Benevolent and Benign? Using Environmental Justice to Investigate Waste‐related Impacts of Ecotourism in Destination Communities

Abstract:  We contribute to the diversification of environmental justice (EJ) by using it to frame ecotourism-related solid waste management problems. Ecotourism is a service industry portrayed as benevolent (providing benefits), and benign (reducing negative impacts). We propose four characteristics shared by ecotourism-based communities in the Global South and communities struggling with more conventional EJ conflicts. We apply these characteristics to the solid waste crisis in Tortuguero, Costa Rica, a renowned ecotourism destination. First, we show that, despite their general absences from the EJ literature, service industries such as tourism and hospitality can create environmental injustices that disproportionately impact certain types of communities. Second, we highlight the roles of location and socio-economic marginality in siting ecotourism development, in complicating related environmental impact management, and in limiting local abilities to respond to environmental management shortcomings. Third, we provide an example of opportunities to introduce EJ concepts and theory into the study of tourism.     

Italian state politics and the disruptive factor of volunteer groups

The Cretan crisis and the Greco-Ottoman War meant a revival of philhellenism all over Europe. Especially in Italy the war caused vigorous philhellenic reactions: demonstrations and collections of money for the Greek cause, as well as organization and shipping of groups of volunteers to the Greek war fronts. Scholarly discussion on the Italian involvement in the crisis of 1897 has revolved around two main foci: Italy’s search for a diplomatic role and a national identity between “grandezza” and “raccoglimento” policies or Italian philhellenism as an example of the power of philhellenism in nineteenth-century Europe within the broader international context of Risorgimento philhellenism. In this paper, Italian state politics will be discussed from another perspective, namely the Italian policy towards the Italian volunteer groups fighting for Greece. Published Italian state documents as well as research studies based on further Italian primary sources not having dealt with the specific desideratum, the allies’ angle, also partly the Greek perspective, as revealed through their state archives allow us to extensively reconstruct the different steps taken by the government in Rome in its endeavours to deal efficiently with the uncontrolled dynamics of its national revolutionaries both inside and outside the country. Irregular volunteer groups claimed their right and in part imposed their share to actively participate and influence directly or indirectly national and international policies, aspiring to represent continuity in a powerful revolutionary tradition against the priorities of nation-states. In times of internal crises, and despite their divergent, even contradictory, policies, nation-states of the nineteenth century came together in their objective to defend their exclusive right to shape and pursue national policy according to their priorities against the disruptive factor of national revolutionaries, and to deal efficiently with – or repress – the actions and potential for instigation by volunteer groups both at home and abroad, especially when internal collection was for them the only viable alternative left.     

Forest crisis narratives: Illegal logging,datafication and the conservation frontier in the Romanian Carpathian Mountains

Environmental crisis narratives escalate around the world. Their production and consequences demand scholarly attention. Drawing on the analytical tools of political ecology and highlighting long-term historical developments, this article examines the shift to a new narrative of conservation in forestry, which displaces older structures of state forest management. In particular, we explore the emergence and unfolding of a crisis narrative of illegal logging, which escalated in Romania in the last thirty years. Based on long-term research of digital sources, interviews and fieldwork, we analyze the contents of this narrative, the way it produced heroes and villains, and its entanglements with processes of datafication, criminalization, and the surge of forest violence. We argue that (1) the genealogies of the forest crisis narrative can be understood in relation to frontier-specific processes of deregulation and re-territorialization, which generate acute struggles for forest control and legitimacy; (2) the narrative of illegal logging unravells as a media spectacle surrounding the production of data by a plurality of state and non-state actors (3) in the attempts to curtail illegal logging, the emphasis on law, surveillance and criminalization posits forest conservation one step short of militarization, fuelling the trends for global environmental law enforcement and securitization of conservation.     

Environmental injustice in America and its politics of scale

Environmental burdens, such as proximity to hazardous sites, tend to be inequitably borne by poor Americans in general, and by Americans of color in particular. So argues a loose coalition of grassroots organizations and public-interest groups known as the Environmental Justice (EJ) movement. Prompted by that movement, the national government and some state legislatures have established policies to address future inequity. Those policies assume that the scope of environmental injustice spans the country, with many hazardous facilities dotting the landscape in communities of color and/or of the poor. However, various industries and also some social scientists call into question the argument that inequities occur on a national, or even state-wide, scale. Their counter-arguments typically espouse a market-based explanation that localizes the problem: any inequitable risks result from the impersonal forces of the marketplace functioning within individual communities. The politics of EJ pivot around defining the scales of inequity and its resolution. This paper examines the debates over environmental justice in terms of the tension between the scale(s) of the problem itself and the scale(s) at which the problem is to be resolved (or at least ameliorated) via government policy. The paper also sketches several theoretical and political implications of the debates. Theoretically speaking, market-based explanations tend to privilege the local scale, thereby ignoring vital factors that help us to understand environmental inequity as a phenomenon operating at a multitude of scales from the local to the national and international scales. Politically speaking, if the inequities were particular to discrete locales, then extensive governmental involvement would be unnecessary.     

Environmental Justice and American Indian Tribal Sovereignty: Case Study of a Land–Use Conflict in Skull Valley, Utah

This paper examines environmental justice in the context of questions of American–Indian tribal sovereignty through an analysis of a land–use dispute over the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians' decision to host a high–level radioactive waste facility on their reservation in Tooele County, Utah. The case study entails a far more intricate story than that presented in the majority of existing literature, which is dominated by analytical frameworks of environmental racism and distributive environmental justice. By elucidating the historical geography of Skull Valley and politics of tribal sovereignty, I argue that a prolonged process of historical colonialism has produced a landscape of injustice in which the tribe's choices have been structurally limited. The historical colonialism, intertwining with the capitalist political economy, has geopolitically isolated the tribe to suffer procedural environmental injustice. At the same time, the tribe has struggled to pursue self–determination through the retention of sovereignty and Goshute identity in the arenas of tribal environmental management and the environmental–justice movement. Conflict over the definition and practice of tribal sovereignty at different geographical scales reveals the social, historical, and political–economic complexity of environmental justice.     

Narratives of success and portraits of misery: Football,national identities,and economic crisis in Spain (2008–2012)

ABSTRACT

This article explores the propagation of national narratives through football in both the Spanish and the European media in the period 2008–2012. The Spanish national team's victories in the 2008 and 2012 Euros and the 2010 World Cup resulted in the consolidation of a domestic “narrative of success” that depicted Spain as a flourishing, modern European country. Yet as the economic crisis increased, Spanish governments, mass media, and corporations promoted this narrative of success as a “compensation mechanism,” aiming at making up for the country's dire financial situation. In the European media, the initially benign portrait of Spaniards was gradually transformed into a new representation that depicted Iberians as slackers and scroungers of European Union funds. The article shows the re-emergence of derogatory stereotypes as a manner of making Spaniards scapegoats for the economic crisis, while reinforcing nationalist narratives among Europeans.     

Spying in the British Post Office,Victorian Politics and Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White

In 1844, the British public learned that the government was secretly opening exiled Young Italy leader Giuseppe Mazzini’s private letters and sharing information with continental authorities. For outraged citizens, espionage in that quintessential liberal institution, the reformed British Post Office, appeared un-English, despotic and criminal, the makings of a Gothic plot. Representations of the Post Office Scandal in Parliament and print predict the revision of the Gothic into the sensation novel that occurred with the publication of Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White. Attention to the fields of Anglo-Italian studies, mid-Victorian print culture and the development of narrative form in the mid-nineteenth century illustrates the historical and political implications of letter-opening for the emergence of a new fictional genre. The Post Office Espionage Scandal and The Woman in White share a central place in a mid-Victorian moment of evolution in the mutually constitutive relationship between Italian and British national identities, producing and reflecting a crisis in Britishness focused on the secret tyrannies concealed beneath the surface of Victorian liberalism. The letter-opening scandal reveals a crisis in Victorian liberalism in the political realm and the media, while The Woman in White translates this Victorian crisis of confidence into a literary genre defined by exposing the sordid undercurrents of British society: sensation fiction. Together, the espionage scandal and Collins’s novel respond to and generate a challenge to Victorian complacency that emerged out of the collision of British and Italian politics and culture in the mid-nineteenth century.     

Florentine networks in the Middle East in the early Renaissance

By crossing data from Florentine collections with notarial records produced in Egypt and Syria, this article focuses on the Florentine trading networks operating in the eastern Mediterranean during the fifteenth century. It highlights two factors influencing Florence’s long-distance trade in the area: political unrest characteristic of Italian Renaissance cities, and the scant interest of the Florentine government in building diplomatic and commercial institutions. Initially woven by exiled merchant-bankers and offshore companies, the network reconfigured towards the middle of the century around a group of entrepreneurs based in Rhodes, who were deeply entrenched in local finance and in business with the Islamic cities. The article provides a more complex view of relations between government institutions and Mediterranean long-distance trade by approaching the rise of the Medici in Florentine politics and their handling of the network.     

Assembling Justice Spaces: The Scalar Politics of Environmental Justice in North-east England

Abstract:  In contrast to the US environmental justice movement, which has been successful in building a networked environmentalism that recognises—and has impacted upon—national patterns of distributional (in)equalities, campaigns in the UK have rarely developed beyond the local or articulated a coherent programme of action that links to wider socio-spatial justice issues or effects real changes in the regulatory or political environment. Our purpose in this paper is to extend research which explores the spatial politics of mobilisation, by attending to the multi-scalar dynamics embedded in the enactment of environmental justice (EJ) in north-east England. It is an approach that is indebted to recent work on the scalar politics of EJ, and also to the network ideas associated with actor-network theory (ANT)-inspired research on human–nature relations. Our account provides preliminary reflections on the potential for an "assemblage" perspective which draws together people, texts, machines, animals, devices and discourses in relations that collectively constitute—and scale—EJ. To conclude, and building upon this approach, we suggest future research avenues that we believe present a promising agenda for critical engagement with the production, scaling and politics of environmental (in)justice.     

Migration,knowledge production and the humanitarian agenda in times of crisis

By drawing on the Italian case, this article critically discusses the use of crisis as a tool of knowledge and expertise production. In recent years, the theme of crisis has played a key role in shifting migration management towards a humanitarian agenda based on the premise that contemporary migration to Europe is comprised of forced mass movement. The article considers the extent to which migrants’ subjectivities call into question the knowledge that has been produced during the current era. It also reflects on the ways in which gender and race provide fundamental insights for a better understanding of the evolution of migration management within the context of crisis.     

On the current absence and future improbability of political Catholicism in Italy

Clerical ‘non-negotiable values’ were actively promoted by right-wing governments in the 2000s, the Monti government that replaced them was strongly supported by the Vatican and the Italian bishops, and the current left-wing government is led by a former member of the Catholic popolari who attends Mass every Sunday. But this article argues that, rather than a new golden age of political Catholicism, the return of Catholicism to Italian politics has taken a ‘low intensity’ form which lacks the robust combination of ideas, leaders, organizations, and interests that informed earlier, genuinely political forms of Catholic engagement. The article demonstrates this by focusing on the ‘Todi movement’, which played a crucial role in the Monti government, and on Matteo Renzi’s current leadership of the Partito democratico and the national government. It also proposes a theoretical framework to explain the apparent contradiction between the high visibility and the low political relevance of Catholicism in Italian politics.     

The Politics of Crisis: Deconstructing the Dominant Narratives of the Housing Crisis

This paper considers how dominant narratives of the housing crisis, since the 2008 banking crisis in England, have been created and what actions taken in its name. The paper deconstructs the term “crisis”, highlighting that its meaning has evolved from a critical moment to a protracted narrative which must be understood historically. Through discourse analysis into housing and party political policy, media and think tank reports, we argue that the employment of housing crisis by the government and others perceives it as an outcome of housing supply constraints and over-regulation—narratives that have justified subsequent policy actions aimed at propping up the housing and financial systems, opening new avenues for housing commodification, deregulation and financialisation and reproducing crisis anew. However, we note that these narratives can also break down and space can be created for the articulation of new narratives which refocus housing crises as emerging from inequality and class divisions.     

Maciste goes to war: Maciste alpino (1916)

During the war years, both fiction and non-fiction films relating to the war populated Italian screens. This article examines Maciste alpino (1916), one of the best known and best received of the popular Maciste series of Italian silent cinema, in light of several factors: the growing nationalist movement that saw intervention in World War I as the means of creating political consensus; the sophistication and development of narrative, character, and attractions in the Maciste series; and its relation to popular film genres such as comic serials and the emerging strongman genre. Maciste functioned as a modern weapon par excellence, a Futurist mechanized man whose muscled body constituted its own fighting machine. At the same time, through his humor, goodwill, and muscled physique he became a national symbol of Italian wartime might.     

Timing,Memory and Disaster: Patriotic Narratives in the Aftermath of the Messina–Reggio Calabria Earthquake, 28 December 1908

The earthquake that struck both coasts of the Straits of Messina on 28 December 1908 was probably the worst natural disaster in the history of the Italian peninsula. It was followed by an extraordinary movement of public grief and solidarity. These extremely widespread manifestations of patriotism in a country that is frequently thought to ‘lack’ national identity give cause to reflect on the way the notion of national identity is used in the Italian context and beyond. The article looks specifically at some of the contrasting ways in which timing and memory simultaneously became patriotic and controversial issues in the Italian press in the aftermath of the catastrophe. It does so through a sustained dialogue with the most influential thinker on nationalism, time and memory: Benedict Anderson. It emerges from the analysis that different constructions of timing and memory are an indicator of the social and political functions of patriotism, which offers ways to manage crisis situations like the earthquake, but at the same time covertly politicizes them.     

Mediterranean trade of the most widespread Roman volcanic millstones from Italy and petrochemical markers of their raw materials

The petrochemical study of millstones can contribute to improve the archaeological research into reconstruction of ancient communication routes and trade networks. Volcanic rocks are geographically restricted and rather rare in the Mediterranean regions, and during the Roman period Italian volcanoes were important sources of raw materials for millstones, so the task of determining their geological origin is relatively straightforward. The Italian vesicular volcanics most frequently employed for this purpose were: trachytes from Euganean Hills (Veneto), leucite-bearing lavas from the Vulsini Volcanic District (Latium), basic-intermediate leucite-bearing lavas from Somma-Vesuvius (Campania), silica undersaturated lavas from Monte Vulture Volcano (Basilicata), a rhyolitic ignimbrite from Sardinia and basic products from Mount Etna and the island of Pantelleria (Sicily). This paper contains a general outline of the trade network for each volcanic typology used for millstones during the Roman period – updated with data concerning the leucite-bearing lavic items discovered in the archaeological sites of the ancient Cuicul (now Djemila, Algeria) – together with a summary of their petrographic and geochemical features.     

Environment and collapse: Eastern Anatolian obsidians at Urkesh (Tell Mozan,Syria) and the third-millennium Mesopotamian urban crisis

The Early to Middle Bronze Age transition in Northern Mesopotamia has received great attention for the apparent concurrence of aridification, deurbanisation, and the end of the Akkadian empire around 2200 BCE. Our understanding of the “crisis” has been almost exclusively shaped by ceramics, demography, and subsistence. Exchange and the associated social networks have been largely neglected. Here we report our sourcing results for 97 obsidian artefacts from Urkesh, a large urban settlement inhabited throughout the crisis. Before the crisis, six obsidian sources located in Eastern Anatolia are represented among the artefacts. Such a diversity of Eastern Anatolian obsidians at one site is hitherto unknown in Mesopotamia. It implies Urkesh was a cosmopolitan city with diverse visitors or visitors with diverse itineraries. During this crisis, however, obsidians came from only two of the closest sources. Two to three centuries passed before varied obsidians reappeared. Even when an obsidian source reappears, the raw material seems to have come from a different collection spot. We discuss the likely exchange mechanisms and related social networks responsible for the arrival of obsidians at Urkesh and how they might have changed in response to climatic perturbations and regional government collapse.     

Constituting Corporate Europe: A Study of Elite Social Organization

Abstract: This article explores the emerging shape and form of the European corporate community since 1996. We examine the cohesion of corporate Europe through the network of interlocking corporate directorates and memberships in the European Round Table of Industrialists. We focus on the unequal structure of representation; the interplay of national and transnational aspects of the network; the role of finance capitalists as a signpost of a regime of internationalized finance capital; and the embeddedness of corporate Europe in the global corporate network. Although the transnational European network gained in strength while national networks eroded, expansion of the European network did not negate a structure of representation favoring the northwest. Bankers became less dominant, yet industrialists with financial connections formed the core of the European corporate community, signaling a departure from national corporate communities centered upon banks. At the threshold of the current economic crisis, corporate Europe comprised the most integrated segment of the global corporate elite.     

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。     

Tacit knowledge transfer via interlocking directorates: A comparison of Canada and the United States

This paper explores geography as a contributing factor to knowledge transfer among Canadian and American firms. We argue that the knowledge networks of the two countries are moving in opposite directions. Canada's network is converging into fewer cities while the American network encompasses a greater number of cities. When the knowledge networks of Canada and the United States are explored, national and local boundaries are found to impede the movement of corporate knowledge. Prior to our discussion on its spatiality, the concept of knowledge is introduced and its relation to individuals and firms of the Canadian and American corporate network is examined.     

La Sicilia dei Moncada. Le corti,l'arte e la cultura nei secoli XVI–XVII

In the last few decades many studies have underlined the role of philhellenism in shaping the Risorgimento as a transnational movement. But philhellenism also had a significant impact in embodying the pre-unification Italian state in a new imaginative framework, marked by the binary oppositions of civilized/barbarian, liberal/despotic and north/south. This article analyses the influence of philhellenism in shaping the imagery of the Kingdom of Sardinia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the role played by this local imagery in promoting opposing patriotisms within the national political sphere in the years leading up to the unification of Italy. Cavour’s moderate party stressed the positive impact of the Piedmontese domination over the island of Sardinia in order to underline Piedmont's image as a force of modernization of a land strongly marked by feudal despotism and pastoral violence. By contrast, Mazzini and the democrats also deployed a philhellenic narrative scheme to explain the backwardness of Sardinia with reference to the despotic and ‘oriental’ character of the Piedmontese domination in an attempt to encourage opposition to unification under the leadership of the subalpine government.