Declining Food Security in a Philippine Oil Palm Frontier: The Changing Role of Cooperatives

The long‐held redistributive function of agricultural cooperatives — one of moral economy and poverty alleviation — has changed dramatically as they emerge as core brokers for agro‐industrial development in the so‐called ‘green economy’. This article examines the changing role of cooperatives involved in brokering oil palm production and its impact upon the food security and livelihoods of smallholders who labour in plantation regimes situated in historically uneven agrarian political economies. Findings show how, increasingly, cooperatives reinforce uneven agrarian social relations of production and exchange in which indigenous smallholders experience loss of land, poor wage labour conditions tinged with insecurity and prejudice, and mounting debt in an expanding oil palm complex. The article suggests that these changes in agrarian social relations negatively influence indigenous farmers’ food security pathways, with their access to and use of appropriate foods diminishing. It asserts that understanding the impacts of cooperatives on food security pathways requires a relational and situated analysis of livelihood change and agrarian relations in extractive frontiers.     

Defining and Contesting Environmental Justice: Socio-natures and the Politics of Scale in the Delta

Abstract:  This article examines a contemporary process intended to "identify a strategy for managing the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta as a sustainable ecosystem that would continue to support environmental and economic functions that are critical to the people of California" ( Delta Vision 2008 , http://deltavision.ca.gov/AboutDeltaVision.shtml ). Environmental injustices in the Delta are exacerbated by connected conflicts between knowledge and power, over the scale at which "environmental justice" and the "Delta" are understood through public policy. The rejection of environmental justice and the socio-natural in the Delta Vision process represents how contemporary policy processes are recreating and reenacting the power/knowledge dynamics that have defined the Delta, placed it on a path to ecological collapse and injected high levels of social and racial injustice in its landscape over the past 150 years. Our article combines an ethnographic and a historical geographical approach that contributes to the literature on environmental justice and scale and links with the literature on water governance and power to advance the task of defining environmental justice from the academic and policy perspectives.     

拓荒者：华人对墨西卡利早期开发的贡献

论文结合墨西卡利华人出现的历史背景,重点就华人对墨西卡利早期开发的贡献及当地华人社会的兴起进行了论述,探讨了墨西卡利华人社会迅速衰落的原因,认为墨西卡利华人社会的迅速衰落,具有独特的时代背景和原因。一是它的边疆位置造成了美墨之间的争夺,使得华人的生存发展受到一定影响。二是在世界经济危机爆发的大背景下,依靠棉花出口的墨西卡利经济受到巨大影响,这一外部因素加剧了华人社会的衰落。三是墨西哥的土改政策,也波及到华人的处境。     

Community as a Policy Instrument: A Comparative Analysis

Over recent decades. "community" has been a powerful theme in social policy development not only in the United States but elsewhere in North America and Europe as well. Existing analyses of the concept, however, tended to approach it more from philosophical and sociological perspectives than from the standpoint of policy analysis. This article examines the uses of community as a policy instrument, considering its diverse applications us policy objective, policy means, and policy rhetoric. A cross-section of major community-oriented policies in the United States and Quebec is analyzed, providing a basis file policy-level, regime-level, and political culture comparison. Identifying the key components that community policies may incorporate, we propose a schema for systematically describing deferent types of interventions. Finally. we review the difficulties encountered in implementing policies with a community orientation and the need to avoid simplistic judgments of success and failure.     

Hollande and Africa Policy

Studies of French Africa policy have traditionally focused on its neo-colonial basis and the often corrupt nature of the relations it engendered because of the connivances of semi-official and unofficial networks and covert practices that characterised it. These are often referred to in the literature as la Françafrique. In seeking to understand François Hollande's Africa policy this article moves away from a neo-colonial, Françafrique analytical framework and instead seeks to engage with the continuity versus change debate in French Africa policy through the lens of geopolitics. The three central themes of Hollande's Africa policy—security, partnership and trade—are analysed, focusing firstly on the French interventions in Africa, notably in Mali, since 2012, before discussing French engagement with African regional organisations, such as the Economic Community of West African States, and the increasing importance attached to economic and trade links. The article ends with a brief survey of some of the challenges facing French Africa policy.     

Middle power strategic choices and horizontal security cooperation: the 2009 Australia-South Korea security cooperation agreement

ABSTRACT

This article examines why Asia-Pacific middle powers cooperate with each other on security issues. The article challenges the assumption that middle powers are primarily influenced by great-power structural factors in their security relations with each other. It argues that the dominant structural explanations of security cooperation between secondary states—balancing against the rise of China, responding to burden-sharing pressure from the United States, or hedging during a period of great power transition—have not been sufficiently tested. Using the 2009 Australia-South Korea security cooperation agreement as a representative example of middle power security cooperation, it finds that inter-personal leadership preferences played a key intervening role in filtering existing structural incentives into actual policy cooperation. It shows how congruence in leadership preferences shapes when and with whom middle powers are likely to cooperate on security issues. The article opens up the research agenda on middle powers by examining how they approach security relations in bilateral and horizontal contexts with each other.     

‘Best Practice’ Options for the Legal Recognition of Customary Tenure

Is there a ‘best practice’ model for the legal recognition of customary tenure? If not, is it possible to identify the circumstances in which a particular model would be most appropriate? This article considers these questions in the light of economic theories of property rights, particularly as illustrated by the World Bank's 2003 land policy report. While these theories have their flaws, the underlying concept of tenure security allows a typological framework for developing legal responses to customary tenure. In particular, this article suggests that the nature and degree of State legal intervention in a customary land system should be determined by reference to the nature and causes of any tenure insecurity. This hypothesis is discussed by reference to a wide variety of legal examples from Africa, Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific. The objective is not to suggest that law determines resource governance outcomes in pluralist normative environments, but to improve the quality of legal interventions in order to assist customary groups to negotiate better forms of tenure security and access to resources.     

Carceral labour: Offshore work relations,conflicts and local participation in Ghana's oil and gas industry

Local participation is crucial for linking the oil and gas industry to broader economies. Direct employment in the oil and gas industry, albeit often on a limited scale remains critical for the transfer of expertise and know-how in many developing economies. Focusing on the social construction of carcerality – a set of spaces, practices and relationships, the paper examines the carceralities of non-prison places such as offshore oil and gas infrastructures. With emphasis on oil rigs and Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSOs) vessels, the paper highlights the complex labour relations, negotiations and conflicts in offshore working environment and its impacts on local content and participation in Ghana's oil and gas industry. The paper shows that carceral techniques operate to limit the potentiality of career progress. Offshore labour practices and relations show the new kinds of carceral spaces being created through offshore extraction, and sheds light on how these carceral spaces depotentialize the labour force and reinforce global political economic inequalities.     

“A handshake across the Himalayas:” Chinese investment,hydropower development,and state formation in Nepal

Abstract

This article examines contemporary patterns of Chinese infrastructure development in Nepal’s Rasuwa District and the ways in which Nepali actors engage with Chinese investments to advance projects of state formation. Particularly in the wake of political volatility and natural disaster, Chinese interventions support the material and imaginative projects of a Nepalese state seeking stability, security, and economic growth. Long perceived as peripheral to the state center, Rasuwa is rapidly becoming central to Sino-Nepal relations, particularly in the context of bilateral investments in hydropower and transportation infrastructure. Drawing on data generated from 30 months of fieldwork in Nepal, we argue that Chinese development in Rasuwa: a) undergirds territorializing practices of the Nepalese state; b) represents a “gift of development” that connects Nepali ambitions of bikas (development) with Chinese anxieties over exile Tibetan populations; and c) reflects a strategic reorientation of geopolitical alliances between Nepal, China, and India. Challenging studies that depict Chinese development as an overwhelming extractive force, we instead show how small states like Nepal in fact use Chinese interventions to advance domestic projects of state formation and national security at home. On the basis of this study, we expand understandings about the place and priority of infrastructure in national state-making agendas, illustrate uneven local experiences with international development interventions, and highlight new configurations of Chinese investment and development abroad – characterized in Nepal as a “handshake across the Himalayas.”     

Lost in translation: why Nigeria's police don't implement democratic reforms

The transfer of democratic values and practices such as community‐based policing to African police forces is a key aspect of western aid and security policies, yet the cultural transmission on which it depends is not fully understood; the ways in which African officers respond to theories and practices imported from western societies has yet to be assessed critically. Further, despite decades of international support for police reform and re‐education, there is little evidence to support the assumption that the skills, technologies and procedures associated with western policing can act as an effective channel for the transmission of democratic values. This article uses the Nigerian police's response to both externally funded and internally generated reform projects to address a question with implications for policy transfer more generally: what explains the uneven transmission of politically sensitive forms of knowledge? It discusses how imported ideas and practices are received by Nigerian officers and political elites, and how they are transformed having been filtered through local interests and dispositions. It shows that even when the process of reform is accepted, the political will required to ensure its effective implementation is not. Democratic practices do not travel well because recipients respond to imported practices in an adaptive manner, integrating aspects of donor understanding and indigenous realities.     

Global production networks and the extractive sector: governing resource-based development

This article explores the opportunities a GPN approach providesfor understanding the network configurations and regional developmentimpacts associated with extractive industries. The article elaboratestwo core claims: (i) that the application of the GPN analyticalframework provides a way to make progress in a stalled policydebate regarding the linkages between resource extraction andsocio-economic development (popularly known as the ‘resourcecurse thesis’); and (ii) that the encounter between GPNand a natural resource-based sector introduces distinctive issues—associatedwith the materiality and territoriality of extractive commodities—that,to date, GPN has not considered fully. The article examinesthe global production network for oil as an empirical case ofhow extractive industries can provide (limited) opportunitiesfor socio-economic development.     

Forks in the Road: Energy Policies in Canada and the US since the Shale Revolution

ABSTRACT

This article examines policy responses in Canada and the US to the shale revolution and changing North American oil and gas markets. We outline the effect of the shale revolution on North American oil and gas markets, and how the subsequent energy policy choices in each country changed the relationship between Canada and the US. In the US, increasing production, combined with the policy imperative of maintaining energy security, led to less support for Canadian supply and the subsequent on-off-on saga of the Keystone XL pipeline. In Canada, growing concern about the balance between the environment and the economy led to stalled pipeline development and reform of regulatory systems, problems exacerbated by the new policy direction in the US.     

Globalizing West African oil: US ‘energy security’ and the global economy

This article examines the nature of US oil intervention in West Africa and in particular the ways in which US strategic policy is increasingly being wedded to energy security. It argues that academic debates of a ‘new oil imperialism’ overplays the geostrategic dimensions of US policy, which in turn underplays the forms of globalization promoted by Washington in the postwar world. Specifically, the US has long sought to ‘transnationalize’ economies in the developing world, rather than pursue a more mercantilist form of economic nationalism. This article argues that US oil intervention in Africa conforms to this broader picture, whereby processes of transnationalization and interstate competition are being played out against the backdrop of African oil. The recent turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa will add to these dynamics in interesting and unpredictable ways.     

Oil Exploration in Colonial Nigeria,c. 1903–58

This article explores the history of oil exploration in colonial Nigerian between c.1903 and 1958 when the first shipment of Nigerian crude oil arrived in Rotterdam. It debunks the two most persistent myths in Nigerian oil historiography, namely that oil exploration dates back to 1908 when the German oil company, the Nigeria Bitumen Corporation, started operations. An examination of contemporary sources shows that oil exploration activities date back to at least 1903, and that Nigeria Bitumen was indeed a British oil company with a listing on the West African Market of the stock exchange in London. The paper argues that the challenging Nigerian environment, which required sophisticated technology, and the limited support from the British government ensured the failure of early oil exploration activities by small British oil concerns. Consequently, over time, the exploration of the oil possibilities of colonial Nigeria became the domain of large, integrated oil companies, in particular Royal Dutch/Shell and British Petroleum, who had the financial resources to fund the expensive search for oil in the colony and the technological expertise and equipment to achieve success over the long term. This dominance by the majors remained a characteristic of the Nigerian oil industry well into the 1990s. The colonial roots of two additional characteristics of the modern oil industry in Nigeria are further traced, namely the enclave nature of the industry within the broader Nigerian economy and the establishment of oil as a national concern, which concern in general overruled the oil-related problems and concerns of local oil producing communities until the emergence of oil-related minority struggles in the 1990s.     

Afghanistan: the reconstruction process

In this article the author focuses initially on the degree of support provided by the international community to the interim administration of Afghanistan and notes that the pledges made at the Tokyo Conference do not equate to the per capita levels of funding made available for other recent emergencies. He draws attention to the inter–relationship between security and funding for reconstruction and comments that the recent decision of the US government to join with others in agreeing to finance work to upgrade the major highway system is very timely in shoring up the regime in the wake of the recent assassination attempt on Hamid Karzai. He stresses that the international community needs to provide sustained support to the new government if it is to survive. He also analyses the complex relationship between the administration and the aid community and reports on the calls by the government to be given the major part of the resources allocated by international donors and to be supported to take the lead in determining policy and strategy.
The author notes the nature of the Afghan economy and the potential for reconstruction, taking account of the economic impact of the conflict, the progress made by the aid community since 1992, the humanitarian crisis arising from the drought of 1999–2001 and the large scale, mainly involuntary, return of refugees from Pakistan and Iran since March 2002. He comments on the fact that the agricultural economy cannot support its population, on the need for economic safety valves in the form of migration to Pakistan and Iran, on the availability of camps for internally displaced people, and on urbanization. In concluding the author is both optimistic and cautious, noting the fragility of the situation, but also acknowledging that the international community is taking timely action to address it through reconstruction assistance although it remains reluctant to give sufficient priority to security provision.     

侨郡改置与前燕政权中的胡汉关系

侨州郡县的研究一直是历史地理研究中的难点,对于前燕设置侨郡的研究尤为不足。通过比对《通鉴》和《晋书》的记载,可知慕容廆设置侨郡的时间在建兴二年,早于东晋。慕容政权采取任用非本州人担任侨郡太守的政策,以此来削弱流民的力量,巩固自己的统治。这一政策激化了汉人大族与慕容政权的关系,并导致了大族的叛乱。慕容皝将侨郡改置为侨县,进一步削弱大族的势力。侨郡的改置反映了慕容政权内部胡汉关系的微妙变化。     

The Foreign Policymaking Role of Congress in the 1990s: Remote Sensing Technology and the Future of Congressional Power

In the midst of a period of Congressional assertiveness on foreign policy, a new technology has emerged for commercial use with the potential for enhancing Congress' information-gathering processes and agenda-setting role. The effect may alter the balance of power in the relationship between Congress and the President. Congress' access to news media stories of imagery may provide an independent information source on U.S. or foreign military installations and activities. Such a source could be utilized to assess issues such as Pentagon appropriations, treaty compliance, and foreign aid funding. The thesis of this article is that when interest groups and the news media use remote sensing imagery on foreign policy issues, the foreign and national security policymaking process will be transformed by enhancing the information status and the public agendasetting role of previously excluded segments such as interest groups, the news media, and the general public. The expanded role of these groups will decentralize decisionmaking by fragmenting power and likely restructure the relationship between the Congress and the executive over these policy areas during the 1990s.     

Regularizing Extraction in Andean Peru: Mining and Social Mobilization in an Age of Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract: This paper examines the new forms of regulation and resistance accompanying the expanding extractive frontier in Andean Peru. It does so through an analysis of a process of community mobilization at the Pierina gold mine in the region of Ancash that was aimed at transforming the conditions under which area residents labored at the mine. The article documents the complex ways in which the emergence of neoliberalized forms of resource governance has affected the terrain of mining‐related sociopolitical struggle at Pierina, both allowing the mining firm to consolidate authority in the arena of mine–community relations, while also establishing certain conditions for residents to pursue their interests collectively. An analysis of the Pierina case suggests that efforts to forge more just and equitable political economies of mineral development must not only challenge the neoliberalization of resource governance, but also confront the underlying socio‐ecological contradictions of contemporary capitalist resource development.     

Community, Identity and Gender in Migrant Societies of Southern Africa: Emerging Epistemological Challenges

Immigration policy in South Africa is undergoing serious revision in response to unprecedented cross-border migration into the post-apartheid state. This article looks at the relevance of orthodox international relations theory to migration policy in South Africa, and argues that fundamental shifts in approach are essential if IR theorists of the region are to contribute effectively to understanding and managing migration in southern Africa. It builds on the results of interviews with migrants and considers the significance of the themes of identity, community and gender as areas of particular relevance to international relations theory.     

浅析中国政府在中印边界争端中的危机处理

1962年前后,印度政府在中印边境地区推行的“前进政策”,不仅挑战了新中国外交政策的根本原则,而且严重威胁了中国西南边境的安全与稳定,使得中印两国围绕边界问题的争端发展成为一场国家关系危机。中国政府应对这场危机的决策过程,既体现了危机处理的一般规律,又反映了中国领导人进行危机决策的一些独特的原则和方式。