Stakeholder engagement with environmental decision support systems: The perspective of end users

Environmental decision support systems (EDSS) are designed to assist natural resource managers and stakeholders to assess problems and select options for change. EDSS that combine community engagement in developing future scenarios with computer‐based land use planning and modelling tools are widely used internationally. However, these EDSS are often not used after the research and development phase. To best understand why the EDSS are not being used in the long term, the end users of the EDSS should be consulted—a perspective that is lacking in the literature. The research reported here presents the perspectives of stakeholders involved in a community climate change adaptation project in western Canada. Evidence from the community suggests that this project was successful in instigating change. However, the EDSS was not used after the project's end. Our findings indicate that, from the end users’ perspective, the project could have had much greater and sustained success had there been ongoing engagement and communication with them, particularly in the form of continued support for the use of EDSS after the development project.     

‘Travail,famille, patrie’ dans L'écume des jours de Boris Vian

Having historically lagged behind most Western countries on matters relating to disability, France now seems poised on the brink of a new era in the provision for, and attitudes to, people with disabilities. This article begins with a brief examination of the political context of this recent change, including the new anti-discrimination law of 2005, the positions of both Chirac and Sarkozy, and the recent work of Julia Kristeva. Since one of Kristeva's main aims is to change the way in which disability is seen, this article goes on to examine in detail the photographic work of Delphine Censier, a woman with disabilities who is also concerned with changing perceptions of disability, and making possible a new relationship between people with and without impairments. Censier's work—which pictures her in lingerie and in sexually suggestive poses—appears problematic, at first glance, from both a feminist and a disability theory perspective. Using the work of US disability theorists such as Rosemarie Garland Thomson and Robert McRuer, however, this article argues that Censier's work in fact self-consciously performs disabled sexuality in a nuanced and insistently non-normative manner and, in so doing, goes a long way to fostering the new perspectives on disability that Kristeva's own work, alone, could not.

En ce qui concerne les attitudes envers le handicap, la France a toujours été considérée comme étant en retard par rapport à d'autres pays occidentaux. Pourtant, une nouvelle époque semble actuellement se préparer dans ce domaine. Cet article examine d'abord le contexte politique de cette nouvelle attitude, évoquant notamment la loi de 2005 sur l'égalité des chances; les positions et de Chirac et de Sarkozy, et le travail récent de Julia Kristeva. L'un des buts principaux de Kristeva est de changer la façon dont on regarde les personnes en situation de handicap. Ainsi, cet article examine en détail le travail photographique de Delphine Censier, une femme en situation de handicap qui veut, comme Kristeva, changer le regard des ‘valides’ vis-à-vis du handicap, et qui veut aussi imaginer de nouveaux rapports entre ceux qui sont en situation de handicap et ceux qui ne le sont pas. Dans ses photographies, Censier porte de la lingerie et se montre volontairement séduisante. Considérées sous un aspect féministe, ou bien selon les principes de ce que le monde anglo-saxon appelle ‘disability theory’, ces photographies présentent des problèmes d'interprétation. Pourtant, à l'aide du travail des théoriciens américains Rosemarie Garland Thomson et Robert McRuer, cet article se propose de démontrer que le travail de Censier est performatif, qu'il interroge, consciemment, les normes sexuelles du monde ‘valide’ dans le but de lui montrer que sa perception de la ‘sexualité handicapée’ devrait être beaucoup plus nuancée. De cette manière, l'?uvre de Censier ajoute une autre perspective à la critique de Kristeva, suscitant de nouvelles interprétations ‘visuelles’ de la personne handicapée.     

Capitalist Expansion and the Decline of Common Property Ecosystems in China,Vietnam and India

This article identifies some of the multiple processes of capitalist development through which access to common property resources and their utility for communities are undermined. Three sites in upland Asia demonstrate how patterns of exclusion are mediated by the unique and selective trajectories through which capital expands, resulting in a decline of common property ecosystems. The process is mediated by economic stress, ecological degradation and political processes such as state‐sanctioned enclosure. The first case study from Shaoguan, South China, indicates how rapid capitalist industrialization has depleted the aquatic resource base, undermining the livelihoods of fishing households yet to be absorbed into the urban working class. At the second site, in Phu Yen, Vietnam, capitalist development is limited. However, indirect articulations between capitalism on the lowlands and the peasant economy of the uplands is driving the commercialization of agriculture and fishing and undermining the utility of communal river and lake ecosystems. In the third site, Buxa in West Bengal, India, there is only selective capitalist development, but patterns of resource extraction established during the colonial period and contemporary neoliberal ‘conservation’ agendas have directly excluded communities from forest resources. Restrictions on access oblige them to contribute subsidized labour to local enterprises. The article thus shows how communities which are differentially integrated into the global economy are excluded from natural resources through complex means.     

Topoiesis de los dispositivos de registro del texto literario

ABSTRACT

Never before have the layout, the text format, and support been as important as they are today. Studies reflecting on the relationship between the meaning of the literary text and its form have rapidly increased. This kind of study has focused mostly on the history of the reading process and the history of the book as well as on the possibilities of new technologies in the literary field. However, none of these approaches has reached the point of creating a comprehensive methodology for the analysis of the relationship between the message and its channel. This work is intended to propose a methodology of analysis based on some concepts such as peritexts (Genette) and visuo-graphic zone (Cárdenas).     

Pics or It Didn't Happen: Reading Photographs in the Reef Tank Community

In 1961, Lee Chin Eng jumpstarted the reef hobby, a hobby dedicated to the modeling of coral reefs in captivity, with an article in Tropical Fish Hobbyist. He illustrated the article with eight photographs; these images were meaningful to the hobbyists viewing them and they conveyed both information about the tank system and also claims about Lee's expertise. This paper examines three genres of photographs—landscapes, active, and passive portraiture—that appeared in Lee's article and how and why they have proliferated in the reef hobbyist community over the last sixty years. By tracing the history of these genres, we can better understand natural knowledge producers rely on photographs to exchange knowledge and cement community identity.     

The only way is ethics? Applying for National Health Service ethical approval and governance for research with children

ABSTRACT

In this Viewpoints piece, we reflect on the process of applying for National Health Service (NHS) ethical approval and governance for research with children in England. We present a case study of our experiences of navigating the Integrated Research Application System (IRAS) for one study, The Hair Study. We argue that, for children’s geographers, getting to grips with the complex processes of applying for NHS ethical approval and governance is important when considering the move towards interdisciplinary working, and engagement with children in underexplored spaces and places, such as: doctors surgeries; hospitals; dentists; and other services commissioned by the NHS.