Suchergebnisse

René Véron's ethnographic account takes us through neighbourhoods and government offices in West Bengal and Gujarat to discuss multi-scalar environmental governance and to reflect on various urban geography concepts. His essay examines the role of local social structures and state authorities by looking at everyday interactions.

Development and environmental issues of small cities in developing countries have largely been overlooked although these settlements are of global demographic importance and often face a "triple challenge"; that is, they have limited financial and human resources to address growing environmental problems that are related to both development (e.g., pollution) and under-development (e.g., inadequate water supply). Neoliberal policy has arguably aggravated this challenge as public investments in infrastructure generally declined while the focus shifted to the metropolitan "economic growth machines". This paper develops a conceptual framework and agenda for the study of small cities in the global south, their environmental dynamics, governance and politics in the current neoliberal context. While small cities are governed in a neoliberal policy context, they are not central to neoliberalism, and their (environmental) governance therefore seems to differ from that of global cities. Furthermore, "actually existing" neoliberal governance of small cities is shaped by the interplay of regional and local politics and environmental situations. The approach of urban political ecology and the concept of rural-urban linkages are used to consider these socio-ecological processes. The conceptual framework and research agenda are illustrated in the case of India, where the agency of small cities in regard to environmental governance seems to remain limited despite formal political decentralization.

ABSTRACTIndia's oilseeds sector, which includes its coconut economy, experienced drastic changes in the wake of agricultural liberalization in the mid‐1990s. A persistent coconut crisis 'narrative' emerged after sharp price declines between 2000 and 2002 in which small farmers in the state of Kerala, India's main coconut producer, were identified as victims of the liberalized importation of cheap palm oil. This article describes this crisis narrative based on a literature review of academic and official reports, and challenges its problem analysis by juxtaposing it with information from ethnographic research with local farmers and traders. The research indicates that local labour shortages and increased regional competition also had a strong impact on Kerala's coconut market, production and processing, which varied from region to region. Furthermore, small farmers, with their diversified livelihoods, did not recognize a 'crisis' as such. Drawing upon the 'advocacy coalition framework', the article also indicates reasons for the emergence and persistence of the coconut crisis narrative and points to complex processes of restructuring social space in the age of globalization.

Thirty years after the death of Michel Foucault, notwithstanding the fact that his thought has profoundly shaped the contemporary reflection and contributed to move beyond structuralism, the Urban Political Ecology in general and the Urban Political Ecology of water in particular are still dominated by Marxist-inspired theoretical frameworks. This paper aims to provide a theoretical rationale for the development and implementation of a Foucauldian ap-proach to the UPE of water. We show how a Foucauldian approach could shed light on the hydro-social cycle and could be the basis of a specific form of scholarly political engagement.

The traditionally coercive and state-controlled governance of protected areas for nature conservation in developing countries has in many cases undergone change in the context of widespread decentralization and liberalization. This article examines an emerging "mixed" (coercive, community- and market-oriented) conservation approach in managed-resource protected areas and its effects on state power through a case study on forest protection in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The findings suggest that imperfect decentralization and partial liberalization resulted in changed forms, rather than uniform loss, of state power. A forest co-management program paradoxically strengthened local capacity and influence of the Forest Department, which generally maintained its territorial and knowledge-based control over forests and timber management. Furthermore, deregulation and reregulation enabled the state to withdraw from uneconomic activities but also implied reduced place-based control of non-timber forest products. Generally, the new policies and programs contributed to the separation of livelihoods and forests in Madhya Pradesh. The article concludes that regulatory, community- and market-based initiatives would need to be better coordinated to lead to more effective nature conservation and positive livelihood outcomes.

The positive roles that political parties might play in development have recently been downplayed in favour of accounts of the virtues of civil society and participatory development. This article challenges some assumptions inherent in this shift in emphasis. It considers how political society has mediated the agency of the rural poor in three locales in eastern India in repsect of the national demand-driven Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS). (InWent/DÜI)

Abstract: This paper attempts to understand the production of the city through informality. In particular, informal practices related to the momo (dumpling) industry, concentrated in the 'urban village' of Chirag Dilli, are analysed in their dialectic relationship with formal planning and legislation in Delhi. We use a Lefebvrian framework that views city-making as an interaction of formal representations in the form of master plans, etc., informal and formal spatial practices (including momo production and living patterns) and representational (imagined) spaces related to neighbourhoods and the city. Drawing on primary qualitative data, we examine how informality informed the formal planning. The uneven application of state legislation, in turn, fostered particular informal practices (such as momo manufacturing) and the emergence of a distinct urban morphology and of new cohabitation practices. The informal momo industry also altered the representational associations made with both the Chirag Dilli neighbourhood and the city of Delhi. The paper shows how informal practices constantly interact with formal frameworks to co-produce urban space and consequently the city. We argue that informal practices are not necessarily in conflict with formal planning or subverting it, but that they play a central role in their own right for the production of space.

Urban ponds in India have for a long time been used for multiple purposes and have been accessible to a wide range of social groups; they thus often represent an urban commons. However, recent transformations of urban ponds into infrastructure that serves more limited uses have been accompanied by enclosure and social exclusion. Using an urban political ecology approach that is enriched with the concepts of environmental imaginaries and (un)commoning, this paper examines the ideational foundations and societal mechanisms underpinning the transformation of the pondscape of Navsari, a small city in the state of Gujarat. Based on interviews and field observations, the study found that the small-town elite's imaginary of the 'modern city' underpinned the shift to the ponds becoming part of Navsari's drinking water infrastructure; this led to the enclosure of the ponds and thus the ideational and physical separation of residents from these waterbodies and the exclusion of traditional user groups. This socio-ecological transformation of the pondscape, however, was not characterised by simple, linear processes of uncommoning driven by local elites: the dismantling of the urban commons (in the form of waste dumping by multiple actors) largely preceded the creation of infrastructure; enclosures and exclusions remained imperfect and spatially variable; and in some places informal resource-use rules continued or were recreated by local communities. This research points to how important it is for urban political ecology to consider the imaginaries and practices of multiple actors – including those beyond the metropolitan areas – in the construction of a nuanced narrative of dispossession in the neoliberal city.