Human need in rural developing areas: perceptions of wildlife conservation experts

‘Sustainable use’ and ‘community‐based conservation’ are two contemporary concepts in wildlife conservation policy. Their rise represents a shift away from traditional conservation techniques, and a merging of narratives about conservation and development. While policy statements by major conservation organisations emphasise the necessity of the shift, evidence to date suggests that, in practice, implementation of these concepts has been limited. This paper considers the extent to which sustainable use and community‐based conservation have been accepted (or not) by a specific group of conservation experts, and what this level of acceptance implies for conservation in practice. Based on in‐depth interviews with experts in marine turtle biology and/or conservation policy, the paper considers the willingness and ability of such experts to incorporate human development needs and issues into conservation activities. The suitability of conservation organisations as promoters of rural development, and implications of their further involvement as such, are discussed. Les principes de ‘l'utilisation durable’ et de ‘la protection de l'environnement par la communauté’ sont deux concepts courants dans la politique de la defense de la flore et de la faune. La montée de ces concepts représente un écart par rapport aux techniques traditionnelles de la défense de l'environnement, ainsi qu'un lieu de convergence ou les récits sur la protection des ressources naturelles, et sur développement se fusionnent. Bien que les déclarations de principe faites par d'importants organismes de protection soulignent la nécessité de poursuivre cette nouvelle orientation, il y a de bonnes raisons de penser que la mise en pratique de ces concepts a été, jusqu'a présent, trés limitée. Cet article traitera de la mesure d'acceptation accordée à ces deux concepts, au sein d'un groupe spécifique de spécialistes en défense des ressources naturelles, ainsi que les répercussions de ce niveau d'acceptation pour la pratique de la protection. A partir d'entrevues en profondeur menées avec des experts en la biologie des tortues marines et/ou en la politique de leur protection, l'article examinera la volonté, ainsi que la capacité, de tels experts d'intégrer les exigences humaines aux activités de protection. Seront également considérées la question de l'aptitude de ces organismes de protection à promouvoir le développement rurale, et les consequences possibles de leur implication continue dans celui‐ci.     

Invisible Children fades away: What it means for the future of youth activism

The global reach of Invisible Children's viral video KONY 2012 supposedly established the efficacy of ‘spectacular humanitarianism’: sympathetic spectatorship of suffering others through the mediatization, commodification, and depoliticization of Western humanitarian action. However, their ‘brand’ of activism ultimately proved unsustainable, as Invisible Children announced in late 2014 that it was phasing out operations. Here I consider how Invisible Children, as a quintessential spectacular humanitarian movement, has shaped youth activists' subjectivities in the global North. Drawing on activism, media, and humanitarian studies critiques, as well as interviews with recent Invisible Children interns, I argue that though Invisible Children's approach can attract and launch young people into social activism, it can also hinder growth beyond the problematic confines of a spectacular humanitarian approach which reproduces, rather than transforms, global power relations. However, young activists can and do go on to cultivate a more critical and self‐reflexive approach to global social activism.     

Mixed messages: youth participation and democratic practice

The article begins by observing that, over the last decade, the idea of youth participation has once more become a popular part of contemporary political talk both in Australia and in many Western societies. Indeed most Western governments now advocate enhanced youth participation as part of a discourse about modern citizenship, so much so that it has become a policy cliché to say ‘increased youth participation’ will ‘empower’ young people, help build community and remedy a range of social problems. It is also noted that, if the idea of participation itself is an old idea central to the liberal democratic tradition, the current ‘rediscovery’ of youth participation is arguably part of that political orthodoxy. Drawing on selected State, national and Commonwealth government youth documents, the question is asked whether the official enthusiasm for youth participation has much to do with democratic practice. It is argued that the recent government enthusiasm for youth participation is problematic for three reasons. First, it fails to recognise the significant obstacles that young people currently experience when trying to participate socially, economically and politically. Second, there is a failure to think through what democratic practice requires. Third, both the conceptualisation and operationalisation of official youth participation policies reveal an agenda that is seriously at odds with the rhetoric of democratic participation. This raises questions about whose voice is actually being heard and to what effect.

A litmus test of any government, however it may describe itself, is its treatment of children. (Yakovlev 2003 Yakovlev A 2003 A Century of Violence in the Soviet Union New Haven, CT: Yale University Press  [Google Scholar], 33)     

Parents of global youth: contesting debt and belonging

In the United States, recently arrived migrant youth encounter competing media and institutional discourses that cast them as dependents who have been rendered ‘left behind,’ ‘on their own,’ or ‘unaccompanied’ by their parents. A corresponding narrative emerges in which young migrants’ parents are framed as abusive, neglectful, and ignorant. Combined, these portrayals may garner specialized services and contribute to success in the legal realm. At the same time, however, they fail to recognize and even imperil the intimate intergenerational networks that facilitate transnational migration. In this article, we trace the homogenizing power of public discourses on young people and their families across two diverse ethnographic contexts, that of Chinese and Guatemalan migration. Focusing in particular on narratives of debt and belonging, we argue that the pervasive pathologization of migrant youths’ parents diminishes and contorts valued relationships over time. It correspondingly demands broader efforts to historicize and to contextualize youth mobility.     

The precarious and the transitional: labor casualization and youth in post-bubble Japan

ABSTRACT

In recent decades economic globalization and neoliberal restructuring have constricted longstanding pathways to middle-class citizenship in Japan and other postindustrial economies. Much attention has been given to how the shift from ‘lifetime’ salaried employment to ‘flexible’ labor markets has disenfranchized many young people, leaving them struggling to reconcile dominant middle-class expectations of adulthood with neoliberal economic realities. Taking an anthropological approach, this article reconsiders this prevailing assessment of labor casualization by examining ways in which young casual workers in Tokyo’s retail, service, and creative industries navigate the transforming economy. Their circumstances, choices, and self-representations shed light on the active role they play in the formation of alternative transition regimes that challenge normative transitions to work and adulthood in Japan. These findings have broader implications for the limits of conventional social scientific approaches to the impact of economic crises and neoliberal restructuring on youth in the early twenty-first century.     

Births,Infants and Children: An Econometric Portrait of Women and Children in India

This article undertakes an econometric analysis of the constellation of factors that serve to determine some outcomes with respect to demography and to schooling in India. These are: the numbers of pregnancies, live births and infant survivals to women, the chances of children being enrolled at school and, if enrolled, of continuing in school. The econometric estimates are based on unit record data from a survey — carried out by the National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi — of 33,000 rural households in sixteen states of India. The study concludes that a broad spectrum of factors affects these outcomes. The literacy of women is important but so is the literacy of men. Infrastructure, in the form of safe drinking water and easy access to medical facilities, is important for infant survivals and, in the shape of easy access to schools, is important for school enrolment. Parental occupation matters for both infant survivals and schooling: children born to women who work as labourers are disadvantaged, relative to other children, in terms of their chances of surviving infancy and, if they do survive, of receiving schooling. The number of siblings that a child has affects his/her schooling outcomes, and gender, religion and region play an important role.     

Environment and Cultural Heritage in China: Introduction

The transformation of the natural and built environment over the past three decades has left China with a legacy of environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity. The loss of cultural heritage, including cultural forms associated with the natural ecology, has been just as dramatic. The three studies in this special focus section of Asian Studies Review explore significant issues in environmental conservation, cultural heritage, and grassroots activism in urban and rural China, with an emphasis on the relationship between the natural environment, the transmission of traditional cultural forms, and localised forms of agency or activism. As discussed here, while China's discourse on these issues is strongly influenced by global norms, different regions of China are developing their own individual responses to environmental conservation, the protection of biodiversity, and the ongoing transmission of endangered cultural forms.