Canada–United States Energy Relations: Making a MESS of Energy Policy 1 , 2

Energy policy-making has become ever-more challenging over the last three decades, comprising a larger and more complex set of inter-related dimensions. Energy policy-makers have to deal with energy as a discrete market sector, pursuing competitive, efficient, safe, and affordable energy. They also have to address environmental imperatives, ensuring energy is developed with due regard for sustainability, ecosystems, air quality, climate change, and the like. In addition, energy policy must address security objectives, which themselves have broadened over time. Finally, energy must be developed in ways that are socially acceptable. This article examines how these four policy dimensions—Market, Environment, Security and Social acceptability, the acronym MESS—have come to characterize energy policy-making in the twenty-first century. It then explores what kind of MESS the Canadian and American governments are making of energy policy—both domestically and bilaterally—and offers some proposals for key sectors and activities that could benefit from greater collaboration.     

Exploring Goodness-of-Fit and Spatial Correlation Using Components of Tango's Index of Spatial Clustering

The ability to detect anomalies such as spatial clustering in data sets plays an important role in spatial data analysis, leading to interest in test statistics identifying patterns exhibiting significant levels of clustering. Toward this end, Tango (1995) proposed a statistic (and its associated distribution under a null hypothesis of no clustering) assessing overall patterns of spatial clustering in a set of observed regional counts. Rogerson (1999) observed that Tango's index may be decomposed into the summation of two distinct statistics, the first mirroring standard tests of goodness-of-fit (GOF), and the second an index of spatial association (SA) similar to Moran's I . In this article, we investigate the effectiveness of Rogerson's expression of Tango's statistic in separating GOF from SA in data sets containing clusters. We simulate data under the null hypothesis of no clustering as well as two alternative hypotheses. The first alternative hypothesis induces a poor fit from the null hypothesis while maintaining independent observations and the second alternative hypothesis induces spatial dependence while maintaining fit. Using Rogerson's decomposition and leukemia incidence data from upstate New York, we show graphically that one is unable to statistically distinguish poor fit from autocorrelation.     

Sasanian glass from Veh Ardašīr investigated by strontium and neodymium isotopic analysis

A collection of 31 glass fragments, dated to the 3rd to 7th century AD and excavated in Veh Ardašīr, (modern Iraq), were analysed for their Sr and Nd isotopic compositions with the aim of deepening our knowledge on glass circulating within central Mesopotamia during Sasanian times and to highlight the merits of isotope ratios for the definition of the production scenery. Based on the elemental composition of the samples, two groups related to the exploitation of different plant ashes were previously distinguished, and also a change in the silica source in the course of the 4th century AD emerged. The determination of isotopic distributions of Sr and Nd offers a deeper insight. The ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr isotope ratio, together with the Sr elemental concentration, confirms this use of different plant ashes, and permits one to distinguish distinct glass batches, although the isotopic Sr signature does not allow us to highlight evidences of different provenances for the samples of different composition. Moreover, the ¹⁴³Nd/¹⁴⁴Nd isotope ratio suggests the use of sands belonging to a common geological area, and also allows the identification of a set of samples that were possibly produced exploiting a further different sand source. As a whole, Sr and Nd isotope ratio values for the samples considered, i.e. ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr = 0.70833 to 0.70916 and ?Nd = −8.69 to −4.98, differ from the published isotopic data on middle Eastern glass samples and can therefore define a characteristic Sr–Nd signature for plant-ash Sasanian glass excavated in Veh Ardašīr.     

Can national cultural policy approaches be used for sub‐national comparisons? An analysis of the Québec and Ontario experiences in Canada

There has been relatively little comparative research undertaken on sub‐national cultural policy. This article aims to contribute to the development of sub‐national comparative studies by assessing the utility of national cultural policy approaches for comparative research at the sub‐national level in Canada. Drawing on studies of national cultural policy, the authors develop three main approaches to cultural policy and administration – the French, British and hybrid approaches – and explore their applicability to the origin and evolution of cultural policy and administration in the Canadian provinces of Québec and Ontario. This exploratory research suggests there is room for optimism in drawing on national‐level experiences to undertake sub‐national comparative cultural policy research, particularly for comparisons over broad time periods. The study also suggests that it will be important in subsequent research to further elaborate the models for present‐day comparative analysis and to refine and adapt them to reflect specificities at the provincial level of analysis.     

Land and Sea Tenure at Erub,Torres Strait: Property,Sovereignty and the Adjudication of Cultural Continuity

Approaching property as social practice, and native title as a confluence of indigenous, ethnographic, and legal discourses, we address two themes: firstly, the ethnocentrism of the state's division of ‘property’ from ‘jurisdiction,’; applied to deny indigenous societies' practice of the latter; and secondly, the contradictions inherent in judicial evaluation of continuity and discontinuity in indigenous law and custom. We explore the relationship of ‘home place’ to tenure at Erub, where island, reef and ocean comprise a cultural and experiential continuum. Rights across a full spectrum of material/symbolic resources involve a dynamic tension between principles of exclusion and incorporative reciprocity. The issue of how to balance more particular against more collective rights is at play with each nesting of more local into more inclusive socio-territorial identities: from households and lineages, through island communities, sub-regional island groups, and Torres Strait regionally, to the encapsulating state and evolving international orders. At Erub, an island community long regarded as a vanguard of creolization for Torres Strait, newcomers have by-and-large been assimilated to indigenous systems of land- and sea-holding and authority. The connection between people and territory is a complex practice of social identities and interests responding to political opportunity, according to cultural forms that manifest substantial and traceable continuities to indigenous arrangements, as innovation has proceeded. The continuities appear sufficient to satisfy criteria for native title recognition as articulated in the Mabo decision, but the criteria themselves are too narrowly based to accommodate the processual dynamics of evolving culture and tradition. A reordering of territorial jurisdiction, predicated on the principle of Islander consent to development activities in their homelands/seas, would provide more authentic conditions for cultural autonomy.