Capitalist Formations of Enclosure: Space and the Extinction of the Commons

Despite their theoretical and political potential, recent debates on enclosure usually lack an effective consideration of how space is mobilized in the process of dispossession. This article connects the analysis of enclosure's general spatial rationality to a range of illustrations of its particular formations and procedures. Enclosure is understood as one of capitalism's “universal territorial equivalents”, a polymorphous technique with variegated expressions in time but also with a consistent logic that uses the spatial erosion of the commons to subsume non‐commodified, self‐managed social spaces. In response to the ever‐changing nature of commoning, successive regimes of enclosure reshape the morphologies of deprivation and their articulation to other state and market apparatuses in order to meet shifting strategies of capital accumulation and social reproduction. Through a spatially nuanced account of these phenomena, I outline a tentative genealogy of enclosure formations that allows tracking diverse geographies of dispossession across different scales and regulatory contexts in various historical stages of capitalist development.     

THE EFFECT OF ACCESSIBILITY ON PRODUCTIVITY IN SPANISH MANUFACTURING FIRMS

This paper evaluates the impact of accessibility on the productivity of Spanish manufacturing firms. We suggest the use of accessibility indicators of workers and commodities, integrating transport, land use, and individual components, computing real distances or traveling times using the Spanish full road network. Estimated firms’ total factor productivity is explained as a function of the accessibility indicators and additional control variables. Results evidence the crucial role on firms’ productivity to the accessibility of commodities and to a slightly lesser extent the workers.     

Degrees of Engagement: Using Cultural Worldviews to Explain Variations in Public Preferences for Engagement in the Policy Process

Scholars have been studying the concept of public engagement and its role in the policy process for some time. Scholars have argued that understanding the interests and motivations of the public and engaging them in the decision‐making process can lead to better policy designs and, ultimately, better policy outcomes. However, studies of public engagement often assume that people have a desire to get involved in the policy process. This paper tests this key assumption using the case of nuclear facility siting in the United States to ask: what factors influence an individual's stated willingness to want to engage in the policy process? Using data from a national web survey fielded in 2013, we ask the public if and to what extent they would likely engage in the siting process if given the opportunity. Findings indicate that the likelihood of engagement varies rather substantially across individuals. We find that an individual's cultural belief system and existing level of political activity account for some of this variation. These findings suggest that public engagement programs may vary across groups and communities. In other words, the prospects of engagement are likely to appeal to some members of the population and not others.     

“Blue Ribbon” Commissions,Interest Groups,and the Formulation of Policy in the American States

Despite the prevalence of state‐level commissions convened to make policy recommendations, research to date has not systematically investigated the ways in which these bodies impact policy or degree to which state‐level interest groups can use these institutions in that process. We argue that less powerful groups will favor these mechanisms and use them to get issues onto the institutional agenda and to increase the likelihood of legislative success. We also suggest that traditionally powerful groups will oppose the creation of reform‐minded task forces, but will likely use them to hinder policy change once they are formed. We test this assertion in an analysis of the creation and recommendations of task forces convened to study autism insurance mandates, as well as the eventual adoption of such mandates, in the American states between 2001 and 2010. The results suggest that public and industry groups influence the formation and recommendations of task forces, but that the latter appears to have a relatively larger impact. They also suggest that a task force recommendation has a large impact on the likelihood of adopting an autism insurance mandate and that neither the insurance industry nor autism advocacy groups have a direct influence on adoption after controlling for the presence of a recommendation.     

Spatial Tactics in Criminal Courts and the Politics of Legal Technicalities

This paper documents court‐imposed bail and sentencing conditions with spatial dimensions, such as red zones, no contact conditions, curfews and prohibitions to demonstrate, issued in the context of criminal proceedings. These conditional orders, which are growing in importance and have a significant impact on the lives of marginalized groups of people, have not received the attention they deserve in the literature. As opposed to better publicized forms of spatial regulation such as legislation or policing strategies, these conditional orders are a distinctive form of spatial tactic that rely on ancient and routinized rules of criminal procedure and the practices of the courts. In order to understand this spatial tactic, and its impact on marginalized people's rights and uses of spaces, we argue that it is necessary to pay attention to the legal rationalities, knowledge and practices that sustain them.     

TAXATION AND INTERNAL MIGRATION—EVIDENCE FROM THE SWISS CENSUS USING COMMUNITY‐LEVEL VARIATION IN INCOME TAX RATES*

ABSTRACT We investigate the relationship between income tax rate variation and internal migration for the unique case of Switzerland, whose system of determining tax rates primarily at the community level results in enough variation to permit analysis of their influence on migration. Specifically, using Swiss census data, we analyze migratory responses to tax rate variations for various groups defined by age, education, and nationality/residence permit. The results suggest that young Swiss college graduates are most sensitive to tax rate differences, but the estimated effects are not large enough to offset the revenue‐increasing effect of a rise in tax rate. The migratory responses of foreigners and other age‐education groups are even smaller, and reverse causation seems negligible.     

Polylinear incursions and autochthonous adaptations: Neolithisation and sustainable sedentarisation of the Arabian Peninsula

This contribution’s broad and in parts essayistic approach to Arabia’s Neolithic is less a discussion of findings than an explicit advocacy for future holistic research strategies. Based on the contribution’s meta-theoretical inputs, it suggests two sets of theses to be tested by the hitherto gained fragmentary information and future research on Arabia’s Neolithic. It aims to encourage an “emancipation” of Arabia’s early to mid-Holocene research from conceptions developed outside its regions, and to identify the Neolithic elements and developments of the Arabian lands by distinguishing incursions from primarily autochthonous and/or autonomous adaptations in their own right. It is suggested that productive lifeways are considered to be the only crucial parameter to testify a Neolithic status. In our view this is the case, provokingly enough, for the productive foraging management of natural resources which attests surplus and pre-planning strategies and contacts with established Neolithic socio-economies. Polylinear incursions and autochthonous adaptations are discussed as the two poles between which early to mid-Holocene developments in Arabia took place. A set of basic and a set of trajectory hypotheses on Arabia’s neolithisation and finally sustainable sedentarisation (reliance on oases economies) is presented, offered as a possible framework for future multi-/ transdisciplinary research.     

About time: age,period, and cohort effects on support for Quebec sovereignty

Can age, period and cohort effects help explain support for Quebec sovereignty? Previous work on this question has focused mostly on the effects of age and cohort. We contribute to this debate by adding a period perspective. As such, our study is the first to investigate the impact of age, cohort and period effects in a single study of opinion towards sovereignty in Quebec. We take advantage of an original dataset that includes survey data collected between 1985 and 2012. We use these data to examine the impact of age, birth year and survey year on support for this constitutional option among francophone Quebeckers. Our results are in line with previous work: we show that younger Quebeckers are more likely to support sovereignty, and that some cohorts – namely, respondents born between 1945 and 1959 – are also more likely to favour this option. Perhaps more surprisingly, we find that specific events are comparatively the most important factor to explain fluctuations in Quebeckers' attitudes towards sovereignty.