“Participation”, White Privilege and Environmental Justice: Understanding Environmentalism Among Hispanics in Toronto

Abstract: The environmental justice movement has highlighted not only the unequal distribution of environmental hazards across lines of race and class, but also the white, middle‐class nature of some environmentalisms, and broader patterns of marginalization underlying people's opportunities to participate or not. There is a significant body of work discussing Hispanic environmental justice activism in the US, but not in Canada. This paper draws on interviews with representatives of organizations working on environmental initiatives within the Hispanic population of Toronto, Canada to explore definitions of and approaches to environmentalism(s) and community engagement. Four interrelated “mechanisms of exclusion” are identified in this case study—economic marginalization; (in)accessibility of typical avenues of participation; narrow definitions of “environmentalism” among environmental organizations; and the perceived whiteness of the environmental movement. Taken together, these mechanisms were perceived as limiting factors to environmental activism in Toronto's Hispanic population. We conclude that the unique context of Toronto's Hispanic community, including contested definitions of “community” itself, presents both challenges and opportunities for a more inclusive environmentalism, and argue for the value of “recognition” and “environmental racialization” frameworks in understanding environmental injustice in Canada.     

The American Geographical Society's Map of Hispanic America: Million-Scale Mapping between the Wars

ABSTRACT

The 1:1 million Map of Hispanic America, compiled at the American Geographical Society's New York headquarters between the First and Second World Wars, has been seen as a landmark in twentieth-century cartography. In this essay we re-evaluate the Hispanic Map as a technical and scholarly project and re-assess its wider significance for the history of twentieth-century topographic mapping in the light of the cultural and political factors that shaped its development. When finally completed in 1945, the Hispanic Map was rightly judged an unsurpassed scientific achievement and a major work of art. But it was already out of date, superseded by newer cartographic technologies, particularly aerial survey and reconnaissance, that had removed the need for the kind of meticulous and painstaking compilation that the Hispanic Map exemplified.     

Deportation Discretion: Tiered Influence,Minority Threat,and “Secure Communities” Deportations

As deportations from the United States rose to unprecedented levels, a nationwide immigration enforcement program Secure Communities helped identify deportable noncitizens under arrest in county jails. Examining county‐level variation in deportation activity between 2008 and 2013, this paper contributes to immigration policy research by examining how county officials in some locations facilitated exceptionally restrictive deportation outcomes while others exercised the discretion to turn noncitizens over for deportation sparingly. Consistent with a hypothesized “tiered influence” relationship, but contrary to a “racial threat” hypothesis, Hispanic concentration predicts the highest levels of exercised discretion where Hispanic concentration is neither too small nor too large. Noncitizens under arrest seem to have benefited from above‐average Hispanic concentrations, except in counties where Hispanics exceed about 40 percent of the population.     

Transatlantic Correspondence and ‘Mobile Knowledge’ in Alexander von Humboldt's Exploratory Travels to Hispanic America

Summary

This article focuses on the relevance of Alexander von Humboldt's correspondence in the formation of transatlantic scientific networks at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Apart from connecting Humboldt with scientists and scholars worldwide, his correspondence turned out to be a fundamental tool for assuring the material conditions and the social and scientific connections he needed to carry out his research on the Spanish colonies and to simultaneously diffuse his achievements on the European side of the Atlantic. His contact with Hispanic American scientists and with the local elites enabled him to build a broad social network, gaining access to key material, human and intellectual resources. The letters sent to scientists, scientific institutions and noblemen in Europe, for their part, kept Humboldt's European correspondents informed about his activities in Hispanic America, contributing to the validation of his work before the scientific community and the fulfilment of the duties resulting from the political and institutional support he received both before and during his travels. This stresses the importance of strategic social groups and their cooperation in the framework of exploratory travels as a means to gaining access to resources in the peripheries. It also reveals the scientist's dependence on all those who supported his research: kings, barons, botanical gardens, universities, and academies.     

1. INTRODUCTION

Why were mid‐nineteenth‐century Hispanic populations so small in what is now the American Southwest, after centuries of colonization? A brilliant new literature provides a model of explanation in the authority of formidable indigenous polities, especially that great power that Pekka Hämäläinen reveals to us in his book The Comanche Empire. ¹ 1 Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).
Employing an exercise in cartographic history, centered on the Pecos River Valley, we can confirm a hypothesis drawn from that theoretical model: Comanche sway was so great that European mapmakers appear to have lost knowledge about that geographical region. This new historical model deserves close attention from scholars. In this forum, four leading historians, drawn from different fields, assess the contribution of The Comanche Empire.     

A Genoese merchant and banker in the Kingdom of Naples: Ottavio Serra and his business network in the Spanish polycentric system,c.1590–1620

Abstract

The dense Genoese commercial networks – which were present in all territories under Spanish rule, fairs, commercial emporia and battlefields – were an essential factor for the survival of the crown. This raises some doubts about the dominating influence posed, according to traditional accounts, by the court in Madrid; the court was, indeed, a point of reference for the Genoese merchant families but by no means the only one. In fact, the Genoese always took care to be present in important harbours and markets, such as Naples, where they often had correspondents to look after the family’s multiple interests.

This article revolves around the crucial role played by Ottavio Serra (1570–1639), son of Giovambattista Serra, ‘signore’ of Carovigno and an active merchant and moneychanger in the viceroyalty of Naples during the first two decades of the seventeeth century. The importance of Ottavio was not limited to his participation in the economic life of Naples. The analysis of Ottavio’s activity as financial agent for his relatives and partners in Madrid, Genoa and Piacenza, among other locations, as well as the examination of his links with a great variety of economic centres in the Mezzogiorno, presents early-modern Naples as a highly ‘internationalised’ centre in the context of the polycentric Hispanic imperial system.     

美国华人和其他主要亚裔族群的跨国政治活动调查

根据2000—2001年全美亚裔政治态度试点调查的原始数据,通过拉美裔跨国政治活动与亚裔的比较,从美国亚裔政治上能否被同化,政治活动能否跨国界、哪些亚裔参与跨国政治、亚裔的政治跨国主义和政治同化关系等方面,对美国亚裔跨国政治活动的形成、特点及其相互关系进行实证分析。结论是,亚裔在许多方面与拉美裔等其他移民群体有相似的特点;反对亚裔“不可同化论”;亚裔保持跨国联系不会对他们在美国的文化、政治同化产生负面影响;那些移民前积极参政、在美国积极参与族裔社区组织活动、积极参与和亚裔事务有关政治活动的亚裔,参与跨国政治的比例较高。