Out from the (Green) shadow? Neoliberal hegemony through the market logic of shared urban environmental governance

Recent work in critical geography describes the neoliberalization of urban social service provision through a transition from state provision to civil sector delivery. The concept of a ‘shadow state’ is deployed by some social theorists to describe this process by which nonprofits with government contracts increasingly adopt a state-oriented agenda for the execution of social entitlement programs. Possible linkages between the neoliberalization of urban environmental service provision and a shadow state are lacking by comparison. I, therefore, use qualitative data concerning three organizations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to demonstrate that civil sector groups are stepping up as local government diminishes its markets for municipal environmental labor. However, the diverse compositions of these shared governances potentially complicate the efficacy of a shadow state thesis for describing environmental provision in inner-city Milwaukee. Instead, I argue that a Gramscian interpretation of shared governance better accounts for the neoliberalization of environmental service provision as government agencies and civil sector groups relate to one another through hegemonic market logic. I argue that this provides a more nuanced picture of how governance concerning the urban environment is constructed by the government, market, and civil sectors to further shape human social reproduction.     

Reforming Local Government Policymaking and Management Through Organizational Learning and Experimentation

This article presents two ongoing programs of local government reform in Norway, the Free Commune Program and the Pilot Commune Program. These programs are fairly typical of thinking on local government development in the Nordic countries at the moment. On the one hand, the welfare states are seen as being in danger of becoming overloaded. On the other hand, local government is seen as being in need of developing a capacity to respond better to local communities; consequently, national regulations have to become less standardized in order to allow for greater local adaptability and more variation. The emergent municipal organizational models reflect a more community-oriented approach to local government and a deemphasis on local governments as distributive channels for central ministries. A New Nordic Welfare Model is emerging with more emphasis on local initiatives.     

Mitochondrial haplogroup M discovered in prehistoric North Americans

We analyzed two mid-Holocene (∼5000 years before present) individuals from North America that belong to mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup M, a common type found in East Asia, but one that has never before been reported in ancient or living indigenous populations in the Americas. This study provides evidence that the founding migrants of the Americas exhibited greater genetic diversity than previously recognized, prompting us to reconsider the widely accepted five-founder model that posits that the Americas were colonized by only five founding mtDNA lineages. Additional genetic studies of prehistoric remains in the Americas are likely to reveal important insights into the early population history of Native Americans. However, the usefulness of this information will be tempered by the ability of researchers to distinguish novel founding lineages from contamination and, as such, we recommend strategies to successfully accomplish this goal.