This paper deals with the dialectics of settlement continuity and change in Palestine's southern coastal plain during the Mamluk and Early Ottoman periods (1270–1750 CE). Using Ḥamāma, an Arab ...village in Majdal ‘Asqalān's hinterland as a test-case, the paper introduces a new method of establishing settlement continuity — a major challenge in the study of the historical geography of late medieval and Ottoman Palestine, by showing continual presence of known village lineages. The paper presents an integrative, topic-oriented discussion of Ḥamāma's administration, demography, settlement geography, economy, religion, material culture and daily life, as evidenced by literary and archaeological evidence. The paper argues that nomadic economic and security pressures led to a major process of settlement abandonment around Majdal ‘Asqalān, and the southern coastal plain in general, during the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. The population of abandoned villages moved to surviving settlements, while the lands of abandoned settlements continued to be cultivated by neighboring villages.
•Historical Geography of Ḥamāma in Southern Palestine, inhabited 1270–1948.•A new method for establishing settlement continuity by presence of village lineages.•Ottoman records reveal wide settlement abandonment due to nomads c. 1700–1948.•Displaced populations concentrated in fewer surviving villages.•The territory of abandoned settlements carved among surviving villages.
Recent research in rural geography has shown increasing interest in the ways in which rurality is performed and enacted by diverse actors. Rural geographers have also demonstrated increasing ...awareness of their own ‘performances’ as researchers, including their enactment of multiple roles in engaging with research subjects, funders and users. This progress report for rural geography discusses recent contributions on these two related themes, briefly summarizing research on the performance and enactment of rurality and rural identities before proceeding to review publications that have reflected on methodological developments, positionality in rural research and political and policy engagement in rural geography.
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Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
A number of commentaries and articles have been published in recent years reflecting on the nature, history and practice of rural geography. The introspective mood follows a period in which rural ...geography has been widely considered to have been resurgent, but indicates concerns about the unevenness of progress in rural geography, and about the readiness of the subdiscipline to address new challenges. This article, the first of three progress reports on rural geography, focuses on attempts within these interventions to rethink the boundaries of rural geography and its connections with other fields of study. First, it examines renewed debates on the definition and delimitation of the rural, including efforts to rematerialize the rural. Second, it considers the rejuvenation of work on rural—urban linkages, including concepts of city regions, exurbanization and rurbanity. Third, it discusses the interdisciplinary engagement of rural geographers, including collaboration with physical and natural scientists.
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Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This report focuses on the individual and collective capacities of rural people to develop innovative and entrepreneurial approaches to local development (e.g. via place marketing) and to create ...music, art, prose and other cultural forms in place which in themselves serve to promote rural localities and regions to non-local people. In addition, it considers people’s propensities to move to new places on a permanent or temporary basis, and how this mobility affects individuals and host and sending communities. Rural geographers are also taking advantage of new sophisticated geostatistical databases to produce more precise measurements of mobility and migration relevant to rural population geography research. However, in reviewing these two major research fields I also pay attention to the relative mobility of concepts and metanarratives developed in particular national and cultural contexts and the degree to which they successfully travel and ‘take root’ – in the sense of helpfully explaining empirical circumstances – in other places. Far from being a remote outpost of the broader discipline, rural geography, through its practitioners, continues to pose vital normative questions regarding the current and future directions of rural society, economy, population and environment across the globe, and developing the intellectual and practical tools to address those questions.
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Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The high burden of chronic communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, and an escalating rise of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Malawi and other sub-Saharan African countries, calls for a shift in ...how health care services are designed and delivered. Patient-centred care and patient self-management are critical elements in chronic care, and are advocated as universal strategies. In sub-Saharan Africa, there is need for more evidence around the practice of patient self-management, and how to best support patients with chronic conditions in the African context. Our study explored self-management practices of patients with different chronic conditions, and their strategies to overcome care challenges in a resource-constrained setting in Malawi.
This is primarily a qualitative study, involving patients with different chronic conditions from one rural district in Malawi. Data are drawn from semi-structured questions of a survey with 129 patients (from the third of four-part data collection series), 14 in-depth interviews, and four focus-group discussions with patients (n = 31 respondents). A framework approach was used for qualitative analysis, and descriptive statistical analysis was performed on survey data.
Patients demonstrated ability to self-manage their conditions, though this varied between conditions, and was influenced by individual and external factors. Factors included: 1) ability to acquire appropriate disease knowledge; 2) poverty level; 3) the presence of support from family caregivers and community-based support initiatives; 4) the nature of one's social relations; and 5) the ability to deal with stressors and stigma. NCD and HIV comorbid patients were more disadvantaged in their access to care, as they experienced frequent drug stock-outs and incurred additional costs when referred. These barriers contributed to delayed care, poorer treatment adherence, and likelihood of poorer treatment outcomes. Patients proved resourceful and made adjustments in the face of (multiple) care challenges.
Our findings complement other research on self-management experiences in chronically ill patients with its analysis on factors and barriers that influence patient self-management capacity in a resource-constrained setting. We recommend expanding current peer-patient and support group initiatives to patients with NCDs, and further investments in the decentralisation of integrated health services to primary care level in Malawi.
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Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Traditional villages are important carriers of traditional cultural heritage, and they have strong historical, cultural, aesthetic and tourism value for all countries and the international community. ...In China, the number of traditional villages is currently decreasing each year, and the precious material and non-material heritage is at risk of disappearing in the process of urbanization. A comprehensive understanding of the spatiotemporal patterns of traditional villages on multiple scales has important significance in protecting traditional culture, revitalizing traditional villages and achieving sustainable urbanization. Therefore, the spatiotemporal characteristics of traditional villages at the city, province, and geographic zone scales are explored by a series of Geographic Information System(GIS)-based methods in this article. Specifically, the analysis units are multi-scale, the applied methods are multi-variate, and the identified patterns are multi-perspective. The results demonstrate that the distribution of traditional villages in China is unbalanced over space and time. Moreover, the different spatiotemporal distributions of traditional villages are sensitive to scales. These findings clarify differences in the corresponding geographic and environmental factors, the level of economic development and local policy support. We further suggest that exploring the effective and suitable modes of protection and rural development is necessary. The results of this article revealing the unbalanced spatiotemporal distribution of traditional villages can provide valuable suggestions and insights into alleviating regional inequality in China.
Amidst the backdrop of attention to populism in general, it is instructive to understand populism through social movements focused on food and agriculture. Agrarian populism is particularly salient ...in agrifood movements. Agroecology has been widely identified as a domain of populist claims on environmental and social governance surrounding agricultural-ecological and political-economic systems. As authoritarian populist leaders gain power throughout the world at a time of expanding economic globalization and contingent socioecological crises, contests over populism in agrifood regimes can highlight current dynamics relevant for formative evaluation of alternative political agroecology strategies and of populist environmental governance more broadly. Can populism be harnessed by radical political agroecologies to simultaneously contest the hydra-headed nature of capitalism, authoritarianism, and pollution and implement forms of environmental governance based on repair? We argue that populist agroecology has untapped potential for repair and that the mechanism of focusing social movements on repair might help address some of the more problematic authoritarian tendencies of populism. Key Words: agroecology, agrofood activism, emancipatory rural politics, food movement, populism, rural geography.
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Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Rural areas are back on the agenda. In official German policy papers, at least, there is the commitment to address existing regional disparities and the specific problems of rural regions. However, ...how exactly these problems are to be addressed often remains vague and practical political consequences are often not explored. This paper applies the conceptual approach of Cultural Political Economy to analyze different “economic imaginaries” that underline and shape regional policy related to rural areas. Using Critical Discourse Analysis and the case of uneven development in the German state of Hesse, this paper discusses competing economic conceptualizations of regional policy. Through this, we can see that sufficient funding of municipalities and democratization are necessary conditions for realizing progressive alternatives for rural development.
•Peripheralized rural spaces are back on the political agenda in Germany.•The neoliberal policy approach in rural development is contested, but remains hegemonic.•An activating, opportunity-fixated “economic imaginary” is dominant in rural regions in Hesse, Germany.•Cultural Political Economy (CPE) is useful for analyzing discourses and policies in rural development.•Local democracy and financial resources are essential for realizing alternative visions of rural development.
Purpose
The United States has experienced a surge of COVID‐19 cases and deaths. Regardless of the overall increase in the prevalence and mortality, there are disagreements about the consequences of ...exposure and contracting COVID‐19, specifically in rural areas. Rural areas have inherent characteristics that increase their vulnerability to contracting COVID‐19. The objective of this study was to investigate the differences in death rates from COVID‐19 between urban and rural areas in the United States.
Methods
This study used county‐level data. The data set consisted of confirmed COVID‐19 cases and deaths along with county‐level demographics. The sample consisted of all counties in the 50 US states and DC. Counties were designated as metropolitan, micropolitan, and rural. A zero‐inflated negative binomial regression was used to estimate county‐level number of deaths conditional on contracting COVID‐19. The study focused on COVID‐19‐related mortality from February 10, 2020, to June 12, 2020.
Findings
After controlling for county‐level characteristics, the rate of COVID‐19 deaths was 70.3% (P < .001) for rural counties and 53.4% (P < .001) for micropolitan counties, both significantly lower than metropolitan counties during the study time period.
Conclusion
Over time, rural geography and social isolation may not provide sustainable protection to rural residents from the pandemic. The slow progression provides rural areas additional time and opportunity to learn from the experiences in urban areas that were most affected. Rural areas need to be proactive and develop prevention strategies and response plans to manage and control the spread of COVID‐19.
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