Fragmentation regimes of Canada's forests

Canada is a large nation, approximately 1 billion hectares in size, and until recently, no national assessment of forest fragmentation had been undertaken. To assess national level biodiversity and ecosystem condition, national drivers of forest fragmentation are identified as being either primarily natural (e.g., resulting from wildfires, water features, or topography), or primarily anthropogenic (e.g., resulting from urbanization or roads and associated activities such as forest harvesting and oil and gas exploration). The relative importance of each of these fragmentation drivers within Canada's ten forested ecozones, which occupy approximately 650 million ha, is assessed using ecozone summaries and standard scores. Forest pattern metrics were generated from a Landsat‐derived land cover product and fragmentation drivers were characterized using available national datasets. Through this analysis, we combine and portray the relative importance of forest patches with spatial layers indicative of natural and anthropogenically induced conditions as driving various fragmentation regimes over the forested area of Canada. The forest fragmentation in Canada can be characterized primarily by natural drivers, whereas fragmentation regimes attributable to anthropogenic drivers are typically regionally located and related to industrial activities and access (i.e., roads). We identify three scenarios in our results that characterize forest fragmentation in Canada: ecozones with similar forest patterns but different drivers; ecozones with similar patterns and drivers; and finally, ecozones with both different patterns and different drivers. Our findings indicate that national assessments of forest fragmentation should account for both natural (and inherent) and anthropogenic sources of fragmentation.     

Liberation Theology and Zombies: Paralysis and Praxis

In Fredric Jameson's formulation it may now be “easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” What Jameson suggests is that our current preoccupation with the drama of the apocalyptic belies a deeper paralysis of the imagination, and with this the concomitant loss of actions conducive to a new politics. Jameson's comments here foreground a contradiction in our experience of late capitalism, representations of dramatic rupture which obscure fundamental political stasis. This paper takes Jameson's reflections and the contradiction of action which is also non-action as the point of departure to query the current state of Liberation Theology, particularly the work of Ivan Petrella, to defend the work of Gustavo Gutiérrez, and ask how our contemporary predicament might be illuminated by Danny Boyle's zombie film, 28 Days Later.     

Political reconciliation in Timor Leste,Solomon Islands and Bougainville: the dark side of hybridity

In recent years, the study and practice of political reconciliation has experienced a turn to hybridity. This turn has been defined by the increased rate at which liberal international and local peacebuilding practices, and their underlying ideas, have become merged, integrated or co-located in time and space. While hybrid approaches to reconciliation have been praised as an effective means of engaging local populations in peacebuilding operations, little attention has been paid to examining whether or not they also bring unintended negative consequences. Drawing on the cases of Timor Leste, Solomon Islands and Bougainville, this article examines the potentially dark side of hybridity. It demonstrates that, in each of these cases, hybrid approaches to political reconciliation have brought both positive and negative consequences. On the positive side of the equation, hybridity has seen imported international approaches to reconciliation adapted to meet local demands and ensure resonance with local populations. On the negative side, however, the misappropriation and instrumentalisation of local practices within hybrid approaches has served to damage their legitimacy and to jeopardise their contributions to reconciliation. The article thus concludes that the existence and extent of this dark side necessitates a re-evaluation of how hybrid approaches to political reconciliation are planned and implemented.     

Dative for Accusative Case Interchange in Epistolary Formulas in Greek Papyrus Letters

Greek papyrus letters preserve not only instances of the replacement of the dative case; they also show the use of the dative instead of the accusative case as direct object and disjoint infinitival subject. This interchange is mostly found in epistolary phrases, namely the salutation formula (?σπ?ζομα? σε) and the initial (ε?χομα? σε ?για?νειν) and final (?ρρ?σθα? σε ε?χομαι) health wishes. The phonetic similarity of the pronouns might have created the circumstances for case confusion. Contamination of the constructions reflects the difficulties of the scribes to construct conservative epistolary phrases and, thereby, diachronic phraseological variation might reflect language change. In salutation formulas, the use of a dative Addressee could be explained by analogical overextension from the category of communication verbs taking a dative complement. The decline of the accusative and infinitive construction might be one of the reasons why the accusative disjoint infinitival subject is replaced by the dative case in health wishes.     

Holocaust Narratives: Second-Generation “Perpetrators” and the Problem of Liminality

Taking “second-generation perpetrators” to refer to the tension between the guilt of the parents who were actively involved in carrying out Nazi atrocities, and the innocence of their offspring, I posit the oscillation between these positions as a form of liminality. Underpinned by the work of Jacques Derrida and Marianne Hirsch, I discuss this form of liminality in relation to concepts of the ghostly, examining the ways in which Holocaust narratives, literary and cinematic, are haunted by the past. I argue that the family conflicts such second-generation narratives present run the risk of displacing the real victims of the Holocaust.     

Between Ecclesiology and Ontology: A Response to Chris Allen on British Food Banks

The sociologist and theologian Chris Allen develops aspects of both Liberation and Postliberal theologies to launch a critique of the two dominant contemporary Christian responses to British food insecurity: food charity and food justice campaigning. Allen maps an alternative approach: a land activist Church that draws on its own historical counter-cultural practices and takes an oppositional stance to the contemporary state and market nexus. Drawing on the work of the Italian philosopher and political theorist Roberto Esposito, this essay argues that Allen's goals could be more fully realized by investigating with greater nuance Christian ontology, ecclesiology and the role of the state. Turning again to Allen's sources in this essay, the variety and potential of foodbank volunteering along with the legitimacy of food justice campaigns are critically reintegrated into a more radical project, a project which includes but is not limited to the sphere of the ecclesia.     

Front doors to freedom,portal to the past: history at the Ellis Island immigration museum,New York

Heritage sites and museums play a significant role in the production and legitimization of historical knowledges and social identities. The potential for these institutions to act in ways that maintain deep‐rooted inequalities in the relative power of social groups has long been noted by academic commentators. A critique of the role of museums in reproducing ‘official’ histories is now well established. In this paper we explore new ways of conceptualizing and empirically exploring the production and politics of museum histories. By tracing the historical development of museums, we explore the power play between individual actors and institutions involved in production of the museum, and the multi‐vocal histories and landscapes which result from the interaction between these actors. We illustrate these arguments through a case study of Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York Harbor.