De l'espace nomade à l'espace mobile en passant par l'espace du contrat: une expérience théorique

The paper retraces both a scientific itinerary and what might be described as a stratification and a history of the dominant social forms of structuring space: nomadism, sedentariness, mobility. It argues against a possible evolutionist interpretation of this scheme by privileging a synchronic observation of the various intersecting spatial forms in what might be called the truth of the place (which is the stage of intersection). The theoretical idea of a mobile space is thus schematized by opposing it to the paradigm of fixedness which dominates classical as well as modern spatial analysis. The rapprochement of nomadic space (being the source of reflection) and mobile space (being the result of reflection) is presented as a “methodological” space avoiding metaphorical vagueness.     

Inquiring Into Life as We Live It

This article marks the first steps in an inquiry into community-based approaches to well-being for children and families. The author outlines the development of her methodological approach, which draws significantly from human geography. The study, while concerned with broader social and economic dynamics, is situated in a particular community which is undergoing economic, ecological, and political transitions. By grounding the study in this way, individual and collective experiences can be better understood and responded to. The intention is to make methodological decisions explicit in order to engage readers with the significance of theoretical considerations when embarking on qualitative research.     

The political economy of global tree plantation expansion: a review

This contribution analyses the recent global expansion of different types of tree plantations. A literature review collates accounts from recent academic publications and by NGOs, and is accompanied by field research and interview observations about the causal processes, central features and likely futures of contemporary tree plantation expansion. I will analyse the political and spatial causalities explaining varieties and commonalities in expansion style and pace, with elaboration on the applied and empirical significance of these findings for peasant studies. The literature on environmental and developmental impacts of tree plantation expansion is also surveyed.     

Disquieting growth: urban space in Kawashima Yūzō's film Suzaki Paradise Red Light

This article examines how Japanese postwar cinematic texts manifest and comment upon contemporary political and economic events, and considers the usefulness of cinema for a more complete historical understanding of the period. In particular, it argues for the significance of fūzoku eiga, or ‘films of customs and manners’ by analyzing a representative text of that genre, Kawashima Yūzō's 1956 film Suzaki Paradise Red Light. Although Kawashima's film has been treated as an apolitical melodrama, a close textual analysis reveals it to be a counter-narrative to the success story of postwar economic recovery and growth that the Japanese state sought to promote. Key to this analysis is an examination of the urban space of the Suzaki neighborhood in Tokyo, as depicted in the film. Kawashima's tour of Suzaki addresses the issues of the economic stagnation within the metropolis, uneven development, and the liminal space of muen, or ‘no ties,’ which offers a brief refuge from an increasingly disciplined everyday life.     

Witchcraft and space: a theoretical analysis of unseen political spaces in Ghana and Cameroon

This article addresses the application of the concept of space to witchcraft in Africa. Throughout colonial history, and still today, efforts to mediate and control witchcraft and witchcraft-related violence have focused on the manipulation of physical spaces, such as villages, shrines and witch camps. While critical theories of space and power are increasingly relevant in a number of fields, the exploration of these concepts may be somewhat limited in their application to witchcraft-related violence and witchcraft as a lived reality in Africa. In this article, the theoretical ability of Western concepts of space to analyze the phenomenon of witchcraft will be considered, looking at the relations of space and power in colonial and postcolonial Africa. This analysis brings into question the modernist foundations of these concepts and explores the role of witchcraft in the governance of Ghanaian and Cameroonian spaces and imaginations.     

From failed states to fragile cities: redefining spaces of humanitarian practice

It has become commonplace to claim that cities are becoming conflict zones, or ‘war zones’. This article traces some of the discursive and conceptual shifts that made it possible to define the city as a new frontier for international humanitarian action in states of the Global South. In order to represent cities as humanitarian spaces, concepts of ‘failure’ and ‘fragility’ have been problematised and subjected to reinterpretations that legitimised new strategies applied to the urban realm. I argue that this re-scaling of humanitarian practices enables a de-coupling and inclusion of so called new ‘urban conflicts’ in strategies of global liberal governance. Moving from failed states to fragile cites is a key development to understand changes in the practices that redefine humanitarian spaces today. The definition of urban violence as a new type of conflict informs a new cycle of expansion of the humanitarian order focused on the city. The article analyses the problematisation of concepts of failure and fragility as a decisive move to redefine the boundaries of humanitarian spaces.     

Space,discourse and environmental peacebuilding

The concept of environmental peacebuilding is becoming increasingly prominent among peacebuilding scholars and practitioners. This study provides a brief overview about the various discussions contributing to our understanding of environmental peacebuilding and concludes that questions of space have hardly been explicitly considered in these debates. Drawing on discourse-analytic spatial theory, I discuss how the social construction of scale, place and boundaries are relevant for environmental peacebuilding processes and outcomes. This theoretical approach is then applied to the Good Water Neighbours project, which aims at improving the regional water situation and at building peace between Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians. The results suggest that discursive constructions of space are important in facilitating, impeding or shaping environmental peacebuilding practices. Analyses of environmental peacebuilding, but also of peacebuilding more general, are therefore encouraged to draw more strongly on the findings of spatial theory.     

扩大转移总量拓展转移空间培育转移新人——毕节地区农村劳动力转移研究

该文指出,贵州省毕节地区农村劳动力转移在过去的二十年里取得显著成就,为贫困地区走出了一条农村劳动力转移、农民增收、贫困缓解、生态环境得到改善和重建,农村经济社会事业全面发展的扶贫开发道路。在国家加大对西部地区开发力度,产业空间结构进一步调整,更注重区域平衡发展的背景下,毕节地区将会随着交通等基础设施改善和投资环境的优化,迎来新一轮农村劳动力转移的机遇。为此,该文建议,毕节地区要根据宏观环境新变化,在扩大转移总量、拓展转移空间、培育转移新人上,构建新的转移战略,更好的推动农村劳动力的转移。     

公立学校教师双重法律身份之定位及意义

教师法律身分与教师享有的权利内容及保障制度密切相关,我国大陆地区目前的相关教师法律规范对于教师的法律身分界定不甚明确,从而直接导致了教师游离于劳动法和公务员法的保护之外。本文中,笔者首先以列举教师维权中的困惑来引出教师法律身份如何定位这一课题,然后对我国台湾地区学者关于教师法律身份的不同观点进行了简要介绍,其次通过对教师的劳动者身份和公务员身份进行分析,提出了教师应为特殊劳动者兼特殊公务员的观点,最后着重阐述了定位教师的双重法律身份在立法完善及法律适用上的重大指导意义。     

论新中国宪法中“公民的基本权利与义务”一章的形式——从《国家人权行动计划（2009—2010）》的缺憾说起

宪法是内容与形式的统一体，研究宪法形式特别是基本权利的形式，具有重要的理论价值与实践意义。新中国四部宪法都设有“公民的基本权利与义务”这一章。该章在几十年的变迁中，形式上有重大改观，但在位置、篇幅和体例等形式问题上仍然有改进的空间，将来修宪时宜考虑其在形式上的完善。