scholarly journals Identifying Place Distinctiveness Through Cultural Resource Mapping

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-195
Author(s):  
Nur Farhana Azmi ◽  
Faizah Ahmad ◽  
Azlan Shah Ali
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
Building Structures ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Cultural Resource ◽  
Resource Mapping ◽  
The Town

Regardless of their size, every town, city, or more generally each place, has its own beautiful, unique and distinct characteristics. However, only few studies have provided valuable information on exceptional and unique features that can contribute to the distinctiveness and identity of small-scale towns. It is important to identify these cultural resources, especially now that the identity of small towns is rapidly weakening. This study explored the significance of cultural resource mapping as an important technique for identifying the unique characteristics of a place. A questionnaire survey was conducted amongst a random sample of 119 local community members in Sungai Lembing, a small town in the state of Pahang, Malaysia, to investigate respondents’ mental representations of familiar features that they experience in the town, through cultural mapping. It was revealed that natural features, buildings, and non-building structures were seen by the respondents as the most dominant elements that constitute the individuality of their town. While deepening the community’s understanding and awareness of their cultural assets, this paper also highlights the significance of cultural mapping as a tool for identifying unique characteristics of a place, especially those that may have been previously overlooked.   Abstrak. Terlepas dari ukurannya, setiap kota atau lebih umum lagi suatu tempat, memiliki keindahan, keunikan dan karakter tersendiri. Namun, hanya sedikit penelitian yang memberikan informasi berharga tentang fitur luar biasa dan unik yang dapat berkontribusi pada kekhasan dan identitas kota skala kecil. Oleh karena itu, penting untuk mengidentifikasi sumber daya budaya tersebut terutama dalam kondisi saat ini di mana identitas kota kecil dengan cepat melemah. Makalah ini mencoba mengeksplorasi pentingnya pemetaan sumber daya budaya sebagai teknik penting untuk mengidentifikasi karakteristik unik suatu tempat. Survei kuesioner dilakukan di antara sampel acak dari 119 komunitas lokal di Sungai Lembing, sebuah kota kecil di negara bagian Pahang, Malaysia; untuk menyelidiki representasi mental responden dari fitur-fitur yang sudah dikenal yang dialami di kota melalui pemetaan budaya. Studi ini mengungkapkan bahwa fitur alam, bangunan dan struktur non-bangunan digambar oleh responden sebagai elemen dominan yang membentuk individualitas kota. Sambil memperdalam pemahaman dan kesadaran masyarakat akan aset budaya mereka, makalah ini juga menyoroti pentingnya pemetaan budaya sebagai salah satu alat penting dalam mengidentifikasi karakteristik unik suatu tempat terutama yang mungkin sebelumnya diabaikan.   Kata kunci. pemetaan budaya, dokumentasi, identitas, tempat, kota kecil.

Informal Networks in the Black Sea Region

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 297-322
Author(s):  
Mariam Darchiashvili
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
Informal Networks ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Black Sea Region ◽  
Turkish Origin ◽  
Legal Responses ◽  
Boarding House ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
The Town

Abstract In 2014, local community members nailed a pig’s head to the door of a Muslim boarding house in Kobuleti, a small town in Adjara, to argue that ‘this is a Christian place.’ They expressed fears about the building owner, who was thought to be of Turkish origin. Enlargement of the boarding house was perceived as a possible Islamization of the town and an increase of transborder flows in the region. In this article, I examine the agency of the boarding houses in Adjara through human and non-human actors. At the same time, I look at the legal responses of the state and official structures for controlling informalities embedded in the boarding houses’ networks.

scholarly journals Protection of old forges in Sułkowice – symbol of the local crafts-manship

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 151-160
Author(s):  
Barbara Zin
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Times ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Wooden Structures ◽  
The Town ◽  
Second World

Wooden structures linked to agriculture are disappearing from the image of the Polish countryside, villages and small towns at the beginning of the 21st century. It is worthy to start the discussion on the fate of desolate, deteriorating forges, sawmills, carpentries, or water mills which are relics of the traditional technology. Sułkowice, a small town in the Małopolskie voivodeship, has been known for ages as a prominent centre of blacksmiths and their craft. Even today one feels the specific character of the landscape; in the mid-19th century circa 1000 blacksmiths worked there. Tradition lived until the times after the Second World War – when artisans in Sułkowice forged, among others, artful fittings for the MS ‘Batory’ [famed Polish liner]. Inventories, surveys and measurements of old forges, elaborated by the authoress within the framework of the research grant “Image of villages and small towns in Poland of the last decade of the 20th century” (led by Prof. Wiktor Zin) led to gathering of the documentation of circa 20 structures hailing from the close of the 19th century. After 20 years that elapsed since the research there are only a few left, and their days are numbered. Local Programme of Revitalisation of the Town from the year 2007 which is a strategic plan for enterprises aiming at amelioration of the area, does not mention the protection of the last witnesses of the local crafts’s tradition. Whereby the activisation of the local community, deriving from the tradition of the place, should be the aim of such a programme. Thus maybe there should be reconstruction and later ‘cyclical rebuilding’ of the structures which have no chance to exist with their primary function? “Old-new” wooden structures shall be a reminder of the blacksmiths’ tradition.

The People Beyond the Tag

2019 ◽  
pp. 61-97
Author(s):  
Shareen Hertel
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Stakeholder Consultation ◽  
Subjective Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
The People ◽  
Grassroots Level ◽  
The Town

Chapter 4 analyzes the receptivity of local community members in the town of Villa Altagracia (Dominican Republic) toward the practice of stakeholder consultation. It draws on original qualitative interviews with residents of this manufacturing community where collegiate apparel is produced (i.e., clothing with college logos) and workers at one company (Alta Gracia Apparel) are paid triple the prevailing minimum wage. The chapter introduces the concept of “subjective socioeconomic status,” which enables us to compare how different respondents rate their own well-being compared to that of other people in their community. Villa Altagracia has a significant unemployment problem, and the surveys convey the challenges experienced by people beyond the factory’s employees. Listening to people at the grassroots level illuminates the limits of business and human rights promotion strategies, the structural roots of poverty, and the inherent complexity of poor communities central to global supply chains.

Withshare

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiawei Chen ◽  
Benjamin V. Hanrahan ◽  
John M Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Local Community ◽  
User Study ◽  
Social Ties ◽  
Smartphone Application ◽  
Mobile Technologies ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Community Members ◽  
The Social ◽  
Important Design

Coproductions are reciprocal activities that all parties are actively engaged in and create synergies that cannot be produced by one party alone. Coproduction activities are important for community building, as the social interactions among community members create social values such as new social ties, trust and reciprocal recognition. Mobile technologies bring new opportunity for coproductions by supporting small-scale reciprocal activities that are location and time sensitive. In this article, the authors introduce and study WithShare, a smartphone application that helps people to organize such coproduction activities. A 3-week user study with 38 young adults in a local community of college students shows WithShare facilitates the coordination of opportunistic and lightweight reciprocal activities in their daily life. The results highlight potentials of coproduction activities in strengthening existing social ties, and establishing new weak ties in the local community. The findings suggest important design implications for mobile technologies to support coproduction activities.

scholarly journals Singing Sustenance: An Ethnographic Account of Village Songs and Community Development in Postwar Rural Japan

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Eid-Ul Hasan
Keyword(s):  
Community Development ◽  
Local Community ◽  
High Growth ◽  
Common Goal ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Work Songs ◽  
Southern Island ◽  
Village Life ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Town

<p>This paper offers an ethnographic account of seven village songs associated with community development in postwar rural Japan. These songs belong to Oyama Town in the southern island of Kyushu in Japan, and were created by the local community members mostly between 1961 and 1965. In Japan the village songs in prewar period were rooted in daily village life, and sang the glory of nostalgia in the form of work songs, party songs, calendrical or communal festival songs. In the postwar period, however, village songs embraced modernity as their focal theme. These seven village songs, created during high growth days, are songs with a difference as they portray efforts to bring about community development, under the New Plum and Chestnut (NPC) movement, with plum and chestnut as main crops, against the backdrop of a strongly centralized policy oriented rural Japan. The research found that the village songs had encouraged and motivated a rural community like the Oyama Town to create a “sense of community” through shared values and common goal. By exploring these songs, the research also identified that the local government such as the town office, which acted as a legitimate vehicle either by nurturing the potential local human resources or by entrusting the responsibility of community development with the local employees, had played an important role in devising and materializing the common goal—the development of Oyama.</p>

scholarly journals Approaches in assessing the investment attractiveness of small towns of Russia

2018 ◽  
Vol 212 ◽  
pp. 08020
Author(s):  
A. Emelianovich ◽  
E. Kulyagina ◽  
Yu. Kolozhvari
Keyword(s):  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Priority Vector ◽  
Product Increase ◽  
Effective Use ◽  
Further Development ◽  
The Town ◽  
Small And Medium Business

Effective use of the territories’ resources depends on the development of small- and medium-sized business as the basis of high economic activity of the local population. In Russia small and medium-sized business is a priority vector of economic development, a factor of the gross domestic product increase, and of unemployment decline. The article describes a methodological approach to assess the development of small scale and medium-sized enterprises of the territory bearing in mind the adaptation of some known methods to the peculiarities of the regional economy. The authors also assessed the investment potential and investment attractiveness on the example of the town of Barabinsk of the Novosibirsk Region. The article proves that small and medium business has great potential for further development, giving rise to many promising projects; still the paper reveals some actual problems delaying the process of small and medium-sized enterprises expansion. In the conclusion some activities for further promotion and stimulation of small and medium business development in the town of Barabinsk are proposed.

scholarly journals Community Poultry Project for Conserving the Wildlife Species in Magombera Forest, Tanzania

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Kelvin Ngongolo ◽  
Ezekiel Sigala ◽  
Samuel Mtoka
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Poultry Production ◽  
Income Generation ◽  
Training Workshop ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Wildlife Species ◽  
Alternative Livelihood ◽  
Conservation Of Biodiversity

Aims: Poaching of wildlife is a major challenge in their conservation, including endemic ones like Procolobus gordonorum Matschie. Local communities in Udzungwa and Magombera poach for subsistence and small scale commerce. The Community poultry project adjacent to Magombera forest contributed towards enhancing the conservation of wildlife species through providing community with poultry as an alternative livelihood where meat and income can be generated in legal and convenient methods. Place and Duration of Study: This study took place in communities surrounding the Magombera Forest in the Morogoro region of Tanzania. The study was conducted from July 2018 to January 2019. Methodology: Random semi-structured questionnaires with Likert scaling were administered to 119 local community members neighbouring the Magombera Forest.  A training workshop in which the participants were trained on veterinary and improved rearing practices in order to address the challenges were administered to 52 participants, followed by pre- and post-training evaluation questions that assessed the challenges and opportunity for poultry keeping. Results: Sixty one percent of respondents reported that they kept chickens before training, after training all showed an inclination to keep chickens for meat and income generation. The respondents reported that challenges for poultry keeping are diseases control, market for products, rearing system and predators and parasites. Conclusion: Training on poultry production to enhance conservation of biodiversity in Magombera forest is essential.  However from this study it is clear that crucial challenges (such as diseases) for successful poultry production, specified by local communities, need to be dealt with first.

scholarly journals Battling the Tides of Climate Change: The Power of Intangible Cultural Resource Values to Bind Place Meanings in Vulnerable Historic Districts

Heritage ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malorey Henderson ◽  
Erin Seekamp
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Climate Impacts ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Adaptive Planning ◽  
Cultural Resource ◽  
Place Meanings

Climate change increases not only the vulnerability of cultural resources, but also the cultural values that are deeply embedded in cultural resources and landscapes. As such, heritage managers are faced with imminent preservation challenges that necessitate the consideration of place meanings during adaptation planning. This study explores how stakeholders perceive the vulnerability of the tangible aspects of cultural heritage, and how climate change impacts and adaptation strategies may alter the meanings and values that are held within those resources. We conducted semi-structured interviews with individuals with known connections to the historic buildings located within cultural landscapes on the barrier islands of Cape Lookout National Seashore in the United States (US). Our findings revealed that community members hold deep place connections, and that their cultural resource values are heavily tied to the concepts of place attachment (place identity and place dependence). Interviews revealed a general acceptance of the inevitability of climate impacts and a transition of heritage meanings from tangible resources to intangible values. Our findings suggest that in the context of climate change, it is important to consider place meanings alongside physical considerations for the planning and management of vulnerable cultural resources, affirming the need to involve community members and their intangible values into the adaptive planning for cultural resources.

Claiming belonging, constructing social spaces: Citizenship practices in an Afro-Bolivian town

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuck Sturtevant
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Economic Resources ◽  
Community Members ◽  
The Social ◽  
National Norms ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Town

Recent literature on citizenship practices and discourses highlights processes of ‘subjectification’ or ‘self-making’ in relation to a local community rather than the rights and responsibilities associated with the legal status bestowed on full members of a national community. In this paper, set in the town of Chicaloma in the Yungas region of Bolivia, I argue that this self-making is not simply a response to hegemonic national norms, nor to a communally defined image of its ideal member, but rather is bound up in simultaneous processes of ‘community-making’. Further, I argue that community-making is itself a hotly contested process. Access to specific social and economic resources is differentially available to those members of the community who are able to make more convincing claims to belonging. In this context, community members are engaged in an on-going process of making claims to belonging which work by constructing the social space in the image of the claimant as much as by producing the subject. They constitute an important citizenship practice through which subjects assert their rights in various instances of local governance, but they work by constructing the community as well as the citizen-subjects who populate it. Rather than yield clear categories of included and excluded, though, these practices and discourses result in fluid and unstable differentiations among actors, and, in fact, a fluid and unstable constitution of the community as a social space.

DIFFUSION AND ADOPTION OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES IN SOUTH AFRICAN TELECENTRES: SELECTED TELECENTRES IN KWAZULU-NATAL

Mousaion ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blessing Mbatha
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Diffusion Of Innovations ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Information And Communications Technologies ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Kwazulu Natal ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Ict Tools ◽  
The Government ◽  
Types Of Information

This study investigated the usage and types of information and communications technologies (ICTs) accessible to community members in four selected Thusong Service Centres (TSCs or telecentres) in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). The telecentres that participated in the study were: Nhlazuka, Mbazwane, Dududu and Malangeni. The study was informed by Rogers’ (1995) Diffusion of Innovations (DoI) theory. Through a survey, four TSCs were purposively selected. A questionnaire was used to collect data from community members in the four telecentres involved. The data collected was tabulated under the various headings and presented using tables, frequencies, percentiles and generalisations with the help of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The results indicated that a variety of ICT tools have been adopted in the TSCs to provide the local community with the much-needed access to information and improved communication. The government should ensure that adequate varieties and levels of ICT competence are offered to all the citizens. In conclusion, there is a need for sufficient and coherent government policies regulating the training of the local community to use these ICTs effectively.

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