This paper focuses on five culinary events on Slovenia’s Karst Plateau (Kras). It presents visitors’ motives for attending these events, their satisfaction with them, and their views on ...sustainability. These traditional culinary events, which take place in the same gastronomic region, differ in their scale, theme, character, and history. A survey was conducted among 244 visitors, approximately 50% of whom had a university degree. The most important motives for their visit include local cuisine; experiencing something new, different, or special; and exploring natural heritage and especially cultural heritage. Visitor satisfaction is the greatest at boutique culinary events, where the main theme is highlighted more strongly than at large-scale culinary events. The main challenge in terms of the sustainability of culinary events is public transport access to the venues. Significant progress would be made by reducing the amount of disposable packaging made from non-sustainable materials. The key to successful culinary events is high-quality services and ingredients, where the word local is key.
The article addresses the governance of water commons with an emphasis on drinking water. The study applied two conceptual frameworks: Ostrom's Design Principles and the Social-Ecological Systems ...framework. The empirical part refers to two water commons in Slovenia and is based on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with locals and professionals. The article follows three objectives: 1) to identify the drivers and motivations for successful local water governance; 2) to assess the robustness of water commons in terms of current and future challenges; 3) to identify the benefits of water commons. The key elements for the functioning of the two local communities under examination are shared interests, as well as a strong commitment to effective management. In addition to the material benefits (i.e. drinking water supply), non-material ones are also important. Community building and identity are particularly noteworthy. The importance of small drinking water supply systems that are well organised and responsibly governed as commons is beneficial not only to a municipality but also to a country.
This article examines the contemporary industrial semiotic landscape in the town of Velenje, Slovenia, to determine the (positive or negative) collective imaginaries and discourses about industry in ...the local community. To this end, the semiotic landscape is mapped for signs and symbols of past and present industry, 33 randomly selected short interviews are conducted to understand the residents’ attitudes towards industrial symbols and industrial development in general, and a content analysis of official strategic documents is conducted to determine how industry is represented by officials and whether there are efforts to reimage the town. We found that the industrial past and present are well represented by industrial symbols and are a matter of pride and collective identity for the residents. However, the industrial tradition is hardly represented in official documents: Influenced by the prevailing post-industrial discourses, local authorities have begun to construct new territorial identities in order to increase the town’s attractiveness and economic growth. Currently, both ideas seem to coexist in Velenje. We argue that industrial symbols can become a reference point to create an alternative perception of a modern consumer society based on past industrial values, such as collective well-being, solidarity, and equality.
The article addresses the topic of coastal transformations through the lens of the critical heritage approach. It focuses on fish as a vehicle to assess how heritage as a particular type of imaginary ...and discourse conveys the social, cultural, political and economic transformations of the area. The two fish chosen to represent the heritage imaginaries in the Northeast Adriatic Bay of Piran are the wild mullet and farmed seabass. Both species are seen as local but each in its particular way. Mullet has acquired a local status by appearing annually in the Bay of Piran where local traditions developed around its catch. Farmed seabass became local through the process of domestication after it traversed large distances across the land to arrive in the Bay
’
s meshed cages. Through detailed ethnographies and textual and visual discourse analysis, the authors find an array of competing and complementary heritage imaginaries surrounding both fish. These imaginaries highlight frictions as a central part of the present-day life on the coast as well as unease about the future, and can be discerned in the tense relation between fishing and mariculture, the competing ideologies of the local, national and the global and the disappearance of previous ways of life in the face of rapid coastal transformation.
The terraced landscape in the Jeruzalem Hills is the result of specific socioeconomic conditions under communism, and now its appearance is drastically changing for the second time in the last fifty ...years. This article examines the creation of the new landscape layer of modern cultivated terraces and studies their disappearance and the return to a condition similar to the original state. The analysis is based on interviews and visual interpretation of aerial laser scanning (lidar) data. It focuses on the state of the landscape before terracing, the creation of terraces and formation of a terraced landscape, and its most recent transformation into slopes without terraces. It is determined that, despite the recognized aesthetic value of terraces, legal protection in the form of a nature park has not impacted their preservation because 56% of them have already been leveled. With the conversion of vineyards to vertical plantations, a new challenge is arising: increased erosion.
Although participatory research can be an improvement over conventional research, there is a lack of self-critique and self-reflection by scholars. The aim of this paper was to develop a method of ...participatory research in human geography based on a case study of the local community. We evaluated the positive and negative aspects of carrying out participatory research in community development from the local community and academic points of view. The participatory method was used in a rural local community in Slovenia, where cultural values were identified as an alternative developmental source. The method was presented in detail in three steps: 1) knowledge acquisition, 2) knowledge synthesis, 3) knowledge implementation and evaluation. The results yielded important social impacts, some economic and cultural impacts, and no significant ecological impacts. The paper discusses the impacts of conducting such research on the local community. It recognizes that, if the community is actively engaged in research, outcomes are likely to be matched to its needs and expectations. We discussed scholars’ bias towards economic aspects of community development and the fact that ignoring local knowledge may result in the failure of developmental initiatives. There is a need for more accurate and unbiased critical assessment of long-term impacts of carrying outparticipatory research. We believe we avoided two common traps of participatory research: regarding the positivist critique, this method offers sufficient scientific vigour and could be reproduced in similar communities; regarding the post-structural critique, personally committing stakeholders towards implementation and legitimising all social groups to overcome intrinsic power relations within the community. We concluded that participatory methods are important for obtaining local knowledge that complements traditional academic research.
This article presents the findings of a study on long-term land-use changes in eight areas of various Slovenian landscapes. The emphasis is on comparing changes on terraced and non-terraced land from ...the early nineteenth century to the present and on a typological classification of land-use change, whereby a fifth type (i.e., extensification) is added to the established four types in Slovenia: afforestation, grass overgrowth, intensification, and urbanization. The article explains which factors have a decisive impact on land-use changes, especially in terms of abandoning terrace cultivation. The methodology used proves that there are important differences in the rate of land-use change between terraced and non-terraced land.
Heritage has different developmental potentials that might contribute to the sustainable development of a given area. In terms of sustainable development these potentials are not necessarily ...economic, but also include social, environmental or cultural aspects. However, heritage by itself rarely holds tangible benefits if it is not properly managed. The key challenge for attaining sustainability is to focus management on a participatory approach, which ensures public participation in the process. The paper argues that a successful and effective management of heritage depends on the people, who must be able to 1) identify the appropriate heritage, 2) link it with key stakeholders and other topics, 3) design it into a proper service, and finally 4) sell the new service to users.
Cultivated terraces distinctively mark the landscape and are a result of human adaptation to steep areas. Terraces were studied with regard to their morphometric qualities, ownership structure, and ...land use at eight pilot sites in various landscape types in Slovenia. Twenty-six detailed interviews were carried out with local residents and experts. In current agricultural practice, terraces mostly represent obstacles, and for owners they create a loss rather than profit; however, they represented an advantage in the past, when they were cultivated manually. Land use is intensifying on economically profitable terraces. Among those examined, the Jeruzalem terraces stand out because these are the youngest ones (created in socialist Yugoslavia around 1965). Because of their aesthetic value, they are the best known among the public. Profitability in particular will be an important driving force for the future maintenance of terraces.
PDF
