Suchergebnisse

The article focuses on the transformation of gender roles and concepts of the Bolivian Aymara. It analyses gender‐specific participation in a rural institution, the so‐called thakhi or 'path of duties', which manifests the cosmological structure that provides the cultural context of gender relations in Aymara society. It guides and reflects human behaviour based on cultural norms. However, ongoing mobility in the context of migration has led to translocally organised lives that are shaped by different horizons of local experience. The example of an evangelical preacher illustrates how established concepts may change in this context.

This dissertation shows the contribution human geography can make to social science research on climate change. The central question is how the conceptialization of space and spatial categories changes in the face of climate change debates. First, a number of traditional spatial registers in human geography (place, region and landscape) are discussed and it is asked what role those categories play in scientific debates, as well as political and media accounts of climate change. The historical development of the conceptualization of those categories is sketched out and it is argued that in all of them, relational and constructivist perspectives have gained importance in recent years. In a second step, spatial aspects are discussed in the context of two thematic areas, vulnerability and security, and are demonstrated with the help of four articles that are part of the dissertation. Here, places and regions are characterized as medium and outcome of power-laden social processes. In a last step, it is argued that the translocality approach can help establishing critical human geographical inquiry in climate change research.

"This collection brings together a variety of anthropological, historical and sociological case studies from Central Asia and the Caucasus to examine the concept of translocality. The chapters scrutinize the capacity of translocality to describe, in new ways, the multiple mobilities, exchange practices and globalizing processes that link places, people and institutions in Central Asia and the Caucasus with others in Russia, China and the United Arab Emirates. Illuminating translocality as a productive concept for studying cross-regional connectivities and networks, this volume is an important contribution to a lively field of academic discourse. Following new directions in Area Studies, the chapters aim to overcome 'territorial containers' such as the nation-state or local community, and instead emphasize the significance of processes of translation and negotiation for understanding how meaningful localities emerge beyond conventional boundaries. Structured by the four themes 'crossing boundaries', 'travelling ideas', 'social and economic movements' and 'pious endeavours', this volume proposes three conceptual approaches to translocality: firstly, to trace how it is embodied, narrated, virtualized or institutionalized within or in reference to physical or imagined localities; secondly, to understand locality as a relational concept rather than a geographically bounded unit; and thirdly, to consider cross-border traders, travelling students, business people and refugees as examples of non-elite mobilities that provide alternative ways to think about what 'global' means today. Mobilities, Boundaries, and Travelling Ideas will be of interest to students and scholars of the anthropology, history and sociology of Central Asia and the Caucasus, as well as for those interested in new approaches to Area Studies."

The reverse migration of workers at the beginning of the first lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic forcefully crystalised underlying issues such as poverty, hunger and the precarious lives of the working class in India's megacities. With the easing of lockdowns, workers are again on the move. Against this background, this article aims to examine and unpack the reasons that have shaped labour mobility during the ongoing pandemic. It uses the framework of mobility studies and translocality which provide a strong analytical framework to understand linkages between rural and urban areas. In the process, the article highlights the politics associated with the mobility of workers. It draws on a case study of a peripheral industrial region of Delhi known as Narela. After briefly situating the study in the historicity of Narela with respect to the Industrial Relocation Policy of Delhi and resettlement of bastis, it highlights the lived experiences of the working-class population during and after the first lockdown of the pandemic. Based on detailed in-depth telephonic interviews, the article reiterates the crucial relationship between spatially stretched social reproduction and the social embeddedness of workers which suggests that there are a host of factors affecting workers' mobility.

The article is devoted to some aspects of studying the wedding in modern Dagestan through the prism of the problem of mobility in the fate of the Dagestan rural community. Using the example of the author's materials on migration from the Republic of Dagestan to some regions of Western Siberia (Khanty-Mansiysk and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug), the author studies the degree of influence of translocal elements of the way of life, characteristic of many Dagestan rural communities, on the mobility practices associated with the wedding ritual complex, and also indirectly related to this complex economic and social strategies of the Dagestanis. The article shows how the main stages of the wedding are translocated - mainly, the choice of a marriage partner, pre-wedding events and the location of the wedding itself. It is also of interest how the wedding determines the practices of regular and occasional mobility of migrants and their fellow villagers, the speed of movement between the sending and receiving communities and the decision-making about these movements. It also shows the significant role of Internet communication in modifying wedding practices.

Investigating the multi-layered mobility of Southeast Asian irregular farm workers in rural Taiwan, this article examines the formation of their mobility in a physical, geographical, occupational and socio-economic sense. Focusing on frequent movement in these four aspects, this article coins the term 'fettered mobility' for workers' constant relocation in the villages' informal farm labour market. In tandem with the focus of this Special Issue on the ongoing transformations of migration at the crossroad between the legal, social and economic obstacles dictated by nation states and the market, and new patterns of movement, this article shows how 'fettered mobility' is an unintentional result of the Taiwanese state's mobility regime, which regulates foreign nationals' mobility by categorizing a hierarchical legal status. Fettered mobility is facilitated by the translocal migrant community constituted by the co-ethnic link between migrant workers and migrant spouse farmers, and also by the inter-ethnic link between the migrant community on the one hand and Taiwanese farmers and unlicensed brokers on the other. When migration is reconfiguring at a global, regional and local scale, fettered mobility is an assemblage in which the state, market and individual amalgamate into a networked, mobile, irregular and precarious labour force in which unprotected migrant workers are vulnerable to the state's power to repatriate. Repatriation is an omnipresent threat, and anyone who knows of a migrant worker's fettered mobility can put an end to their migration. Presenting fettered mobility as an assemblage, this article enriches the ongoing debate on the relationship between mobility and immobility and underlines its conditionality and instability.

AbstractChinese economic reforms have profoundly changed the scale at which things get done. Much of the existing literature on scale has concentrated on the politics of rescaling from above. Less has been written about rescaling initiatives from below, the focus of this study. It distinguishes three important localisms.Local capitalismstreats capitalism as subordinate to local social and political processes that provide crucial conditions of existence.Local citizenshipsees processes of entitlement and exclusion as accomplished locally rather than through national frameworks.Translocalitydescribes the ways in which claims are made on the loyalties of those possessing capital but residing elsewhere and the promotion of the place through image‐building and physical/social infrastructural enhancements. These three distinct localisms overlap and interact in a variety of ways to shape a new social and spatial order in post‐reform China. A detailed study of the practices of localism in the Dongguan city‐region reveals the ways in which the emergence of capitalism has been dependent on pre‐existing social connections and based on villages and townships. The entitlements of citizenship are polarized between the localhukoupopulation and the migrant workers irrespective of the national definition of social safety net and regardless of the physical presence of the individuals.RésuméEn Chine, les réformes économiques ont profondément modifié l'échelon auquel les choses se font. Les publications traitant de cet aspect se consacrent en général aux politiques de redimensionnement venues des instances supérieures, et abordent plus rarement les initiatives venues d'en bas, objets de cette étude. Cette dernière distingue trois localismes importants:les capitalismes locaux, le capitalisme apparaissant subordonné aux processus sociaux et politiques locaux qui déterminent les conditions d'existence;la citoyenneté localepour qui les processus d'habilitation et d'exclusion s'effectuent au plan local et non en fonction de cadres nationaux;la translocalitéqui décrit comment est sollicitée la loyauté de ceux qui possèdent le capital mais résident ailleurs, et comment des projets de création d'image et d'infrastructure matérielle ou sociale dynamisent la promotion du lieu. Ces trois localismes se chevauchent et interagissent diversement, façonnant un nouvel ordre social et spatial dans la Chine de l'après‐réforme. Une étude détaillée du localisme pratiqué dans la ville de Dongguan fait apparaître les modalités d'un capitalisme émergent, dépendant des liens sociaux existants et basé sur des villages ou municipalités. L'accès à la citoyenneté définit un clivage entre la population locale ayant sonhukouet les travailleurs migrants, indépendamment de la notion nationale de filet de protection sociale ou de la présence physique des individus.