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The interrelationship between rural, rurality and social innovation still remains underexplored even though there has been considerable work within the individual discourses of social innovation and rural studies. This paper aims at broadening the scope of this interrelationship by exploring the nuanced dynamics and complexities of rural lifeworld and the experiences and knowledges of actors that shape the understanding of rural social innovation. At the core of this analysis lies two key ideas including a) an understanding that rural groups' and communities' complexities and marginalities might not be adequately understood without addressing the complex ways in which identities of caste, race, gender, ethnicity and class intersect and b) that the locally-rooted solutions resulting from these concerns are usually underrepresented in the social innovation literature and the relevance of the same needs to be recognized. This reimagining of rural social innovation is located within the theoretical perspectives of intersectionality and feminist perspective and the epistemologies of the South focusing on ‘ecologies of knowledges’ that are capable of complexifying and adding to the contemporary debates on social innovation. From an understanding of the above, the authors argue that strategies and innovations grounded on the specific groups' and communities' own knowledge and rhythm within complex rural contexts needs be recognized as social innovation.

Rural social enterprises are increasingly recognized as organisations that contribute to local development by providing goods and/or services to meet community needs and by fostering inclusive social and governance relations. The purpose of this paper is to explore how rural social enterprises engage in a plurality of socio-economic relations with different dimensions of their ‘place’ when contributing to the development of their localities. Based on three in-depth case studies of social enterprises operating in rural Ireland, our findings illustrate how rural social enterprises engage with locational, institutional, material and identity aspects of their ‘place’, which indicates their ‘placial embeddedness’. Moreover, our findings also demonstrate how these organisations engage in, and combine market, redistribution and reciprocity relations, which indicates their ‘substantive hybridity’. Based on the interrelated nature of these findings, we argue that it is through a process of placial substantive hybridity that rural social enterprises foster social innovation in order to contribute to an integrated development of their localities. They harness and (re)valorise (untapped) local resources while complementing these with other resources from extra-local sources and accommodate and/or respond to structural-exogenous forces based on the needs of their local population in line with neo-endogenous rural development.

Social innovation (SI) research tends to understand rural SI processes as collective initiatives of equally engaged, supportive, and like-minded people. However, recent research has indicated that SI projects often benefit from dedicated key players who find support in their communities but also must deal with resistance and barriers. Against this backdrop, this article explores the figure of the key player in SI research and exposes the patterns of rural SI processes with the empirical cases of two small communities in Germany that jointly created rural infrastructure systems, thus seeking emancipation from remote political and economic control and marginalization. Using the empirical cases, we tested and specified a heuristic framework of key players that combines analytical dimensions at the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels. According to our findings, the heuristic framework is appropriate for analyzing key players in rural SI processes. Notably, we show that SI processes benefit from assertive key players and strong communities capable of joint action. Both are crucial for dealing with internal opposition and overcoming external hurdles that appear when novel approaches irritate familiar solutions and routines.

The phenomenon of rural marginalisation has intensified across the European Union after the 2008 global economic crisis, since the traditional state forms have been proved unable to promote an all-inclusive governing. Beyond-the-state governance systems are socially innovative, horizontal, networked, and collaborative institutional arrangements that are committed to breaking through this rural marginalisation. Marginalised rural areas provide a favourable context for socially innovative governance, since they contain small cohesive communities, while at the same time poor governing penetrates them. Nevertheless, social innovation in rural governance remains largely unexplored. The novel contribution of this article consists in underlying this research gap and exploring the question of how socially innovative governance is fostered or impeded within marginalised rural regions. Comparative research was conducted in between the marginalised rural regions of Muhlviertel in Austria, Baixo Alentejo in Portugal, and Phthiotis in Greece. The comparative results revealed some of the parameters that foster socially innovative governance; a decentralized government structure, advanced interregional networking, a discourse dissemination among the stakeholders and the civil society, as well as an organizational stability of the involved institutions for social innovation to become embedded. This article points to socially innovative governance that has a more codified and systematized hypostasis by recommendation of unique governance qualities.

Item does not contain fulltext As a result of global migration processes, Western societies have become increasingly ethnically diverse. Yet not all regions are equally affected by these immigration processes. The current study investigates whether and how ethnic discrimination in hiring is linked with the regional concentration of ethnic minorities, using original data of a large-scale field experiment on ethnic discrimination (N = 4.211) and detailed regional data in the Netherlands. The results show that greater exposure to ethnic minorities in a region is not clearly related with decreased (indicative of positive intergroup contact) or increased (indicative of group threat) ethnic discrimination in hiring. Rather, the findings provide more support for the familiarisation hypothesis: regional concentrations of ethnic minorities are positively associated with ethnic discrimination, however, this effect levels off and turns negative at high concentrations of ethnic minorities. This result holds particularly for minorities with non-Western migrant origins and minorities with Muslim migrant origins. 20 p.

In popular thinking, debt evokes notions of vulnerability and bondage, while irregular migration for sex work conjures up the hazards of human trafficking and modern slavery 1 . These perceptions inform ‘safe migration’ policies aimed at ordering and regulating migration and combating informality to increase migrants’ safety and well-being; the assumption being that illegality puts migrants at risk of abuse. This article challenges these assumptions with an ethnographic study of brokerage practices in the quasi-family networks that facilitate the irregular and circular migration of Vietnamese sex workers to Singapore. In these networks, brokers sell a migration package on credit to their clients, the migrant sex workers, who repay it through sexual labour. This package includes all the services necessary for the women to migrate temporarily and work safely in Singapore. Most crucially, it serves as an entree into the broker’s business and social network, as a way of forming an enduring relationship. Without denying the power of debt to create inequality, obligation and exploitation, this article shows that debt can also be a profitable, non-coercive and reciprocal device for brokers and sex workers alike, a vector of ‘safety’ which limits some of the risks they encounter in a repressive and uncertain host environment. This finding stems from a novel framework in economic anthropology, the ‘socio-economy of debt’ (Guerin, 2018), which complicates moral views of debt through an empirical examination of the materiality, power dynamics and social and moral meanings of debt arrangements and relationships.

In the context of neoliberal financialization, what is the role of debt in agrarian change? To address this question, I combine insights about debt from rural political ecology and development finance scholarship in order to analyze the relationship between changing agroecological practices and household indebtedness in a Cambodian rice- farming village. In the past two decades, Cambodians have borrowed from commercial microfinance institutions at the highest rate per capita of any country in the world. With fewer Cambodians farming, and agricultural production increasingly commodified, researchers have begun to study how the fast growth of Cambodia's microfinance industry contributes to these changes. By building upon the concept of financial landscapes, which highlights the diversity of social and material relations of debt in rural economies, I argue that agrarian change in Cambodia is entangled with rising household debts used to fund both agricultural production and social reproduction. I describe how non-monetary debt obligations underpinned labor-intensive rice agricultural practices in the 1980s and early 1990s, but have since been replaced by monetary debt used to fund household basic needs and commodified agricultural production. To make my argument, I draw upon 20 months of ethnographic research within a farming village in Kampot Province. This article contributes to rural political ecology and development finance scholarship by exploring debt in its diverse material and social forms at a time of deepening financialization, and how these debt relations in turn shape the economic and agroecological contours of contemporary agrarian change.

The contribution of the paper to the geographical literatures on informalities is to expand the work on transport informalities from transport system reforms and professionalization of informal provisions such as minibus services or taxi provisions to ridehailing, including explicit discursive framings through which formalization operates. Ridehailing platforms have entered various cities around the world extra-legally, forcing public authorities to deal with them. While there is an emerging literature discussing various aspects of ridehailing and platform economies, the literature to date has not analyzed what kinds of discursive frames facilitate the legitimation of these businesses. Analyzing legitimation through frame analysis highlights the affective forcefulness of future visions configured around technology-oriented regulation, employment provision and digitalization. The article argues that the state acceptance of sharing platforms, together with the introduction of the legal framing for them, particularly gains strength from the frame promising digital future. In such policy-framing processes, sharing platforms’ extra-legal entry into the market as a form of “elite informality” becomes accepted instead of being considered illegal. This paper analyzes verbatim reports of debates regarding ridehailing legalization held at the Estonian parliament (Riigikogu) in April and September 2016. These verbatim reports represent a key event and arguably the most public part of the trajectory from Uber entering Estonia extra-legally in May 2015 to Estonia introducing the “Uber law” legalizing ridehailing in 2017.

This article reconstructs the shifting uses of local concepts of “informality“ (nǫk rabop) over the last 35 years in the streets of Bangkok, with a particular attention to the birth of the motorcycle taxi business in the 1980s, its development after the 1997 economic crisis, and its transformation since the arrival of ride-hailing apps in 2016. Based on more than 10 years of qualitative and quantitative research with motorcycle taxi drivers, state officials, city planners and everyday users in Bangkok, this archaeology of informality expand on contemporary theorizations of informality as a logic of planning, a heuristic device, and a practice. I do so by focusing on the highly relational, contingent, and ultimately contested nature of informality, the role of non-state actors in shaping it and, the performative power of informality as a categorical label. In this sense, I propose a double conceptualization of informality: on one side as an ever-shifting relationship between established and codified practices (whether regarding land, labor, property rights, or everyday actions), a governmental and legal system, and people who control and interact with these practices; on the other, as a label, often deployed tactically by actors trying to make sense and make do with the world around them. In this duality between a shifting set of relationships and an almost intuitive and referential label that allow for categorical assessments resides, I show, the central efficacy of “informality” as a concept good to think with, to govern with, and to resist with.

Informal public transport is generally understood as transport services that are provided in absence or violation of state regulations. This paper argues that attempts to define the informality of public transport through such liberal economic lenses are insufficient in explaining the processes which lead to production of informalities. Discussing the operation of Vikrams (individually-owned and privately-operated shared autorickshaws plying on fixed routes) in Dehradun, India, this paper uncovers the multifaceted role of the state in producing and sustaining informalities in public transport provisions. It offers a more nuanced view of informality in transport studies than its commonplace understanding as a spontaneous, self-regulating, entrepreneurial aggregate. The paper argues that informality in transport studies should be understood as a heterogeneous practice that is a product of wider structural contexts situated in the politico-historical understandings of public transport in evolving spatio-temporal moments. In the case presented in this paper these include imperial legal legacies and its intersections with shifting postcolonial political economies and territorial structures.

Amaphela, meaning cockroach in isiXhosa, are a form of paratransit that provide township dwellers in Cape Town, South Africa with flexible, inexpensive and relatively comfortable transportation in combination with other formalised and semi-formalised services. While this shared mobility practice has received scant attention through the lens of paratransit and transportation geographies, amaphela have completely evaded analysis through the lens of mobility studies. The flexibility and informality of amaphela services can be understood through both utopian or dystopian lenses: It can be seen as a threat to order, formality, safety and reliability in the modern South African city; or it can be celebrated for the unique and creative ways that they negotiate township space while serving the public through flexible and affordable demand-driven service. This paper concludes that amaphela services in Cape Town thrive in an intermediate zone of adaptive infrastructure and governance to fulfil their mobility role.

Most Russian cities are currently facing major transformation processes in the public transport supply. Commercial paratransit services, known as marshrutkas, have been criticised heavily for unsafe and uncomfortable facilities as well as for anti-social business behaviour, prone to tax evasion and daily penny wars on the street. Consequently, many municipalities have enforced various strategies to restrict informal marshrutka services. This article compares the distinct policy strategies of two municipalities, Rostov on Don and Volgograd, and discusses the different outcomes. When analysing the case studies, two prevailing discourses seem to have informed the locally applied transport policies: a neoliberal, free market approach that perceives the loosely regulated commercial transport operations superior to state-led services and a rather neo-modernist perception of informal transport operation, calling for a rigorous push back of marshrutka mobility. Prominent in both policy discourses is the notion of informality as an instrument to govern the transport setting. Reviewing the developing field of informal transport studies, the article argues that the governments of the respective cities have employed (simplified) notions of informality as a legitimisation argument to take action. A closer perspective on the daily operations, however, unveils a socially institutionalised transport service full of complex operation practices beyond policy-strategic divides between the formal and informal. The contribution utilises the formal/informal nexus successfully developed in urban studies and applies it to international transport studies. Thus it enables the unveiling of insufficiencies in urban transport provision without falling in the trap of superficial modernisation narratives.

Lagos is often depicted as a city of immobility and inequality. Based on a micro-sociological study in the public transit system and an ethnographic study in an urban neighborhood, this article provides a nuanced analysis of situational inequality. Given the enduring traffic congestion and prevailing social inequality in the city, moments of aggressive cutting in line on roads and disputes over light collision accidents demonstrate a spontaneous unequal power relationship that is at odds with the existing social inequality structure. These moments can impose a sense of frustration on the private car drivers who are assumed to have a higher social status while bringing delight to minibus (danfo) drivers and passengers who have lower status. This emergent situational inequality, the paper argues, provides lower-class people with affective elements which can contribute to making sense of (im)mobilities, urban lifestyle, and conceptualization of Lagos. However, the effects of situational inequality are limited to the individual level, as it cannot largely transform the spatiality and temporality of traffic congestion, the socioeconomic class structure, and the traffic governance in Lagos. This dialectical situational inequality does not become a practical living strategy but reifies their individual philosophies of living in Lagos embodied through narratives. The sociological account of situational inequality in this paper showcases an approach to interpret the meaningfulness of micro mobility experiences with regard to macro urban conditions, thereby enriching our understandings of the relationship between mobility and inequality.

The seven editions of Geography and Geographers and of Political Geography form two intimidating collections creating order in their (sub)disciplines. As successive editions engage with an exponentially growing and diversifying scholarly literature they have adopted different strategies to order ‘work in progress’. This commentary also considers their ordering and bordering of the (sub) discipline, epistemologically but also linguistically, foregrounding the predicament of their readership at the non-Anglophone borderlands of Anglo-American (political) geography.

The authors examine the problem of integrating urban sensing into engaged planning. The authors ask whether enhanced urban data and analysis can enhance resident engagement in planning and design, rather than hinder it, even when current urban planning and design practices are dysfunctional. The authors assess the outcomes of a planning and design effort in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. Community-Centered Urban Sensing is a participatory urban sensing initiative developed by urban planners and designers, architects, landscape architects, and technologists at the University of Virginia to address the need for actionable information on the urban environment through community-engaged urban data collection and analysis. These findings address how technological urbanism moves from data to action, as well as its potential for marginalization. Finally, the authors discuss a conceptualization of smart and engaged planning that accounts for urban dysfunction. The smart cities paradigm should encompass modes and methods that function even when local urban systems are dysfunctional.

It has been suggested that more globalized cities are more polarized and segregated than other cities. However, this is mainly evidenced by advanced capitalist cities and other selected developed cities, while less developed cities are clearly under-researched. This paper draws on both developed and less developed cities in Guangdong province, and asks how socio-economic segregation levels differ among cities of varying economic development levels. We find that, contrary to expectation, less developed cities are showing higher levels of segregation than well-developed cities. We suggest that the key contributing factor is that the well-developed cities in Guangdong province are characterized by manufacturing-dominant economic structures and industrialization-based economic transformation. Correspondingly, their occupational structures are predominantly characterized by employees with a recent agricultural background; the restructuring process is therefore dominated by professionalization of the lower class. The stronger and faster industrialization and professionalization processes produce lower segregation levels in those more developed cities.

Although more and more people choose to live in (large) cities, people in the Western world generally report lower levels of subjective well-being in urban areas than in rural areas. This article examines whether these urban–rural differences in subjective well-being are (partly) driven by selective migration patterns. To this end, we utilise residential mobility data from the United Kingdom based on 12 waves of the British Household Panel Survey. We explore urban–rural differences in life satisfaction as well as changes in life satisfaction of people moving from rural areas to urban areas (or vice versa), hereby paying specific attention to selection and composition effects. The results show that selective migration can, at least partly, explain the urban–rural subjective well-being differential through the selection of less satisfied people in cities and more satisfied people in the countryside. While the average life satisfaction of urban–rural migrants is higher compared to the life satisfaction of rural–urban migrants, we do not find – on average – long-lasting life satisfaction effects of migration. At the same time, there are differences between sociodemographic groups in that we find that a move from the countryside to the city is positively associated with the life satisfaction of students while it is negatively associated with the life satisfaction of people with a non-tertiary education.

The insufficient access to housing and the commercialization of public space are most problematic aspects of urban development in Poland. As we witness the effects of neoliberalization in the urban policy sector – with an increased presence of private corporate actors combined with a withdrawal of the earlier so dominant public authorities – there is still no long-term policy in place to counteract the negative social as well as economic effects on the citizens. To the contrary, existing political order in many cities supports market solutions, while scaling down investments in public space, municipal housing or building for rent. To better explain the dynamics of urban policy, the paper uses a field theory approach (Martin, 2003), to analyse the role of developers and urban grassroots movements in planning and building of Polish cities. Data from formal and informal interviews with developers, urban activists and public authorities are used, supplemented by results of participatory observations at national conferences, government workshops and activists’ gatherings. Paper describes the ongoing ‘game of the city’ (Domaradzka and Wijkstrom, 2016) in which incumbents defend their dominant position and control over space, while a set of challengers seek to introduce new values and behaviours. It presents the wider context of Polish urban policy field and organizational practices of developers and urban activists to illustrate the field dynamics and actors’ changing strategies. The analysis also shows how the dominant narratives are shaped through re-defining the ‘right to the city’ frame and incorporating it into the developers’ agenda.

Now that Justin Trudeau’s “independent” Senate has had a full term to orient itself, how do we characterize the emerging relationship between it and the House of Commons? To answer this question, this article examines quantitative and qualitative changes in the Senate’s impact on legislation since 2015. I look first of all at quantitative changes in Senate-Commons interaction, as assessed through the Senate’s strong challenges to the Commons, more normal legislative review, and proactive policy influence. I then turn to qualitative case studies of Bills C-14, C-48, and C-69 to provide a more in-depth assessment of Senate review of legislation related to its core institutional mission. Overall, I argue that the newly independent Senate has been a much more assertive participant in the legislative process, but ultimately has been very mindful of reputational considerations and avoided going beyond “moderate” review. As a result, there are lingering questions about the practical significance of Trudeau’s reforms.

In recent years local governments in many North American cities have engaged in “land value capture,” which involves state actors exchanging greater density for condominium developers through rezoning as a way to build social housing and affordable rental units. This paper focuses on how these policies are framed and implemented by developers, planners and politicians in two large Canadian cities, Toronto and Vancouver, to address a long-standing but under-theorized question: what is the relationship between altruism and profitability for private development companies? Drawing on concepts from economic and cultural sociology, including Beckert's fictional expectations, Goffman's frame analysis, and Bourdieu's forms of capital, I challenge existing accounts of developers as either following the logic of profit maximization, or “giving back” through charitable acts. Instead, I argue that land value capture policies involve the process of “giving back to get ahead;” through acts of gift-giving developers enhance their symbolic capital, or reputational prestige, leading to new opportunities for profit-making. Thus I show how meaning and symbolism accompany the pursuit of monetary gains and mystify “giving back” as a strategy of accumulation for the private sector. This research holds implications for understanding “condo-ization” as a form of urbanism, as well as the increasing privatization of affordable housing in North America.

The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project is an example of critical visualization practice that interrogates both its own conditions of production and how who is represented is also affected by the representations. In order to describe and analyze this form of practice the notion of assemblage as well as tools from actor-network theory are employed. These concepts allow the researcher or designer to consider how visualizations operate beyond its existence as a discrete representation but rather as a process that weaves a network of humans and non-humans together which is especially relevant to a critical engagement in information visualization practice.

Immigrants are central to the identity of the United States, the population of which has grown in number and diversity as a function of new arrivals from around the globe. This article describes a visualization project that uses the visual metaphor of tree rings to explore the contribution of immigrants to the country’s population. Immigrants and native-born persons are represented and differentiated as cells in trees, with layered annual rings capturing patterns of population growth. These rings register, in their shape and color, certain environmental conditions. In order to mimic the natural process by which growth rings are formed, we devised a computational system that simulates the growth of trees as if cells were data-units. Dendrochronology involves dating certain events by analyzing patterns of growth in trees. Analogously, in our visualizations the rings can be counted and dated, showing the chronological evolution of the population. The dendrochronology theme is a poetic take on the data, yet it is also a functional and conceptual space that is used to construct language and rationales on that data. The tree-growth process not only inspires the appearance of the visualizations but also informs the rules of the computational system that creates them.

Artificially intelligent systems (ai) are increasingly becoming the ubiquitous, unseen arbiters of our social, civic and familial lives. Ever increasing computational power, combined with almost limitless data, has led to a turning point in the way artificial intelligence assists, judges, and cares for humans. In the wake of such power we must ask ourselves what it is that we are making inherently unknowable as the world becomes more predictable, managed, and discrete. Building on the work of black feminists Sylvia Wynter and Hortense Spillers, I perform a reading of the “flesh”. I aim to hint towards a different field of relations and a knowledge politic premised on unknowability and the radical potential of the subjugated to foster new imaginaries of the human fluid enough to weather instability. This piece troubles the boundaries inscribed between things. Settled in the flesh of blackness, we are reminded of the ways that blackness floods the landscape of productive reason while holding outlier ways of being beyond Western Man. This paper seeks to return to the pulse found within the flesh as a critical site for thinking through alternate ways of being, within the messiness, the unstable, the precarious; finding life born of transition, the pulse within discord.

The loess hilly and gully region of China supports a fragile ecosystem that has been subject to serious water loss and soil erosion in recent decades. In response, ongoing soil and water conservation and ecological restoration efforts have been conducted. A review of the region's development history indicates that the utilization mode of cropland in rural areas played an important role in the course of soil and water conservation and socioeconomic development. As a representative area, this study evaluated the status of the Yangjuangou catchment of Liqu Town, Baota District, Shaanxi Province. The dynamic processes, driving factors, variation characteristics, and intrinsic mechanisms of changes in cropland use since the 1980s were analyzed using remote sensing and participatory interview survey data. The results showed that changes in cropland use in Yangjuangou catchment occurred in four stages, including slope cropland utilization stage (1985–1998), the Grain for Green Project stage (1999–2007), agricultural structure adjustment stage (2008–2012), and cropland abandonment stage (2013–2017). These changes in cropland use were driven by policy, economic, socio-cultural, and environmental factors and showed certain characteristics. Specifically, cropland exhibited a “core-margin" funnel-shaped pattern in vertical space, with its changes tending to “flow” toward the core; its utilization intensity generally increased, and the area of intensive utilization and intensive elements gradually shifted. In recent years, spatial patterns gradually developed a sustainable “ecology-production" spatial pattern and abandoned cropland exhibited “contagion” spatial patterns. Finally, based on the behavior mechanisms of farmers and government, we found that the driving force for changes in cropland has changed over time. Initially, food demand on farmers and the goal of ecological safety promoted by the government were dominant. But more recently, the drivers have changed to development demand on farmers and the equal government objectives of promoting ecological safety, rural development, and food security. This study provides a microcosmic perspective on understanding the process and rules of changes in cropland use in the loess hilly and gully region. It also helps to understand the rural transition, providing a reference for developing rural development strategies and policies in this region.

Grain is not only the basic living materials of urban and rural residents, but an important strategic resource related to the national security. Therefore, grain security is an important aspect of national security. Farmers' willingness to grow grain is the key factor to guarantee food security. Based on the structural equation model, the main factors that influence the farmers' willingness to grow grain were studied in this paper by investigating 486 dispersed farmers in six counties (cities, districts) of three prefecture-level cities in Shandong Province. The study indicated that aside from the difficulty of measuring the influence of personal characteristic factors, the national grain subsidy policies, grain price, grain planting scale, other farmers' production behaviors, and promotion of agricultural technology affected the farmers' willingness to grow grain in varying degrees. Further regional multi-group analyses demonstrated that the farmers' willingness to grow grain showed an increasing trend from east to west in Shandong Province. Additionally, grain subsidy policies and family characteristic factors had obvious regional differences on the farmers' willingness to grow grain. Therefore, optimizing and improving the national grain subsidy policies, encouraging the management of a moderate scale, stabilizing prices of grain, increasing the propaganda of agricultural information and promoting agricultural technology were the key factors to increase the farmers' willingness to grow grain.

Rural China has undergone dramatic socioeconomic and spatial restructuring as a result of rapid urbanization and the implementation of a series of top-down reforms. In this paper, based on the actor-network perspective, we examine the actor translation process associated with implementation of various governmental strategies in Haoqiao, a poor village located in the northern Jiangsu Province in China. We mainly focus on interactions between participants as well as their influences on the rural restructuring process. The findings proved the crucial role of township government in implementing restructuring at village-level. Motivated by acquisition of land-related finance, the performance evaluation system of local officials, and public accountability, the town government is keen to mobilize others in the action coalition promoting rural restructuring. However, it is noteworthy that many farming households are reluctant to comply with community planning, because they have to cover large price gap between their old houses and residential land and new houses for resettlement. We also discuss the motivations for diverse human actors and the potentially negative impacts that domestic macro-economic situation plays on the circulation of rural residential land consolidation which mainly underpin the rural restructuring.

In this paper, we apply a civic perspective and social innovation theory to examine how residents of a Dutch village experiencing rural depopulation and austerity reforms evaluate a civic initiative aimed at improving liveability, and what explains their evaluation. Using multivariate statistical analysis, we found that most residents were positive about the initiative and its contribution to local liveability. We also discovered that a substantial group knew very little about the initiative and that low-income groups, in particular, lacked the interest to identify and become engaged with it. Voluntary engagement, however, did not necessarily result in a positive evaluation. Above all, tangible outputs explained citizens’ appreciation. A perceived increase in collaboration within the village and novel forms of collaboration with the local government also proved important, but only when they were accompanied by realised tangible outputs.

In recent years, China's rural areas have undergone intense restructuring motivated by various flows derived from e-commerce, which has triggered a new wave of rural rejuvenation. Attempting to reveal the process and mechanism of rural economic restructuring driven by e-commerce, this paper takes Xiaying village in central China to conduct an empirical study by introducing the theory of “space of flows” and applying the method of semi-structured interview. The results show that e-commerce has become a technical catalyst to the variation of industry structure, employment pattern and household economy. Xiaying village has performed a leap from traditional agriculture to commercial service and constructed a complete e-commerce oriented industry chain, which is distinguished from the traditional path of rural modernization adhering to the gradual evolution of the primary, secondary and tertiary industry in China. In response, the employment pattern is diversified and tends to be de-agriculturalization, thus providing an economic advancement opportunity for rural households. As a matter of fact, rural elites, technology innovation (e-commerce platform), resource endowments and government support all contributed greatly to this restructuring process. What distinguishes it from others is the strong mobility and exchange of urban and rural elements, which functions as the initial engine. Essentially, this transition can be considered as the impact of the network on the geographic space restructuring rural economy.

In this paper, we first detect the uneven distribution of regional inequality in rural China with the per capita net income data at county level, and then diagnose the various factors that contribute to this as well as its driving mechanisms using the four-dimension transitional framework. The results suggest that rural inequalities are clustered at the province level, and those most unequal regions tend to be geographically gathered. Stemming from the framework, the study reveals that the spatio-temporal disparity in rural inequality is deeply embedded in the quadruple-transition process of marketization, globalization, decentralization and urbanization. Employing both the pooled OLS and spatial regime models, the study further unfolds that influences of the transition processes are diversified across regions and study periods. We finally argue that human investment rather than economic growth plays the key role in reducing the rural inequality in eastern provinces, and that the formulation of policies in line with regional characteristics would be helpful to address or alleviate rural inequality.

The paper aims to contribute to debates on the relationship between place, home, and sense of belonging by exploring the context of domicide, which is the intentional destruction of home. In contrast to voluntary migration, which has been intensively studied, those displaced by domicide rarely have the resources or power to rebuild their home, and are often resettled in peripheral regions. The paper argues that locality, which has been largely underplayed in migration and home research, shapes domicide victims' homes and sense of belonging. Drawing on qualitative research with migrants displaced by the Three Gorges Project, one of the largest instances of domicide in China, the paper presents insights into the ways rural locality and migrants' translocal practices are interwoven with the home experiences of those who are displaced. It also explores how their identity and belonging are negotiated, constructed and contested. The analysis contributes to critical geographies of home and could help to devise future involuntary resettlement policy and practice to increase migrants’ sense of home in resettlement.

The purpose of this paper is to address the hypotheses of complete urbanization and the post urban world with an emphasis on the agricultural sector. The paper studies spatial and temporal changes in land-use and agricultural activities in one rapidly growing metropolitan region, the Stockholm region. We explore the number and size of agricultural firms, changes in their main activity and trends of diversification and land prices for various types of land and location, all in a disaggregated spatial dimension. The results contribute to a deeper understanding of agriculture's function in metropolitan regions and shed new light on the possibilities of the agricultural sector to transform in a world where the traditional urban-rural relations are ceasing to exist.

The keys to realizing spatial restructuring in rural areas are the optimization of the spatial pattern of rural settlements and the integration of rural resources. Based on a 2015 Google Earth remote sensing image, this study employed kernel density estimation (KDE), the minimum cumulative resistance (MCR) method, and a logistic regression model to apply quantitative analysis to the spatial distribution characteristics and influencing factors of a rural area. The results revealed that the density of rural settlements is significantly spatially different in Baota District; the density core area in the district was located in the valley area with industrial agglomeration. Rural settlements in Baota District were located near the county seat and township seat, near a river, farmland and county-level road, on sunny slopes. Traffic accessibility to the townships had a greater impact on the spatial distribution of rural settlements than the traffic accessibility to the county. Thus, county-level road development plays a more important role in the optimization of town-village systems. Hence, we suggest constructing a complete transportation network system in the optimization of the town-village spatial pattern in the county, thereby improving the central service functions of towns to strengthen the spatial connection between townships and the central agglomeration effects of towns.

The concept of sustainable livelihood security has wider generic meaning pertaining to sustainable development to ensure ecologically secure, economically efficient, socially equitable and sufficiency in infrastructure in the society. Dairying provides sufficient income to the farming community of West Bengal. Therefore, sustainability of dairy-based livelihood in the districts of West Bengal was assessed to find out necessary interventions to be required to ensure sustainable livelihood security of dairy farmers. An exclusively district level Dairy-based Sustainable Livelihood Security Index was developed underline the principle of Human Development Index of United Nations Development Programme by using 17 indicators divided into four sub-indices i.e. Ecological Security index, Economic Efficiency Index, Infrastructural Sufficiency Index and Social Equity Index. The overall mean value of Dairy-based Sustainable Livelihood Security Index was found to be 0.38 with a range from 0.12 (Purulia district) to 0.59 (Darjeeling district), indicated the sustainability status was low. In case of sub indices, Infrastructural Sufficiency Index (0.49) and Ecological Security Index (0.45) were stronger indices than other two indices, Economic Efficiency Index (0.32) and Social Equity Index (0.29) which signified the very lower level sustainability. Districts were categorized for better interpretation into four based on overall Sustainable Livelihood Security Index score as very low (less than 0.3), low (0.3–0.54), medium (0.55–0.70) and high (greater than 0.70). Districts namely Maldah, Uttar Dinajpur, Purulia were having very lower level sustainability in dairy-based livelihood. But, it was moderately sustainable in the districts of Darjeeling, Nadia and Hooghly. Hence, Dairy-based Sustainable Livelihood Security Index (SLSI) is not only highlighting the state of sustainability of dairy-based livelihood but also emphasized the area where necessary policy matters to be intervened for improvement of livelihood of dairy farmers.

This paper examines the commodification process initiated through a series of state-led programs and questions the sustainable public goods provision in rural China. We challenge the unilateral understanding of spontaneous commodification by the profit-seeking community, and argue that the influence exerted by the Chinese government cannot be ignored. It is found that a preliminary partnership among the state, private investors and villagers was formed to create a hot-spring village called Tangjiajia in suburban Nanjing. The reconstruction was the result of a state-led renovation of the built environment, but it also catalyzed villager entrepreneurship and boosted community consensus. Regarding the public goods provision, stakeholders in the village now enjoy high-quality facilities and services provided by the government for free but have failed to foster reciprocal cooperation to replenish the subtractability of the rural commons. We claim that state intervention is temporal but not a cure-all. A pricing mechanism for the sustainable delivery of public goods is urgently needed in the community. The state-led commodification has undermined the previous low-level equilibrium of rural governance. From the stance of rural sustainability, only self-organization of the rural community can solve the dilemma.

Human migration is a direct indicator of rural attraction. As the world's most populous nation, China is experiencing a rural population decline. The government is actively focusing on a rural revitalization strategy to make rural areas sustainable. Based on data from the sixth census in 2010, this paper applies the Moran's I method and spatial lag regression model to analyze the spatial pattern and driving factors of China's rural migration. The main conclusions are listed as follows. (1) The areas, including the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, and the northwestern areas, were the most attractive destinations for rural migrants. (2) The inter-provincial rural migration pattern is close to the total rural migration pattern, but is different from the intra-provincial pattern. (3) In general, job opportunities in the secondary industry, rural income, rural investment, and the local economic levels were all main drivers for rural migration. The driving mechanisms varied in the eastern, central, and western provinces. To support China's efforts in rural revitalization, regionally different policies, urban-rural integration, and new economic factors are suggested and highlighted from the perspective of rural migration.

The sandy area along the Great Wall in northern Shaanxi Province of China, is located in the transition zone between the Maowusu Desert and the loess hills and gullies region, with a vast territory and large per capita of cultivated agricultural land. However, the cultivated land quality is generally poor due to the local natural conditions. It is of practical significance to find ways to improve the quality of agricultural land and put forward targeted measures for its improvement. Through the analysis of farmland gradation results in the study area, we calculated an improvement potential index with a model to determine the primary limiting factors of agricultural land quality in the study area. The results indicate that both singe-factor and combined-factor limitations exist in the region. The single-factor limiting types include soil thickness, organic content, irrigation, salinization, etc., while the combined-factor limiting types include the combinations of the irrigation water source and irrigation firm probability, soil structure and organic matter, soil thickness and soil texture, and so on. Through the analysis of the potential index model results, we determined the main limiting factors in agricultural production, which vary spatially throughout the region, and suggested targeted measures to improve the cultivated land quality. These measures will then promote revitalization of sandy rural areas along the great wall in northern Shaanxi Province, China.

With 76% of the total main workforce in agriculture and more than 50% small and medium landowning households, the village provides an important case study for understanding agrarian resilience. The conceptualisation of resilience has been majorly confined to a system or a territorial boundary. Agrarian resilience too is commonly assumed to be driven by forces within the agriculture and the rural. i.e. land ownership remains constant, the labour of the peasantry is spatially limited to agriculture, the capital is generated within agriculture and the networks and skills of the peasantry is also confined to agriculture. This has underscored the role of factors and processes working outside the agriculture in conceptualising agrarian resilience. While the primacy of the agrarian processes cannot be denied, there are often processes working outside an agrarian system that can also enable resilience. i.e. the rural workforce can diversify its labour outside agriculture in the urban non-farm sector, capital can also be generated from sources outside the agriculture. In this context, using the case study of a village dominated by small and medium landowning households in the Patiala district of Punjab in India, the paper shows that resilience is driven by processes both within and outside agriculture.

China's rapid urbanization process has pushed rural villages into an urban-rural integration movement. Several modes and approaches have been applied to remake space in rural China, which differ greatly in restructuring outcomes. In response, this article builds on the insights of regime theory to develop a conceptual framework to reveal the mechanism behind China's rural spatial restructuring and seeks to explore the underlying reasons that affect the outcomes. It is found that resource adequacy, the quality of resource coalition, and the effectiveness of implementation determine the rural regime's capacity to manage spatial restructuring. Case studies from Hua County, Chaohu City, and Shenzhen are used to illustrate the conceptual framework's application and facilitate a comparative analysis from the perspective of rural regime capacity. The findings provide a critical rethinking of the “sustainable remaking of rural space”, which could therefore shed light on the rural governance of countries in the global south generally.

The Urban-rural interface is a transitional geographic space, bordering between urban and rural areas and experiencing intensive flows of material, energy and information, in terms of goods, money, people, data and ideas. This interface can be viewed as a physical space exhibiting climatic, topographical, soil, hydrological and bioecological properties, and more importantly, as a humanistic space exhibiting social, cultural and economic properties. Consumption behaviors are humanistic properties that can be viewed as an integration of social, cultural and economic conditions and interactions in a specific human geographic space. Interpreting the humanistic aspects of border areas using consumption behaviors is a type of macro space interpretation stemming from a microcosmic perspective. In this study, we conducted a questionnaire survey from 1166 households in Gongyi City, Henan Province, China, and used interactive geographic detectors to explore the humanistic aspects of the urban-rural interface using residents' consumption behaviors. Our results revealed that the spatial patterns delineated by consumption behaviors, a humanistic property influenced more by other humanistic properties, were similar to the spatial patterns delineated by land use, a humanistic property influenced more by other physical properties. However, there were some differences or inconsistencies between the delineated humanistic and physical spaces, indicating that social and economic developments are not occurring at the same pace in places where similar physical conditions prevail. Our results also revealed that differences in consumer consumption behaviors among residents of the urban-rural interface are influenced by complex interactions of economic, social, and spatial factors. We concluded that emphasizing the optimization of humanistic spaces, in addition to the improvement of physical spaces, is essential in enhancing the sustainable development of urban-rural interface. Our results showed that interactions between these factors are promoted by the additive effects of the urban-rural interface and these interactions in turn strengthen the interpretation power of these factors. Such synergistic effects are most evidently reflected by the interactions between spatial factors and economic and social factors.

Discussions of China's hollowed village reconstruction (HVR) program tend to divide initiatives into community-based model (CBM, led by local actors which is also called bottom-up model) and government-led model (GLM, driven by policy makers which is also called top-down model). In this paper, we propose a theoretical framework, which goes beyond these two models. Then, we take three typical villages which experienced different models of HVR in recent years as case studies, exploring the intersection of the process of decision-making, the structure of governance and the performance of projects. Both theoretical analysis and case studies show that a hybrid governance structure (HGS), with limited range of reconstruction in the distribution and functions of rural land, is most in line with China's background for HVR and rural vitalization. The participatory process is very important for these three modes, with villages and communities as the important carriers for participation and interaction. Not only villagers can truly participate in the planning and decision-making process in the HGS's approach, which enables villagers to have more autonomy, but also enhanced the project's performance by integrating villagers' interests and willingness with government proposals, matching the subjective and the objective conditions. This research indicates that we can integrate diverse driving forces of village revitalization, pay more attention to the governance's structure and operating models of reconstructing. More importantly, this study responds to Elinor Ostrom's common-pool resource theory and suggests a way forward in the public governance of rural vitalization in contemporary China.

Since the implementation of China's open-door policy in 1978, the number, structure, and environmental conditions of rural settlements have changed dramatically. This study examined the changes in rural settlements and the factors behind rural change in Guangdong Province using land-use datasets from 1980, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015, a digital elevation model, and data for transport networks and physical characteristics. Different stages of change in the rural settlements became evident: there was expansion from 1980 to 2000 and rapid decline from 2000 to 2010. Urban growth was facilitated by converting high-production cropland. The density of rural settlements was highest in areas with medium-level development: the density was highest in eastern and western parts of the province, lower in the center, and lowest in the north. The patterns and changes in rural settlements were most strongly related to water sources and transport systems; however, some physical variables (terrain, precipitation, and temperature) were significantly associated with the probability of occurrence of rural settlements. We argue that comprehensive, systematic planning systems should be established for rural areas and that it is necessary to recognize the value of the cultural heritage of southern Guangdong. To ensure the success of a rural revitalization strategy, it is important to introduce regional development schemes that resolve inequalities between less and more economically developed areas.

The ageing of the rural population and the citizenization of the rural-urban migrated population have brought unprecedented pressure and challenges to Chinese farmers' old-age care. Socialized old-age care services are a necessity to fulfil the service needs of farmers' old-age care. This study examines the farmers' willingness to pay for socialized old-age care and its influencing factors. Based on field survey data, this paper employs the descriptive statistics method and a binary logistic model to determine and analyze the influencing factors of rural residents' willingness to pay for rural socialized old-age care. We observed the following: rural residents generally have a willingness to pay for rural socialized old-age care services but are subject to their own economic conditions, traditional concepts, and external supply conditions. The influencing factors of rural socialized old-age care include the marital status, self-care ability, enrollment in the New Old-Age Insurance System for Rural Residents, proportion of migrating children, health status, and the population living in the same household. The marital status, the enrollment of New Old-Age Insurance System for Rural Residents, and proportion of migrating children have a positive facilitating effect on willingness to pay. The self-care ability, health status, and the number of residents in the same household have a reverse effect. Considering the willingness to pay, the already-old are more affected by the traditional old-age care concept and more dependent on their children. For the not-yet-old, factors that contribute to transferring old-age care responsibilities to themselves and society have become more significant, which contributes to the existing literature.

Using a comprehensive primary dataset collected from 3680 farmers in certain districts of China and a long-time panel dataset of 31 of China's provinces from 2000 to 2012, an empirically analyzed work is presented in this paper on the impact of farm size on agricultural technology progress from both micro and macro perspectives. A Multivariate Probit Model was built to analyze and clarify the micro basis on which farm size affects technology progress. The impact of farm size on farmers' willingness to adopt new technologies, their technical preference, and their behaviors to acquire agricultural knowledge was tested by model estimation. The influence of farmers’ average scale on agricultural technology progress in most regions was estimated by using fixed-effect and random-effect models. The progress of technology was measured by the technology progressing rate (TPR), which is calculated by the trans-log stochastic frontier function. The results show that farmers with larger farms are more willing to adopt new technologies, spend more time and money in the pursuit of agricultural knowledge, and pay more attention to productive technology rather than processing technology. From the regional analysis, it seems the regions with larger farms have a much higher technology progress rate overall, and while the effect varies depending on scale, there are remarkably positive impacts in large-farm regions, slightly negative impacts in medium-sized farm regions, and notable negative impact in small-farm regions.

After nearly seventy years of poverty alleviation, China has basically solved the problem of providing food and clothing to the rural poor. However, the islanding effect of the distribution of the poor and the marginal diminishing effect of the antipoverty resources, which restrict the effects of poverty-eliminating strategies, are increasingly obvious. In this context, targeted poverty alleviation is designed by the Chinese central government. Therefore, it is necessary to systematically analyse targeted poverty alleviation and explore the mechanism of its practices. In addition to reviewing the process of antipoverty in rural China, this study investigated the connotation of targeted poverty alleviation and considered the case of Fuping in Hebei Province to explore targeted antipoverty practices. Results showed that poverty alleviation in rural China could be divided into six stages, and the essence of targeted poverty alleviation lied in helping those who truly needed help and achieving genuine outcomes by accurately identifying and assisting poverty-stricken households, accurately managing objects and measures and accurately assessing antipoverty effectiveness. The practices of targeted poverty alleviation in Fuping county mainly involved industrial development, resettlement assistance, financial and educational development, together with medical security and land consolidation, all of which built an endogenous and sustainable mechanism enabling regional development. This study suggests that targeted poverty alleviation is an innovative strategy which is suitable for overcoming the islanding effect of poverty distribution and helping policymakers formulate detailed and targeted measures to eliminate poverty.

This paper reviewed the history of the coupling relationship between land consolidation and urban-rural development in China since 1949. It found that, although land consolidation projects in non-integrated urban-rural development phases improved the quality and quantity of cultivated land, it did not improve the rural decline effectively before 2013 because it focused more on land issues and did not complement and stimulate urban and rural development. Comprehensive land consolidations in China are expected to operate as both a tool and a platform for the operation of a developmental policy that aims to promote rural vitalisation through the integration of urban-rural development. The case of Huai Town was analysed using a framework of Rural In Situ Urbanisation (RISU) through a semi socio-economic restructuring. This was done to present an innovative style of RISU in which villagers live in towns and their livelihoods, living spaces, and public services are urbanised while they still retain both their rural land rights and rural household registrations, which allowed for the integration of urban and rural resources, the protection of villagers' interests, and a smooth social transition. The key factors for these comprehensive land consolidations to help combat rural decline include a bottom-up, community-supported structure; a coordinated approach incorporating livelihood transformation, population urbanisation, and land urbanisation, with livelihood transformation serving as the foundation; and the protection of villagers’ rights and interests.

Integrated urban–rural development is important in rural vitalisation. Most publications have focused on the structural system of urban agglomerations but ignored urban–rural systems at the county level. To fill this research gap, a three-level construction method using network analysis is proposed for investigating the structure of the interconnection of rural and urban systems at the county level. Hierarchical systems among towns, between towns and villages as well as among rural settlements are recognised by the interconnection strength measured by multiple methods. The development strategy of each town is decided using cross discrimination based on its nodality and network centrality. The hierarchy between towns and villages is characterised by interconnection analysis between towns and villages and one village would be designated as the hinterland of the destination town with the highest frequency of commuting behaviour. The hierarchy among rural settlements is characterised by their interdependence using gravity model and the central settlements are identified according to the forms of settlement clusters with their respective three spatial patterns (i.e., single-centre, dual-core and linear). The city- and sub-centres of Daye, economic hinterland of each town and central settlements were identified to provide guidelines for the development of rural planning and vitalisation. Our case study demonstrates the potential of the proposed analysis framework for the guidance of the urban-rural system construction. However, further investigation and alternative data sources are needed to fully reflect the interactive intensity between towns and rural settlements.

By introducing geographic social capital, this paper highlights the role of social and spatial proximity in facilitating the spatial agglomeration of the informal female labour market for glove manufacturing in Gaozhou. It examines the town-village nodes within the network, interacting with pre-existing rural conditions to display discursive uncertainty. Further, it focuses on the agency manifested by different actors within the multi-layered nodes, capturing the resources embedded in the network in the specific geographic context or milieu. The results suggest that spatial proximity promotes social proximity, but also generates spatial lock-in, which can be avoided by becoming a ‘focal actor’ or a ‘boundary spanner’. The boundary between the ‘core’ and the ‘periphery’ has become blurred. The social value of skilled workers located near the top of the network has changed. The node of village farmers at the end of the network has become increasingly important; they are perceived to be a ‘reservoir’ of labour resources. The survey results show a compound social network of establishments and workshops that mainly feature an informal network within the specific context of geographical localities. ‘Hybrid spaces’ discovered through ethnographical immersion investigation embody the spatial embeddedness of social relationships and cultural constructions in the glove manufacturing workplace, reemphasizing the importance of people as a resource in the sustainability of rural development.

Selecting the appropriate targeted poverty alleviation policies and exploring the implementation path of refined poverty alleviation policies are important to provide support for achieving a comprehensive poverty alleviation for China in 2020. Two models, namely, land resources-environmental carrying capacity (LRECC) index and the coupling coordination degree (CCD), were established to quantitatively explore the important effects of differences in the LRECC in the production, living and ecological spaces on poverty, and determine the important role of superior carrying space in poverty alleviation. Additionally, this study explored the relationship between the poverty incidence and the LRECC by using of the coefficient of geographical association (CGA) to perform the priority and the optimal selection of targeted poverty alleviation policies from the production, living, and ecological spaces. Results showed that the comprehensive CGAs of Long Zhouping township, Huo Shaoping township and other townships were high; therefore, the priority of targeted poverty alleviation was high. By contrast, the comprehensive CGAs of Ya Zikou township, Du Zhenwan township, and other townships were low; thus, the priority of targeted poverty alleviation was low. Long Zhouping and Dayan townships should select the production aspect of targeted poverty alleviation policies, whereas Du Zhenwan and Ya Zikou townships and Gao Jiayan and Moshi townships should select the living and ecological aspects, respectively. Selecting the appropriate targeted poverty alleviation policies by quantitatively identifying the advantages of regional land resource endowment and the poverty incidence will help take the poor out of poverty, and do not become poor again, thereby achieving regional sustainable development.