Displacement, Diversity, and Mobility: Career Impacts of Japanese American Internment

In 1942 more than 110,000 persons of Japanese origin living on the U.S. West Coast were forcibly sent away to ten internment camps for one to three years. This paper studies how internees’ careers were affected in the long run. Combining Census data, camp records, and survey data, I develop a predictor of a person’s internment status based on Census observables. Using a difference-in-differences framework, I find that internment had long-run positive effects on earnings. The evidence is consistent with mechanisms related to increased mobility due to re-optimization of occupation and location choices, possibly facilitated by camps’ high economic diversity.

Russian and Indian Preschool Educators’ Beliefs about Distance Education for Preschoolers

Increasing interest in the digitization of education raises the question of the specifics of the use of digital devices in preschool education and the perception of these new practices by educators. The primary purpose of this study was to examine educators’ beliefs about distance education for preschool children in Russia and India, given their professional education and cultural background. These two countries were chosen to explore how the education system has dealt with emergency remote teaching in countries with social and economic diversity. The study involved 909 preschool educators (623 from Russia and 286 from India). An exploratory factor analysis of educators’ responses to the Educators’ Beliefs about Distance Education for Preschoolers Questionnaire identified three factors. The first factor reflects the degree of positive or negative beliefs about the promotion potential of distance education for preschool children’s development. The second represents educators’ beliefs about the effectiveness of distance education depending on different teacher, child, and environmental conditions. The third is manifested in the belief among educators that distance education is ineffective in preschool education. The findings suggest that the years of professional education in early childhood pedagogy impacts educators’ beliefs about distance education for preschool children. Regardless of the number of years of education training, educators in India were more likely to believe in the high promotion potential of distance education in early childhood.

Pacing Forward in the Face of Fragility: Lessons From African Institutions and Governments' Response to Public Health Emergencies

Africa is home to 54 United Nation member states, each possessing a wealth of ethno-cultural, physiographic, and economic diversity. While Africa is credited as having the youngest population in the world, it also exhibits a unique set of “unfortunate realties” ranging from famine and poverty to volatile politics, conflicts, and diseases. These unfortunate realities all converge around social inequalities in health, that are compounded by fragile healthcare systems and a lack of political will by the continent's leaders to improve smart investment and infrastructure planning for the benefit of its people. Noteworthy are the disparities in responsive approaches to crises and emergencies that exist across African governments and institutions. In this context, the present article draws attention to 3 distinct public health emergencies (PHEs) that have occurred in Africa since 2010. We focus on the 2013–2016 Ebola outbreak in Western Africa, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which continues to spread throughout the continent, and the destructive locust swarms that ravaged crops across East Africa in 2020. Our aim is to provide an integrated perspective on how governments and institutions handled these PHEs and how scientific and technological innovation, along with educational response played a role in the decision-making process. We conclude by touching on public health policies and strategies to address the development of sustainable health care systems with the potential to improve the health and well-being of the African people.

Traditional Communities and Mental Maps: Dialogues between Local Knowledge and Cartography from the Socioenvironmental Atlas of Lençóis Maranhenses, Brazil

The Lençóis Maranhenses region, located in the state of Maranhão in northeastern Brazil, constitutes an area that includes a national park and presents extreme physical, geographic and climatic contrasts in addition to economic diversity and emerging tourism. Scattered throughout this portion of the Brazilian territory are local inhabitants whose traditional lifestyles are characterized by agricultural, extractive, fishing and animal husbandry activities. These local residents use guidance systems and mental maps developed through their long history, interaction with nature, and knowledge of the environment in which they live and work. Based on sketches prepared by residents and by Health Agents serving the communities, and with the support of cartographic-based materials produced by the team of the Socioenvironmental Atlas of Lençóis Maranhenses (ASALM, Portuguese abbreviation for Socioenvironmental Atlas of Lençóis Maranhenses), we present a set of digital and interactive cartographic materials that reproduce the movements, uses and practices of the families of these communities as well as the environmental dynamics of this vast region. Such cartography can serve as an instrument of planning, understanding and action, both to safeguard the rights of the local residents and for the handling and management of natural resources. Based on the dialogue between local knowledge and cartography, we present the methods, processes and results of our research project.

Digital Accessibility in the Asia-Pacific Region

The Asia-Pacific or APAC region covers a vast area of great linguistic, cultural, geographic, and economic diversity and is home to over 65% of the world’s population with disabilities. While many of the accessibility challenges are common and include prioritization, lack of awareness, affordability, availability, infrastructure, language, and training, there are also wide regional differences in areas such as resources, infrastructure, development, policy, and accessibility of technologies and content across APAC countries. This chapter seeks to give a regional overview of digital accessibility by utilizing the DARE Index to analyze gaps in implementing digital accessibility policies in the region, and then reviewing four country case studies (Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka).

Historical memory and features of economic institutions in a multilanguage environment and multicultural society

The paper aims to substantiate the role of historical memory in formation of a certain economic culture that determines the specific nature of economic institutions in a multilanguage and multicultural society. Methodological background of research is based on neoinstitutional and civilizational approaches. Because of the chosen methodology, we study the economic institutions as the structures which include norms, traditions and thinking patterns (specific to a particular culture). It is justified that cultural factors related to confessional views, ethnic customs, political and economic traditions determine development, dynamics and structure of economic institutions of Russian society. It is also found that the failures of Russian economic modernization are largely due to underestimation of its civilizational specifics, multiculturalism and economic diversity.

Evolution of Regional Economic Spatial Structure Based on IoT and GIS Service

Unbalanced regional development is an inevitable trend in the development of all countries in the world. The rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology has created tools for the study of regional development issues. IoT has many advantages and thus owns a very wide range of applications. This paper makes use of geographic information system (GIS) technology, which can be viewed as one of the IoT sensing information. Changes in spatial regional economic differences and space and the evolution of the structure are particularly examined by processing spatial information such as maps, analyzing phenomena and events that exist on the earth, and exploiting Kriging and inverse distance weighting (IDW). The numerical results in this paper justify that the introduction of GIS technology to the study of economic diversity can upgrade regional economic research from a traditional qualitative and statistical level to a quantitative and spatial visualization level.

Planning Urban Manufacturing, Industrial Building Typologies, and Built Environments: Lessons From Inner London

Despite concerns about the loss of industry, industrial land, and buildings in high-value post-industrial cities, there is concurrently a renewed enthusiasm around the potential of “new” urban manufacturing and its contribution to the socio-economic diversity of cities. Yet, little is known about how planning policy can best support the retention and growth of urban manufacturing. To advance this agenda, this article proposes that we need a better understanding of industrial building typologies and resultant urban form. Using concepts developed by Julienne Hanson to analyse residential morphologies undergoing transformation under modernism, we apply these concepts to investigate the industrial, mixed-use contexts in two areas of London with concentrations of urban manufacturing—Hackney Mare Street and Old Kent Road. The research presented examines how both areas have evolved historically to produce distinctive urban tissues and a range of industrial building typologies. The article reveals that, despite territorial similarities in the late 19th century, the mixed land uses and smaller plot sizes of Hackney Mare Street have allowed for a more resilient development pattern, whereas the greater separation of land uses, large plot sizes, and inward-facing development in the Old Kent Road has facilitated its reimagination for large-scale regeneration. We conclude that greater attention needs to be paid to the relationship between urban manufacturing and built urban form if policies that aim to protect or support the revival of manufacturing in cities are to avoid negative unintended consequences.

Sunflower Commercialisation in Singida Region: Pathways for Livelihood Improvement

Sunflower commercialisation in Singida Region, Tanzania has been successful. The successes include increased oilseed production, expanding processing capacity and declining rural poverty. Policies and efforts by development agents to promote sunflower commercialisation have increased the number of actors and service providers. Accumulation from sunflower and other enterprises, including livestock, have not only improved livelihoods, but also contributed to household economic diversity. This paper examines the interactions between activities involved in sunflower production and other livelihood strategies. For example, the paper examines local dynamics in policy and business contexts that have shaped livelihood options available and people’s choices of which option they undertake, and the corresponding outcomes, and reasons for such commercialisation trajectories. The study aims to inform local, regional, and national strategies, to pursue more inclusive and sustainable agriculture development, and widen options and pathways for men and women in Mkalama and Iramba districts of Singida Region.