Whose Permits? The Tenacity of Permissive Development Control in Flanders

This paper explains how a permissive planning permit system is embedded in Belgian/Flemish society and how this contributes to urban sprawl. We base our analysis on an institutionalist approach as developed in previous and current research and analyse the Flemish planning permit system since 1962 as one of different interacting planning systems, all (re)produced, maintained, transformed and struggled over by specific individual and collective actors and shaped by a range of institutional dynamics. The analysis shows how in the dynamics of the Flemish planning permit system, a general struggle between actors defending property-based private initiative and actors arguing for collective action in space is especially apparent. In this struggle, property ownership expressed through a permissive planning permit system and limited enforcement of regulations is seen to be predominant, especially in the 1960s, 1980s and 2000s. Changes in the 1990s, making the planning permit system more strict, have partly and momentarily challenged the institutional frame which structures the predominant planning permit practice, but left the logic of individual property largely untouched. Today, the Flemish planning permit system has again been reoriented towards the protection of private property, which hampers the capacity of government to implement a coherent spatial policy.     

Bodil Begtrup and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: individual agency,transnationalism and intergovernmentalism in early UN human rights

The article investigates the individual agency of the little studied transnational, Bodil Begtrup, in the subfields of women's and minority rights, and refugee and asylum policy. Begtrup fulfilled many roles – as state representative, expert advisor, member of the United Nations' Commission on the Status of Women, and president of a national NGO. This article shows how Begtrup enjoyed wide room for manoeuvre in the subfield of women's rights, and acted in this as a transnational norm entrepreneur and process entrepreneur advocating women's rights as an integral part of human rights and forging the change of the institutional design of the UN human rights institutions. In the subfield of minority rights, refugee and asylum policy, Begtrup acted under tight governmental control because the issue at hand was subject to national interest and domestic party politics. Her agency in the two subfields shows how internationalism was a predominant feature in the early shaping of UN human rights. Transnationalism occurred when the subfield in question was not affected by national interest.     

Fish ’n chips: ZooMS peptide mass fingerprinting in a 96 well plate format to identify fish bone fragments

Fish are a large, highly diverse, and anthropologically important group of vertebrates. However, fish bones are underrepresented in the archaeological literature because they are less stable than those of other taxa and identification of bone to species is often difficult or impossible. We explore a new identification system, ZooMS (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry), which is based upon protein barcoding. As proteins can be cleaved enzymatically and analyzed by mass spectrometry in a repeatable way, protein barcoding is used widely in microbiological contexts for quick and inexpensive protein identification; mass spectra reflect the differences in protein sequence and can therefore be reproducibly linked to a particular protein or protein fragment. ZooMS uses peptide fingerprinting of bone collagen as a method for rapid identification of archaeological bone. This has involved the identification of masses related to peptides of known sequence. For mammals, sufficient sequence information is available for this approach but for groups, such the teleost fish, species are highly diverse and there are few available collagen sequences. Here we report a preliminary investigation into the identification of fish species by peptide mass fingerprinting that does not require sequence information. Collagen mass spectra are used to identify eight species of bony fishes (Osteichthyes) from four orders: Clupeiformes, Salmoniformes, Gadiformes, and Perciformes. The method is applied to both modern and archaeological fish remains and offers the capacity to identify traditionally unidentifiable fish fragments, thus increasing the Number of Identified Specimens (NISP) and providing invaluable information in specialized contexts.     

Why so many wings? A re-examination of avian skeletal part representation in the south-central Northwest Coast,USA

Ten years ago, I summarized hypotheses for the abundance of bird wing elements in archaeological sites and rejected the hypothesis that differential preservation caused this pattern in the Pacific Northwest Coast (Bovy, 2002). I also noted that distal wing elements (relative to proximal wings) dominated several assemblages in the Gulf of Georgia sub-region. I re-examine this issue, focusing on behavioral hypotheses for the abundance of distal wings. Ethnographic evidence is used to formulate predictions for the cultural explanations, which are tested using data from the late Holocene Watmough Bay (45SJ280) site, where distal wings comprise 98% of the large duck assemblage (n = 4195). Diving ducks, dabbling ducks, geese, loons and grebes all have more distal wing bones than expected, and were likely caught using submerged nets. The most plausible explanation for the prevalence of distal wing bones is either that only the distal wings were transported back to the sites (perhaps attached to skins) and/or the distal wings were discarded separately during cooking.     

Global human impacts or climate change?: explaining the Sooty Shearwater decline at the Minard site,Washington State,USA

Sooty Shearwater (Puffinus griseus) remains decrease throughout the occupation (AD 1000–1600) of the Minard site (45-GH-15) on the southern Washington coast, USA. Given that New Zealand is one of the major breeding locations for this long-distant migrant, the decline at the Minard site may be due to human impacts on a global scale. In particular, the Maori practice of muttonbirding, the killing and preparation of fledgling shearwaters for storage, may have affected the number of summer migrants reaching the Pacific Northwest Coast. A second hypothesis attributes the decline in Sooty Shearwaters at the site to increasing sea surface temperatures and/or increased frequency of ENSO events during this period. Understanding how Sooty Shearwaters responded to human hunting and/or climate events in the past may be useful for the current management of this species, which has faced dramatic declines in recent decades.     

Explaining perceptions of a technological environmental hazard using comparative analysis

This study addresses one of the main research problems in the area of environmental hazard risk—to explain why perception of threat from the same hazard varies between groups. We argue that the cultural theory of risk, explicitly place-contingent ways of life and worldviews that support those ways of life, goes a long way towards explaining risk perception differences in the communities of Kinuso, Fort Assiniboine and Barrhead Alberta. Fifty-five in-depth interviews were conducted within these communities; three of the four communities are closest to the Alberta Special (hazardous) Waste Treatment Facility. A regional donut pattern of interviewee concern is partially explained as differential attachment to ways of life like farming, tourism and hunting for the concerned and amenity-proximate rural living for the unconcerned. These relationships are further supported by worldviews like distrust and sensitivity to equity for the concerned and the price of progress for the unconcerned. Though this study is not about siting process per se, detailed conversations about the siting process indicate that the perceptions of risk (as concern) in the operational phase of this hazard were solidified early on and are likely difficult to change.     

Decentralization,Local Taxation and Citizenship in Senegal

This article deals with the politics of revenue collection in a framework of decentralization, democratization and multiparty politics as experienced in the small village of Barkedji in the pastoral region of Senegal. In Senegal, revenue collection has recently been transferred from state administrators to locally elected councillors. Contrary to the assumption of the ‘good governance’ doctrine, this transfer of responsibility has not resulted in a strengthening of democratic structures where taxpayers demand (and gain) public services and more political representation in exchange for increasing taxes. In Barkedji, as elsewhere in Senegal, tax‐compliance hit rock‐bottom after tax collection became the responsibility of local councillors. Meanwhile other types of local institutions, with less clear state relations, are able to mobilize large amounts of revenue outside the normal tax channels for the provision of goods and service. These non‐state institutions seem to have taken over as providers of political representation as well as suppliers of public goods and of access or rights to crucial local resources. The article explores the motivation among first‐comers and newcomer populations to adopt or reject tax requirements to different types of organizations, and discusses the implications of this parallel tax collection for the exercise of public authority and the crafting of state and citizenry.