Villagers’ perceptions of tourism activities in Iona National Park: locality as a key factor in planning for sustainability

Local people's perception of nature-based tourism evolution and consequent impacts on their well-being are crucial in promoting ecotourism and achieving sustainable development. This study focused on indigenous populations' attitudes concerning tourism activities taking place in the Iona National Park, located in the Namibe Province of Angola, where ecotourism is considered an anchor product and is expected to become an economic driver of major importance. To obtain information that is useful for a changing tourism management in order to increase rural communities' well-being, we conducted a survey addressing local people's perceptions about the following main topics: perception of the presence of visitors and of their activities; present and prospective positive and negative effects of the park; and government policies that should be developed in the near future. The research shows that most respondents' perceptions strongly vary according to locality. The level of urbanization and the distance to the core areas of touristic activities appear to be the main factors driving the villagers' perception polarization. Thus, conflicting interests between nature conservation and local populations' well-being should be addressed and managed according to locality profiles, with some exceptions, such as ensuring the entire population has access to pastoral lands.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Städtische Lebenswelten in Bewegung: In Afrika und darüber hinaus

Although throughout the history of anthropology the ethnography of urban societies was never an important topic, investigations on cities in Africa contributed to the early theoretical development of urban studies in social sciences. As the ethnography of rural migrants in towns made clear, cultural diversity and creativity are foundational and permanent elements of urban cultures in Africa (and beyond). Currently, two new aspects complement these insights: 1) Different forms of mobility have received a new awareness through the concept of transnationalism. They are much more complex, including not only rural–urban migration, but also urban–urban migration, and migrations with a destination beyond the continent. 2) Urban life-worlds also include the appropriation of globally circulating images and lifestyles, which contribute substantially to the current cultural dynamics of cities in Africa. These two aspects are the reasons for the high complexity of urban contexts in Africa. Therefore, whether it is still appropriate to speak about the “locality” of these life-worlds has become questionable. At the same time, these new aspects explain the self-consciousness of members of urban cultures in Africa. They contribute to the expansive character of these societies and to the impression that cities in Africa host the most innovative and creative societies worldwide.Auch wenn die Ethnographie städtischer Gesellschaften in der Geschichte der Ethnologie nie eine große Rolle gespielt hat, leisteten doch Untersuchungen zu urbanen Lebenswelten in Afrika einen wichtigen Beitrag zur frühen theoretischen Entwicklung sozialwissenschaftlicher Stadtforschung. Wie die Ethnographie von Migranten aus ländlichen Räumen in afrikanischen Städten schon damals deutlich machte, sind kulturelle Diversität und Kreativität grundlegende und dauerhafte Elemente urbaner Kultur in Afrika (und weltweit). In letzter Zeit haben zwei wichtige Aspekte diese frühen Einsichten ergänzt: 1) Verschiedene Formen der Mobilität haben durch das Konzept der Transnationalität neue Relevanz gewonnen. 2) Zu urbanen Lebenswelten gehört auch die aktive Aneignung global zirkulierender Bilder und Lebensstile; sie trägt wesentlich zur kulturellen Dynamik afrikanischer Städte bei. Beide Aspekte sind ursächlich für die außerordentliche Komplexität heutiger urbaner Lebenswelten in Afrika. Daher steht infrage, ob es noch angemessen ist, von der „Lokalität“ dieser Lebenswelten zu sprechen. Zugleich erklären diese Aspekte das Selbstbewusstsein der Angehörigen urbaner Gesellschaften in Afrika. Sie tragen zum expansiven Charakter dieser Gesellschaften bei sowie zu dem Eindruck, städtische Gesellschaften in Afrika gehörten zu den innovativsten und kreativsten weltweit

Residential land utilization case study: Nairobi, Kenya,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Thesis. 1973. M.Arch.A.S.Includes bibliographical references.by George Gattoni and Praful Patel.M.Arch.A.S

Private provision of rural infrastructure services: competing for subsidies

Market-oriented reforms of infrastructure in developing countries tend to focus primarily on commercially viable services in urban areas. Nevertheless, an increasing number of countries are beginning to experiment with extending the market paradigm to infrastructure services in rural areas that are often less attractive in commercial terms. In these cases, subsidies are used to close the gap between market requirements and development needs, and are increasingly determined and allocated on a competitive basis. The authors discuss the conditions under which competition among firms for such subsidies-successfully used in the telecommunications sector in a number of middle-income countries-could also be applied to electricity, water and sanitation, and transportation services in lower-income countries.Health Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Decentralization,ICT Policy and Strategies,Health Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Town Water Supply and Sanitation,ICT Policy and Strategies

E-governance in cities

This paper describes and analyses the way European urban policymakers guide their city into the information age. We develop an analytical framework to be able to analyse, assess and compare urban ICT policies. In the empirical part, the frame is applied to a number of cities. We conclude that the most successful cities apply a balanced mix of content, infrastructure and access policies. Furthermore, success depends on the capacity of urban management to engage in local networks with local companies, citizens and intermediary organisations, as well as their ability to mobilise external resources.

Everyday forms of collective action in Bangladesh: Learning from Fifteen Cases

"This paper examines fifteen cases of collective action in six villages in rural Bangladesh. Collective action was defined broadly and identified from significant episodes in previous life-history research in the same villages. The types of collective action identified were catalyzed by marriage; dowry and domestic violence; disputes over land; illness, injury and death in accidents; and theft and cheating. The role of development NGOs was less significant than would be expected considering their visibility in rural Bangladesh. The study suggests that ‘everyday forms' (Scott 1985) of collective action often occur spontaneously and informally, with significant impact on peoples' wellbeing, but with ambiguous outcomes for some poor people involved. This is a different picture that is usually understood in Bangladesh – due to the visibility of NGOs – particularly by outsiders. Local government elected chairs and members play a key role in collective action events, which often include local arbitration, or shalish, hearings. A deeper understanding of how collective disputes and struggles are commonly managed in everyday life should help us to hold a more realistic view of the empowerment potential of interventions aimed at fostering collective action in rural Bangladesh." authors' abstractCollective action, Disputes, Social norms, Gender, Poverty,

WhatsApp in Ethnographic Research: Methodological Reflections on New Edges of the Field

The mobile phone and the increasing worldwide use of smartphones with applications such as the instant messenger WhatsApp are revolutionising ethnographic research. Drawing on transnational, ethnographic research in Tanzania, the USA and Oman, this paper shows that WhatsApp constitutes a valuable tool in ethnographic research in three important fields of interaction and communication: first, between researchers and informants simultaneously in different places; secondly, as a tool to exchange with field assistants; and thirdly between researchers. Building on expanding theoretical reflections on transnational networks and practices this paper adds new insights to corresponding methodological consequences. It critically reflects on the usefulness of integrating WhatsApp into ethnographic research. It argues that by incorporating such technologies we can not only keep an actor-centred focus, but also support methodologically the theoretical shift from understanding the field as a ‘location’ to grasping the field as a ‘network’ – or even a transnational social field

Understanding internet usage and network locality in a rural community wireless mesh network

© 2015 ACM. Community networks owned and operated by local communities have recently gained popularity as a low cost solution for Internet access. In this paper, we seek to understand the characteristics of Internet usage in community networks and provide useful insights on designing and improving community networks in rural areas. We report the results of a socio-technical study carried out during a three month measurement of a community wireless mesh network (CWMN) which has been operating for two years in a rural area of northern Thailand. An on-site social interview was also conducted to supplement our analysis. The results reveal several interesting findings: rural users do use online social networks, instant messaging applications and online games similarly to urban users; they install unnecessary applications on their mobile phones and are completely obvious to their side effects - the traffic from these applications accounts for a major share of the traffic leading to numerous network anomalies. Finally our analysis uncovers the characteristic of locality in community networks where users in close geographical proximity interact with each other.TakNet was achieved thanks to sponsorship from THNIC Foundation. Part of this work was also supported by EU H2020 UMobile Project (Grant agreement no: 645124)

Strategies for Low Cost Rural Telephony.

This paper presents strategies that operators can employ to profitably provide acceptable and affordable telecommunication services to customers in the rural areas. The strategies discussed include the use of low power/ low cost infrastructure designed and based on the specifications of the rural areas and the shared access concept using the Global System for Mobile (GSM) phone booth. These strategies are based on infrastructure that is modular, scalable, solar powered, and customizable to the operator’s specifications. The low cost infrastructure is designed to extend telecommunication services to rural areas enabling users in those areas to link up with the operator’s network in the urban areas using their personal phones. These devices (repeaters) can be designed to allow the user’s phones to transmit at minimum power thus giving them longer talk time. With the GSM phone booth, the users don’t need to have personal phones. The GSM phone booths are installed within their streets and the users are supplied with re-loadable cards with which they can access the phone booths to make their calls. These phone booths are also designed to be range extenders powered by solar making them suitable for the more remote areas