Scientific Uncertainty and Learning in European Union Environmental Policymaking

Scientific uncertainty characterizes policy/making in many environmental issue areas. Policymakers must rely on scientists to bring environmental problems to their attention, design and prescribe policy solutions, and to define and evaluate policy effectiveness. An important theoretical question is: What role does organizational learning play in amelioration of scientific uncertainty and shaping environmental policy. This study examines the political processes and policy outcomes associated with European Union policymaking to revise water quality directives and deal with climate change to ascertain and describe the role played by organizational learning. The evidence suggests that organizational learning is occurring as an integral part of the political dynamics of policymaking in these two issue areas.     

The Planning System in Northern Ireland Post-devolution

Devolution within the UK has produced new systems of governance within Scotland and Wales and restored to Northern Ireland local accountability following three decades of direct administration. The paper reviews the different status of Northern Ireland to provide both an understanding of the context in which planning has been set and the new structures that are taking shape. Particular focus is placed upon the ambitious mechanisms underlying the Agreement between the political parties in the province. The paper discusses how planning issues and responsibilities have moved from one highly centralized government department pre-devolution to effectively three new departments thereby providing a test not only of joined-up governance but of the ability of the new devolved structures to work effectively. Challenges posed by the different competencies are debated and emerging issues are discussed in terms of coherent planning at regional, subregional and local levels.     

Migrant fertility differentials in Ecuador

The effects of migration on fertility in Ecuador were analyzed by subdividing migrant categories into permanent-, return-, circular-, and non-migrants, and context factors into 6 socioeconomic and agrarian variables. The study is introduced with a conceptual framework that explains personal intermediate variables and their influence on fertility in terms of demographic transition theory, and then defines the influences of selection for fertility, disruption of marital unions, and socialization into fertility norms at the origin vs. assimilation of norms at the destination. Migrants are usually better educated, younger and upwardly mobile, all selecting for lower fertility. Migration disrupts formation of marital unions, and causes separation of spouses, lowering fertility. Data for this study were from the 1974 and 1982 Ecuadorian Population Censuses. The contextual variables analyzed were urban/rural; manufacturing/agricultural; mineral extraction/economic recession; long/recent agricultural settlement; domestic/export crop; and large/medium sized farm. The analysis of personal attributes showed that fertility increased over the range on non-migrants through circular-, return- to permanent-migrants, a finding explained by degrees of disruption of unions. Higher fertility was associated with less education, lower economic participation, higher prevalence of marriage, longer residence and older ages. Regression analysis also showed that personal attributes outweighed contextual factors: thus age, marriage rates, residence time, education and economic activity were significant. Contextual factors were important only for non-migrants, except for destination variables which affected return-migrants and origin variables which affected circular-migrants. Low fertility was associated with urbanization, industrialization, mineral extraction, large farms, recent farm settlement and export crops. The results indicate cear influences of modernity and place influences on fertility of migrants.     

The Mississippian Site of Origin for the So-Called Moundville Spider

For 60 years, the origin of an iconographically significant example of Southeastern Mississippian symbolic art has been enmeshed in error and ambiguity. A trail of sleuthing over 25 years provides information used to assess museum curation records and published clues from 1887 to the present, contextualizing the mystery and finally allowing identification of a specific Mississippian period cemetery of origin for the so-called Moundville spider.     

The comfort of the river: understanding the affective geographies of angling waterscapes in young people’s coping practices

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on ethnographic research with angling intervention programmes working with ‘disaffected’ young people in the UK to demonstrate how young people use the affective geographies of waterscapes to regulate their feelings and escape stressful lives. But rather than interpret the restorative or therapeutic quality of waterscapes as the consequence of (passive) immersion into green/blue spaces, we argue that ‘comfort’ is derived from an ongoing, active engagement with(in) the world. Drawing on works influenced by phenomenological theories and relational understandings of the more-than-human world, we illustrate how the affectual qualities of waterscapes are continually ‘woven’ into being through the material and embodied practices of young anglers. However, understanding why waterscapes ‘matter’ to young people also requires accounting for those assemblages originating in the past that shape these co-experienced worlds.     

Book reviews

The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain. By FERNANDO CERVANTES. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. Pp. x, 182.

An Evil Lost to View? An Investigation of Post‐Evangelisation Andean Religion in Mid‐Colonial Peru. By KENNETH MILLS. Liverpool: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Liverpool, Monograph Series No. 18, 1994. Pp. 147.

The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660–1720. By R. DOUGLAS COPE. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994. Pp. xiii, 220.

Memory, Myth, and Time in Mexico: From the Aztecs to Independence. By ENRIQUE FLORESCANO. Trans, by Albert G. Bork and Kathryn R. Bork. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. Pp. ix, 282.

Fuentes manuscritas para la historia de Iberoamérica. Guía de instrumentos de investigación. Por SYLVIA L. HILTON e IGNACIO GONZALEZ CASASNOVAS. Madrid: Fundación Mapfre América‐Instituto Histórico Tavera, 1995. Pp. 617.

The Town of San Felipe and Colonial Cacao Economies. By EUGENIO PINERO. Philadelphia: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 84, 1994. Pp. 189.

Imperial Panama: Commerce and Conflict in Isthmian America 1550–1800. By CHRISTOPHER WARD. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993. Pp. xii, 272.