David Storey

Issues of Integration, Participation and Empowerment in Rural Development: The Case of LEADER in the Republic of Ireland

Currently, within the European Union increasing emphasis is being placed on devising innovative development strategies for rural areas. Considerable stress is laid on integration, participation and empowerment. Integration implies a need for cross-sectoral harmonisation of developmental objectives as well as increased co-ordination between agencies involved in the developmental process. Participation implies consultation with those most directly affected, namely rural dwellers, hence increasing the level of involvement of local people in the development process. Empowerment suggests a greater degree of influence being wielded by local residents and, thus, some shift in the power balance between ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ and between ‘professionals’ and ‘amateurs’. In practise, this has resulted in a plethora of initiatives which, to a greater or lesser extent, espouse the idea of a more locally attuned ‘bottom-up’ approach to rural development stressing the importance of involving local communities. This approach is seen as a more appropriate mechanism than traditional ‘top-down’ strategies. Within Ireland, a number of programmes have been in operation since the late 1980s. This paper presents some evidence from on-going research on LEADER II in Ireland suggesting that there are a number of issues which need to be teased out with regard to current initiatives. Power relationships at both national and local levels need to be explored. While there may well be beneficial outcomes, the nature and extent of participation is quite variable. It may well be more valid to view current developments in terms of a process of incorporation rather than a move to a ‘bottom-up’ participatory model. While current strategies may represent a positive move, there is a need to ensure that the rhetoric being employed is translated into reality.

Out on the streets

Hobos, hustlers and backsliders: homeless in San Francisco, Teresa Gowan. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2010, 340 pp., ISBN 9780816669677, US

Once Within Borders: Territories of Power, Wealth, and Belonging since 1500

24.95 (pbk).

State, Geography of

In this very useful volume, historian Charles S. Maier explores the role of territory and territorial thinking in shaping the political map of the world. For political geographers this is not exactly new ground, but Maier brings fresh light and insight to the subject matter. He ranges widely both in time and in geographical coverage, displaying an impressive breadth of knowledge and providing a history of the evolution of the modern Western state, through the prism of territory. As a geographer, it is very pleasing to see a historian engage with important political geographic ideas, drawing on the work of Jean Gottman, Stuart Elden, John Agnew, and many others. Elden’s (2013) work in recent years has impressively charted the emergence of territory as a concept, arguing that territories and their boundaries reflect a distinctive mode of social and spatial organization linked to particular ways of thinking about geographic space. To an extent, Maier is engaged in a similar task. Like Elden, Maier is concerned with moving beyond territory as a taken-for-granted concept and he sees territory as a way in which space is both imagined and organized. Where Elden has focused on the evolving relationships among people, place, and power, and how ideas of territory have been interpreted and reworked over time, Maier is more interested in the use of territory as a social and political practice, and as a framework underlying states and economies. Territory functions as both a decision space and an identity space so that a particular mode of political organization is linked closely to ideas of belonging. As Maier suggests, the emergence of territory has both “established possession and validated allegiances” (p. 269).

Sport in the city: cultural connections, edited by Michael P. Sam and John E. Hughson

This article is a revision of the previous edition article by L. Staeheli, volume 24, pp. 16435–16439,

Critical Toponymies. The Contested Politics of Place Naming

1 Conjoining three essentially contested terms – ‘extreme’, ‘landscape’ and ‘leisure’ – into a single title is not conducive to clarity, especially when the accompanying photograph – showing David Kirke of the Dangerous Sports Club, dressed in top hat and tails and holding a bottle of champagne bungy jumping from the Clifton Suspension Bridge at Bristol – signifies an industrial/urban environment. 2 Supposedly a response to an insurance company’s classification of ethnographic fieldwork as ‘not a hazardous sport’ (p. xi). 3 I can only assume that Laviolette considers this form of presentation somehow consistent with the strictures of his phenomenological method which he notes demands ‘careful description of the observed phenomena’s essences’ (p. 1). 4 Laviolette holds imagination to be a constructive, rather than a fanciful, force (p. 161). 5 Laviolette’s primary examples of extreme sports are cliff jumping and surfing. In the statistical contexts of risks, injuries and fatalities neither pastime, at least as practised by the average aficionado, qualifies as extreme (see e.g. Booth, Surfing: The Ultimate Guide). However, as Laviolette rightly reminds us, only participants can assess the level of danger (p. 86). 6 Massumi, Parables for the Virtual. 7 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling. 8 Thrift, Non-representational Theory. 9 Hansen, ‘The Time of Affect’. 10 Papoulias and Callard, ‘Biology’s Gift’, 34. 11 Ibid. 12 Kagan, The Temperamental Thread, 25; see also Kagan, What is Emotion.

Segregation and Territoriality: Comments on Waterman

Critical Toponymies. The Contested Politics of Place Naming Lawrence D. Berg & Jani Vuolteenaho (Eds) Ashgate, Farnham, 2009. ISBN 978-0-7546-7453-5, 291 pp., £60 Place names are part of our everyd...

Territory: The Claiming of Space

A recent edition of this journal included a retrospective appraisal of Fred Boal’s classic 1969 paper on territoriality in Belfast. The section includes a short comment piece from Waterman (2008) focusing on issues of segregation in Israel. While acknowledging that Waterman’s contribution is more in the way of brief reflections rather than a rigorous paper, it does raise some issues worthy of comment.