Energy and Environmental Politics in Post-Corporatist Mexico

No government that is serious about environmental protection will imitate the Mexican model. The undrinkable waters and defiled deserts of Mexico's northern border towns and the poisoned air of its capital city are infamous. But there are noticeable changes in Mexican politicians' and lawmakers' attitudes toward the country's environmental ills, in no small part because of changing public attitudes toward these problems. As Mexico's political system becomes more open and democratic, policy elites are increasingly attentive to environmental problems, as ordinary citizens, and especially urbanites, vent their frustration at the ballot box. Perhaps ironically, Mexico's hydrocarbon industries are potential leaders in the nascent environmental reform process. Inducements for better environmental behavior by the oil and natural gas industries are new, municipal and federal environmental regulations, stepped-up enforcement, and local and cross-border markets for Mexico's gas.     

Migration,the Urban Periphery,and the Politics of Migrant Lives

This paper explores the politics of migration through a focus on labor migration regimes and the urban lives of migrants in the Seoul Metropolitan Region of South Korea. In particular, it draws attention to the ways in which migrant lives highlight the limits of the contemporary emphasis on control in migration management regimes. The paper contends that while migration management certainly reworks the socio‐legal status of migrants, the desire for control is often displaced in the everyday presence and practices of migrants as urban residents. In order to develop this argument I focus on the notion of the urban periphery as a spatio‐temporal configuration that manifests marginalization but is also potentially generative, innovative and destabilizing. The paper proceeds by exploring three dimensions of the periphery: (1) the mobile commons that emerges in everyday life; (2) the process of becoming undocumented and the subversion of control; and (3) the tactics of recognition that challenge the peripheral location of migrants. In each case the focus on the urban periphery draws attention to the importance of visibility and invisibility in migration, to the uneven spatio‐temporal configuration of migrant lives in the city, and to the ways in which migrant desires constitute a politics that exceeds what is normatively expected of them.     

民俗旅游的文化政治

上个世纪80年代以来,在很多场合下,民俗文化不再被权力政治一味地贬损为“落后”、“迷信”、“原始”、“蒙昧”,而是被发明为弘扬民族传统文化、向外来旅游者展示本土形象的旅游资源。一时间,中国大地上大大小小的民俗村、民俗城、民俗园数不胜数,位于边疆地带的少数民族地区打破了昔日的宁静古朴,一批批来自国内外的游客穿梭往来,许多已经消失的民俗事象被知识分子挖掘发明出来,策划、包装成为动态性、参与性展示古代民俗生活的旅游产品。     

The Mobile Politics of Emotions and Social Movement in Oaxaca,Mexico

In light of recent debates between affect and emotions in geography, this article focuses on how the emotional landscape of spatial struggles in Oaxaca articulated people together, thereby generating solidarities and a collective sociality offering the potentiality of interconnection that geographers of affect emphasize. Through an analysis of a women's march, I demonstrate how social movements move people, mobilizing them both physically and emotionally, with effects that go beyond a movement's political demands. Engaging with how emotions do movement‐building work means going beyond a focus on the relational construction of emotions and arguing instead for their collective agency, including their power to transform participants into activists. Highlighting the centrality of spatial struggles and emotions to the shifting, mobile politics of social movements brings into sharp relief the importance of a situated, historical analysis for theorists romanticizing the emancipatory possibilities of a revolutionary transnational articulation between social movements.     

Science,Politics and Fishery Management in the US Gulf of Mexico Region

Abstract

Fisheries are a major source of food for the burgeoning human population of Earth, and their management is an extremely complex process. Management of these limited resources invariably arouses emotional responses from those participating in their harvest, processing and consumption.

A review of pertinent marine fishery management literature reveals an increasing recognition of the necessity for molding the sociopolitical, economic, biological, chemical, and physical sciences into a cohesive system that will provide managers with a sound basis for making decisions. This review discusses fishery management planning in world, US, regional, and state markets. Emphasis is on the northern Gulf of Mexico fisheries, where the authors have performed most of their research. The Gulf of Mexico region accounted for 34% of US commercial landings in 1979. In the Gulf region, fishery management plans have been developed and implemented over the past several years. Regional plans for management of resources in territorial and internal waters were produced in a state–federal–university-user effort. The interdisciplinary task force included state and federal marine fishery managers and specialists, economists, cultural anthropologists, marine biologists, marine fishery industrial representatives and management specialists.

The conceptual model of the management system provided a basis for the decision-making process. The strategic plans developed in this planning process were adopted and implemented in the five Gulf States. Several fishery management models are depicted and discussed. All show either directly or by implication that both science and politics are integral parts of the management of the several fisheries. An expanded model illustrates the interdisciplinary nature of fishery management. Some recommended political structures for fishery management are also discussed.     

Recovering Lives from behind the Gloss of Ideology: Recent Histories of Elite and Middle‐Class Women in England and America

Books reviewed in this article: Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women's Lives in GeorgianEngland Jill Liddington, Female Fortune: Land, Gender and Authority Laura McCall and Donald Yacovone (eds), A Shared Experience: Men, Women and the History of Gender John Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle‐Class Homein Victorian England     

Materialism, Mode of Production, and a Millennium of Change in Southern Mexico

In this paper, I ask why the insights of classical (i.e., materialist) Marxism are not more commonly used by archaeologists of recent academic generations. With evidence from the Soconusco region of Mexico, I explore the relationship between the economic base and political superstructure of the region’s inhabitants as well as evidence for the transformation from a kin-ordered to a tributary mode of production. Major esthetic and political transformations occurred across the region when naturalistic standards were replaced by abstract Olmec-style representation beginning approximately 1,400 cal. B.C. In contrast, macrobotanical, ground stone, and faunal patterns from the site of Cuauhtémoc (along with patterns from across the Soconusco) indicated that a major transformation of the economy occurred during the Conchas phase (1,000–850 cal. B.C.). Along with the marked intensification of subsistence production, the Conchas phase was also when the first system of conical mounds were built at the top three tiers of political centers in the Soconusco. I argue that the use of modes of production holds unrealized potential for a materialist interpretation of the past and that the development of a tributary mode of production helps explain the changes in the Soconusco after 1,000 cal. B.C.