Competing entanglements in the struggle to save the Amazon: The shifting terrain of transnational civil society

Transnational civil society has often been conceptualized as a third sector, buffered from the power politics of nation-states and global capital. The relative autonomy of this sector has been seen as key in empowering the voices of marginalized peoples and in advocating new counter-hegemonic agendas on the world stage. Recent research, however, has begun to explore power imbalances within the transnational civic sphere, and how different transnational NGOs' modes of articulation with political institutions and market actors inform those power dynamics. We suggest here that the concept of “entanglements,” recently introduced within political geography, can offer a useful spatial imagery in assessing the effects of these varied lines of influence. The article first traces the evolution of the Amazon Alliance, a transnational network of environmental and human rights NGOs and Amazonian indigenous federations. It then examines a countervailing nexus of governmental and corporate entanglements that have been drawing conservation NGOs away from indigenous eco-political engagement in recent years. To understand the waning salience of the eco-indigenous conservation agenda, we argue, requires analysis of the shifting terrain of civil society, and of the articulation of different NGOs with institutions beyond the frontiers of the third sector.     

Can MNCs promote more inclusive tourism? Apollo tour operator's sustainability work

ABSTRACT

Outbound tour operators are key actors in international mass tourism. However, their contribution to more sustainable and inclusive forms of tourism has been critically questioned. Drawing from new institutional theories in organization studies, and informed by the case of one of the largest Scandinavian tour operators, we examine the corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability work in large tour operators and the challenges faced in being more inclusive. On the basis of in-depth interviews with corporate officers, document analysis and media reports, we show how top-down coercive and normative pressures, coming from the parent company and the host society shape the ability of the daughter corporation to elaborate a more inclusive agenda. However, daughter companies do not merely comply with these institutional pressures and policy is also developed from the ‘bottom-up’. We show how the tour operator's sustainability work is also the result of organizational responses including buffering, bargaining, negotiating and influencing the parent organization. By creating intra and inter-sectoral learning and collaborative industry platforms, MNCs not only exchange and diffuse more inclusive practices among the industry, but also anticipate future normative pressures such as legislation and brand risk. Daughter organizations help shape their institutional arrangements through internal collaborative platforms and by incorporating local events and societal concerns into the multinational CSR policy, especially when flexible policy frameworks operate, and the corporate CSR agenda and organizational field are under formation. However, risks do exist, in the absence of institutional pressures, of perpetuating a superficial adoption of more inclusive practices in the mass tourism industry.     

Scaling down or scaling up? Local actor decisions and the feasibility of decentralized environmental governance: a case of Páramo wetlands in Southern Ecuador

In Latin America and the Global South, policy-makers are adopting community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) principles for local governments. The idealized emphasis on ‘local’ collaborative approaches is known to neglect human geographic contexts and issues of capacity, power, and human drivers of change at larger scales. However, critiques lack empirical evidence of policy implementation decisions. How do local government and community actors choose to use decentralized environmental governance policies in relation to a threatened cultural and natural landscape across their jurisdictions? This question is explored in an ethnographic case of a high Andean wetland region in southern Ecuador by focusing on the context and micro-politics of two seemingly contradictory local government decisions: proposals to nationalize a local community protected area and to work with other local governments to construct a road across the wetlands that could threaten protected area status. When different sectors are devolved to different local actors without strong sub-state institutions for conflict management, decentralization may create incentives for conflict rather than conservation. Governance design depends on understanding how and why diverse local actors engage in boundary-spanning regional strategies, calling for additional contributions from political geographers.     

Command Centre Bjorn: the conflict heritage of a Swedish Cold War military installation

This text presents the results of a contemporary archaeological investigation of an important Swedish Cold War installation, Command Centre Bjorn. This centre was connected to the Air Force Attack Squadron and together with the coastal artillery and the navy it constituted a crucial part of the Swedish defence efforts during the Cold War period. The text also discusses questions concerning heritage processes, and it stresses that a contemporary archaeology approach can contribute with new insights into the Cold War and its heritage in Sweden, as well as canalize and offer guidance to the huge public interest in the material remains from this period in Sweden.     

The Social Context of Settlement in Norway in the First Millennium AD

The Viking Age was an important watershed in European history, characterized by the centralization of authority, the adoption of Christian ideology, the growth of market trade, the intensification of production and the development of urbanism. Together, these phenomena mark the beginning of Scandinavian state formation. However, the dates at which each occurred - and the unequal rates at which different state attributes were adopted in 'cores' and 'peripheries' - remain to be fully explored and explained. These issues can be illuminated by world-systems theory and brought into focus by studying the date at which key aspects of the Viking Age were adopted in a Scandinavian periphery - the Norse Earldom of Orkney and Caithness, northern Scotland. The present study questions not only why peripheries change, but why they do not change, or change more slowly than neighbouring cores.     

Falling off the Map: South Africa,Antarctica and Empire,c. 1919–59

During the first half of the twentieth century, despatches about the coldest corner of the British Empire were circulated to three, sometimes four, of its southern neighbours under the British crown: Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the Falklands. Of these four, South Africa seemed the least interested in Antarctica, despite the keen interest of some influential individuals and a strategy of bringing Antarctica into the imperial fold through British dominions that were proximate to Antarctica. In this context, we ask how South Africa viewed itself in relation to the Antarctic to the south and the British metropole to the north. We discuss the key activities that connected South Africa to Antarctica—whaling and weather forecasting. Moreover, we consider some of the enterprising plans for a South African National Antarctic expedition, and what these plans reveal of South Africa's perception of itself as a southern country. This article interlinks with a growing scholarship that is critical of treating Antarctic history as politically and culturally isolated, including showing how the relatively simple natural and political ecology of the Antarctic can throw into relief multiple national and international concerns.     

Muricid boreholes in Pleistocene acorn barnacles from the Beagle Channel: trophic interactions during the Last Interglacial in southern South America

Gordillo, S., 2013. Muricid boreholes in Pleistocene acorn barnacles from the Beagle Channel: trophic interactions during the Last Interglacial in southern South America. Alcheringa 37, 1–8. ISSN 0311-5518.

Acorn barnacles with boreholes were recovered from a Pleistocene marine deposit on Navarino Island, on the southern coast of the Beagle Channel. Balanomorph shells were identified as Balanus laevis (Bruguière, 1789 Bruguière, J.G., 1789. Encyclopédie méthodique. Histoire naturelle des vers 1, 158–173, pis. Paris, 164–166. [Google Scholar]), and a few bear small round holes located generally on the middle or apical part of the parietal plates, thus suggesting that they represent the work of small muricid predators. If so, this study is the first record of drilling predation on fossil barnacles reported in southern South America.

[Sandra Gordillo [sgordillo@cicterra-conicet.gov.ar], Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencias de la Tierra, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CICTERRA, CONICET-UNC); Centro de Investigaciones Paleobiológicas (CIPAL), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Av. Vélez Sársfield 1611 X5016GCA Córdoba, Argentina. Received 8.1.2013; revised 26.3.2013; accepted 2.4.2013