Search results

The study aims to highlight and reflect on resistance to Brazil's illiberal accelerationist politics highlighting alternative possibilities based on affects and forms of relatedness.

Drawing on the case of public universities and the arts in today's Brazil, the authors point out a tragedy of resistance (when opposing change fuels its acceleration) and explore a strategy of lines of flight and becomings in the light of Deleuze and Guattari's perspective on acceleration.

Alongside an oppositional and reactive resistance, that is caught in a tragedy of resistance, the authors explore an alternative strategy that protects a plurality of life forms and forces and their becoming. This strategy differs from most critiques of accelerationism.

This strategy of resistance seems more faithful to Deleuze than the accelerationist strategies that claim to be inspired by him. The authors suggest another reading of the often quoted passage by Deleuze and Guattari. While Deleuze and Guattari favor continuous deterritorializations of the flows of desire, accelerationism reterritorializes these flows towards a (often) undesirable future.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate compensation and related welfare issues in the case of the expropriation of land for urban redevelopment in China.

A mixed methods quantitative and qualitative approach was selected to undertake the research. This involved a wide ranging qualitative review of the academic and policy literature to explore the relevant arguments and issues, combined with a quantitative regression analysis of survey data collected from research subjects.

The research identified the complex and changeable phenomena of urban village redevelopment in China, and the variable compensation arrangements used. The research found that monthly family income before land expropriation, monthly family expense before expropriation, the location of the housing expropriation and family unit size are important determinants for the property holders chosen methods of compensation. It also found that an increase in family size leads to a decreasing probability that the expropriated farmers choose the single monetary compensation relative to the alternative option of housing compensation. The degree of satisfaction with compensation, changes in monthly family income and expense are found to be significant determinants for changes in life satisfaction.

The research made the following four recommendations based upon the qualitative and quantitative analysis: that local governments should pay closer governance/ political attention to changes in the welfare of the farmers/ villagers whose property has been expropriated; that central and local government should aim to improve the compensation system for rural land and property expropriation, to make the compensation policy be perceived as fairer and more reasonable by citizens; that a broad National standard of compensation be used within a pragmatic locally focussed regime; that the Chinese Central, Provincial and Local governments can devise improved policy tools and make more effective policy interventions by learning from the experiences (both successes and failures) of other countries approaches to this topic. It also suggested that further research be undertaken investigating the multitude of local level policy experiments, as a way of developing better National compensation standards based upon those compensation standards that appear to be working – and have citizen support – at the local level.

The literature review identified recent developments in Chinese urban studies and originally synthesised both recent and longstanding work on the issue of urban villages in China. The research also suggested changes to the National and Local legal and policy framework for compensation cases in urban redevelopment expropriation scenarios.

Climate change impacts tend to coalesce with everyday vulnerability and affect different socio-economic groups in different ways. In this regard, this study aims to contribute to studies that make gender critical to understanding the way that climate change is experienced. Socially constructed gender differences have a bearing on the extent of exposure to climatic shocks, leading to various patterns of vulnerability to these shocks.

This study uses both qualitative and quantitative methodologies to collect data.

The study finds that there is an inherent potential within the study area for equal opportunities for both men and women to address levels of vulnerability to climatic shocks and, by implication, potential to challenge patriarchal structures that tend to characterize these study areas. The contextualization of gender analysis remains elusive in the face of increasingly shifting gender roles that traditionally defined women as victims to everyday vulnerability and more recently in conjunction with climatic shocks.

In this regard, this research contributes to emerging perspectives on the potential role of ‘woman as heroine’ and challenges the perception of ‘woman as victim’ in environmental management. Considerations for mainstreaming adaptation responses to climate change do not necessarily have to consider women as a special social group in isolation but, rather, implications for both men and women and caution that embeddedness remains key for gender considerations in any rural context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the politics involved in local struggles against forestry extractivism. The forestry sector is dependent on vast areas of land for tree plantations. This creates deep-rooted conflicts between global corporations that seek access to natural resources and locals whose way of life requires the use of the same land.

This study draws on a political ontology frame of reference and storytelling methodology to build on testimonies of three small-scale farmers who actively seek to resist forestry plantations next to their land in rural Uruguay. The stories reveal the impossibilities they face when raising claims in the public political sphere and how they lack the means to organise strong collective resistance.

One of the testimonies reveals how the farmers engage in a form of “politics of place” (Escobar, 2001, 2008) to counter the power of the proponents of forestry and the further expansion of plantations. This form of politics strengthens and politicises the ontological difference between extractive and non-extractive worlds. The farmers seek to build new imaginations of rural living and sustainable futures without the presence of extractive corporations. They fulfil this aim by designing community projects that aim to revitalise ancient indigenous legends, set up agro-ecological farms, and teach schoolchildren about the environment.

The struggles of the farmers indicate the territorial transformations involved in (un)making (non)extractive places and the need to expand the analysis of the politics involved in struggles against extractivism beyond social struggles.

Over the period, the role of finance has emerged significant in the socio-economic development of the women. There are two major types of finances, i.e. formal and informal ones. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate first the determinants of the demand for credit and then the demand for these credit sources by women especially in urban slums.

In this study, a primary survey was conducted with the help of a structured questionnaire in slums of two major urban cities in India, i.e. Delhi and Mumbai. In total, 450 individuals were interviewed in each city.

This paper presents a range of significant socio-economic factors affecting the demand for credit and source of credit by women borrower in Delhi and Mumbai. Despite, the greater emphasis by the government to increase the formal credit utilization, the informal credit is still preferred.

The outcomes of the study are expectedly useful to various policymakers and banks in encouraging women to opt more for the formal credit. The government can follow the research outcomes to scale up the programmes and schemes targeted for women empowerment in urban slums.

The study is unique of its kind in doing a comparative analysis in slums of two differently located urban cities with large slum population.

The aim of the article is to elucidate the political factors which motivated Zimbabwe's land reform that was forcibly initiated by the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) government in 2000.

The research makes use of primary and secondary sources. The government of Zimbabwe parliamentary debates highlight the grievances raised by the people over land redistribution as early as 1980. The newspapers, internet and published material provide evidence pointing out to the political nature of the land reform.

It is apparent that the ZANU PF government was reluctant to address the land question despite the fact that many rural people were crowded in the reserves. It was in 2000 that ZANU PF awakened to its waning popularity after the referendum defeat which coincided with the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in 1999. Land reform was used as a political weapon to thwart the MDC as evidenced by the brutal suppression of MDC activities countrywide.

The research proves that the victimisation of MDC members in Zimbabwe has made opposition politics a disastrous game. Starting in 2000, ZANU PF embarked on a mission to thwart opposition activism and the effects were deeply felt. Paramilitary groups such as the Second Chimurenga war veterans, Border Gezi “youths” and ZANU PF supporters took the lead in torturing and killing real and alleged MDC supporters. The MDC retaliated but with very limited success.

The paper provides unique insights into the political motives which encouraged Zimbabwe's land reform programme. The implications for practice provided herein are useful for policy makers in the country.

This discussion forwards a political economy framework for the analysis of the role and impact of political intervention on the process and outcome of environmental conflicts. The proposed analytic approach, advocated by the class‐centric state perspective, focuses on the economic roots of political action in conflict situations. The paper provides a critique of the existing analytic approaches to conflict analysis. The paper also offers a brief account of Hawaii's land use policy and history of land‐related environmental conflicts to illustrate the potential of the political economy approach.

As ethnic diversity is regarded as a determinant of growth, this study engages in an analysis of diversity as the forte behind better economic performance and where social stability of a nation is necessary to achieve growth. While these factors alone may not be sufficient to achieve growth and maintain social harmony, domestic institutions and good governance are regarded as vital factors.

Differential performances of diverse ethnic groups are most influential contributions of social capital and its growth impact. In this framework there is a larger role of aid to provide security to a nation to achieve its development objectives. An evaluation of ethnic diversity and land issues in Fiji is undertaken with concerns of a market economy, policies and governance.

An examination of the opposing nature of ethnic diversity and land issues in Fiji provides an insight not only of ethnic conflict, but also of the role of aid to solve conflict. A discussion on ethnicity and being equal in the market relates to the reason for equality before identity. The analysis indicates the role foreign aid can play to achieve stability and avoid ethnic conflict for growth in Fiji.

The paper indicates the global issues of inequality and conflict and policy implications for Fiji and the nations facing such problems and aid donors’ role for growth and development.

This paper aims to report on subalterns' emancipatory accounting (SEA) embedded in transformation of governance and accountability structures (GAS) in Ceylon Tea.

The paper draws on James Scott's political anthropology to examine how subalterns' resistance and emancipatory accounting triggers structural transformations.

An attempt is made to theorise subaltern resistance as a form of emancipatory accounting. Concerning the commentaries that accounting has been to suppress or hegemonise the subalterns and appreciating the analysis of indigenous resistance implicated in emancipatory potential, this paper examines how a distinct subaltern group in Ceylon Tea deployed their own weapons towards the changes in GAS.

The accounting literature neglects how subalterns reconstruct governance and accountability structures: this paper introduces a social accounting perspective on resistance, control and structural transformations. Also, it introduces to accounting researchers James Scott's political anthropology as an alternative framework.

A tax based on land value is in many ways ideal, but many economists dismiss it by assuming it could not raise enough revenue. Standard sources of data omit much of the potential tax base, and undervalue what they do measure. The purpose of this paper is to present more comprehensive and accurate measures of land rents and values, and several modes of raising revenues from them besides the conventional property tax.

The paper identifies 16 elements of land's taxable capacity that received authorities either trivialize or omit. These 16 elements come in four groups.

In Group A, Elements 1‐4 correct for the downward bias in standard sources. In Group B, Elements 5‐10 broaden the concepts of land and rent beyond the conventional narrow perception, while Elements 11‐12 estimate rents to be gained by abating other kinds of taxes. In Group C, Elements 13‐14 explain how using the land tax, since it has no excess burden, uncaps feasible tax rates. In Group D, Elements 15‐16 define some moot possibilities that may warrant further exploration.

This paper shows how previous estimates of rent and land values have been narrowly limited to a fraction of the whole, thus giving a false impression that the tax capacity is low. The paper adds 14 elements to the traditional narrow “single tax” base, plus two moot elements advanced for future consideration. Any one of these 16 elements indicates a much higher land tax base than economists commonly recognize today. Taken together they are overwhelming, and cast an entirely new light on this subject.