Staying despite riverbank erosion: evidence of coastal Bangladesh

Riverbank erosion often compels affected people to migrate from their respective communities. However, there are still many who do not leave the affected region. The research focuses on this particular group of non-migrant populations living in the erosion-prone Ramdaspur village of Bhola district in Bangladesh, to explore how erosion influences (non-)migration decision. We interviewed households from the study village. More than half the respondents reported that, even though they are continuously being hit by erosion, they are unwilling to move away because of the community support they receive from staying in the village. The rest of the respondents who choose to remain, do so because of financial reasons. Therefore, this study proposes a need for a holistic approach in future adaptation planning for the riverbank erosion-prone areas of Bangladesh to support the non-migrants in the communities.

Urban Villages, Their Redevelopment and Implications for Inequality and Integration

Urbanvillages are a unique product of China’s rapid urban expansion. They provide a new way of life sustained by property rental income for local villagers. More importantly, urban villages provide cheap accommodation for millions of rural migrant workers in most large cities. Recently, with the increasing demand for land by commercialdevelopers and public projects, urban villages have become the targets for redevelopment. This chapter uses a case study village in Beijing as an example to assess the social and economic impacts of urban village redevelopment on both the original local inhabitants and migrants in rented accommodation. The case study village went through a very long and complicated redevelopment process from 2004 to 2017 involving different stages of demolition and relocation. It provided a rare opportunity to evaluate the effects on the local population, both pre- and post-redevelopment. The study involved several field visits, observation and interviews with village residents. It shows that urban village redevelopment offered no positive benefits for migrant workers who often lost their homes to demolition. For local villagers, redevelopment and relocation into new flats may improve their living conditions. However, most suffer from the loss of long-term economic and income generation opportunities. Moreover, the new property rights for the replacement flats confer no additional rights of citizenship for the relocated villagers who remain ‘second-class citizens’ within Chinese cities.

‘Popular’ Imagery in the Late Ottoman Periphery: The Wall Paintings in Village Mosques of Denizli Province

Among the spaces conveying rich information on Anatolian social structure, mosques occupy a special place. In pre-modern societies, village and small-town mosques were not only places of worship, but served as foci of education and sociability, hosting visitors or travellers on occasion. While the architecture of village mosques is usually very simple, the furnishings can be elaborate, turning these modest structures into mirrors reflecting village culture, and thereby the culture of the Ottoman periphery. The present article focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century painted mosques in the Turkish province of Denizli and environs, which display a remarkable unity of style and iconography. In the secondary literature, these works of art usually appear as products of so-called ‘Westernization’. By contrast, this study argues that they are outputs of Ottoman popular culture. Tangible from the seventeenth century onwards, the sociocultural dynamics and life practices specific to the Ottoman periphery have given this artwork its peculiar form. Thus, this study encourages researchers to rethink Anatolian conservatism, as it demonstrates that in the pre-modern era, mosques were not the well-protected spaces, distant from everyday life that they are today. Rather, in the period under study, village mosques could be ‘ambiguous’ spaces seamlessly joining varying spheres of life and belief.

THE PERCEPTION OF LOCAL COMMUNITY TOWARD TOURIST ACCOMMODATION DEVELOPMENT, CASE STUDY: VILLAGE OF SEMINYAK, BALI

The growth of tourism accommodation (villa) in the district of Kuta Utara, which is so rapid and uncontrolled, tends to have raised some concerns on the impact that may arise (socio-cultural, environmental and economic). The gap between benefit and cost of the phenomenon raises the question of how perception, response, changes the behavior of the culture and mindset of the local community towards the development of their area travel accommodation. To examine the case, this study combines the two forms of both quantitative and qualitative methodologies (multi-method). The qualitative methods done by observing a research site to see the behavior of local people in the village of Seminyak and informal talks (interview) that is guided by an interview guidelines related to the perception of the local community, the village headman, and the managers of accommodation (villa). While quantitative methods conducted by distributing questionnaires to local communities (90 respondents) were selected randomly. The result of this study is the public response to the development of the accommodation is in the phase of “Euphoria”. It is seen from some of the symptoms, which generally public responses tend to more focus on the advantage of the economic aspects and as if the exclusion of other effects that arise as the socio-cultural and environmental.