scholarly journals Legacies of Place and Power: From Military Base to Freeport Zone

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Reyes

This article examines the place–making of global borderlands—semiautonomous, foreign–controlled geographical locations geared toward international exchange. I use the case study of the Subic Bay Freeport Zone (SBFZ), Philippines, as an example of a global borderland that resides within a space formerly occupied by a colonial power. I show how elite Filipinos adapted and transformed the spatial boundaries the U.S. military initially erected. The earlier boundaries differentiating Americans from Filipinos and military personnel from civilians helped the native elite to perpetuate familiar patterns of inequality based on nationality, class, and skin color. This differentiation occurs through: (1) the indirect and direct exclusion of the poor vis–à–vis the SBFZ's sociospatial organization and (2) the maintenance of cultural practices (litter, traffic) and moral discourses (of what is “good” and “bad”) formerly associated with the base, so that the SBFZ remains distinct from the surrounding city of Olongapo. Places of power have legacies, structural and spatial residues that continue to influence cultural practices and discourses even after the original uses of a place are transformed.

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 688-709 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas B. Harvey ◽  
Jared H. Rosenfeld ◽  
Shannon Tomascak

Under U.S. Supreme Court cases Argersinger v. Hamlin and Alabama v. Shelton, the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires the provision of defense counsel to an indigent defendant for any charge that, if proved, actually leads to imprisonment or is punished by a suspended sentence that subsequently could lead to imprisonment. This article uses St. Louis as a case study to demonstrate that unconstitutional criminal procedures and underfunded public defender’s offices create no-lawyer-courts—courts that unconstitutionally allow defendants to go unrepresented. In a period of observation spanning 2014-2016, we found that St. Louis courts violated the right to counsel in misdemeanor prosecutions through lengthy confinements and exorbitant bonds, abusive plea bargaining practices, invalid waivers, and unconstitutional sentences. Drawing from court observations and electronic data, this study highlights how constitutional doctrine’s grant of procedural discretion to lower courts imposes injustice on poor and minority communities in practice.


2005 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 486-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
James L. Glancey ◽  
Edwin Kee ◽  
Tracy Wootten

The vegetable industry is important to our nation as a provider of nutritious and safe food directly consumed by our citizens. It is also critical to a rich and vigorous national agriculture. During the 20th century, engineering innovations coupled with advances in genetics, crop science, and plant protection have allowed the vegetable industry in the U.S. to plant and harvest significantly more land with higher yields while using less labor. Currently, fresh and processed vegetables generate 16% of all U.S. crop income, but from only 2% of the harvested cropland. Yet, many of the challenges in production that existed a century ago still exist for many crops. Perhaps the most significant challenge confronting the industry is labor, often accounting for 50% of all production costs. A case study of the mechanized production system developed for processed tomatoes (Lycopersicon esculentum) confirms that systematic methodology in which the machines, cultural practices, and cultivars are designed together must be adopted to improve the efficiency of current mechanized systems as well as provide profitable alternatives for crops currently hand-harvested. Only with this approach will horticultural crop production remain competitive and economically viable in the U.S.


Author(s):  
Anna Michalak

Using the promotional meeting of Dorota Masłowska’s book "More than you can eat" (16 April 2015 in the Bar Studio, Warsaw), as a case study, the article examines the role author plays in it and try to show how the author itself can become the literature. As a result of the transformation of cultural practices associated with the new media, the author’s figure has gained much greater visibility which consequently changed its meaning. In the article, Masłowska’s artistic strategy is compared to visual autofiction in conceptual art and interpreted through the role of the performance and visual representations in the creation of the image or author’s brand.


1992 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Block

Abstract: This paper attempts to unravel the very complex issue of balance first by addressing its historical and theoretical contexts. Then the coverage of the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is used as a case study. Résumé: Dans cet article l'auteur s'applique à décortiquer la complexité de la controverse notion de "balance'' dans la couverture médiatique. Il la place d'abord dans son contexte historique et théorique. Il s'appuie, ensuite, comme exemple, sur le suivi que les médias ont fait autour des pourparlers et de l'entente du libre-échange entre le Canada et les États-Unis.


Societies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Placido

In this article I discuss how illegal substance consumption can act as a tool of resistance and as an identity signifier for young people through a covert ethnographic case study of a working-class subculture in Genoa, North-Western Italy. I develop my argument through a coupled reading of the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) and more recent post-structural developments in the fields of youth studies and cultural critical criminology. I discuss how these apparently contrasting lines of inquiry, when jointly used, shed light on different aspects of the cultural practices of specific subcultures contributing to reflect on the study of youth cultures and subcultures in today’s society and overcoming some of the ‘dead ends’ of the opposition between the scholarly categories of subculture and post-subculture. In fact, through an analysis of the sites, socialization processes, and hedonistic ethos of the subculture, I show how within a single subculture there could be a coexistence of: resistance practices and subversive styles of expression as the CCCS research program posits; and signs of fragmentary and partial aesthetic engagements devoid of political contents and instead primarily oriented towards the affirmation of the individual, as argued by the adherents of the post-subcultural position.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8399
Author(s):  
Sally Adofowaa Mireku ◽  
Zaid Abubakari ◽  
Javier Martinez

Urban blight functions inversely to city development and often leads to cities’ deterioration in terms of physical beauty and functionality. While the underlying causes of urban blight in the context of the global north are mainly known in the literature to be population loss, economic decline, deindustrialisation and suburbanisation, there is a research gap regarding the root causes of urban blight in the global south, specifically in prime areas. Given the differences in the property rights regimes and economic growth trajectories between the global north and south, the underlying reasons for urban blight cannot be assumed to be the same. This study, thus, employed a qualitative method and case study approach to ascertain in-depth contextual reasons and effects for urban blight in a prime area, East Legon, Accra-Ghana. Beyond economic reasons, the study found that socio-cultural practices of landholding and land transfer in Ghana play an essential role in how blighted properties emerge. In the quest to preserve cultural heritage/identity, successors of old family houses (the ancestral roots) do their best to stay in them without selling or redeveloping them. The findings highlight the less obvious but relevant functions that blighted properties play in the city core at the micro level of individual families in fostering social cohesion and alleviating the need to pay higher rents. Thus, in the global south, we conclude that there is a need to pay attention to the less obvious roles that so-called blighted properties perform and to move beyond the default negative perception that blighted properties are entirely problematic.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7629
Author(s):  
Haorui Wu

This study contributes to an in-depth examination of how Wenchuan earthquake disaster survivors utilize intensive built environment reconstruction outcomes (housing and infrastructural systems) to facilitate their long-term social and economic recovery and sustainable rural development. Post-disaster recovery administered via top-down disaster management systems usually consists of two phases: a short-term, government-led reconstruction (STGLR) of the built environment and a long-term, survivor-led recovery (LTSLR) of human and social settings. However, current studies have been inadequate in examining how rural disaster survivors have adapted to their new government-provided housing or how communities conducted their long-term recovery efforts. This qualitative case study invited sixty rural disaster survivors to examine their place-making activities utilizing government-delivered, urban-style residential communities to support their long-term recovery. This study discovered that rural residents’ recovery activities successfully perpetuated their original rural lives and rebuilt social connections and networks both individually and collectively. However, they were only able to manage their agriculture-based livelihood recovery temporarily. This research suggests that engaging rural inhabitants’ place-making expertise and providing opportunities to improve their housing and communities would advance the long-term grassroots recovery of lives and livelihoods, achieving sustainable development.


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