Voluntary Environmental Programs: A Canadian Perspective

In light of the increasing number of environmental problems necessitating government's attention and the limited scope and budget for addressing these issues, environmental protection has, and continues to evolve as more flexible approaches to regulation are being sought and embraced by governments throughout the world. Voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) are a pragmatic response by both governments and business to find a more flexible way to protect the environment. We discuss the theoretical motivations for firms to adopt VEPs in general and examine Canada's experience with three types of VEPs, public, negotiated, and unilateral agreements, to assess whether the motivating factors are present. We then argue that the institutional, political, and regulatory framework governing environmental policy in Canada does not provide the conditions necessary to effectively promote superior corporate environmental protection across jurisdictions. Despite the lack of government‐directed VEPs, there has been considerable interest by both the private sector and civil society who have taken the lead by developing unilateral agreements. Using existing literature and our current research, we examine the factors that motivate firms in Canada to participate in unilateral agreements and the characteristics of firms with the higher environmental performance and suggest some policy implications.     

Being Canadian: Dual Citizenship in Historical Perspective

Why do states configure their citizenship laws in certain ways? Why do they allow or prohibit dual citizenship? Why was it only in 1946 that Canada decided to enact its first citizenship law which prohibited multiple national allegiances? Why was a similar proposal abandoned in 1931? And why was this citizenship law changed in 1977 to allow dual citizenship? A common answer is that citizenship reflects the national “identity” of each nation-state. Through a perusal of the debates regarding citizenship laws in Canada, I locate the particular motivation for introducing those laws. I argue that although the symbolic element of citizenship laws is significant, citizenship laws are enacted as a political instrument to achieve immediate and specific goals. In particular, accepting dual citizenship in Canada should be seen as a one of the strategies political elites tried in order to incorporate English and French speakers under the same flag.     

Canadian Human Landscape Examples

In this paper, we initiate a discussion of zoos as cultural landscapes, using the example of the Assiniboine Park Zoo in Winnipeg, Manitoba. We start from the notion that zoos are cultural institutions that do not reflect nature itself but are created landscapes inscribed with social and cultural messages conveyed through the presentation of wild animals. We examine the development of this zoo in the context of the stages through which it has passed in its over a hundred years of existence on the basis of historical accounts as well as Assiniboine Park Zoo master plan and annual report documents. We argue for examining zoos as cultural landscapes that reflect the changing relations between humans and animals and with 'nature' more generally.     

Canadian Human Landscape Examples

Suburban city centres and office parks are among the prominent forms of suburban development in the Toronto region. Suburban city centres combine civic and business functions whereas office parks were designed to accommodate business requirements. Drawing on the largest suburban municipality in the Toronto region, the City of Mississauga, this paper examines two cases: Mississauga City Centre and Heartland Business Community. Suburban city centres wish to replicate some urban qualities that generate big‐city identity whereas other parts of the suburban realm remain driven primarily by corporate considerations.     

美国“地区研究”兴起的历史考察

太平洋战争爆发后,特别是冷战初期,美国联邦政府、三大私人基金会以及相当一部分学者逐渐意识到深入了解非西方世界对维护国家安全的重要性,着手共同推动"地区研究"。联邦政府、私人基金会和学者三位一体体制运作的结果是复杂的:地区研究在迅速成长为一门显学的同时也不可避免地在很大程度上沦为政治的附庸;在满足了国家对地区专家和知识需求的同时也为一些地区研究者挑战美国对非西方世界的政策创造了条件。就美国地区研究兴起与国家安全考虑的密切关系而言,政治没有给学术留出太多独立生存的空间,而知识分子本身也并非都希望远离政治,学术与政治难以彻底分离。     

Canadian Philosophy: A Dialectical Exploration

This article inquires into the difference between philosophy as a universal practice and philosophy as a cultural product; its aim is to establish a case for there being Canadian philosophy. Philosophy as a practice can exhibit a dialectical framework. The practice can pursue both universal truths and cultural variations in expressions of those truths. Each philosophical endeavor requires the other to be meaningful. No matter how abstract a “truth” may be, an example always creates cultural relevance. The article introduces the example of an early Canadian philosopher, whose work is documented in the book by Leslie Armour and Elizabeth Trott, The Faces of Reason: An Essay on Philosophy and Culture in English Canada, 1850-1950. John Watson (1847–1939) was the most prolific and well-known contributor to philosophy in early Canada, pursuing universal questions and yet responding to the circumstances of his new home in developing Canada and, in doing so, contributing to Canadian cultural interpretations of philosophical questions. This article uses his example to conclude that the study of philosophy in Canada must include Canadian philosophy.     

Human Security as ontological security: a post-colonial approach

ABSTRACT

This article will critically interrogate the relationship between Human Security and Ontological Security from a broadly postcolonial perspective. The dislocation engendered by successive waves of neo-liberal globalisation has resulted in the deracination of many of the world's inhabitants, resulting in a state of collective ‘existential anxiety’ [Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991]. Under such conditions, the search for ontological security becomes paramount. However, conventional understandings of Human Security as ‘freedom from fear and want’ are unable – from a post-colonial perspective – to provide ontological security since they operate within a culturally specific, Eurocentric understanding of the ‘human’ as ‘bare life’ [Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Daniel Heller-Roazen (trans), Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998]. It will then be argued that post-secular conceptions of Human Security [Giorgio Shani, Religion, Identity and Human Security, London and New York: Routledge, 2014] by acknowledging the role which culture and religion can play in providing answers to existential questions concerning the ‘basic parameters of human life’ are better able to ‘protect’ ontological security in times of rapid global transformation given the centrality of religion to post-colonial subjectivity. This will be illustrated by the case of the global Sikh community. It will be argued that ontological, and therefore, Human Security rests on reintegrating the ‘secular’ and ‘temporal’ dimensions of Sikhi, which had been severed as a result of the colonial encounter.     

Human Rights and International Security: The International Community and the Greek Dictators

The Greek junta was notorious for its use of state torture as a means of control. Yet, for most Western governments and organisations such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the United Nations (UN), Greece's geostrategic location was considered to be a higher priority than the undemocratic behaviour of the ‘Colonels’. This article seeks to synthesise existing historiography with new research in order to examine the complex and interconnected processes that led Western states and key international institutions to tolerate human-rights abuses in Greece in the face of huge protest from international public opinion. It will look at why Western states failed to explain away the ‘Greek case’, as they had done with Portugal and Spain, as an anomaly on the road to defeating a mortal enemy, the USSR, which was committing far more numerous violations. It will also consider why international opinion focused on Greece so intently. It will show how many in the West were lulled by the regime into believing that human-rights abusers can act as agents of stability and security. The article's footnotes aim to draw attention to the many primary and secondary sources that provide additional information on the issue of human-rights abuses by the Greek junta.     

论环境史对人的存在的认识及其意义

人及其活动依然是环境史研究的主题,不过,环境史对人的存在及其活动的认识,不是排斥或远离自然而是融入或回归自然而产生的。环境史的创见主要在于更新了认识人及其活动的视角,因而突破了“人类惟一”的狭隘意识以及“精英主义”的英雄史观。环境史不仅不反人类,相反,它倡导和实践的是一种更宽泛、更真实的人道主义,因为它既关注抽象的人类,也关注具体的人群和个人,还关注与人的生存息息相关的环境。环境史作为解读人类文明的新范式,其研究将直接影响着人们对待自然和他人的态度与行为,有助于人们反思“我们应该怎样生活?我们应该为什么生活?”,以便挖掘人存在的丰富意义,从而使史学在新时代更好地发挥其社会功能。     

A Socio‐Geographic Perspective on Human Activities in Social Media

Location‐based social media make it possible to understand social and geographic aspects of human activities. However, previous studies have mostly examined these two aspects separately without looking at how they are linked. The study aims to connect two aspects by investigating whether there is any correlation between social connections and users' check‐in locations from a socio‐geographic perspective. We constructed three types of networks: a people–people network, a location–location network, and a city–city network from former location‐based social media Brightkite and Gowalla in the U.S., based on users' check‐in locations and their friendships. We adopted some complexity science methods such as power‐law detection and head/tail breaks classification method for analysis and visualization. Head/tail breaks recursively partitions data into a few large things in the head and many small things in the tail. By analyzing check‐in locations, we found that users' check‐in patterns are heterogeneous at both the individual and collective levels. We also discovered that users' first or most frequent check‐in locations can be the representatives of users' spatial information. The constructed networks based on these locations are very heterogeneous, as indicated by the high ht‐index. Most importantly, the node degree of the networks correlates highly with the population at locations (mostly with R² being 0.7) or cities (above 0.9). This correlation indicates that the geographic distributions of the social media users relate highly to their online social connections.     

Mercosur and Brazil: A European Perspective

Brazil is the core state of South America and sustains an alliance called Mercosur. Mercosur was the focus of much European attention during the 1990s, both politically and economically, attracting large amounts of investment to the region. Brazil has difficulties pursuing the Mercosur integration process to its logical end, with resistance coming from both developmentalist visions of the past and industrial interests in the present. Mercosur has drawn Brazil closer to the European Union, functioning well as an instrument of Brazil's external ambitions, though also exposing it to the risk of free trade with Europe. For both Mercosur and EU‐Mercosur relations to remain useful to current Brazilian ambitions, they must remain short of achieving their final goals and linger in a prolonged state of negotiation. Some EU states also prefer this solution. After four years of preparations Mercosur entered into negotiations with the EU in 1999, and since then EU‐Mercosur negotiations have passed through several dramatic phases, often influenced by international political and economic developments, both in Europe and in Mercosur itself. The current Mercosur economic crisis impedes further progress in integration and also delays the EU‐Mercosur process. The election of Lula da Silva as president of Brazil is not expected substantially to change the course of Brazilian policies towards Mercosur and the EU, though, faced with the challenge of reviving Mercosur, the president might have to make difficult choices with regard to Brazil's own interests. Through an EU‐Mercosur agreement Lula could resuscitate the Argentinian and Uruguayan economies, though this might be at a cost for Brazil. Will Brazil be willing to pay this price in order to preserve Mercosur?