Is Nature‐Oriented Tourism a Pro‐Environmental Practice?: Examining Tourism–Environmentalism Alignments Through Discourse Networks and Intersectoral Relationships

A key tenet of ecotourism is that interacting with nature through tourism cultivates environmental awareness and responsibility. We examine this assumption by analyzing discourse networks and organizational networks that connect tourism and environmentalism in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Using a combination of interviews, field observation, and web‐based data, we ask: Is there an alignment of tourism and environmental discourse regarding human interaction with and use of coastal environments? Are there meaningful organizational ties between tourism and environmental organizations? We conclude that there is little indication that nature‐oriented tourism is working to produce substantial changes to our broader political ecology.     

Atos Healthcare withdraws from the Work Capability Assessment: a comment

In March 2014 Atos Healthcare withdrew a year early from its contract to provide the UK’s health assessment – the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) – that is supposed to sort disabled people into administrative categories according to their adjudged capability to do paid work. This move was welcomed by political elites, with, for example, UK Coalition Government Minister for Disabled People Mike Penning using it to criticise previous Labour governments for the contractual arrangements they put in place – although while the Coalition may have been concerned with the contractual arrangements soon after being formed, it extended the contract for five years. For the UK disability movement, the withdrawal of Atos Healthcare early from the WCA contract was a victory and, at least in part, a consequence of disabled activists’ resistance to the Employment and Support Allowance generally, and the WCA in particular.     

Assessment of a hybrid reform path: Social and labour policies in Uruguay, 1985–2005

Since Uruguay's return to democracy in 1985, a shift in economic and social policy has radically changed the country. The outcomes have been shaped by adjustment to international circumstances “by default”, stop‐go market reforms and the inconsistent pace and content of reforms. Unlike other countries in the region, Uruguay has not followed a resolutely neo‐liberal course, but rather a hybrid one. The end result has been a liberal labour regime coupled with a three‐dimensional social policy balancing the market, the old corporatist welfare State and the new welfare state targeting specific beneficiaries.     

A movement of ‘subsidized capitalists’? The multi-level influence of the Bharatiya Kisan Union in India

This paper investigates the relationship between the state and India's rural informal sector by focusing on the collective mobilizations of middle-sized agricultural producers in Western Uttar Pradesh. These cultivators are involved in an economic sector which is at the same time capitalist, largely informal but also, to some extent, state-regulated. Through their mobilizations organized by the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), they have attempted to influence state regulation of agricultural markets, obtaining increased input subsidies and better procurement prices for their produce, and thus an increase in the rates of return and profitability of their farming activity. The paper conceptualizes the modality of production of these farmers as ‘subsidized capitalism’, alluding to the self-employed and self-funded producers with holdings large enough to support a pair of bullocks defined as ‘bullock capitalists’ by Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph (1987), while denoting the crucial role of public subsidies in preserving this faction of informal agrarian capitalism. The paper also points to the ambivalent relationship between the ‘subsidized capitalists’ of Western Uttar Pradesh and the state: although they seek protection from the central government in the context of globalization, they confront and contest local state institutions by deploying collective strategies to distort local regulations of agricultural markets.     

Gendering Global Governance

In this article I map out the major debates on global governance and the feminist critiques of the mainstream interventions in these debates. I argue that the shift from government to governance is a response to the needs of a gendered global capitalist economy and is shaped by struggles, both discursive and material, against the unfolding consequences of globalization. I suggest feminist interrogations of the concept, processes, practices and mechanisms of governance and the insights that develop from them should be centrally incorporated into critical revisionist and radical discourses of and against the concept of global governance. However, I also examine the challenges that the concept of global governance poses for feminist political practice, which are both of scholarship and of activism as feminists struggle to address the possibilities and politics of alternatives to the current regimes of governance. I conclude by suggesting that feminist political practice needs to focus on the politics of redistribution in the context of global governance.     

Communicating intersectionality through creative claims making: the queer undocumented immigrant project

ABSTRACT

Social movements confronting overlapping inequalities face the unique challenge of elucidating the heretofore invisible experiences of those whose identities lie at the intersection of existing movements. Social media platforms provide a direct outlet for intersectional social movements to make political claims visually by illuminating these complexities creatively with discursive resources such as symbols, text, and narratives. Using content analysis of images posted to the organization’s Facebook, we examine how lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) immigration activists – as embodied by the Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project (QUIP) – attempt to communicate intersectionality online. Images posted by QUIP demonstrate how the existing ideas and values of separate established immigrant and LGBTQ movements can be reformulated and repackaged. However, the available discursive resources may compartmentalize identities, which then requires movements to generate new symbols, text, and narratives. By leveraging extant discursive resources and innovating new expressions, activists aim to communicate intersectional experiences and unite multiple struggles.     

Young Women in the Australian Women’s Movement

This article explores and documents the role of young women in the contemporary Australian women’s movement. Through case studies of two very different groups of young women, working in submerged networks in the community and on university campuses, it aims to suggest the diversity of contemporary young feminist praxis. Further, it argues that the work that these young women are doing in discursively creating and maintaining a feminist political space is crucial to the future of the movement. Based in constructivist ‘new’ social movement theory this article suggests a way forward from the so-called ‘generational debates’ of the 1990s and argues that, through their own unique processes of collective identity, young women who are active in the Australian women’s movement are dealing with the conflicts that are essential to the movement’s survival.     

拉美民众主义的特点及其演变

民众主义是20世纪拉丁美洲现代化进程中具有深远影响的政治思潮、政治运动、政策倾向和政权形式,其主要特点可概括为城市性、多阶级性、广泛性、选举性、大众性及魅力领袖主导性.拉美民众主义经历了一个由盛而衰的过程.早期民众主义表现为20世纪初自由主义改革运动,30至60年代民众主义运动处于鼎盛期,70年代后趋于衰落,但至今在拉美政治中仍有一定影响.     

墨子“尚贤”思想评析

"尚贤"是墨子思想体系中的重要组成部分.其"尚贤"思想在具有功利性、彻底性、进步性的同时,也具有空想性、主观性、狭隘性的特点.但墨子的"尚贤"思想更注重的是社会要有明确的分工,等级制度不可废,"尚贤"思想是在"义"的指导下对社会现有秩序的改良主张.     

Small area estimation for longitudinal surveys

Over the last few years many studies have been carried out in Italy to identify reliable small area labour force indicators. Considering the rotated sample design of the Italian Labour Force Survey, the aim of this work is to derive a small area estimator which borrows strength from individual temporal correlation, as well as from related areas. Two small area estimators are derived as extensions of an estimation strategies proposed by Fuller (1990) for partial overlap samples. A simulation study is carried out to evaluate the gain in efficiency provided by our solutions. Results obtained for different levels of autocorrelation between repeated measurements on the same outcome and different population settings show that these estimators are always more reliable than the traditional composite one, and in some circumstances they are extremely advantageous.The present paper is financially supported by Murst-Cofin (2001) Lutilizzo di informazioni di tipo amministrativo nella stima per piccole aree e per sottoinsiemi della popolazione (National Coordinator Prof. Carlo Filippucci).