Geographical Research最新文献

Environmental crisis, socio-spatial inequalities, and geopolitical turmoil: geography’s relevance has never been greater. Yet, paradoxically, the discipline of geography in Australia faces diminished public appreciation, semantic and substantive elimination from university programs, falling school enrolments, and the challenges of out-of-field teaching. Against this backdrop voluntary, community-based learned societies (VCBLS) such as Geography Victoria, the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia, and the Royal Geographical Society of Queensland bring people, passion, networks, and energy to the discipline. These community organisations promote the intrinsic value of geography, advocate for educational reform, foster original research, cultivate public engagement, and inject crucial resources into the discipline’s future. Given their membership, past and current contributions and scope for more, dynamic, thriving, and professionally appreciated and professionally supported voluntary, community based learned societies are not only vital to the revival of the discipline of geography in Australia but are supportive of broader local, state, and national communities. This paper urges practising geographers (including teachers) and the professional associations that represent them to engage with VCBLS for individual and organisational mutual benefit and for the future wellbeing and sustainability of Australian geography.

Scholars have shown that narratives of corruption can both intensify economic globalisation and fuel resistance to it. However, little research has been done on how policy debates are framed by people with competing perspectives on corruption. This article draws on interviews with key stakeholders to highlight how narratives of corruption have framed debates about policy reform in the Philippine rice industry. Respondents whose views reflect an economic perspective that promotes market mechanisms to address corruption justified a law designed to deregulate the rice market. Their actions were a panacea to the growing power of cartels illegally and often corruptly importing rice into the country. Respondents whose views reflect a critical perspective argued that this law would only bolster cartel power and that other policy solutions such as land reform and self-sufficiency would reduce corruption and other injustices. Our analysis reveals how those debates informed deregulation of the Philippine rice sector and resulted in a Rice Tariffication Law in 2019. In the process, we reveal how competing perspectives on corruption and associated narratives are ideologically deployed to shape policy reforms that expand economic globalisation and benefit some groups, such as consumers, at the expense of others, particularly small-scale farmers.

We apply a relational multiscalar model of the sustainability of social organisation to the management of COVID-19 in Australia to analyse systems resilience and outcome fairness. Our model encompasses the structures, processes, functions, and contents of social organisation across micro, meso, and macro scales. We developed four data sets linked to COVID-19 and analysed these as variables in our model: (1) letters to the editor in public newspapers; (2) net weekly payroll jobs growth; (3) income/wealth inequality; (4) COVID-19 mortality and case/infection rates. These variables are used as proxies for democratic systems resilience, economic systems resilience, socioeconomic systems fairness, and public health systems efficacy, respectively. We found that as the pandemic progressed, public opinion shifted from favouring structural-societal transformation to favouring incremental adaptation. Spatial scale and geographical location impacted the resilience of weekly payroll jobs, with ‘urban’/densely populated areas having less job growth than ‘regional’/less dense locations, and ‘national’ scale net jobs growth being greater than ‘job growth in New South Wales, Tasmania, and Victoria, in decreasing order. Transitions in pandemic policies of border restrictions and vaccination constrained net job losses, or enabled net gains over time, with the federal JobKeeper wage support preventing ‘breakout’ unemployment. Mobility restrictions and vaccination minimised mortality rates with self-administered (RAT) testing possibly decreasing infection rates. While our findings affirm that the complexity and ‘messiness’ of social policy means that management outcomes are not easily predictable nor will necessarily match expectations, our model provides a framework for assessing system dynamics and outcome fairness.

Feminist approaches to livelihoods deeply enrich development studies by focusing on gender, social difference, intrahousehold considerations, and other manifestations of power. In this paper, we suggest three pillars of feminist livelihood studies that advance debates in this field. First, postcolonialism and decoloniality are separate but related frameworks essential for situating feminist approaches to livelihoods. Second, social-relational and intersectional analyses provide critical understandings of the forces of oppression and difference that co-produce livelihoods. Finally, feminist research on the environment examines social-ecological dimensions of livelihoods that complement studies in feminist political ecology. Feminist methodologies are highlighted throughout our discussion and include the application of decolonising methods, reflexivity, and socio-spatial dynamics within livelihood research. Attention to these pillars through a critical feminist lens provides a transformative agenda for livelihood studies. In sum, the research and practice of feminist livelihoods presented here support new directions for development studies to disrupt colonial, masculinist, and racialised approaches and to decolonise the ways we interact with communities to affect change.