Challenging the developmental state: Nature conservation in Singapore

Abstract: Nature conservation efforts are often reactive to encroaching development plans and systematic conservation planning that is integral with development is not only uncommon, but is often fraught with difficulties even where it is actually attempted. Such obstacles to conservation are especially apparent in developmental states where state legitimacy is largely derived from the state's ability to develop the country. Among other things, developmental states place a premium on physical and economic development. This paper critiques, through the standpoint of nature conservation, the inadequate conceptualisation of ‘development’ in the developmental state thesis. Specifically, this paper argues that the seemingly value‐free (but ultimately economically based) underpinnings of development goals pushed by the developmental state needs to be tempered with a broader concern for the ethics of development. To that end, I draw on two case studies of nature conservation tussles in Singapore to show how alternative extra‐economic visions of development have been articulated, notwithstanding the developmental state's monopoly on the discourse (and practice) of progress and development. The case studies, set in the heady economic growth of the early 1990s, will critique two related aspects of the developmental state: its ‘amoral’ economistic conception of development and its use of growth and materialism as legitimacy.     

Popular music in a transnational world: the construction of local identities in Singapore

As an area of geographical inquiry, popular music has not been explored to any large extent. Where writings exist, they have been somewhat divorced from recent theoretical and methodological questions that have rejuvenated social and cultural geography. In this paper, I focus on one arena which geographers can develop in their analysis of popular music, namely, the exploration of local influences and global forces in the production of music. In so doing, I wish to explore how local resources intersect with global ones in a process of transculturation. Using the example of English songs by one particular songwriter and artiste whose works are part of the popular music industry mainstream, and that of Mandarin songs of the genre xinyao, I will show that, despite increasing globalising forces, music is still an expression of local/national influences. Indeed, I will argue that globalisation intensifies localisation.     

Multiple dimensions in negotiating the cross‐border transport links that connect and divide Singapore and Johor,Malaysia

Abstract: Despite recent literature pointing to the need for a multidimensional approach to border processes, transport links across borders are usually uncritically associated with cross‐border ‘integration’. This paper focuses on examining the roles played by transport facilities in border processes. It uses case studies of three key transport links at the border between Singapore and Johor, Malaysia. As would conventionally be expected, enhancing these links was often seen in terms of the economic opportunities expected to arise from the easing of bottlenecks. However, the findings also reveal multiple roles for the transport links at this border, many of which cannot be enlisted in any simple conception of cross‐border integration, even when clear enhancement of the links is involved. These roles include: as ‘filters’ (or ‘valves’) used to encourage or discourage certain flows; as ‘gateways’ asserting territoriality; and as ‘bargaining chips’ in the bilateral relationship. A role as ‘collision points’ between policy regimes was also surprisingly important. However, contrary to usual expectations none of the transport links examined appear in the guise of ‘bridges’, contributing towards integrated governance. These findings highlight the complexity of border processes, and underline the contingent interactions between different dimensions of cross‐border processes sometimes simplistically conflated as ‘integration’.     

Divided communities and contested landscapes: Mobility,development and shifting identities in migrant destination sites in Papua New Guinea

Abstract: Internal conflicts at the local and national levels in several South Pacific countries have revealed the fragility of national unity and the difficulties nations face in governing and managing their own economic development. In Papua New Guinea, the focus of this paper, an uncertain economic future for many rural and urban communities, and rising inequalities in income opportunities and access to resources, have coincided with greater intolerance of migrants at sites of high in‐migration by customary landowners and provincial and local authorities. This paper draws on fieldwork undertaken in the major oil palm growing regions of Papua New Guinea where migrants from densely populated regions of the country have settled on state land alienated from customary landowners. We examine how struggles over land, resource control and development are polarising migrant and landowner identities resulting in increasing tensions and episodic communal violence. A settler identity is emerging based on a narrative of nation building and national development, while an ethno‐regional identity amongst customary landowners is undermining the citizen rights of migrants and challenging the role and authority of the state in land matters.     

‘Governed freedom’ in Oceania: AusAID,subjectivation and the practice of critique in studies of governmentality

Drawing predominantly on the work of Butler, Rose and Walters, this paper examines the governing rationalities and technologies that characterise one particular site of aid relations. Focusing on key policy documents, economic surveys and performance reports, the paper traces the fashioning of particular subjectivities as constitutive of AusAID's development objectives and the function of problematisation and responsibilisation as central to these practices of subjectivation. While I argue the freedom on offer as part of AusAID's development objectives is a highly governed one – where the ‘free’ economic‐rational subject adopts certain ‘civilised sensibilities’ (Rose, 1999: 78), I show how this process of subjectivation encompasses both ‘a power exerted on a subject’ and ‘a power assumed by the subject’ (Butler, 1997: 11). What becomes apparent through this analysis is the productive and tenuous characteristics of these practices of subject formation. This paper also foregrounds the practice of critique itself, and the very act of research; concepts adopted and explanations made, as far from innocent in their performativity in enacting some worlds and not others.     

Urban evictions,public housing and the gendered rationalisation of kampung life in Jakarta

The dispossession of urban communities across class and racial lines is a global phenomenon linked to the expansion of international investment in the development of ‘exemplary’ city space. However, city evictions are also historically informed and gendered processes which are continuous with past colonial and postcolonial urban rationalisation projects. Drawing on testimonies of women evictees in Jakarta, as well as interviews with public housing managers, this article details the gendered nature of the rationalisation of urban life in the context of a contemporary evictions regime. We argue that the rationalisation of urban space serves to sharpen the gender order by placing material constraints on women's roles, limiting their economic activities and defining them as hygiene‐responsible housewives. Further, and in turn, the limited provision of ‘rusunawa’ public housing, which we show to be a gendered spatial and social transition informed by state doctrine on the family, provides the state with justification for dispossession itself. Finally, women's everyday acts of refusal and resistance show not only that kampung forms of social life continue to be preserved in Jakarta, but also that rationalisation itself is a negotiated and contingent process.     

Negotiating Routes and/or Roots: Heritagisation of nanyin in China and Singapore, 1970s to 2010s

Originated in southern China, nanyin (南音) is regarded as ‘the sound of motherland’ (乡音) performed and loved by the Hokkien dialect speakers in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and diasporic populations living in Southeast Asia. Having thrived in transnational spaces, nanyin is now celebrated as a shared heritage in China and Southeast Asian countries, such as Singapore. This paper explores the process of heritage-making, that is, the ways in which the art form and cultural practice of nanyin have been re-shaped and re-appropriated by the diasporic communities and the native place to articulate different understandings of the Chinese identity in their distinct nation-state frameworks. In this ambivalent entanglement, China has re-appropriated the diasporic history of nanyin to gain international recognition and build soft power through United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In Singapore, the Siong Leng Music Association has actively engaged in the heritage-making of nanyin, leading to the creation of a unique Singapore brand that speaks to hybridity and cosmopolitanism, in the same way as the re-construction of their Chinese identity. Examining the two processes of heritagisation of nanyin along the China-Singapore ‘heritage corridors’, the paper argues that the two ends are connected in important ways but always seek to maintain distance to articulate their own cultural representations at international stages. Thus, nanyin through a comparative perspective enables a critical examination of issues of centre versus periphery, authenticity, and hybridity in the Sinophone world.     

Decolonising Pacific research,building Pacific research communities and developing Pacific research tools: The case of the talanoa and the faafaletui in Samoa

In building Samoan academic researcher capacity in Samoa, we argue that there is a need to first establish the kind of researcher community advocated by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, and to do so through developing research tools, such as the talanoa and faafaletui, in partnership with researcher capacity‐building initiatives such as the applied postgraduate social and health research methods course (coded PUBX731‐HSA505) run by the Centre for International Health, University of Otago, in partnership with the National University of Samoa. This paper offers a commentary on the talanoa and faafaletui as Pacific research methodologies, and asks what its value might be for researchers in Samoa. It reflects on the learning experiences of staff and students of the applied social and health research methods course in relation to the talanoa and faafaletui as Pacific research methodologies or methods. It concludes that developing Pacific research and researcher capacity in Pacific Island countries, such as Samoa, must include opening up spaces within these communities to critically engage what is Pacific or Samoan or indigenous about these research tools, methods or methodologies, and how they might differ in form or substance from other methods or methodologies.     

高海拔地区水稻遮光、剪叶和疏花对米质影响的研究

通过遮光、剪叶和疏花等措施研究了高海拔地区水稻源库关系对籽粒灌浆及稻米品质的影响以及灌浆物质和灌浆动态与稻米品质的关系。结果表明,遮光提高整精米率,特别是对强势粒;遮光对垩白度的影响因品种和粒位而异;剪叶提高垩白度,疏花降低垩白度;遮光降低稻米直链淀粉含量和稻米淀粉RVA谱的最高黏度和崩解值,延长米胶长度;稻米主要品质指标既与灌浆物质量有关,也与灌浆动态有关;灌浆结实前期的灌浆速率、灌浆量及其比例对垩白面积、垩白度、最高黏度、崩解值等影响最大,后期其次,中期的影响较小;垩白面积和垩白度随结实前期灌浆速率、灌浆量及其比例的增加而降低,随结实后期灌浆速率、灌浆量及其比例的增加而增加,最高黏度、崩解值则相反。     

Place,identity and immigrant communities: The organisation of the Yulan Festival in post‐war Hong Kong

Abstract: In the process of migration, some traditions persist while others do not. The Yulan Festival, also known as the Ghost Festival, continues to be observed by different subethnic Chinese migrant groups in Hong Kong for a variety of reasons. Although the festival organisation accentuates subethnic distinctions, paradoxically it also enables different groups to integrate into the larger community. The activities articulate various meanings of ‘place’– as ‘ancestral place’ on the mainland where
the rituals are believed to originate, as the specific locality/neighbourhood in Hong Kong where the festival is held, and Hong Kong as a whole. This article, based on interviews with Chiu Chow and Hoklo participants, shows how they think of the different meanings of ‘place’, which in turn reflects the way they make sense of the process of migration.     

Global production networks,the developmental state and the articulation of Asia Pacific economies in the commercial aircraft industry

Abstract: Asia Pacific economies – particularly Japan, South Korea, China and Singapore – play a large and growing role in the commercial aircraft industry, despite the fact that the region has no major independent plane‐maker. Instead, Asia has secured a significant position in the increasingly elaborate global production networks of Boeing and Airbus. The wider Asian significance in those networks has been fostered not only by the region's deep capital and human resource assets but also by the catalytic actions of developmental states in the region. Moreover, decades of rapid air traffic growth have made Asia a crucial market for Boeing and Airbus. In response, the American and European giants have been compelled to outsource more of their business to Asia in order to win sales and to design new airliners tailored to the needs of Asian customers. Together, the increased importance of Asia in both the design and the manufacture of commercial aircraft point to a future in which Asia will capture an ever‐larger share of the value created in one of the world's most technologically sophisticated and strategically significant industries.     

中国低碳发展公众参与现状研究 ——城乡公众参与差异分析

基于全国的随机抽样调查数据,对中国城市和农村公众低碳发展认知和行为的客观特征进行分析,结果发现：中国城乡公众在低碳发展认知,意愿和行为方面存在显著差异,并对这些差异的原因进行了探讨。最后针对城乡公众的不同特征,提出差异化政策建议。     

Developing a typology of daily travelers based on transportation attitudes: Application of latent class analysis using a survey of millennials and older adults in Hamilton,Ontario

Using survey data of millennials and older adults in Hamilton, Ontario, this exploratory study sought to identify daily travelers based on their attitudes and perceptions toward transportation modes using latent class analysis. Four daily traveler types are identified—“walk and transit-oriented travelers,” “car-oriented commuters,” “multimodal travelers,” and “car-oriented travelers.” The study also examined the association of different sociodemographic characteristics and trip attributes with the four traveler types. Findings suggest that heterogeneity exists within travel-related attitudes among different traveler types. Further, heterogeneous traveler types exist among individuals belonging to the same generation, with the same living arrangements and possession of a driver's license.     

京津冀地区农药使用现状调查

为积极落实"中共中央关于积极发展现代农业扎实推进社会主义新农村建设"的文件精神,笔者从农民对农药的使用情况、使用的规范性方面,采用入户调查、整群取样的方法,于2006年7月至9月对京津冀地区:北京、石家庄、沧州、保定、秦皇岛5个地区农民进行了实地调查,共收回有效调查问卷735份。此次调查从农药的使用者、农药施用的前期准备阶段、喷施阶段、施用后处理阶段等方面将农民施用农药的真实情况呈现出来,从整体上看,农民有安全使用农药的意识,但对农药施用、存放等知识缺乏系统性了解,对科学施用农药技能掌握较差。针对现存在的问题,提出可行性建议,旨在通过逐步建立完善的农药使用制度,使农药使用工作科学化、制度化、规范化,在增产的同时,促进农业和农药产业健康、有序、可持续发展。     

2008—2018年长江中下游小麦区试品系品质分析

为了解长江中下游小麦品质育种进展,对2008—2018年本区域参试的130个品系(182份样品)的品质测试数据进行分析,并根据不同品质分类标准评价了该区域小麦品质改良现状。结果表明,2008—2018年130个小麦区试品系的容重为786±16.07 g/L,粗蛋白含量12.79%±0.93%,湿面筋含量26.14%±2.77%,沉降值为34.65±10.43 mL,吸水率为56.62%±3.83%,稳定时间为4.03±2.82 min,最大抗延阻力为289.55±123.01 E.U,延伸性为154.55±19.11 mm,此外,变异系数最高的为稳定时间69.98%、最低的为容重2.04%。年度间比较发现,容重、粗蛋白含量和吸水率起伏较大,湿面筋含量保持平稳,沉降值、稳定时间、最大抗延阻力和延伸性呈现先增加后降低趋势。根据国家品质评价体系,2008—2018年长江中下游小麦区试品系中,存在较多同一品系各项指标间强、中、弱筋相互交错的现象,达标品系中,强筋、中强筋较少,中筋、弱筋较多。总体而言,长江中下游小麦品质育种趋向中弱筋。     

乡村振兴背景下新疆城乡融合发展水平研究——人口-产业-公共服务的综合评价

推进城乡在经济、社会、生态等方面融合性、协调性、关联性发展,是实现乡村振兴的重要路径。通过构建新疆城乡融合发展综合评价体系,测算研究区2014—2019年城乡融合发展指数,分析探讨影响因素,揭示城乡融合发展的趋势特征与地区差异。结果表明：研究期内（1）新疆城乡融合发展水平总体呈增强态势,城乡融合发展不断加强。城乡公共服务、城乡产业经济是新疆城乡融合发展的主要动力;城乡人口要素和城乡生活质量成为制约城乡融合发展综合水平提升的关键因素。（2）新疆各地州市城乡融合发展水平差距逐渐缩小,城乡融合发展水平整体呈现稳定增长态势;人口要素融合增长较快,公共服务融合增长较慢。据此,研究建议构建大、中、小多层次城镇空间格局,强化中心城市主体功能区建设,推进一、二、三产业融合,加快构建城乡均等化公共服务体系等对策建议,有助于正确把握和评价新疆各地州城乡融合发展实践,推动新型城镇化与乡村振兴战略协调发展。     

长江中下游近10年冬小麦区试主要农艺性状演变分析

利用2012—2021年间国家小麦区域试验长江中下游组212份参试品系的主要农艺性状区试结果,分析其近10年的演变规律。结果表明,该区域小麦产量和穗粒数先减后增、有效穗数明显减少、千粒重和株高不断增加、生育期基本保持平稳。今后,长江中下游麦区产量应当在保持现有产量结构的基础上,注意提高千粒重,适当降低穗粒数,培育早熟品种为主,更有利于该麦区产量提升。     

Frost tolerance in wild potato species: Assessing the predictivity of taxonomic, geographic, and ecological factors

The use of genetic resources could be more effective and efficient if we were able to predict the presence or absence of useful traits in different populations or accessions. We analyzed the extent to which taxonomic, geographic and ecological factors can predict the presence of frost tolerance in wild potatoes. We used screening data for 1646 samples from 87 species that had been collected in 12 countries in the Americas. There was a strong association of frost tolerance with species and to a lesser extent with taxonomic series. There was significant geographic clustering of areas with wild potatoes with similar levels of frost tolerance. Areas with a high level of frost tolerance are the central and southern Peruvian Andes, the lowlands of Argentina and adjacent areas, and a small area in the central Chilean Andes. There is a greater chance of finding wild potatoes with high levels of frost tolerance in areas with a yearly mean minimum temperature below 3 ^°C than there is in warmer areas. However, temperature is only a weak predictor of frost tolerance. Temperature data alone did not predict observed frost tolerance in eastern Argentina/Uruguay and falsely predicted it in the southwestern United States. Because many wild potato species occur over small areas, taxonomic, ecological, and geographical factors are difficult to disentangle. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Agrarian change and diversity in the light of Brookfield,Boserup and Malthus: Historical illustrations from Sulawesi,Indonesia

Abstract: This paper uses historical sources to examine the relationship between demography, economy and ecology in three parts of the island of Sulawesi (Indonesia) over a long time period. Broadly speaking, these case studies suggest both the density of population and the intensity of agricultural activity at any given time and place were controlled by two factors. The first was the agricultural potential of the natural environment in terms of soil, climate and topography: populations were denser, and farming more area‐intensive, in naturally fertile areas. The second was the extent to which the local economy was commercialised rather than subsistence‐oriented: when commerce grew, so did both the population and the intensity of its farming systems. In terms of ecological sustainability and resilience, densely populated enclaves of intensive, commercialised agriculture tended to perform better than did sparsely populated and economically isolated areas of subsistence production, where progressive deforestation and land degradation sometimes occurred. Although one reason for this was simply that the former were located on better soils than the latter, other reasons included the greater use of tree crops, and the greater availability of labour for investment in what Brookfield called ‘landesque capital’, which characterised the more populous and commercialised areas.