Stone Dreams: The Political Ecological Analysis of Taiwan's Gravel Industry
Date Issued
2007
Date
2007
Author(s)
Lee, Yen-Ju
DOI
zh-TW
Abstract
In Taiwan, “gravels”, as an essential material of modern construction, is no doubt a byword of “development”, and thus, in lack of gravels is regarded as the decline of construction industry, which would bring about the terrible effect of economic recession. Consequently, the production of natural gravels is always a crucial issue for both public and private sectors. However, owing to the result of unceasing construction projects in Taiwan, the market demand of natural gravels is always far greater than the “formal supply” (which means the exploiting of natural gravels is permitted by the government). The invalid resource management mechanism has given rise to seriously environmental and social problems. Many gravel manufacturers tend to manipulate informal ways to obtain natural gravels, for example, exploiting gravels and setting up factory without permissions, bribing the officials to evade from laws and regulations, and colluding with the gangsters and bringing violence to monopolize the resources. Accordingly, it is convinced that the aggregate industry is nearly the most corrupt industry in Taiwan.
This paper first looks over Taiwan’s aggregate industry in its original socio-history context, and assumes all the environmental and social conflicts resulted from the production/consumption of gravels are in fact reflecting a dynamic struggle of discourse on the commercialization of the natural gravels among three main social actors of the State, the Gravel Manufacturers, and the Local Society. Therefore, this paper on one hand aims to review the development of Taiwan’s gravel industry and the mode of production of gravels in Taiwan; on the other hand attempts to illustrate how the three main actors link to and become as mediators to the urban-regional process of Taiwan, and how they result in the different spatial forms of the urban and regional area of Taiwan.
Subjects
砂石產業
政治生態學
非正式經濟
自然資源管理
永續發展
Gravel Industry
Political Ecology
Informal Economy
Natural Resources Management
Sustainable Development
SDGs
Type
thesis
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