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.     

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.     

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.     

The Artifice of Conviction,or, An Internal Geography of Responsibility

This essay addresses one of the defining characteristics of debates within human geography and across the social sciences during the last ten years: the encounter between traditional and postmodern discourses. It is argued that at least one issue has been unduly neglected: the material fact of groundless arguments. Alternatively portrayed as the father of all evils or celebrated as the liberation of scientific creativity, the groundlessness of arguments has to happen before it can be interpreted. The essay discusses examples of texts that accept the groundless happening of their claims head on. Through these examples, it is argued that possible lessons from the encounter with the so-called “postmodern challenge” include reconsidered notions of both scientific responsibility and argumentative materiality.