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Large-scale capitalist and family-based agriculture in Bahia State of Brazil Due to its relative abundance of arable and grazing areas, Brazil has become a large exporting country of coffee, sugar, ethanol, soya bean oil and oil cakes, meat, citrus fruits, etc. Nevertheless it still continues to suffer from the unequal distribution of lands. Poverty and underemployment in two rural regions of Bahia State (Itajuípe - Coaraci and Valente) give evidence of that unfair economic situation. The implementation of a land reform in Brazil should not thus be considered exclusively for social considerations but also for economic reasons.

Representation of national territory and grain circulation : the Public Distribution System in India In India, the cumbersome Public Distribution System which sells at subsidized prices the grains and sugar procured in surplus regions is known for many flaws. Factors such as social needs, the productivist approach and vested interests help explain why the PDS persists in spite of the economic liberalisation and the partial withdrawal of the State. One missing factor is the fact that the ideal behind the PDS corresponds to two differing but superimposing conceptions of national territory. Both the (nationalist) Hindu territoriality, based on cardinal points and their linkages, and the modernist Nehruvian territoriality, based on a policy of integration created by economic flows, correspond to a circulation-based conception of the national space. Both are factors contributing to the maintenance of the PDS.

European ports policy, between entry to the single market and sustainable development As one of the most important hubs of world trade, the European Union is strongly interested in sea port development. The Union is attempting to apply rules of the single market to the ports to serve as substitute for each member-state's port system and to create a coherent system at European scale. Nevertheless, it is difficult to stimulate territorial development only with market rules and considerable opposition and numerous conflicts have appeared against this policy. The article then considers, we attend the promotion of sustainable development concepts to counter the oppositions, but the underlying ideas can only be sustainable if they respect all the aspects of environmental, social and economic integration.

Residential mobility and nationality in the suburbs of Paris (Yvelines, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val d'Oise) from 1996 to 2005 In France, focusing on national birth origins often provokes problems and intense disquiet. What motives are behind such investigations ? What will this kind of case study be used for ? Once such misgivings are removed, the difficulty remains of obtaining relevant current data. This paper aims to make use of the BIEN database (Base d'informations économiques notariales) bought from the Parisian notary public board. Our objective is to propose a socio-geographical analysis of housing purchase transactions in the metropolitan region of Paris, Île-de-France, concerning non-French buyers. Do they live in every part of this metropolitan region ? Is it possible to describe any specific geographical distributions ? Updated regularly, the BIEN database allows those social transformation processes to be followed over a very short time in order to develop perspectives of what are termed “territorial kinetics” by describing key moments. Qualitative methods are not applied in this survey which makes it harder to reconstruct particular strategies leading to choice of residential locations and the social processes behind the distributions that appear. Nevertheless, we will try to suggest some clues to explain the findings.