in 1943?45 and 1991?92 of three, widely separated areas of sclerophyll forest adjacent to the western edge of rainforest on granitic soils in north Queensland. Nine types of sclerophyll communities could be discerned from aerial photos and characterized by field measurement. Two types of Wet Sclerophyll Forest (WSFa and b) were separated on the species of tree composing the tallest stratum and these were subdivided according to whether the ground layer was dominated by grass or young rainforest. A related type showed large, residual Eucalyptus grandis emergent from mature rainforest. Closed canopy sclerophyll forest with no emergents (SF), sclerophyll woodland and Acaciaforest were also discerned. WSF was defined as having more than 30 per cent of the closed crown cover contributed by trees more than 35 m tall. During the 50-year study period rainforest invaded 70 per cent of WSFa (tallest stratum dominated by E. grandis), which principally occurs as a narrow strip along the rainforest margin, and 57 per cent of the adjacent WSFb (tallest stratum composed of mixed species). Grass would be quickly excluded from invaded areas and thereafter they would only burn under extreme atmospheric conditions. Because sclerophyll trees are unable to regenerate in shade and usually require fire to provide the appropriate conditions, a long-term transition to rainforest may ensue. The final stages of this transition were observed in areas that exhibited full-stature rainforest with large, relictual E. grandis emergents in 1943, but had disappeared by 1992. The initial cause of this vegetation transition is a fire-free period of sufficient length for rainforest tree seedlings to establish and suppress the grass layer. It is not known whether these vegetation changes represent a trend, possibly caused by a change a century ago from fire management by Aboriginal people to management for the cattle industry, or whether it is a temporary phase in the fire-induced, dynamic relationship between rainforest and sclerophyll vegetation. The current loss of WSF probably endangers the survival of a range of genetically endemic biota. Most groups are poorly known but the marsupial Yellowbellied Glider Petaurus australis reginae is totally dependent upon WSF and a number of vertebrates would probably go locally extinct if WSF is replaced by rainforest. WSF is the wettest part of the sclerophyll communities and probably acts as a refuge in times of unusual aridity. To maintain the WSF habitat, fire management is clearly indicated, but the intensity of fire required to reverse the advance of rainforest may be socially unacceptable to instigate or impossible to control if it occurs by accident.

The Mallard, Anas platyrhynchos, and Mallard-Black Duck, Anas superciliosa rogersi, Hybridization

The buildup of mallard and mallard-black duck hybrid populations in Australia has caused concern for the conservation of the black duck. Mallard populations are shown to be restricted in size and distribution in comparison to those of the black duck. Hybrids could not be confidently identified, other than those that showed obvious plumage characteristics of both species. Limited field studies in the Sydney district showed the stability of mallard and hybrid populations in comparison to those of the black duck, and there was evidence of restriction of pairing to intraspecific or intrahybrid matings and of poor hybrid breeding success. At present mallard hybridization per se does not pose a conservation threat to the black duck in Australia. This assessment might not apply under large-scale increase and perhaps husbandry of the feral mallard. In sufficient numbers mallard might threaten populations of the black duck by a different means, competition for refuge in times of drought.