This book explores how social groups in the urban fringe of Abuja, Nigeria, engaged with a series of development projects spanning 15 years (2003 to 2018) which focused on the enhancement of food security for farming households. The groups were at the heart of these development projects and the book presents the many insights that were gained by farmers and project agents working within these partnerships and provides advice for those seeking to do the same. The book also explores how the social groups attempted to lever benefits from being near to the fastest growing city in Africa and a centre of economic and political power. While much has been written about social groups and their embeddedness within wider social networks in Africa and in other parts of the world, the exploration of the role of social groups within development projects is an area that remains relatively unchartered and this book seeks to fill that important gap in knowledge. It provides an important contribution for all those researching and working with social groups in the developing world.

Japan's population is shrinking. Based on current trends, it will decline by an average of half a million people per year for the next forty years. The country is also getting older and the ratio of dependants to active workers is expected to approach 1:1 by around 2030. These two interdependent processes will bring great changes to Japan in the coming decades. In the twenty-first century, a historic turnaround in global demographic trends will occur. Europe and East Asia are especially vulnerable to demographic shrinkage. Germany is already shrinking, as is Russia. South Korea will begin to shrink soon and, importantly, so will China from around 2035. Overall, this is good news, but it brings with it worldwide changes to ways of living and working. Japan's rural areas have been shrinking for decades. Entire villages have vanished; some have even been "sold." Thousands of municipalities have been judged "non-viable" and merged. Thousands more private and public enterprises have collapsed, leaving colossal debts, while hundreds of thousands of older people live miserable lives in neighbourless communities. Rural shrinkage has been the unseen corollary of Japan's extraordinarily dynamic twentieth century urban expansion; indeed, Japan's postwar economic miracle has been achieved at the expense of rural retreat. Potentially disastrous is the negative-sum game that national depopulation triggers, as one community's gain becomes another's loss. Japan's Shrinking Regions in the 21st Century reveals how communities are responding positively to these emerging circumstances, delivering a message of hope and vitality to shrinking regions worldwide. Setting Japan alongside Europe, and with an epilogue describing the T hoku earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown of 11 March 2011, the book offers policy makers and practitioners up to date advice for community revival born of extensive collaborative fieldwork across the whole Japanese archipelago. Japan's Shrinking Regions in the 21st Century brings together the work of 18 international scholars to present the first comprehensive study of regional shrinkage under Japan's national depopulation. Interspersed throughout with numerous illustrations, the book reveals a richly textured examination of shrinkage at the local level, from which emerges the overall story of Japan's depopulation and its place within the trajectory of world development. This will be an important source for all social science collections, as well as for researchers, policy makers, students, and practitioners with interests in regional development, demography, East Asia, and post-industrial change.

This edited collection examines the evolution of regional inequality in Latin America in the long run. The authors support the hypothesis that the current regional disparities are principally the result of a long and complex process in which historical, geographical, economic, institutional, and political factors have all worked together. Lessons from the past can aid current debates on regional inequalities, territorial cohesion, and public policies in developing and also developed countries. In contrast with European countries, Latin American economies largely specialized in commodity exports, showed high levels of urbanization and high transports costs (both domestic and international). This new research provides a new perspective on the economic history of Latin American regions and offers new insights on how such forces interact in peripheral countries. In that sense, natural resources, differences in climatic conditions, industrial backwardness and low population density areas leads us to a new set of questions and tentative answers. This book brings together a group of leading American and European economic historians in order to build a new set of data on historical regional GDPs for nine Latin American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. This transnational perspective on Latin American economic development process is of interest to researchers, students and policy makers.

This book comprises the historical overview of migration processes in Kyrgyzstan, contemporary migration trends in international migration and various social, economic and political impacts of migration. It presents the findings of longstanding, in-depth, comprehensive and empirical research. Insights are maximized by applying the multi-sited strategy of analyzing both the migrant's place of origin and that of destination. The primary goal of the book is to contribute to a better understanding of the meanings and the impacts of contemporary international migration processes in Kyrgyzstan and their relevance for local livelihoods.

This two-volume set examines the process of integration of rural society and the establishment of the modern state in China. It attempts to transcend general policy claims by analysing China's rural governance within the state's integration of rural society over the course of the twentieth century. Drawing on contemporary examples of state integration while observing the particular background of the Chinese context, this set systematically examines the entire process of the rural reconstruction of China over the course of the 100 years since the period of the late Qing Dynasty, while analysing the special characteristics of each period as well as current societal trends in the Chinese countryside. The first volume explores state penetration of the countryside and the transformation of the rural population from the point of view of politics, labour and resources, administration, and institutional integration. The second volume examines contemporary state integration via the economic activities of traditional rural societies, alongside fiscal, cultural, social, and technological integration. The conclusion summarizes three characteristics that are evident in the process of rural integration and the establishment of the modern state in China. The two volume set will be essential reading for scholars and students in Chinese Studies, Political Science, Rural Studies, and those who are interested in the rural reconstruction of China in general.

In this book, a celebration of the work of the sociologist Peter Dickens serves as the catalyst for exploring the relationship between human 'internal nature' (our health and psychological well-being) and 'external nature' (the environment on which we depend and which we collectively transform). Across contributions from Ted Benton, James Ormrod, Kate Soper, John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark, Graham Sharp, James Addicott, Kathryn Dean and Peter Dickens himself, the book draws attention to alienation associated with the promotion of different knowledges in late capitalist production. But it also highlights the possibilities for generating less alienated relations with our environment in the future. As well as discussing the philosophical and theoretical issues involved, the book contains contemporary case studies of ultra-processed food, satellite farming, computerised thinking and dark tourism.

This open access book presents a comparative analysis of intergroup relations and migrant integration at the neighbourhood level in Europe. Featuring a unique collection of portraits of urban relations between the majority population and immigrant minorities, it examines how relations are structured and evolve in different and increasingly diverse local societies. Inside, readers will find a coordinated set of ethnographic studies conducted in eleven neighbourhoods of five European cities: London, Barcelona, Budapest, Nuremberg, and Turin. The wide-ranging coverage encompasses post-industrial districts struggling to counter decline, vibrant super-diverse areas, and everything in between. Featuring highly contextualised, cross-disciplinary explorations presented within a solid comparative framework, this book considers such questions as: Why does the native-immigrant split become a tense boundary in some neighbourhoods of some European cities but not in others? To what extent are ethnically framed conflicts driven by site-specific factors or instead by broader, exogenous ones? How much does the structure of urban spaces count in fuelling inter-ethnic tensions and what can local policy communities do to prevent this? The answers it provides are based on a multi-layer approach which combines in-depth analysis of intergroup relations with a strong attention towards everyday categorization processes, media representations, and narratives on which local policies are based. Even though the relations between the majority and migrant minorities are a central topic, the volume also offers readers a broader perspective of social and urban transformation in contemporary urban settings. It provides insightful research on migration and urban studies as well as social dynamics that scholars and students around the world will find relevant. In addition, policy makers will find evidence-based and practically relevant lessons for the governance of increasingly diverse and mobile societies.

This book highlights China's engagement with Africa through trade, investment and financial linkages. Its three main goals are as follows: firstly, to provide insights into Chinese FDI in Africa, by exploring a range of infrastructural projects and several countries' historical, geographical, socio-political, cultural and economic backgrounds; secondly, to present the main double taxation treaties with Beijing and country profiles of the African economies; and lastly, to provide a valuable business guide for recognizing and capitalizing on new opportunities in Afro-Eurasia.

Air Travel Fiction and Film: Cloud People explores how, over the past four decades, fiction and film have transformed our perceptions and representations of contemporary air travel. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the book provides a comprehensive analysis of a wide range of international cultural productions, and elucidates the paradigms and narratives that constitute our current imaginary of air mobility. Erica Durante advances the hypothesis that fiction and film have converted the Airworld-the world of airplanes and airport infrastructures-into a pivotal anthropological place that is endowed with social significance and identity, suggesting that the assimilation of the sky into our cultural imaginary and lifestyle has metamorphosed human society into "Cloud People." In its examination of the representations of air travel as an epicenter of today's world, the book not only illustrates a novel perspective on contemporary fiction, but fills an important gap in the study of globalization within literary and film studies.

This volume addresses renewable energy communities, and in particular renewable energy cooperatives (REScoops), in the context of the revised EU Renewables Directive. It provides a comprehensive account of the history and development of the renewable energy community movement in over six different countries of continental Europe. It addresses their visions, strategy, organisation, agency, and more particularly the challenges they encounter. This is of particular importance to gain more understanding into how renewable energy communities fare in domestic energy markets where they are confronted with regime institutions, structures and incumbents' agency that tend to favour maintaining of the status quo while blocking attempts to empower and institutionalise renewable energy communities as market entrants having a disruptive, radical green and localist agenda. This volume will be an invaluable reference for academics and practitioners with an interest in social innovation in sustainable transitions, the role of community energy in energy markets, their agency, as well as an outlook to the impact that the EU Renewables Directive may have to change national legislation and policy frameworks to create a level playing field that is essentially more fair and beneficial to renewable energy communities.

This volume draws together scholarly contributions from diverse, yet interlinking disciplinary fields, with the aim of critically examining the value of narrative inquiry in understanding the everyday lives of children and young people in diverse spaces and places, including the home, recreational spaces, communities and educational spaces. Incorporating insights from sociology, geography, education, child and youth studies, social care, and social work, the collection emphasises how narrative research approaches present storytelling as a universally recognizable, valuable and effective methodological approach with children and young people. The chapters points to the diversity of spaces and places encountered by children and young people, considers how young people 'tell tales' about their lives and highlights the multidimensionality of narrative research in capturing their everyday lived experiences.

Social scientists have generally remained impervious to a major economic and cultural adaptation--namely, the peripatetic lifestyle--although this adaptation has been an integral part of developments within the socioeconomic and cultural networks that social scientists study. This lack of interest derives perhaps from the ambiguous integration of peripatetics into these networks as well as the often negatively charged constructs -Gypsies, outsiders, or marginal others--imposed on peripatetics by dominant cultures. As peddlers of the strange to borrow a phrase from Clifford Geertz, peripatetics are situated at the fringes of their host societies and many students of the social ecological and behavioral sciences still continue to overlook the roles of peripatetic peoples.

This collection presents the latest in cross-cultural comparative research on the nature of peripatetic peoples. Contributors examine the place of peripatetic peoples in the everyday lives and diverse cognitive maps of client communities. Relying on Georg Simmel's construct of The Stranger, the contributors to this volume suggest that peripatetic peoples are simultaneously outsiders and insiders, but most important, they are entrepreneurial middlemen traders par excellence. All told, the essays provoke vital reassessments of the anthropological focus on the role and status of cultural brokers and go-betweens in political, economic, and social interactions.

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. This prescient book presents the intellectual terrain of shrinking cities while exploring the key research questions in each of the field?s sub-domains and reviewing the range of methodologies within these topics. The book begins with an introduction outlining what shrinking cities are and how they are researched, highlighting both the opportunities and challenges that arise in this field, including the big ideas any researcher must grapple with. The next six chapters are each devoted to a different sub-domain within shrinking cities, offering a quick overview of the topics, relevant problems, paradoxes and key research questions. The book concludes with a review of the major themes and, most importantly, looks toward the future, predicting and anticipating the most significant future research trends related to shrinking cities. This accessible and compelling Research Agenda will be of interest to researchers looking to move into this area, urban studies and planning instructors who are teaching research methods courses, and students studying or independently researching shrinking cities.

This book presents essential insights into lifelong learning and education in healthy and sustainable cities, providing a basis for strategies to help achieve the 2030 Agenda sustainable development and health promotion goals. The interface between environment, health and lifelong learning is fundamental to attaining these goals, and as such, the book gathers interdisciplinary reflections from researchers, educators and other experts concerning the links between environmental quality, human health, human education and well-being, and addressing inequality, unplanned urbanization, migration, lifestyles, and consumption and production patterns. Topics include: Urban planning to address inequality in health and urban poverty; Healthy cities and healthy environments; Governance for sustainable development; Social determinants of health oriented on sustainable development goals; Education and lifelong learning for sustainability; Energy security, access and efficiency; Sustainable cities, buildings and infrastructure.

This study examines the rise of the technopolis--high technology-based regional development. It explores how and why these regions emerged and the policies that have been devised to promote them. The rapid, propulsive growth of the technopolis in the 1960s and 1970s caught many people by surprise. Silicon Valley arose in an agricultural area; Route 128 in a stagnant manufacturing region. Throughout the rest of the world, a new generation of regional development policies have appeared, the most common ones being science parks, small business incubators, and venture capital funds. This book surveys these policies from a comparative, critical perspective. It also develops a theoretical framework for understanding why regional high-technology development occurs and the role policy can play in the process.

This work will be of interest to development planners and scholars in the fields of economic geography, development economics, and regional development.

A comprehensive analysis of the various terrestrial natural landscapes and habitats within Japan, and the efforts to sustain and conserve them and sustain landscape services. In 2011, Conservation International designated the Japanese islands collectively as one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. They are rich in biodiversity, but also densely populated and so human impacts have led to many species being classed as endangered though few have become extinct during recent decades. Sugimura evaluates the effects of landscape changes, government policies and economy on the forest ecosystems and services of Japan. He then contemplates how a rich variety of wildlife species have been able to survive, albeit in limited numbers, despite the rapid expansion of Japanese economic activities in the 20th century. In addition, there appear to be correlations between uniqueness of biodiversity, types of landscape use and the attitudes of local communities towards natural landscapes. A vital introduction for international environmentalists, geographers and environmental scientists looking to understand Japan's unique ecosystems and their experiences with human activities.

An innovative contribution to the literature of cultural geography, this book explores the evolution of landscape--both material and symbolic--from the standpoint of the populations, cultures, and human decision-making processes that shape and give it meaning. Focusing on evolution, behavior, symbolism, and ecology, Norton offers a critique of the literature of cultural and social geography and articulates a framework of central issues that connect a wide range of theoretical approaches. In the first four chapters, Norton gives detailed consideration to both traditional and contemporary literature and methodologies and to the links between cultural geography and other social science concepts and analytical methods. The remaining chapters are concerned with the causes and consequences of cultural landscape evolution and the variables affecting it, including language, religion, politics, society, economy, and the physical environment. In addressing these areas of cultural geography, Norton promotes an approach that integrates the contributions of geography with those of anthropology, sociology, psychology, and history. His analysis provides a useful synthesis of the conceptual and empirical content of cultural geography and suggests promising new directions for research in the field. Norton's work will prove a valuable classroom and library resource for students and scholars in cultural and social geography and related areas of sociology and anthropology.

This book analyzes how climate change adaptation can be implemented at the community, regional and national level. Featuring a variety of case studies, it illustrates strategies, initiatives and projects currently being implemented across the world. In addition to the challenges faced by communities, cities and regions seeking to cope with climate change phenomena like floods, droughts and other extreme events, the respective chapters cover topics such as the adaptive capacities of water management organizations, biodiversity conservation, and indigenous and climate change adaptation strategies. The book will appeal to a broad readership, from scholars to policymakers, interested in developing strategies for effectively addressing the impacts of climate change.

In Europe, the emerging discipline of geodesign was earmarked by the first Geodesign Summit held in 2013 at the GeoFort, the Netherlands. Here researchers and practitioners from 28 different countries gathered to exchange ideas on how to merge the spatial sciences and design worlds. This book brings together experiences from this international group of spatial planners, architects, landscape designers, archaeologists, and geospatial scientists to explore the notion of 'Geodesign thinking', whereby spatial technologies (such as integrated 3D modelling, network analysis, visualization tools, and information dashboards) are used to answer 'what if' questions to design alternatives on aspects like urban visibility, flood risks, sustainability, economic development, heritage appreciation and public engagement. The book offers a single source of geodesign theory from a European perspective by first introducing the geodesign framework, then exploring various case studies on solving complex, dynamic, and multi-stakeholder design challenges. This book will appeal to practitioners and researchers alike who are eager to bring design analysis, intelligent planning, and consensus building to a whole new level.

This book presents possible alternatives and interpretations to the well established notion in the mostly western discourse on public space. The discourse on public space as understood in the democratic-rationalist tradition, when applied to the Singaporean public space, would offer much criticism but would not be adequate in identifying alternative processes that allow for transformative potentials in public space. Thus said, the objectives of this book are: 1. To develop a conceptual frame of reference to construct the discourse on Singapore public space 2. To form a preliminary model of Singapore public space through analyzing case studies 3. To understand the modes, methods of production and representation of these public spaces within the rapidly changing urban context 4. To situate these constructions of public space and its possible trajectories within the larger discourse on public space, and to examine the viability of such a construction and interpretive model of public space

This book offers an extended consideration of the fairground showfront. It combines archival material, contemporary examples of fairs, and a sustained theoretical engagement with influential philosophies of surface, including recent work by Avrum Stroll and Andrew Benjamin, as well as the nineteenth century author Gottfried Semper. Semper's work on the origin of architectural enclosure -formed from woven mats and carpets- anticipates the surface and material history of the showfront. Initial chapters introduce these philosophies, the evolution of showfronts, and the ways in which individual fairground rides and attractions are arranged to form an enclosing boundary for the whole fair. Later chapters focus on issues of spectacle and illusion, vast 'interior' spaces, atmosphere, crowds and surface effects. Informed by a wide range of work from other design and cultural studies, the book will be of interest to readers in these areas, as well as architecture and those curious about the fairground.

Cities and Spaces of Leadership investigates the interaction between leadership, leaders and spaces at various levels. It analyzes how spaces and places influence leaders and leadership, as well as how the presence, distribution, action, and concentration of leaders in spaces contribute to their transformation.

This study focuses on impacts of the environmental and socio-economic transformation on the indigenous people's livelihoods in Vietnam's Central Highlands recent decades since the country's reunification in 1975. The first empirical section sheds light on multiple external conditions (policy reforms, population trends, and market forces) exposed onto local people. The role of human and social capital is examined again in a specific livelihood of community-based tourism to testify the resilience level of local people when coping with constraints. The study concludes with an outlook on implications of development processed which still places agriculture at the primary position livelihood, and pays attention to human capital and social capital of indigenous groups in these highlands.

An empirical account of one of India's largest indigenous populations, this book tells the story of the Gonds-who currently face displacement and governmental control of the region's forests, which has crippled their economy. Rather than protesting and calling for state intervention, the Gonds have turned toward an informal economy: they not only engage with flexible forms of work, but also bargain for higher wages and experience agency and autonomy. Smita Yadav conceives of this withdrawal from the state in favour of precarious forms of work as an expression of anarchy by this marginalized population. Even as she provides rich detail of the Gonds' unusual working lives, which integrate work, labour, and debt practices with ideologies of family and society, Yadav illustrates the strength required to maintain dignity when a welfare state has failed.

This book approaches the concept of geo-architecture from the perspective of functions of architectures by analyzing the cases of traditional Chinese houses and tombs as well as palaces and places of worship. Houses and tombs, the 'Yang' dwellings and 'Yin' dwellings of human beings in traditional Chinese interpretation, are the two types of architectures that reveal the wisdom with which different ethnic groups adapted to different geographic environments at different times throughout the long history. Palaces are connected with various religious architectures throughout the Chinese history. The connection between imperial power and religion, along with its geographic and cultural connotations, are implicated in the pattern and layout of religious and imperial architectures. This book is the second of a 4-volume book series. The series develops the innovative concept of "geo-architecture" by exploring the myriad influences of natural, human and historical factors upon architecture. These influences are considered in three categories, namely, interaction between architecture and nature, interaction between architecture and its human users and change in architecture over time--each category serves as a lens. Augmenting these lenses is the Time-Person-Place concept applied different geographic. The analysis ultimately focuses on two aspects: geographic influence on architecture and architectural response to geography. The over 1000 pictures of case architectures enriches the study with stunning and unique visual angles. "This unprecedented work will be a unique and valuable contribution to the literature. Integrating as it does the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, and geography, Wang Fang's voice is original, compelling, and will be much appreciated by English-speaking readers (and inside China, too, I can only imagine.)"Stephen M Ervin Assistant Dean Graduate School of Design, Harvard University July 2nd, 2013 "One reason for why there would be interest is because her research would fill some significant gaps in the literature.What is novel about Dr. Wang's series is that she further extends this intellectual project of looking at Chinese architecture through Chinese eyes, by taking it one provocative step further."Annette M. Kim Associate Professor Department of Urban Studies and Planning, M.I.T. July 1st, 2013