Flexible Crossroads

British Columbia's forest economy is at a crucial crossroads. Its survival, Roger Hayter argues, rests on its ability to remain flexible and open to innovation -- a future by no means assured given recent policy initiatives and the current contested nature of British Columbia's forests. Flexible Crossroads looks at the contemporary restructuring of British Columbia's forest economy, demonstrating how both resource dynamics -- the transition from old growth to managed forests -- and industrial dynamics -- changing technology and global market forces -- have shaped this transformation. Conceptually, the restructuring is portrayed as a shift from a commodity-based, cost-minimizing production system (Fordism) to a more product-differentiated, value-maximizing production system informed by the imperative of flexibility. The first part of the book provides global and historical perspectives by situating British Columbia's forest economy within the wider context of global industrialization, the history of resource dynamics, and the current shift from Fordist to more flexible systems of production. In the second part, Hayter assesses the extent to which British Columbia's forest economy is enacting this shift by focusing on factors such as foreign ownership, the strategies and structure of MacMillan Bloedel, the role of small firms, trade relations, employment and labour relations, forest community development, environmentalism and resource use, and innovation policy. Flexible Crossroads will appeal to geographers, political economists and forestry professionals, as well as to students of British Columbia's economy and forest economies generally.

The future of northern British Columbia, a vast, resource-rich region of vibrant cultures and diverse communities, could be either driven by a narrow economic agenda or guided by innovative, place-based solutions that seek to build viable communities and resilient local and regional economies. Investing in Place is about creating the foundations for renewing northern British Columbia’s rural and small-town economies. Markey, Halseth, and Manson argue that renewal is not about nostalgic reliance on the policies and economic strategies of the past – rather, it is about building a pragmatic and innovative vision for development, one that acknowledges both the opportunities and the challenges posed by resource development and global and technological change. For policy-makers and residents alike the path to renewal lies in place-based development, which consists of people working together at all levels of the community and region to take advantage of local opportunities in a sustainable, responsible way.

Canadian Geography: A Scholarly Bibliography is a compendium of published works on geographical studies of Canada and its various provinces. It includes works on geographical studies of Canada as a whole, on multiple provinces, and on individual provinces. Works covered include books, monographs, atlases, book chapters, scholarly articles, dissertations, and theses. The contents are organized first by region into main chapters, and then each chapter is divided into sections: General Studies, Cultural and Social Geography, Economic Geography, Historical Geography, Physical Geography, Political Geography, and Urban Geography. Each section is further sub-divided into specific topics within each main subject. All known publications on the geographical studies of Canada—in English, French, and other languages—covering all types of geography are included in this bibliography. It is an essential resource for all researchers, students, teachers, and government officials needing information and references on the varied aspects of the environments and human geographies of Canada.

Market-based social economy firms such as social enterprises, social purpose businesses, co-operatives, credit unions, and community economic development corporations aim to meet distinct social needs while making money. Do these types of businesses have the potential for growth in the modern economy? Are they destined to function only in areas where conventional firms cannot achieve a sufficient rate of return? Or will the role of social economy organizations change as businesses begin placing more emphasis on corporate social responsibility? Building on the popular 2010 collection Researching the Social Economy, Businesses with a Difference explores the challenges and opportunities faced by firms that seek a genuine balance between their social and economic objectives. Through international case studies, including comparative analyses, this innovative collection highlights the unique issues that must be addressed when associations are accountable not to investors and shareholders, but instead to ordinary people.

Throughout the world’s hinterland regions, people are growing old in resource-dependent communities that were neither originally designed nor presently equipped to support an ageing population. This book provides cutting edge theoretical and empirical insights into the new phenomenon resource frontier ageing, to understand the diverse experiences of and responses to rural population ageing in the early 21st century. The book explores the resource hinterland as a new frontier of rural ageing and examines three central themes of rural population change, community development and voluntarism that characterize ageing resource communities. By investigating the links among these three themes, the book provides the conceptual and empirical foundations for the future agenda of rural ageing research. This timely contribution contains 15 original chapters by leading international experts from Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, UK, Ireland and Norway.

The presentation and representation of the environment occurs throughout academia and across all news media. The strict protocols of science often clash with environmental information available from sources that dwell on subjective aesthetic, emotional and personal sensitivities. This book challenge the reader, as student, teacher, researcher or policy maker, to reflect critically on the ways that environments are studied, interpreted, presented and represented, in education and public policy.

The history of British Columbia's economy in the twentieth century is inextricably bound to the development of the forest industry. In this comprehensive study, Gordon Hak approaches the forest industry from the perspectives of workers and employers, examining the two institutions that structured the relationship during the Fordist era: the companies and the unions. He relates daily routines of production and profit-making to broader forces of unionism, business ideology, ecological protest, technological change, and corporate concentration. The struggle of the small-business sector to survive in the face of corporate growth, the history of the industry on the Coast and in the Interior, the transformations in capital-labour relations during the period, government forest policy, and the forest industry's encounter with the emerging environmental movement are all considered in this eloquent analysis.

Discusses the future of rural development and the recognition of the importance of 'place-based economies'. This title includes topics such as seasonal economies, amenity migration, IT industries, green energy, and transportation developments.