(Mal)Development in Central America: Globalization and Social Change

This article develops a globalization framework and a model of transnational processes for analysing social change and development, and then applies the model to Central America. The analysis emphasizes determinacy, in the last instance, of social forces in historic developmental outcomes, and documents how social forces in struggles in an emergent transnational environment have shaped Central America's changing profile within the global economy and society. Revolutionary movements, a new class structure, US geo-political considerations, and the internationalization of East Asian economies, have all contributed to a new model of development; from the 1960s into the 1990s the national model of development is being replaced by a transnational model. Maquiladora garment production, tourism, non-traditional agricultural exports, and remittances from emigrant workers are coming to eclipse traditional agro-exports as the most dynamic economic sectors linking the region to globalized circuits of production and distribution. The article also examines Central American migration to the US and gender dimensions of the new transnational model of development.     

The Political Economy of Environmental Policy Reform in Latin America

Many parts of the world are threatened with environmental damage and degradation, affecting both the natural resources and the economy of the area. This article analyses the factors affecting the likelihood of different environmental policy reforms in Latin America, with particular emphasis on: the strengths and weaknesses of different groups which promote such reforms; the degree to which the reforms are compatible with the region's current economic policies; and how the type of political regime affects these issues. It reaches the conclusion that, although there has been progress in recent years, the possibility of carrying out far-reaching reforms which could substantially reduce pollution and resource depletion has been limited by: 1) the difficulties involved in linking environmental issues with concerns for social justice; 2) economic policies which promote the exploitation of natural resources and labour and weaken the public sector; and 3) the great influence over regional governments of groups with vested interests in continuing environmentally destructive activities.     

Sustainable Food Systems Cluster,Vermont Style

Vermont, as one of the most rural and independent states in the U.S., has always relied heavily on agriculture and its natural environment to underpin its economy. This article examines the state's agricultural economy as a sustainable food systems cluster and how it is adapting to the global economy, corporate agriculture, and environmental concerns. It describes the scale and concentration of the cluster, its support structure, and the ways it impact other sectors of the economy, including energy, tourism, and the arts. It also explains how a cluster of largely small-scale and artisan enterprises that often represent lifestyle rather than economic choices can be innovative, collectively create a wealth-producing and branded cluster, and the implications of the new agricultural model for the state's educational system.     

The rise and fall of a speculative bubble: geostrategic concerns,public debate and the promotion of an American trans-oceanic canal in the 1820s

The article examines the interest in the United States for the construction of a trans-oceanic canal in Central America. In 1820, William Davis Robinson published a book, Memoirs of the Mexican Revolution, which contained an appendix discussing the practicability of building a trans-oceanic canal including detailed analysis of the potential routes for its construction. The appendix sparked a lively debate among American political and economic leaders. This debate would not abate until the enormity of the financial and engineering realities of the project coupled with the continuing political instability of Mexico, Greater Colombia, and the Republic of Central America dampened investor enthusiasm.     

Social and Political Dimensions of Environmental Protection in Central America

This study takes a critical look at mainstream efforts to protect and rehabilitate the environment in Central America. Despite some notable successes, many forest protection and tree planting schemes have not been effectively implemented and have even contributed to further environmental degradation, social inequality and impoverishment. It is argued that the trade-off between environmental protection and human welfare which characterizes many schemes to protect forests and promote tree planting undermines not only local livelihoods but also the possibility of achieving basic environmental objectives, given the nature of local responses and their effects on project implementation. There is a need for a more integrative and socially-aware approach to environmental planning which addresses two fundamental problems: the failure to locate environmental protection initiatives within a broader development framework and the failure to integrate concerns for environmental protection with the needs and rights of local people. Addressing these two problems of ‘macro-’ and ‘micro-coherency’ in environmental planning requires not only dealing with the many technical, administrative and financial constraints which typically characterize environmental programmes and projects, but also changes in the balance of social forces.     

Communal Forest Management: The Honduran Resin Tappers

Natural resource tenure and economic feasibility of resource-based activities are two of the most important issues in the current debate around environmental degradation and rural poverty. While many analyses have blamed the ‘tragedy of the commons’ and government mismanagement for environmental destruction, this paper provides a case study of resin tapping in Honduras which formulates the hypotheses that common property regimes can be successful and that economic liberalization policies may be detrimental to community-level resource schemes. Over half of the 6000 farmer-resin tappers in Honduras are organized into forty-six co-operatives that market the tree sap, wood and other forest products. These activities combine the twin goals of community-based forest preservation and income generation. Established legally in 1974, the tapping groups have expanded to include a variety of organizational and technical arrangements. The two co-operatives of Villa Santa and San Juan de Ojojona demonstrate contrasting histories, ecological endowments and economic outcomes. Currently the Honduran resin tappers are facing problems over their access to forest resources, the fluctuating profitability of extractive activities and the stability of the co-operative organization. These three issues are relevant to a variety of community-based environmental activities, and the lessons of the Honduran experience can be applied to analyse the processes of environmental degradation and community response elsewhere in the Third World.     

Challenges for global environmental diplomacy in Australia and the European Union

One of the predominant issues on the agenda of diplomats and politicians is how to address the consequences of shifts in perception about threats to the environment and the actual short and long‐term characteristics and effects of environmental degradation. Another challenge is that such issues as climate change impact on many areas including trade, economic and fiscal policies, employment, transport, agriculture and regional development. Furthermore, decisions taken at a national level cannot be isolated from international concerns, as in the case of the Kyoto Protocol.

This article maps out some of the differences between Australia and the European Union in relation to the role of developing countries in tackling climate change, the use of market mechanisms to tackle environmental problems and the implementation of punitive compliance systems. We explore the challenges facing Australia and the EU in sustainable development, why the EU has a reputation as a leader in this field, how Australia has engaged the challenge and why the similarities in the approach of Australia and the EU are more striking than the differences.     

Feeding fears: competing discourses of interdependency,sovereignty, and China's food security

Following the release of the 1994 report ‘Who will feed China?’ by the Worldwatch Institute, there has been much debate over the implications of China's growing demand for grain. The question of China's food production has elicited a variety of responses. While for some it raises the specter of regional and global instability as China becomes an environmental threat, for others the entrance of China into the world market promises increased trade and profits. In this paper I explore the responses in China and the US to the different notions of interdependence which have shaped the debate. I first turn to how concerns over China's food supply have, despite appeals to the concepts of global environmental and economic interdependence, become linked to classical state-centered geopolitical concerns such as ‘sovereignty’ and ‘containment.’ I then look at how the debate has also been actively distanced from national security concerns through the invocation of an alternative interdependence founded on the logic of commerce. I conclude by arguing for the need within critical geopolitics to further examine the circulation of strategic texts between and within states, particularly in the analysis of texts that map worlds beyond the boundaries of North America and Europe.     

Enemies to Allies: The Role of Policy‐Design Adaptation in Facilitating a Farmer–Environmentalist Alliance

In the period 1985 to 1996, agricultural conservation policy in the United States underwent a fundamental transition from a focus on policy design elements that emphasized short‐term economic returns for farmers and long‐term productivity to a focus on design elements that emphasized systemic environmental concerns. Although farmers' concerns with the environment were doubtlessly real, this adaptation of design elements allowed the agriculture policy community to gain the support of the environmental community for programs that offered new ways to channel short‐term economic support to farmers. The adaptation of design elements was triggered by the severe economic threat farmers began to experience in the late 1970s. This article investigates the language adaptations that facilitated the changes in agricultural conservation policy by analyzing the five policy‐design elements developed by Ingram and Schneider.     

中原史前文化的优势--中国早期文明研究札记之一

解开华夏文明的锁钥仍然在中原史前文化中.中原史前文化的优势表现为较早地奠定了深厚的农业经济基础,并以之支撑起庞大的人口规模;向心状的聚落布局;以及先民对世俗性日常生活的关注.同时,还表现在中原地区的东西南北交汇之位、过渡之位和文化与环境的多样性之位.     

BOSERUP BACKWARDS? AGRICULTURAL INTENSIFICATION AS ‘ITS OWN DRIVING FORCE’ IN THE MBULU HIGHLANDS,TANZANIA

Why do farmers intensify their agricultural practices? Recent revisions of African environmental historiographies have greatly enriched our understanding of human–environmental interactions. To simply point at poor farming practices as the main cause of deforestation, desertification and other processes of land degradation is, for example, no longer possible. The contemporary analytical focus is instead on the complex and often unpredictable set of causal relations between societal, ecological and climatic factors. In the literature on agricultural intensification, conventionally defined driving forces, such as population pressure and market demand, remain important explanatory factors despite a growing body of research that suggests more dynamic scenarios of agricultural development and landscape change. This article reports on a case where the common‐sense logic of population pressure theory has dominated the historical narrative of a local process of agricultural intensification among an agro‐pastoral people in north‐central Tanzania. By way of a ‘detailed participatory landscape analyses’ a more complex and dynamic historical process of intensification is suggested, in which the landscape and the process of agricultural intensification itself are in focus. It is concluded that the accumulation of landesque capital has been incremental in character, and that the process of agricultural intensification in the study area has largely been its own driving force based on self‐reinforcing processes of change, and not a consequence of land scarcity and population pressure. This result demonstrates the possibility and usefulness of reversing the Bose‐rupian argument in analyses of agricultural intensification.     

The Aral Sea Basin Crisis: Transition and Environment in Former Soviet Central Asia

The haunting picture of a disappearing Aral Sea is just part of an overall environmental crisis in the Aral Sea Basin, where millions of people are dependent on agricultural production around the flows of two main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. Forced cotton cultivation in the former Soviet Union, in the context of inefficient agricultural organization and production, caused water mismanagement, salinization, water and soil contamination, erosion and the desiccation of the Aral Sea. In the post-Soviet era of ‘transition’, the governments of the Central Asian states and international donors have tried to mitigate the impact of the crisis and contain its scope. Resource-based tensions in the region reflect national (and sometimes ethnic) interests vested in the crucial agricultural sectors that provide foreign exchange and food. Although the Central Asian governments are gradually formulating regional water, land and salt management strategies, the room for manoeuvre that exists to implement policies which would immediately improve the environment, such as efficient water management and sustainable land use, is not being sufficiently utilized.     

Elites and masses: the prevalence of economics and culture in nineteenth-century American party platforms

Scholarship on political party development in nineteenth-century America has focused on the relationship between elites and voters on the influence of policy proposals. The question is how elite perception of voter demands influenced parties’ ideological development. This study addresses this question by assessing the dynamic between cultural and socioeconomic concerns in party ideological formation and policy articulation. A content analysis of national and state party platforms from 1840 through 1896 sheds light on this dynamic. Ultimately, party leaders set the political agenda by referencing economic concerns to a greater degree than cultural concerns in their platforms.     

Dimensions of Structural Adjustment: Gender and Age in the Costa Rican Labour Market

In a restructuring world economy, Costa Rica has been substantially more successful than other Central American countries in changing the composition of its exports and regaining prosperity. Given debates about the socioeconomic impact of the country's structural adjustment policies, this article explores changes in the gender and age dimensions of Costa Rica's labour market in the period 1979-91. On balance, what occurred in Costa Rica was a modest degree of increased and reorganized labour-market inequality by gender and age, as well as by social class. Key comparative Central American questions concern national variation in the magnitude of labour-market change during this period and its cyclical or secular components, as well as their interplay with the sectoral, spatial and social dimensions of such change.     

Accessibility interrupted: the Shimshal road,Gilgit‐Baltistan,Pakistan

Geographers working in mountainous northern Pakistan note that gains in accessibility following the Karakoram Highway's official opening in 1978 significantly reshaped social organization, economic activity, and land use across the region. These valuable regional‐scale analyses provide few insights regarding the contingent and variable ways new roads are conceived and experienced at the community and household level by the people whose mobility they drastically impact. This article addresses that limitation of regional research by focusing on an individual agricultural community called Shimshal that in 2003 completed a 40‐kilometre link‐road connecting it to the highway. Drawing from qualitative information gathered before and after the Shimshal road's completion, we briefly describe the community's motivation for constructing the road, villagers’ accessibility‐related hopes and concerns as it was being built, and some of the social, cultural, and economic changes that followed the road's completion. The article concludes by summarizing the community's response so far to landslide‐induced destruction of over 20 kilometres of the Karakoram Highway which, since January 2010, has left community members without vehicular access to the rest of Pakistan just seven years after their link‐road's completion.     

The Ethical Question in Postwar Central America and the Mutilated Good in Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s El Cojo Bueno

This article examines how the novel El cojo bueno (1996) by Guatemalan writer Rodrigo Rey Rosa posits an ethics that reconstellates the motifs and assumptions that have informed the revolutionary and transition-to-peace efforts of Central America. Through a careful reading of the text, I demonstrate how the novel pushes against the limits of the neoliberal ‘culture of peace’ and gives expression to an ethics that is attuned to the complex sociopolitical conditions of the postwar period. More specifically, I show how the novel develops a moral vision that registers but also resists the impunity, violence, and social disaffection that have devastated the region. The novel dramatizes what the moral life has come to mean in postwar Central America, namely, that it is a matter of grappling with the antinomies of freedom and unfreedom, of compassion and cold survivalism, and refusing to rest easy with either option. Ultimately, El cojo bueno marks a key moment when a new conception of ethics begins to take shape in postwar Central American literature.     

The spatial economy of North American trade fairs

Through a study of trade fairs, this article illustrates that relational approaches to economic geography are not limited to the sphere of economic and social relationships. These relationships are influenced by and, in turn, shape material realities, such as specific infrastructure and the labour market, in a reflexive manner. Trade fairs are “relational events” that bring together regional, national, and often international producers, users, suppliers, and other agents of a value chain or technology field for the purpose of exchanging knowledge about technological and market developments, building partnerships, and maintaining existing networks through learning by interaction and observation. However, these events are also situated in space and time, grounded in the contexts of particular industries, trade patterns, public and private investments, as well as the economic geographies of places. Focusing on North America, this article presents and analyzes data on the economic geography of trade fairs and their regional economic impact (number of events, exhibitors, attendees, exhibition space). It explores regional trade fair patterns and dynamic changes in major trade fair cities by emphasizing the role of history and industry context.     

3. FROM ENVIRONMENTAL CASE STUDY TO ENVIRONMENTAL KIN STUDY

This article explores the relationships among place, knowing, and being in environmental histories. Grounding ourselves in the work of Indigenous scholars from North America and the Pacific, we propose a method of listening and attuning that can attend to the dislocation and abstraction often found in work addressing ecocide and environmental violence. Against the ubiquity of the case-study approach, we propose a method we call “kin study,” which invites more embedded, expansive, material, and respectful relations to people and lands. This article frames the issues and then proposes, though a dialogue, how kin studies may be constituted and applied in studying environmental histories of the Pacific and Western Canada.     

FIRE IN THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON: A SPATIALLY EXPLICIT MODEL FOR POLICY IMPACT ANALYSIS*

ABSTRACT.  This article implements a spatially explicit model to estimate the probability of forest and agricultural fires in the Brazilian Amazon. We innovate by using variables that reflect farm-gate prices of beef and soy, and also provide a conceptual model of field management and deforestation fires to simulate the impact of road-paving, cattle exports, and conservation area designation on the occurrence of fire. Our analysis shows that fire is positively correlated with the price of beef and soy, and that the creation of new conservation units may offset the negative environmental impacts caused by the increasing number of fire events associated with early stages of frontier development.     

Performing national identities in everyday life: Popular motivations and national indifference in 19th-century Amsterdam

This article demonstrates how and when the nation—whether in the shape of concrete national symbols or as an abstract frame of reference—became relevant to ordinary people. It focuses on the experiences and activities of Amsterdam citizens in the second half of the 19th century. Central to the analysis is the apparent contradiction between ‘banal’ or ‘everyday nationalism’, in which nationalist symbols and rhetoric appeared to successfully reach their audience because of their omnipresence in daily life, and ‘national indifference’, as referring to the absence of national identification among the masses. It argues that in order to overcome the dichotomies between elites and masses and national and non-national performances, we should focus on the popular incentives for national identification, rather than on the ideological content and the (physical or symbolic) borders of the national community.