Social Work and Sustainable Development: Local Voices from Mauritius

Abstract

Sustainable development is much more than an ecological and economic concern; it requires social workers to analyse and understand its impact on the broader social and cultural aspects of human life. Mauritius has been branded as ‘Maurice Ile Durable’ (Sustainable Mauritius) by its current government. Within this context, Mauritian social workers are often called upon to engage in sustainable development programs through community empowerment and development activities. This article uses the eco-critical social work theoretical approach to analyse a subset of qualitative data generated by a larger study conducted in 2008 and 2011, which included focus groups and semistructured interviews. Based on the findings of this research, the article focuses on discourses related to concepts such as control, power, and exploitation. It considers three areas as influential to eco-critical social work in Mauritius: antioppressive practice, promotion of social justice, and critical thinking by exploring related concepts such as control, power, and exploitation. The author concludes that within the context of sustainable development more attention should be paid to promoting social justice through tackling the marginalisation and oppression of certain sections of its population.     

Sub-National State Institutions and the Organization of Agricultural Resource Use: The Case of the Dairy Industry1

Abstract Most studies of state/economy relationships focus on national and global institutions and minimize the importance of local, sub-national institutions. This lack of attention to sub-national states also characterizes most of the studies that examine the role of the state in the structure of agriculture. On the other hand, calls for a new type of sustainable agriculture argue that this type of economic system will be embedded in local political institutions. The nature of these local institutions, however, has gone largely unanalyzed. Through a comparative historical analysis of sub-national state intervention in the regional economic structure of the U.S. dairy industry in the New Deal era, this analysis shows how state dairy policy has reflected sub-national interest group politics surrounding food, agriculture, and rural land use. Sub-national states responded to the agricultural crisis of the 1930s by spatially reorganizing agricultural resource use within their territories. The three states examined—New York, Wisconsin, and California—influenced the resource intensiveness of dairy agriculture by managing the spatially segmented boundaries that separated resource-intensive and low-resource dairy production systems.     

China: Facing the Challenges to Link Climate Change Responses with Sustainable Development and Local Environmental Protection

This article is based on the strategic-relational approach developed by Bob Jessop and investigates the contested privatization of the Mexican oil industry. Privatization has been rampant all over Latin America throughout the 1980s and 1990s. There are, however, some important exceptions from this general trend towards privatization which go widely unnoticed within the academic debate. The Mexican oil sector is one such exception as steps towards its privatization have been undertaken since the 1980s but until today ownership-rights for the enterprise remain with the Mexican state.

The strategic-relational approach assumes that despite the pressure exercised by a post-Fordist accumulation regime towards privatization, the contingent interaction of actor strategies and institutions allows for alternative historical paths and may lead to the collapse of privatization processes. In order to conduct a detailed case study, an operationalization of the strategic-relational approach is necessary. Following this path, virgin soil is entered as date only a few attempts have been made to operationalize strategic-relational categories.

The case study of the privatization conflict over the Mexican oil industry reveals that in this specific case decisive resistance against privatization stems from the Ministry of Finance, which is normally considered the most important institutional basis of neoliberalism in Mexico.

Este artículo se basa en el enfoque relacional estratégico desarrollado por Bob Jessop, e investiga la controvertida privatización de la industria petrolera mexicana. Durante los años 80 y 90, la privatización ha sido dominante en toda Latinoamérica. Sin embargo, hay algunas excepciones importantes de esta tendencia general hacia la privatización, que han pasado desapercibidas en el debate académico. El sector petrolero mexicano hace parte de tal excepción, en la medida que los pasos hacia la privatización se iniciaron en los años 80, pero los derechos de propiedad de la empresa son del estado mexicano. El enfoque estratégico relacional asume que, a pesar de la presión ejercida por un régimen de acumulación hacia la privatización posterior a Ford, la interacción contingente entre las estrategias del actor y las instituciones permiten vías históricas alternas y pueden conducir al colapso de los procesos de privatización. Con el fin de llevar a cabo un estudio detallado del caso, es necesario adoptar un enfoque operacional de las relaciones estratégicas. Continuando con esta idea, hasta la fecha, muy poco se ha hecho para establecer categorías relacionales estratégicas de operación, ejemplo, las tierras vírgenes. El estudio del caso del conflicto de la privatización de la industria petrolera mexicana, revela que en este caso específico, la resistencia a la privatización del petróleo se origina en el Ministerio de Hacienda, considerado como la base institucional más importante del neoliberalismo en México.

本文是以鲍勃·杰索普所发展的战略-关系路径为基础,考察有争议的墨西哥石油工业私有化。在整个20世纪80年代和90年代,私有化在全拉美盛行。然而,在这一私有化的大趋势中,也存在一些重要的例外,它们在学术辩论中未受关注。墨西哥石油部门就是这样一个例外,因墨西哥石油部门的私有化20世纪80年代即开始着手,但至今公司的所有权仍掌握在国家手中。

战略-关系路径假定,尽管后福特主义的资本积累机制对私有化施加了压力,但行为体战略与机构之间有条件的互动提供了可供选择的历史路径,并可能导致私有化进程的瓦解。为了进行详细的案例研究,对战略-关系路径进行操作化是必要的。沿着这条路径,把未开垦的土地纳入了进来,因迄今为止只进行了个别尝试把战略-关系分类可操作化。

对墨西哥石油工业的私有化冲突案例研究表明,在这一特定例子中,反对私有化的决定性阻力来自通常被认为是墨西哥新自由主义最重要制度基础的财政部。     

广州构建区域品牌文化的策略研究——基于可持续发展的视角

文化的可持续发展的道路,只能是也必须是从传统走向现代,是承传和发展,是推陈和出新。发现与认定自己的独特所在,才能建构品牌。品牌文化实质上就是在弘扬创新的时代精神,是为了推进城市主体的现代化,是普及文化的价值观成为市民共识的一种策略。     

Social Capital,Organic Agriculture,and Sustainable Livelihood Security: Rethinking Agrarian Change in Mexico*

Abstract This paper explores the relevance of extra local market linkages and local‐level social capital to sustainable livelihood outcomes in two agrarian communities on Mexico's Baja Peninsula. Contextualized by the specificity of Mexico's transition from state‐directed rural development to neoliberally‐guided rural development in the 1990s, findings suggest that market linkages can intersect with pre‐existing social capital to both create new and destroy preexisting social capital, thus shaping the direction of development and inequality outcomes. The nature of a community's social fabric is often a result of long‐standing historical legacies. In the communities presented, the quantity and quality of social capital was intricately connected to their history of state‐sponsored or market agriculture; the nature of local institutions, with particular emphasis on the formation and evolution of the ejido; and the access to and availability of natural resources, namely land and water, which are both intricately connected to market access options. Moving beyond a simple demonstration that social capital matters, this analysis explores the complex and dynamic interaction between local‐level social capital and extralocal market linkages. In doing so, it contributes to the larger debate on how the historical legacy of populist reforms and the social and political institutions created during state populism have nuanced the trajectory of neoliberal development in Mexico.     

少数人的可持续发展：绿色城市发展与居民住房支付能力探析

不少旨在改善旧城空间的棕地开发项目和重建项目,都将可持续发展列为明确的目标。然而问题的关键是,这些重建项目的好处是否公平地分配到原有的社会成员或者街坊手中,或者,是否以牺牲现有居民和商贩的利益和现有社区的多样性为代价,使新搬来的高收入住户获得更多好处？加拿大维多利亚市棕地开发的案例分析,为本文所探讨的由棕地开发引发的收入差异问题提供了例证。第二个案例研究了多伦多的社区,指出在已有的社区内进行可持续发展项目,并不能确保维持和鼓励现有的社会多样性和公平性。英属哥伦比亚省温哥华市Downtown Eastside的一系列填空性建设项目也证实了类似的趋势,即它们对周边社区产生了很大影响,而且事实上给可持续发展带来了反作用。因此,可持续发展与社区中产化及高档化之间的关系比我们想象的更加复杂。     

Local Dependency,Land Use Attitudes,and Economic Development: Comparisons between Seasonal and Permanent Residents1

Abstract For many rural communities in the United States, tourists and retirees make a major contribution to the local economy. The role of recreational home ownership in these communities is not well understood. We examine the attitudes toward land use controls and local economic development among seasonal and permanent residents. We compare growth machine and local dependency theory explanations for support of land use controls and growth activities. Based on focus groups and survey data collected from seasonal and permanent residents of a northern Wisconsin county, we find that full-time (permanent) residents are much more supportive of local economic development activities and less likely to favor land use planning than are seasonal residents. Socioeconomic differences between seasonal and permanent residents do not explain away the variation between the two groups in these attitudes. Among seasonal residents, support for land use controls declines as they spend more time at their lake homes. The results tend to support Cox and Mair's local dependency thesis.     

Changing Institutions to Protect Regional Heritage: A Case for Geographical Indications in the Indian Agrifood Sector

Geographical Indications have evolved in recent years to protect indigenous knowledge in the agrifood sector without hampering the ethos of free trade. Supporters regard them as useful tools for protecting national property rights and offering new export opportunities, while opponents consider them as barriers to trade. This article provides theoretical justifications for them, based on insights from the New Institutional Economics, and cites Darjeeling tea and Basmati rice as Indian examples highlighting some of their dynamic institutional aspects. The new legal framework for GIs is mainly based on the international level.     

Oil Tourism: Disasters and Destinations in Ecuador and the Philippines*

This article examines the links between the petroleum and tourism industries by analyzing how an oil disaster, whether actual or perceived, may attract nature‐based tourism interests. To better understand the role of communities, local governments and/or the media in establishing links between the petroleum and tourism industries, this article explores how the construction of an oil pipeline in Ecuador and an oil spill in the Philippines created opportunities for tourism. Each case contributes to our understanding of how an oil disaster supports nature‐based tourism and how both industries supply a resource or an experience to nonlocal consumers, while converging to alter local communities, economies, and ecosystems. Indeed, tourism investments following a disaster may become a sideshow to the disaster that shifts attention from the disaster to participation in new economic opportunities. In addition, tourism may represent ecological alterations, which are more subtle, yet as damaging, as an oil disaster. The proposed model is then applied to two additional cases, the Exxon Valdez oil spill and Hurricane Katrina, to test its use in understanding other postdisaster developments.     

Cooperatives and Community Development: A Perspective on the Use of Cooperatives in Development

Community developers have long understood the importance of local participation in the events and processes that shape communities. Effective, democratic, and people-and-place-centered development strategies have the potential to achieve such participation. This article suggests that cooperatives can be an effective participatory strategy to bootstrap low-income people into the socio-economic mainstream. Woolcock and Narayan's (2000) social capital and poverty transition model is adapted to demonstrate the development potential of cooperative businesses. We hope to stimulate discussion among community development scholars and practitioners, policymakers, and the public on the potential of cooperative business as a community development strategy, particularly in resource limited communities.     

Children,Poverty and the Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) came into force in January 2016, taking over from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Significant human development progress has occurred in recent decades. Nevertheless, the MDGs have been criticised not least for failing to prioritise inequality and gains for the poorest people. The SDGs create a much more comprehensive agenda and support many key child rights concerns. While SDGs reflect an important global consensus, their delivery depends upon national action.     

Assessing the Regional Economic Impact of Higher Education Institutions: An Application to the University of Cardiff

I evaluate the regional and local economic impact of the University of Cardiff, dividing its effects into two major sides: expenditure impacts and knowledge impacts. I review the major tools and methodologies available in the literature to assess the two sides. The expenditure impact in the financial year 2000–2001 is measured through a Keynesian multiplier model developed by the Centre for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, Cardiff University, in order to compare that same impact in the 1994–1995 financial year. The university’s knowledge impact is assessed through two main variables: (1) employment and destination of graduates, or people impact, and (2) kind of knowledge produced. Cardiff University’s graduates enjoy full-employment, and according to our conceptual framework, Cardiff’s higher education system is classified as “nonactive” positional competition and “social” knowledge production.      

Southeastern Women's Involvement in Sustainable Development Efforts: Their Roles and Concerns

Summary

Sustainable development takes into account the social and economic needs of people in communities, as well as the urgent concerns for environmental protection. Women's roles in sustainable development are of particular interest in light of the numerous environmentally related grassroots development initiatives taken by women throughout the world. In preparation for a participatory forum addressing women's roles in sustainable development, we conducted a survey among representatives from Southeastern grassroots organizations working on community development projects. The results indicate a sustainable development focus in grassroots women's development efforts, as well as a need for networking, skills training, and opportunities to share project experience.     

Local and Regional Governments and Age-Friendly Communities: A Case Study of the San Francisco Bay Area

The purpose of this study was to assess the extent to which cities, county departments of adult and aging services, county transportation authorities, and public transit agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area have in place age-friendly policies, programs, and infrastructure in the areas of community design, housing, transportation, health care and supportive services, and opportunities for community engagement. The most common age-friendly features include those that target alternative forms of mobility (for example, incentives for mixed-use neighborhoods and changes to improve the accessibility of public transit), while the least common policies and programs are those that aim to help older adults continue driving, such as driver education programs, driver assessment programs, and slow-moving vehicle ordinances. The article concludes with policy and research implications of these findings.     

上海城市用水的可持续发展对策

介绍上海城市水资源概况、2010年需水量发展预测、新水源开发计划及加强用水管理