From sustainable development to carbon control: eco-state restructuring and the politics of urban and regional development

The management of carbon emissions holds some prospect for challenging sustainable development as the organising principle of socio-environmental regulation. This paper explores the rise of a distinctive low-carbon polity as an ideological state project, and examines its potential ramifications for the regulation of economy–environment relations at the urban and regional scale. Carbon control would seem to introduce a new set of values into state regulation and this might open up possibilities for challenging mainstream modes of urban and regional development in a manner not possible under sustainable development. But low-carbon restructuring also portends intensified uneven development, new forms of state control and a socially uneven reworking of state–society relations. In order to explore these issues we start by setting out a framework for conceptualising environmental regulation based around the idea of eco-state restructuring. This idea is introduced to capture the conflicts, power struggles and strategic selectivities involved as governments seek to reconcile environmental protection with multiple other pressures and demands. Overall the paper seeks to make a distinctive contribution to theoretical work on state environmental regulation and the emerging spatial dimensions of climate policy.     

The Americans With Disabilities Act: Does It Secure the Fundamental Right to Vote?

People with disabilities encounter substantial barriers to voting. Narrow interpretations by regulatory agencies and the courts indicate that the Americans With Disabilities Act will not be able to remove these barriers. Additional policies will be necessary to overcome the structural impediments to exercising the fundamental right to vote.     

Lost in the Supermarket: The Corporate-Organic Foodscape and the Struggle for Food Democracy

Abstract:  The corporatization of organics has been critiqued for the concentration of ownership, as well as the ecological consequences of the long distances commodities travel between field and table. These critiques suggest a competing vision of food democracy which strives to organize the production and consumption of food at a proximate geographic scale while increasing opportunities for democratically managed cooperation between producers and consumers. This paper examines how the corporate-organic foodscape has interacted and evolved alongside competing counter movements of food democracy. Using discourse and content analysis, we examine how corporate organics incorporate messages of locally scaled food production, humble origins, and a commitment to family farms and employees, and explore some of the complexity of the corporate-organic foodscape. This paper contributes to the understanding of commodity fetishism in the corporate-organic foodscape, and speaks more generally to the need for sophisticated understandings of the complex relationship between social movement innovation and market adaptation.     

HOW MUCH CHILD SUPPORT CAN ABSENT FATHERS PAY?

A variety of empirical studies show that custodial mothers and children are worse off after separation and divorce than absent fathers. Many of these mothers and children live in poverty and many more are above the poverty line but below median family income. Since 1974 the U.S. has had a federal-state program of Child Support Enforcement, but absent fathers still have a poor record of paying child support. To estimate how much money absent fathers could be expected to pay in child support, we used income data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Census Bureau data on the number of custodial mothers and children with living absent fathers, and two systems for determining how much money absent fathers should pay in child support. Using these sources, we estimate that absent fathers could pay $26.6 billion in child support–about 3.6 times as much as they actually paid in 1984. Most of this child support money would come from upper-income families. We conclude that absent fathers could substantially augment the financial security of custodial mothers and their children, and that the U.S. should therefore pursue a vigorous program of Child Support Enforcement.