In-place or out-of-place? Host–guest encounter under ‘One Country, Two Systems’

This study aims to examine the mutual perceptions between Hong Kong residents and Mainland Chinese visitors when they share mall spaces in Hong Kong, further to investigate if and in what circumstances potential conflicts exist between them. Mixed methods, including a questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews, were used as a response to the call for including qualitative methods for more thorough understanding of the host–guest relationship. The survey findings suggest that Mainland tourists were perceived negatively while local residents were perceived positively in both Perception of Behaviour and Perception of Crowdedness. Three place identities are also analysed from in-depth interviews, namely Hong Kong residents being ‘in place’, Mainland visitors being ‘out of place’, and Hong Kong residents being ‘outsiders’. The politics of mobility arising from their conflicts leads to and increases fluidity of their place identity. This study contributes to the literature by examining perceptions on an individual level among the nationals of differing national identities in one single country. It also offers insights for authorities in managing relationships and tensions currently existing in tourism spaces. Such an analysis using the concepts of insideness–outsideness and in-place/out-of-place could be extended to a wider scope of relationships by including different stakeholders in tourism

Reconceptualising host-guest relations at border towns

Highlights • Explores the cultural-geopolitics of mainland Chinese day-tripping in Hong Kong. • Reconceptualises host-guest relationship at border towns. • Provides an alternative to quantification-oriented studies on host-guest relations

Empowering Women through Participatory Action Research in Community-Based Disaster Risk Reduction Efforts

The role of women in community-based disaster risk reduction efforts (CBDRR) is an area of limited academic research and continues to be a thorny issue for policy and practice. This research paper describes a comparative case study of participatory action research (PAR) in CBDRR conducted in one rural and one urban tole (neighbourhood) of Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. PAR is not a method, rather it is a set of principles guiding research. The “Empowering Women through CBDRR” PAR was motivated by the National Society for Earthquake Technology-Nepal’s (NSET) desire to learn how to effectively empower women in disaster risk management on a local level and to enhance resilience to everyday hazards and risks as well as earthquakes. The hazards identified by residents in rural Bhainse were the supply of drinking water and landslides while the supply of drinking water and earthquakes were the perceived hazards in urban Tajhya Tole. The small-scale mitigation activities chosen and implemented by the female led disaster management committees in partnership with the local authorities and NSET addressed everyday risks (fire) that were important to the community or were related to livelihood concerns (landslide and drainage pipe). While there is clear evidence of women’s empowerment and capacity building, sustainability of initiatives is particularly dependent on the commitment of local authorities to incorporate the initiatives into local policies and actions. A gap remains between aspirations to practice empowerment of women and implementation. In many ways, ‘doing’ empowerment remains problematic in CBDRR