Setting an Agenda for Local Action

Many social programs, funded by government or philanthropy, begin with efforts to improve local conditions with strategic planning. Mandated by funders, these processes aim to include the views of community residents and those with technical expertise. Program leaders are left to reconcile public and expert opinions in determining how to shape their programs. The experience of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Urban Health Initiative suggests that although consultation with experts and the public failed to reveal a clear assessment of the community's problems or their solutions, it did assist in engaging diverse groups. Despite this engagement, however, core leaders wielded substantial power in selecting the agenda.     

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.     

Terrorism in the South Pacific? Thinking critically about approaches to security in the region

‘Not only is the Pacific a potential base for terrorist activities, but if we are not vigilant this is exactly what will happen’. This is the impression one gets from much of the recent academic and policy literature in Australia and New Zealand. However, while there is a need for Pacific Island states to be able to counter terrorist threats, there are very real problems which may result from recent moves to portray the South Pacific as a possible terrorist haven. In addressing issues such as the possible ‘over-securitisation’ of the region, in this article we argue that contemporary threat perceptions must be balanced with constant reassessments of the positive and negative ramifications of painting the region in this light. All local authorities must emphasise a law enforcement approach to countering terrorism. Most emphatically, however, cooperation with (not coercion against) other countries must remain the paramount consideration in any and every effort to combat this phenomenon within the region.     

Non-Local Enemies or Local Subjects of Violence?: Using Strontium (87Sr/86Sr) and Lead (206Pb/204Pb, 207Pb/204Pb, 208Pb/204Pb) Isobiographies to Reconstruct Geographic Origins and Early Childhood Mobility of Decapitated Male Heads from the Majes Valley,Peru

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory - Throughout much of the pre-Hispanic Andes, bioarchaeological and iconographic evidence shows that the decapitation, dismemberment, and display of human...