Defiant Innovation: The Adoption of Medical Marijuana Laws in the American States

Diffusion research often characterizes the role of the federal government in innovation adoption as a supportive one, either increasing the likelihood of adoption or its speed. We examine the adoption of medical marijuana laws (MMLs) from 1996 to 2014 to shed light on what motivates states to adopt innovations that are in explicit defiance of federal law. Furthermore, we examine whether federal signals have any influence on the likelihood of adoption. In doing so, we utilize implementation theory to expand our understanding of how the federal government's position impacts state policy innovation adoption. We find mixed evidence for the influence of federal signals on the adoption of MMLs. The results suggest that medical marijuana policies are much more likely to be adopted in states when proponents have the political or institutional capital, rather than a medical or fiscal need. Moreover, this political capital is sufficient independent of the federal government's real or perceived position.     

Space and social control in the administration of the Oglala Lakota ("Sioux"), 1871-1879

The "panoptic" logic of social control analyzed by Michel Foucault plays an important part in regulating "normal" citizens of the modern world as well as institutionalized populations. However, control of the unconfined presupposes certain conditions not paid adequate attention by Foucault, especially the requirement that people be individually identifiable in most activities, and that private property be located at fixed addresses. In order to explore the importance and the implications of these and other preconditions, this paper examines the strategies with which the U.S. government attempted to bring the Oglala Lakota under administrative control during the first decade of their settlement around the Red Cloud Agency on the northern Great Plains. Oglala society exhibited none of the hypothesized prerequisites for social control by the U.S. government at the beginning of the decade, but by 1879, the rudiments of a working system were in place. This story of the struggles surrounding its imposition robs modern social control of its seeming naturalness and immutability, brings into a critical light many of the spatial conditions we take for granted in today's world, and suggests the importance of a new, relatively unexplored dimension of the historical geography of American Indians and their dealings with White society.To the men of my time was appointed the task of taking the raw and bleeding material which made the hostile strength of the plains Indians, of bringing that material to the mills of the white man, and of transmuting it into a manufactured product that might be absorbed by the nation without interfering with the national digestion…In the language of the bounding West in which he made his habitat, it may be said that, in 1871, the Indian was "halter-broke but he had not yet been bitted".James McLaughlin,Former Agent to the Standing Rock Sioux     

Questioning care cultivated through connecting with more-than-human communities

This paper challenges the proposition that connecting with nature through direct encounters with nonhumans promotes ethical regard for them. It probes the limits of more-than-human ethics founded on personal encounters which struggle to cross distance and difference. I consider how personal engagement influences ethical perspectives and attend to processes by which care for nonhumans is learnt. Empirical research in community gardens reveals diverse relationships with nonhumans and underlines the importance of attending to qualities of relating. I propose typologies for thinking through more-than-human relationships, organising them according to degree of care. The research finds limits to gardening’s potential to promote more care-full relations with others, with care limited by the prevalence of instrumental relationships with nonhumans. Learning to care for nonhumans requires a sense of connection to combine with disconnection gained through reflection, setting specific encounters within the context of more extensive relations and their power dynamics. More important than encounters teaching care for specific nonhuman dependents are those promoting understanding of the interdependent nature of more-than-human communities, and that stimulate reflection on the cumulative impact of a human tendency to forget this.     

From riches to rags: organic deterioration at Star Carr

The 11,000-year old lake edge archaeological site of Star Carr in the Vale of Pickering of North Yorkshire is one of the most famous Mesolithic sites in Europe, and one of the earliest, dated to the period of climatic warming that immediately followed the final termination of the last ice age. One of the main reasons for this international importance is the richness of its organic artefacts, faunal assemblage and environmental data. However, recent investigations have demonstrated that these organic remains have severely deteriorated over the last 60 years due to the decay and acidification of the surrounding peat. This paper presents research into the effects on the bone (histological analysis using light and polarising microscopy, and Transmission Electron Microscopy, bulk collagen analysis, and amino acid analysis), antler (visual and metrical analysis, loss on ignition and Scanning Electron Microscopy) and wood (visual analysis, decay assessment tests and Scanning Electron Microscopy).     

Biopower,Life and Left Politics

Abstract: The terms biopower and biopolitics have been deployed in widely varying ways in recent critical political analyses. This essay seeks to rescue from the welter of its deployments a general understanding of biopower potentially useful to left political projects. First, recent iterations of the concept of biopower are surveyed. In the main body of the paper, a series of interventions in recent critical debates are used to trace out a critical re‐mapping of the concept of “life” that names the ends of biopower. Biopolitically relevant life is reconsidered in terms of its proper geographical scope, its gender, racial and ethnic specificities, its distinguishing vital qualities, and its relation to temporality (particularly the future). Through this exercise the notion of biopower is redefined so as to provide potential “docking points” for Marxist, feminist and green discourses, and conceptual resources for left struggles against global injustice.     

The politics of Greek tragedy in Samson Agonistes

ABSTRACT

This essay charts Milton’s engagement in Samson Agonistes with Greek political thought as critiqued in Athenian tragic drama, particularly that of Euripides. In early modern Europe, Euripides’ plays were not only understood to denounce tyranny but also to remain rigorously sceptical about the workings of Athenian democracy (in itself a highly limited kind of representational politics). Milton knew well the commentary tradition that framed Euripidean tragedy in such terms, and found a corollary to his own political views within it, most notably in the writings of Gasparus Stiblinus whose prefaces are included in the 1602 Stephanus edition of the playwright’s works, which he used heavily. Stiblinus shows how Euripides relentlessly scrutinizes corruption, which his tragedies reveal to be not only characteristic of tyrants but also to pervade democratic systems. Milton’s allusions to Euripidean tragic form in Samson Agonistes evoke these commentaries to denounce political corruption.     

Paul’s Euripides,Greek tragedy and Hebrew antiquity in Paradise Regain’d

ABSTRACT

The exchange between Satan and Jesus in Book IV of Paradise Regained is the first substantial account of tragedy in John Milton’s 1671 volume. In his response to Satan’s Athenian temptation, Jesus offers an alternative to the more familiar defence of tragedy in the preface to Samson Agonistes. Here, Jesus invokes the Hebrew prehistory of Attic tragedy, expanding Milton’s tragic archive beyond the antique Athenians themselves, drawing instead upon Clement of Alexandria and Socrates of Constantinople – both of whom support Milton’s idiosyncratic belief that Paul quoted Euripides at I Corinthians 15:33. And where Clement and Socrates support this tragic provenance, they also address the vexed relationship between Christian faith and heathen learning. Far from showing contempt for Athenian art or erudition, Milton invokes these Patristic sources to enable readers to locate Jesus’ critical response in a dynamic relationship to the relevant preface to Samson Agonistes.     

Rock Stars and Bad Apples: Moral Economies of Alternative Food Networks and Precarious Farm Work Regimes

Alternative food networks face both challenges and opportunities in rethinking the role of precarious employment in food system transformation. We explore how alternative food networks in British Columbia, Canada have engaged with flexible and precarious work regimes for farmworkers, including both temporary migrant workers and un(der)paid agricultural interns. Based on in‐depth interviews, participant observation and document analysis, we find that alternative food actors often normalize a precarious work regime using a moral economy frame. This framing describes precarious farm employment as either a necessary challenge in the transition to sustainability, or merely involving a few individual “bad apple” farmers. Further, this framing involves an aversion to “one‐size‐fits‐all” regulation by the state in favor of consumer‐driven regulation of labor standards. Our analysis suggests that a moral economy framing can obscure systemic inequities in precarious farm employment and dampen the impetus for structural change through collective food movement organizing.