Foreign-owned Firms' Campaign Contributions in the United States: An Exploratory Study

This study extends previous empirical work on corporate political activity by examining which foreign-owned firms provide campaign contributions to United States legislators. While numerous studies have examined which domestic firms make campaign contributions, little is known about the propensity of foreign-owned firms to make contributions. Using logit and Tobit analyses, the findings suggest that firm size, legislative issues, foreign ownership, and cultural characteristics are important determinants of a foreign-owned firm's political strategy. The findings also suggest that there are strong parallels between the political strategies of foreign-owned firms and domestic firms.     

The socioecology of fear: A critical geographical consideration of human-wolf-livestock conflict

Animal fear can be an important driver of ecological community structure: predators affect prey not only through predation, but also by inducing changes in behaviour and distribution—a phenomenon evocatively called the “ecology of fear.” The return of wolves to the western United States is a notable instance of such dynamics, yet plays out in a complex socioecological system where efforts to mitigate impacts on livestock rely on manipulating wolves' fear of people. Examining Washington state's efforts to affect wolf behaviour to reduce livestock predation, we argue that this approach to coexistence with wolves is predicated on relations of fear: people, livestock, and wolves can arguably share landscapes with minimal conflict, as long as wolves are adequately afraid. We introduce the “socioecology of fear” as an interdisciplinary framework for examining the interwoven social and ecological processes of human-wildlife conflict management. Beyond frequently voiced ideas about wolves' “innate” fear, we examine how fear is (re)produced through human-wolf interactions and deeply shaped by human social processes. We contribute to the critical physical geography project by integrating critical social analysis with ecological theory, conducted through collaborative interdisciplinary dialogue. Such integrative practice is essential for understanding the complex challenges of managing wildlife in the Anthropocene.     

Rewriting the end of the Early Bronze Age in the United Arab Emirates through the anthropological and artefactual evaluation of two collective Umm an-Nar graves at Hili (eastern region of Abu Dhabi)

The Hili archaeological complex in Al Ain (U.A.E.) is important for its wealth of third-millennium BC Umm an-Nar burial and settlement sites. Two of the most significant burial sites are Tomb N at Hili and Tomb A Hili North. The latter is a classic circular Umm an-Nar monumental grave, while Hili N is a pit-grave, one of only two Umm an-Nar period pit-graves discovered so far in the U.A.E. Both of these tombs contained the remains of hundreds of individuals, in the case of Tomb A Hili North, more than 300, while around 600 people had been deposited in Hili N. Both population groups have been the subject of anthropological and artefactual analyses and a comparison of the findings help to shed light on the chronology of the end of the Umm an-Nar period.     

Family and influence to the south of Normandy in the eleventh century: the lordship of Bellême

The Bellême family were among the most important of the new families to emerge in the unsettled conditions of northern France in the tenth century. They illustrate well the manner in which those families extended their influence at the expense of declining central authorities. The nature of their relations with their overlords, the counts of Maine and the dukes of Normandy, is examined and a new chronology proposed for the complex divisions of estates among the family. It is suggested that family quarrels of the 1040s and 1050s seriously weakened their position and that the lordship was easily dominated by Geoffrey Martel, count of Anjou, the most powerful figure in mid-eleventh century northern France. A reversal is traced in the pro-Angevin sympathies of Bishop No of Sées, the last surviving male member of the family, after the failure of the coalition of Angevins and Capetians against the duke of Normandy in 1054. However, it was not until the estates of the family were eventually reunited in 1071 on the succession of Ivo's niece, Mabel, and her Norman husband, that the lordship came completely under the influence of the ascendant Normandy.