Conference - Quebec 2018

The Commission met in five sessions, organized partly in collaboration with the Commission on Regional Development. At first, the Commission on Tourism was supposed to join, the way the organization of the program was made did let us much room for that kind of collaboration. Even the joint organization of the first two Commissions was not recognized as such in the program. It has to be noted that the organizing committee of the Congress made a mistake with the identification of the Commission: our Commission bears the number C16.29 (it was wrongly identified as 31 during the congress in all the published documentation).

Five paper sessions were held on Tuesday, August 7 (sessions 1-4) and Thursday, August 9 (session 5) with the 19 following papers:

Session 1: Tools of demarginalization in the local and regional development: what role for landscape and tourism?

Konrad Czapiewski (Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization, Poland): Territorial Inequalities and Local Development – some narrative stories from Poland

Krystian Heffner (University of Economics in Katowice) & Agniesza Latocha (Institute of Geography and Regional Development, Wroclaw): Desolated villages as example of spatial, economic and social marginalization in the Polish-Czech borderland

Walter Leimgruber (Université de Fribourg/CH): Nature Parks: valorising regional potential. The example of the Gruyère Pays-d'Enhaut regional nature park (Fribourg/Vaud, Switzerland)

Jamal Abdullah (Universaiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam): Voting patterns in marginal rural areas in the 2018 general election in Malaysia

Session 2: Tools of demarginalization in the local and regional development: what role for landscape and tourism in Europe?

Jerzy Banski (Polish Academy of Sciences): Structure and valorization of local resources in Eastern Poland

Toivo Muilu (Natural Resources Institute Finland – Luke) : Policies of sparsely populated rural areas in Finland

Kristjan Nemac (Science and Research Centre Koper): Do we need to change the system? Think global and create a local alternative

Hugo Capella Miternique (Universitat Illes Baleares): Ibiza’s diversity: from merge to de-gendered leisure

Session 3: Migrations, adaptations, identities and frontiers

Tomas Havlicek (Charles University Prague): Relict (phantom) borders as present social-cultural divide in Czechia: an example of geography of religion

Borna Fuerst-Bjelis (Uiversity of Zagreb): Appreciating differences and coexistence of identities: evidence from the multicultural historical borderlands of Croatia

Thomas Larsen (Kansas State University): Moving Forward with Migration and Geography Awareness Week

Session 4: Between the local and global: multiscalar economic inequalities and development

Atsushi Taira (Kagawa University): Small and medium-sized "global-niche" firms in Japan: a key for rejuvenation of Japan's local economy?

Yehua Dennis Wei (University of Utah): Beyond Convergence: Spatial Polarization, Place Mobility and the Core-Peripheral Structure in China

Matthew Fahrenbruch (University of Kansas): Challenges to Demarginalization. The case of fisheries governance and the development of the export jellyfish fishery on the Miskito Coast of Nicaragua

Mahvish Anjum (Aligarh Muslim University): Custodians of Chikankari Industry in Lucknow City, India: An Occupational Analysis

Session 5: Nouveaux modèles d’action en développement territorial

Bernard Pecqueur (Université Grenoble Alpes) : Innovation sociale et revitalisation des territoires ruraux : le « tiers lieu » de Vizille (France)

Pierre-Antoine Landel (Université Grenoble Alpes) : Interroger la capacité transformative de l’innovation sociale : l’hypothèse de l’opérateur territorial de la transition

Mélanie Doyon (UQAM) : Modèle agricole alternatif et développement des territoires ruraux; le cas de La Clé des Champs de Saint-Camille

Juan-Luis Klein (UQAM) : L’innovation sociale, le « Buen Vivir » et les nouveaux modèles d’action en développement territorial

The Commission held a business meeting open to all members, old and new, on Wednesday, August 8. A separate report has been prepared, the essential elements were the following:

a. The next conference is to take place in Nepal in November/December 2019. Details will be discussed with the organizer, Prof. Pushkar Pradhan

b. There is a proposal for 2020 to hold a pre-congress conference in Cluj Napoca, Romania, preceding the Istanbul IGC.

c. The collaboration with Springer who edit the series Perspectives on Geographical Marginality is continuing well. The new contact person, Mrs. Evelien Bakker, showed great enthusiasm and willingness to help with contacts. Apart from the fourth volume in the series that is almost ready, there a number of projects that, and members will be encouraged to become more active.

d. The Newsletter should become not only an outlet for information but also a medium for discussion. Members will be encouraged to hand in short texts to be included with the aim to stimulate reflections and debates on marginality issues.