Subsistence continuity,change, and environmental adaptation at the site of Nugljanska,Istria, Croatia

This paper investigates changes in subsistence strategies at the upland cave site of Nugljanska (Croatia) at the end of the last ice age, during a time of rapid sea level rise and changing environment. We analysed the faunal assemblage from archaeological levels spanning the Pleistocene–Holocene transition (15,000–8000 years BP) and evaluated changes in relative abundance of species, measured species diversity, and compared the representation of terrestrial mammal and marine resources. We found a significant shift in the most abundant prey species exploited (from red deer, Cervus, to wild boar, Sus). There was some correlation between dietary diversification and periods of increased moisture availability and the spread of deciduous forest in the area. Our results suggest that there was a continuing reliance on terrestrial resources throughout time and that changes in dietary patterns were likely due to local environmental change and potentially, changing seasonal mobility strategies, at the Pleistocene–Holocene transition.     

Locational Disadvantage and Household Locational Decisions: Changing Contexts and Responses in the Cessnock District of New South Wales,Australia. 1964–1999

Following the rapid demise of local coalmining in the 1950s and early 1960s, the former coal towns of the Cessnock area have survived in their newfound dormitory role, with cheap serviced housing acting as a major constraint on out–migration and an incentive for in–migration for low–income householders, mainly engaged in external commuting or outside the workforce. Behavioural responses to widening local job deficits in the early 1960s were reported in this journal (Holmes, 1965). From household surveys and other sources, Holmes examined the interplay between individual, household and locality variables and presented a spectrum of projected future outcomes for localities, according to accessibility, size and service provision, either attached to the Newcastle–Maitland labour market as low–income outer suburbs or experiencing varying rates of decline while providing low–cost welfare housing. While these broad trends have continued over the last 35 years, significant variants, not predictable in 1965 have emerged, notably: the increased residential attractiveness of some small localities; the strengthening of welfare migration, notably from Sydney; the increase in non–workforce households; and, some evidence of emerging socio–economic polarisation in larger towns. In these respects, Cessnock localities can be viewed as a microcosm of wider trends in Australian society, trends which are most fully revealed in disadvantaged metropolitan peripheral localities.     

Local and territorial determinants in the realization of public–private–partnerships: an empirical analysis for Italian provinces

ABSTRACT

Relational networks and intangible factors are crucial elements for the competitiveness of a territory. Public–Private–Partnerships (PPPs), in particular, allow for the provision of goods and services that favour the exploitation of complementarities between public and private resources. They aim at promoting an increase in the overall efficiency of investment projects through a complex mechanism that distributes risk and revenues among stakeholders. This paper examines the local and territorial determinants of PPPs through an econometric analysis based upon Italian municipal data, grouped at the provincial level. Using a tobit model, we analyse the relationship between the realization of successful PPP initiatives and different sets of factors, including less analysed local and territorial determinants. We stress the role of the local management of infrastructure assets, the administrative efficiency of local authorities and the diffusion of previous local development initiatives. Local management and territorial context factors explain most of the occurrence of successful PPP initiatives in the pre-crisis period while usual determinants (infrastructure endowment and financial distress) display a weaker effect.     

Canadian Political Economy and the Great Recession of 2008–9: The Politics of Coping with Economic Crisis

The emerging comparative political economy literature on the Great Recession of 2008–9 has devoted an increasing amount of time analyzing how domestic politics and the economic crisis were jointly determined. This article seeks to explore certain aspects of this dynamic relationship in the context of Canada, a country that has received little coverage in the comparative literature so far.     

Weathering time: walking with young children in a changing climate

ABSTRACT

Children growing up today face a multitude of climate-related challenges, requiring a capacity for creative and ethical modes of attending to both the known and unknown effects of a changing climate. In response to these challenges, I explore the potential in children’s weathering encounters, as observed during an ethnographic research project titled Walking with Wildlife in Wild Weather Times. In particular, I consider the various ways children engage with the weather and what this reveals about our (human) interconnections and minglings with the weather world. In this paper, I focus specifically on the temporal dimensions of child/weather encounters. My aim is to show that taking the time with children to slow down and attend to the elemental affects in the world, can reveal a weathered entanglement of past, present and future and a foundation for a curious and open attentiveness in responding to the climate challenges ahead.     

The Softwood Lumber Dispute and US Allegations of Improper NAFTA Panel Review

The dispute over Canadian exports of softwood lumber products to the United States (US) has lasted since 1982 and, so far, has gone through four episodes of litigation. In Lumber IV, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) determined that the US softwood lumber industry was threatened with material injury by reason of dumped and subsidized lumber from Canada. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a binational panel concluded, however, that there was no such evidence and directed the ITC to reverse its finding. In its resort to the Extraordinary Challenge Procedure, the US alleged that the injury panel had misapplied the US standard of review. In fact, allegations of improper NAFTA panel review were used by the US in order to justify its non-compliance with adverse binding decisions.     

Envisioning a Green Energy Future in Canada and the United States: Constructing a Sustainable Future in the Context of New Regionalisms?

A variety of actors in Canada and the United States are actively constructing a vision of a greener society that includes an environmentally sustainable energy future. Canadian provinces and states in the United States share environmental management, corporations collaborate to drive green development and implement local energy projects, and activists on both sides of the border share environmental protest strategies and mobilization frames. A transition to regionalism of greener energy resources along the Vermont–Canadian border is indicative of a larger “new regionalism” of sustainable identity, despite very concrete and pressing external pressures and energy challenges concerning global climate change, resource depletion, and energy sustainability challenges within the larger nations of both Canada and the United States. In this article, we aim to characterize this green visioning of a sustainable energy future, by focusing especially on the Vermont–Canadian border region, and additionally point to the benefits and contradictions that result.     

‘Enlightenment takes hold of our lands’: translating and publishing in Volhynia and Podolia in the 1800s–50s

ABSTRACT

This article uncovers the role of self-employed translators in one of the distinctive regions of Eastern Europe – the Volhynian and Podolian provinces. These lands belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until they became governorates of the Russian Empire in the 1790s. By exploring the memoirs of the landed nobility and cultural elite from this geographically and intellectually contested area, this article discusses the importance of translation during the crucial period of search for national and cultural identity, and debates the cultural transfer of ideas in the homes of local petty nobility in the 1800s–50s. The article also analyses the problem of reading, discusses the book’s importance and the variety of ways it could be read in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By tackling these problems, the article attempts to decode the meaning of Enlightenment for the provincial szlachta in the 1800s–50s.