The Issue of Citizenship for the Bidun Minority in Kuwait after the Arab Spring

Kuwait is a country in which there are many tribes but it is the al‐U'zam tribe which is very dominant and influential in local politics and the economy, in contrast to the other tribes in Kuwait who are recognized by the state as being equal, but have little influence in these things. The Bedouin tribes, such as the Bidun society in Kuwait, who have been excluded from nationality and citizenship and thus have no influence, are an exception. The Kuwaiti government claims that the Bidun themselves gave up these rights so as not to be part of the Kuwaiti state and this has resulted in the Kuwaiti government not granting them any formal economic, political, or social rights. Because of this, the Bidun have had to fight for their rights for decades since the formal establishment of an independent Kuwait in 1961. This article wishes to discuss whether the question of the Kuwaiti refusal to recognize the Bidun as citizens is because of geostrategic reasons, because of the fear of creating a precedent that might lead to the inclusion of other tribes into the Kuwaiti state, or because this is a traditional political strategy for dealing with politically weak tribes.     

Unsafe drinking water quality in remote Western Australian Aboriginal communities

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is important in the fields of public health and health geography because of its heavy burden on the health system and high cost of treatment in its advanced stages. The causes of CKD are associated with diabetes and hypertension, but in some parts of the world, the disease occurs in the absence of these factors. Researchers identify this condition as CKD of “unknown” causes (CKDu). CKDu is a multi‐factored health problem and one suspected causal factor is contaminated drinking water. The disease occurs globally but is found in particularly high concentrations among people of certain ethnic and disadvantaged social groups living in very different locations around the world. CKD has become endemic in Western Australia where hospital admissions for Aboriginal people requiring renal dialysis or treatment for diabetes are much higher than for the general population. The possible proportions of CKDu cases among the CKD patients are unknown. This study examines the drinking water quality among communities such as these. Water chemistry analysis in these areas indicates that the nitrate and uranium content greatly exceed officially recommended levels. Most of these communities rely on raw groundwater to supply their domestic needs, and it is very likely that the people are unwittingly ingesting high levels of nitrates and uranium, probably including uranyl nitrates. Very few such remote communities have access to treated drinking water, and cost‐effective water treatment systems are required to provide potable water at the local scale.     

Pits,mounds, and vernal ponds in a Tasmanian subalpine grassland

Falling trees commonly turbate soils in primary forest, creating characteristic edaphic patterns related to pit and mound topography. Vernal ponds with associated mounds were observed in mineral soils on a treeless plain in subalpine Tasmania, Australia. The hypothesis that paired ponds and mounds on the plain originated as pit and mound features in forests that were later destroyed by fire was tested by comparing the soils and landforms caused by recent tree falls in adjacent forest with those on the plain. The soil characteristics, orientations, and dimensions of the ponds and mounds were consistent with a tree fall origin, although rare secondary ponds on the tops of mounds may derive from the burrowing activities of the medium‐sized marsupial, Vombatus ursinus (common wombat). The characteristics of pond and mound soils suggested that most were hundreds to thousands of years old, with the ponds persisting because of differences in deflation, deposition, and organic matter formation between themselves and adjacent persistently dry land.     

Inherited memory,social learning,and resilience: lessons from Spain's Great Blizzard of 1888

The snowstorms that affected the Cantabrian Mountains in the winter of 1888 caused unprecedented damage, and the absence of a “resilient approach” to this episode had several consequences worth further consideration. In this study, we explored interconnections between and among memory, social learning, and resilience by surveying the affected landscapes, conducting interviews with current residents, and reviewing historical sources such as press archives. The mixed method has enabled us to examine the construction and transmission of respondents' memories and to link those narratives to our reading of the presence or absence of risk mitigation actions—especially against snow avalanches. Our analysis has established that the 1888 snowstorms are remembered down the decades in ways that downplay risk, neglect social learning and changes to community practices and capacities to cope with uncertainties, and fail to shape preventive measures against future disasters. These insights have relevance for those interested in how archival research, field observations, and contemporaneous interviews can aid understandings of inherited memory, social learning, and resilience.     

Disequilibrium in Development Finance: The Contested Politics of Institutional Accountability and Transparency at the World Bank Inspection Panel

This article examines the dynamic nature with which independent accountability mechanisms operate. Focusing on the World Bank, the authors argue that its Inspection Panel evolves according to internal and external pressures. In seeking to achieve equilibrium, and protect its authority and independence, the Panel has gone through several distinct phases: negotiation, emergence, protracted resistance, assertion of independence and authority, renewed tension, and contestation. The core novelty of the article is its application of concepts from outside the field of development studies — notably institutional accountability from the governance literature, and judicialization from the legal studies literature — to the topic of the Inspection Panel. Examining the Panel in this way demonstrates that accountability mechanisms represent a hybrid of transnational governance influenced by a range of actors including project‐affected peoples, national governments, managers and development donors. Accountability in development finance is about competing interests as well as competing conceptions and expectations of accountability. In such a complex and multi‐scalar system, the Panel is not only concerned with delivering well‐researched investigation reports; it is also an entity seeking to ensure its own survival, as well as an arbiter of its own brand of legitimacy and accountability.     

Spatial Autocorrelation Statistics of Areal Prevalence Rates under High Uncertainty in Denominator Data

We propose a new estimator of spatial autocorrelation of areal incidence or prevalence rates in small areas, such as crime and health indicators, for correcting spatially heterogeneous sampling errors in denominator data. The approach is dubbed the heteroscedasticity‐consistent empirical Bayes (HC‐EB) method. As American Community Survey (ACS) data have been released to the public for small census geographies, small‐area estimates now form the demographic landscape of neighborhoods. Meanwhile, there is growing awareness of the diminished statistical validity of global and local Moran’s I when such small‐area estimates are used in denominator data. Using teen birth rates by census tracts in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, we present comparisons of conventional and new HC‐EB estimates of Global and Local Moran’s I statistics created on ACS data, along with estimates on ground truth values from the 2010 decennial census. Results show that the new adjustment method dramatically enhances the statistical validity of global and local spatial autocorrelation statistics.     

flowAMOEBA: Identifying Regions of Anomalous Spatial Interactions

This study aims at developing a data‐driven and bottom‐up spatial statistic method for identifying regions of anomalous spatial interactions (clusters of extremely high‐ or low‐value spatial flows), based on which it creates a spatial flow weights matrix. The method, dubbed flowAMOEBA, upgrades a multidirectional optimum ecotope‐based algorithm (AMOEBA) from areal data to spatial flow data through a proper spatial flow neighborhood definition. The method has the potential to dramatically change the way we study spatial interactions. First, it breaks the convention that spatial interaction data are always collected and modeled between spatial entities of the same granularity, as it delineates the OD region of anomalous spatial interactions, regardless of the size, shape, scale, or administrative level. Second, the method creates an empirical spatial flow weights matrix that can handle network autocorrelation embedded in spatial interaction modeling, thus improving related policy‐making or problem‐solving strategies. flowAMOEBA is tested and demonstrated on a synthetic data set as well as a county‐to‐county migration data set.     

Shame and Care: Masculinities in the Goroka Marketplace

For those women living in villages within accessible range of Goroka town, it is the norm to sell fresh produce in the Goroka market. Fresh produce trading, or maket in Tok Pisin, is common for women throughout the country. To see men selling food in the Goroka market is significantly less common, and those who do, usually sell foods brought from outside of Goroka. The gender divisions that exist in and around the marketplace today in Goroka are maintained through discourses of emotions and practice, specifically the notion of sem (Tok Pisin: shame, embarrassment). As part of a 12‐month ethnographic research project on gender relations in and around the Goroka market, I spoke with market vendors, amongst others living in and around Goroka, about why men do not market. I also interviewed some of the few men who do sell fresh produce in the market. Based on these men's explanations and those of others with whom I spoke, I suggest that these sellers exhibit aspects of masculinity that are caring for their families, putting shame second, and justifying this by their aspirations to transform their and their loved ones’ lives through education and business. These men demonstrate an emergent form of masculinity that both includes and contests aspects of hegemonic masculinity in the Highlands. Whilst selling fresh produce in the marketplace is deemed embarrassing and shameful for the majority of men, those who sell regardless justify doing so by pointing to the importance of providing for their families and loved ones.