PUBLIC LAND SALES AS INNOVATIVE ENVIRONMENTALISM?

During the 1970s, conflict over land development restrictions in the Lake Tahoe Basin intensified. Funding of costly land purchases to preclude development emerged as a key problem in implementing timely and effective environmental protection. This timing coincided with pressures for land sales in and adjacent to urban “islands” in the public land “sea” of the West. One result was enactment of Public Law 95–586, co-authored by Congressmen Santini and Burton. Proceeds from public land sales near Las Vegas, Nevada, would be dedicated to purchase of environmentally sensitive lands in the Lake Tahoe Basin some 450 miles to the north. This study traces formation of the temporary coalition among local interests and Congressional leaders that yielded a possible model for future public lands conflict resolution. It then reviews and critiques the first four years of experience with implementation of the land sales element of the act. It concludes by suggesting some “fine tuning” which, if accepted by environmentalist groups at the national and local level, would point toward the use of the Santini-Burton approach as a source of funds to be used for environmental protection in other areas.     

Refusing to be Toured: Work,Tourism, and the Productivity of “Life” in the Colombian Amazon

Starting from the contention that exercising a “right to tour” is predicated on the work of producing tourability, I examine how tourability itself is a contested process involving relations of land and labour. Examining the current “resource boom” of ecotourism in the Colombian Amazon, I use an analysis of work and capital accumulation to unravel a seemingly small act of refusal by the community of Nazaret that has barred tourists’ entry to their land. I argue that this act of refusal opens up space for critically examining the relationships of land and labour, especially through the production of “life”, in the accumulation of tourable places in contemporary global capitalism. Engaging literature on both tourism studies and land politics in the Amazon region, I contribute to the scholarship on tourism and work while examining how Indigenous landscapes are being made productive towards the ends of capitalism.     

Global Public Policy,Transnational Policy Communities,and Their Networks

Public policy has been a prisoner of the word “state.” Yet, the state is reconfigured by globalization. Through “global public–private partnerships” and “transnational executive networks,” new forms of authority are emerging through global and regional policy processes that coexist alongside nation‐state policy processes. Accordingly, this article asks what is “global public policy”? The first part of the article identifies new public spaces where global policies occur. These spaces are multiple in character and variety and will be collectively referred to as the “global agora.” The second section adapts the conventional policy cycle heuristic by conceptually stretching it to the global and regional levels to reveal the higher degree of pluralization of actors and multiple‐authority structures than is the case at national levels. The third section asks: who is involved in the delivery of global public policy? The focus is on transnational policy communities. The global agora is a public space of policymaking and administration, although it is one where authority is more diffuse, decision making is dispersed and sovereignty muddled. Trapped by methodological nationalism and an intellectual agoraphobia of globalization, public policy scholars have yet to examine fully global policy processes and new managerial modes of transnational public administration.     

POLICY COMMUNITIES: THE BRITISH AND EUROPEAN POLICY STYLE

It seems possible to formulate broad characterizations of the British and European policy processes in terms of the relationship between government and interest groups. There is a preferred type of machinery in Britain, reflecting normative values, which is to avoid electoral politics and public conflict in order to reach consensus or “accommodation” in the labyrinth of consultative machinery. This style is aptly labelled “bureaucratic accommodation” and is a system in which the dominant actors are groups and government departments. Departments readily recognize the “relevant” groups in a given policy area and seek to mobilize the community around agreed policies. The predilection for the avoidance of conflict seems equally apparent in other Western European nations.     

Narco-Cattle Ranching in Political Forests

In Central America, drug traffickers are deforesting the region's remaining forests and protected areas through a process known as narco-ganadería, narco-cattle ranching. Drawing on the case study of Laguna del Tigre National Park, this article argues that narco-cattle ranching is a key driver of deforestation in Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve. Using ethnographic and remote-sensing methods, we describe narco-cattle ranching's money-laundering practices, its territorial dynamics, and its environmental impacts. We draw on theorisations of “political forests” to explain how drug trafficking organisations transform land use in the reserve, and along the way, remake its ecology, territories and subjects. Our work illustrates that drug policy is inextricably linked to conservation policy in the Americas. More specifically, we argue that community-based resource management improves forest and protected area residents’ abilities to resist drug-trafficking related land use change by strengthening local governance and land tenure regimes.     

The “Science” of Policy Development During Administrative Rulemaking

The legitimacy of government agencies rests in part on the premise that public administrators use scientific evidence to make policy decisions. Yet, what happens when there is no consensus in the scientific evidence—i.e., when the science is in conflict? I theorize that scientific conflict yields greater policy change during administrative policymaking. I assess this claim using data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). I identify policy change—what I refer to as “policy development” in this article—between the FDA's draft and final rules with a novel text analysis measure of shifts in regulatory restrictions. I then go on to find that more policy development does occur with scientific conflict. Moreover, using corresponding survey data, I uncover suggestive evidence that one beneficiary of such conflict may be participating interest groups. Groups lobby harder—and attempt to change more of the rule—during conflict, while an in‐survey experiment provides evidence of increased interest group influence on rule content when scientific conflict is high.     

Brazil's Amazon Fund: A “Green Fix” between Offset Pressures and Deforestation Crisis

Emissions trading and nature-based solutions, particularly REDD+, have lent themselves to the critical literature on the “socioecological fix” in neoliberal capital accumulation and state regulation. Prone to reversals, land conflict, and leakage, these mechanisms displace the burden of carbon emissions reductions to global South countries, promote new green commodities, and thus increase rather than curb the chance of capital accumulations by big polluters. Studies of existing REDD+ projects register the privatisation of forest management on the one hand and “aidification” on the other, suggesting impediments to fully commodifying forest carbon ranging from social movement resistance to technical issues. This case study of Brazil's national Amazon Fund points to global South protagonism in constructing and negotiating REDD+, challenging Northern and market hegemonies. Progressive Southern actors use the political space of the fix to defend rural communities' territorial rights and demand resources in line with historic responsibilities and climate justice.     

Exploring the Conditions for Cooperative Energy Governance: A Comparative Study of Two Asian Pipelines

A central but often unasked question in political and sociological scholarship concerns the conditions that precipitate cooperation on large-scale transnational energy projects, especially among “developing” and “emerging” economies. Using the example of two multi-billion dollar pipeline systems – the Trans-ASEAN Natural Gas Pipeline (TAGP) Network in Southeast Asia and Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Pipeline in the Caspian Sea – this article explores the factors that result in successfully completed projects, and those that lead to conflict and contention. After drawing from extensive research interviews and field research, the article approaches politics and technology through the lens of science and technology studies. It relies on the interdisciplinary concepts of “relevant social group” and “technological frame” to identify coalitions of actors associated with each pipeline project. The paper then investigates the interests and motivations behind these groups to illuminate the challenges facing the TAGP and those that accelerated the completion of the BTC. The paper concludes by offering some thoughts on the diverse elements needed to incentivise cross-border energy infrastructure, and what these may mean for energy and public policy scholars.     

Performing Rootedness in the Negev/Naqab: Possibilities and Perils of Competitive Planting

Through ethnographic and historical analysis of the Negev region of Israel, this article examines competitive planting as a common tool in land conflicts. In a context of disputed land ownership, some Bedouin Arab residents plant crops in defiance of government policy. Government enforcers of land‐use regulations destroy many of these crops and engage in counterinsurgent tree‐planting. I suggest that planting is such a potent tactic because it draws on “environmental idioms” of agricultural labor, the rootedness of trees, and a fundamental Jewish‐Arab opposition that have been central to the development of both Israeli and Palestinian nationalisms. For Bedouin Arabs, whose relationship to both nationalisms has long been contested, the multivalent symbolism of planting makes it a particularly promising tactic for asserting land claims. Further, I contend that these plantings demonstrate both the power of environmental idioms to structure land claims along ethnic lines and the creative potential of participants to challenge dominant environmental discourses by adding new connotations.     

Chronotope,Story, and Historical Geography: Mikhail Bakhtin and the Space‐Time of Narratives

Abstract: This article studies space‐time as revealed in narrative, especially narrative intended to validate truth claims. Narrative plot is uniquely suited to capturing truths about time, causal complexity, and space. Bakhtin's “chronotope” (space‐time), which bridges plot, narrated events, and the real world, is critical to understanding this capacity, whether in fiction, in histories, or in didactic stories, myths, and parables. The chronotope is underutilized in the social sciences, but disputes over indigenous land in Canada exemplify its potential applications. To fully capture these heteroglot (“many‐voiced”) conflicts, factual verification should not be the only test of a narrative's truthfulness.     

Just War and Terrorism: A New Policy Perspective

The idea of terrorism as policy in any policy discussion is abhorrent in most academic circles. The fact is, however, if one removes the emotion attached to the use of terrorism and approaches it as a tool it can be placed in several models used by policymakers today. For many centuries the concept of “just war” has been discussed by philosophers, policymakers, and warriors. When standards have been established that those engaged in conflict can use to determine whether or not an action is considered “just.” How did Christianity in particular move from emphasizing love (agapē, caritas) to the acceptance of waging war? This problem was dealt with when the law of war was included in discussion of natural law theory.     

U.S. Foreign Policy and the Arab Spring: Balancing Values and Interests

The rapid and unpredictable changes in the Middle East collectively known as the “Arab Spring” are posing tremendous challenges to U.S. policy formation and action. This article will explore and evaluate evolving U.S. policy in the Middle East and its potential implications. There has always been a tension in American foreign policy between pursuing American “values” (foreign policy idealism) and protecting American “interests” (foreign policy realism). For decades, the United States has sought to “make the world safe for democracy,” while at the same time often supporting repressive, nondemocratic regimes because of national security or economic self‐interest. The tension between these two fundamentally distinct policy orientations has become even more pronounced as the United States tries to respond to the Arab Spring uprisings. Why did the United States actively support the rebels in Libya but not the protestors in Syria or Bahrain? Is there an emerging, coherent “Obama Doctrine” on intervention in Arab countries, or was Libya just a “one‐off” event? These are some of the questions that this article will attempt to answer.     

The Influence of Local Urban Containment Policies and Statewide Growth Management on the Size of United States Urban Areas*

Abstract. In an attempt to slow the consumption of urban land for a given population, and the negative outcomes thought by some to be generated by such sprawl, regulations in the form of (i) the local imposition of urban containment policies that restrict or prohibit the amount and/or the type of urban settlement beyond a certain line and (ii) the statewide enactment of mandatory growth management requirements for all local governments have been enacted in the United States. This paper describes a regression‐based analysis that finds that different forms of these policies are achieving their desired goal of shrinking the square mile size of an urban area. A comparison of the influence of the various forms of urban containment and growth management policies with other “natural evolution,”“flight from blight,” and “fiscalization of land use” factors that also influence the square mile size of an urban area is made, and policy implications are offered.     

THE CENTENNIAL OF THE FOUNDING OF THE ASKANIYA-NOVA NATURE RESERVE

This article traces the history of the creation and early precarious existence of the oldest Soviet nature reserve, Askaniya-Nova in the Ukraine, and represents part of the ongoing Soviet re-assessment of environmental history in that country (for a Western view, see [60]). It describes the protracted conflict between preservationist and utilitarian perspectives on land use in the reserve, the latter gaining ascendancy during the 1930s under Lysenko and Stalin. Of special interest is coverage of post-war “restoration” at the reserve, or more specifically, the continuation of less than ideal conditions up to the present (translated by Elliott B. Urdang, Providence, RI 02906).     

What Happened to the “Promised Land”? A Fanonian Perspective on Post‐Apartheid South Africa

Abstract: This paper reviews post‐apartheid South Africa through Fanon's critical analysis of decolonization. Since, for Fanon, apartheid represented the purest form of the Manichean politics of space that characterizes colonialism, a Fanonian perspective on South Africa asks to what extent has the geographical layout of apartheid been remapped? Addressing this question necessitates shifting the “geography of reason” from technical discourses of policy‐makers to the lived reality of the “damned of the earth”. From this perspective, Fanon's critique becomes relevant in two ways, first as a prism to understand the rise of xenophobic violence as a symptom of the degeneration of the idea of South Africa's “promised land” and second as a way to listen to a new grassroots shack dweller movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, that is challenging both neoliberal and progressive assumptions by advocating a quite different geographic layout for a “truly democratic” society.     

Policy Instrument Choices for Growth Management and Land Use Regulation

What factors account for local government land use practices and their choices among specific growth management policy instruments? We apply the political market framework to examine how land use policy choices in Florida are shaped by institutional features of county governments and the demands of organizations and interests in a community. Local policy decisions reflect a balance of the conflicting interests and responses to economic and political pressures. The results demonstrate that county government structure and election rules play critical roles in the adoption of urban service boundaries, incentive zoning, and transfer of development rights programs. We report evidence consistent with the argument that these “second‐generation” growth management policies are motivated by exclusionary goals.     

Sri Lankan Muslims: between ethno‐nationalism and the global ummah

ABSTRACT. Sri Lanka's Sunni Muslims or “Moors”, who make up eight percent of the population, are the country's third largest ethnic group, after the Buddhist Sinhalese (seventy‐four per cent) and the Hindu Tamils (eighteen per cent). Although the armed LTTE (Tamil Tiger) rebel movement was defeated militarily by government forces in May 2009, the island's Muslims still face the long‐standing external threats of ethno‐linguistic Tamil nationalism and pro‐Sinhala Buddhist government land and resettlement policies. In addition, during the past decade a sharp internal conflict has arisen within the Sri Lankan Muslim community between locally popular Sufi sheiks and the followers of hostile Islamic reformist movements energised by ideas and resources from the global ummah, or world community of Muslims. This simultaneous combination of “external” ethno‐nationalist rivalries and “internal” Islamic doctrinal conflict has placed Sri Lanka's Muslims in a double bind: how to defend against Tamil and Sinhalese ethnic hegemonies while not appearing to embrace an Islamist or jihadist agenda. This article first traces the historical development of Sri Lankan Muslim identity in the context of twentieth‐century Sri Lankan nationalism and the south Indian Dravidian movement, then examines the recent anti‐Sufi violence that threatens to divide the Sri Lankan Muslim community today.     

DAVID AS A BIBLICAL ‘GOOD-FELLA’ AND ‘THE GODFATHER’

Abstract

Scholars search for analogies with which to better understand biblical texts. David has been compared to the “outlaw”, “refugee”, “vassal”, “renegade”, “guerrilla”, “bandit chief”, “fugitive” and “fugitive hero”. This article suggest that there are better cultural-social analogies, i.e., David as a “goodfellan”while in exile from Saul and in the land of the Philistines, and upon accession to the throne, “The Godfather”.

This article also has, as a part of its purpose, the intent to unmask some of the behavior of David and of monarchy for what they are: essentially organized crime maintained in large part by the use of indiscriminate violence-supported by nonsensical myths and obvious hypocrisy.

Cross-cultural comparisons are made throughout between the David stories, gangster movies and systems of monarchy—especially the ad hoc feudal type. Historical questions aside: The David stories can be “cross-culturally” compared with gangster films as “art”.