A Hierarchical Goal-Programming Approach To Environmental Land Use Management

A mathematical goal programming model is described for the purpose of normative policy evaluation of environmental land use management on the Texas Gulf Coast. The model's three-level hierarchy, linking statewide, multicounty, and local models, allows the explicit consideration of competing goals (policies) at different spatial scales. Microlevel impacts of macrolevel environmental policy decisions, and vice versa, can be assessed.     

Transatlantic financiers and the Civil War

This essay examines the sympathies and actions of transatlantic financiers in Britain during the Civil War. Motivated largely by their financial and ideological connection to the Northern states, major Anglo‐American banks sympathized with the Union and campaigned to keep Britain out of the conflict. Unable to procure the support of Britain's leading banking houses, the Confederacy turned to lesser capitalists and speculators for financial assistance. By highlighting Britain's economic links to the Northern states and pointing to the potential dangers of meddling in the conflict, financiers in the City of London provided statesmen in the Westminster Parliament with a powerful justification for the policy of neutrality.     

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF CARD PLAYING AMONG THE DAULO

While most Daulo people in Eastern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea gamble at cards, there is disagreement about the acceptability of this activity. Organized opposition to card-playing comes from two sources that, in other contexts, are at odds with each other: the wok meri (‘women's work‘) movement and the Village Court. Both criticize card-playing as individualistic, economically unproductive, and unpredictable. Gambling at cards contributes to differences in individual wealth and the Daulo are ambivalent about inequality. While they strongly approve of competition, they believe that it should be harnessed for the good of the group, not just the individual. The tension between these sometimes conflicting values is expressed by the polarity of Daulo people's strong attraction to card games and the organized opposition that gambling elicits from wok meri and the Village Court.