The state and its agencies in coastal resources management: The political ecology of fisheries management in Pattani, southern Thailand

Various stakeholders contribute to the current state of resource management in the inshore fisheries of Pattani, southern Thailand. Taking the state, empowered by national legislation, as the main agent of enforcement, this paper uses an actor-oriented approach derived from political ecology to evaluate how key agents in state agencies at provincial and district levels translate Thai political and legal systems at the local level; more specifically, how cross-scalar institutional linkages and translations affect coastal resources management and the access of village-based, small-scale fishermen to coastal resources. The paper shows that trans-scalar interpretations have created a space of contestation and negotiation in resource governance at the local level that reveals intrastate tensions. Based on extensive fieldwork, the paper demonstrates that access to environmental resources at the local level is highly influenced or regulated by the unequal power relations between different actors at various levels.     

"The Island has been Handed over to Me": Ascension Island as a Company Colony, 1922–42

Ascension Island has spent almost all its years of organised human settlement as a military base. The major exception was between 1922 and 1942 when it was ruled by a civilian company, an unusual form of governance in modern colonial history. Though nominally subject to St Helena, and through that British colony to London, outside interference was largely restricted to rulings on colonial etiquette. The manager of the company was also head of both the government and legal systems. This paper considers the operation of this company colony, the tensions between the company and its workforce/subjects, and the contestation from 1942 for political supremacy between the company, the British state and the American forces that arrived when the island became involved in World War II. Ascension's narrative helps to exemplify some themes in postcolonial discourse and, given the unusual and extreme nature of the island's experiences, informatively broadens understanding of colonialism.     

Global Dimensions of U.S. Legal Services

The internationalization of the world's producer services has included the steady expansion of legal services across national borders. This article opens with an examination of the supply and demand factors that have driven this process, including the strategies and problems faced by law firms that operate internationally. It then offers an empirical examination of the distribution of overseas legal services offices of the 700 largest U.S. law firms, including their foreign markets and headquarters cities.     

A critical evaluation of 3D spatial information models for managing legal arrangements of multi-owned developments in Victoria,Australia

Three-dimensional (3D) spatial information models are increasingly being adopted to help communicate the spatial dimensions of complex built environments. Land administration practices in multi-owned developments include the subdivision, registration and management of legal interests associated with private, communal and public properties, which are often located along the vertical dimension. The spatial structure of each legal interest is normally composed of invisible spaces, defined as the inside and outside of multi-owned developments, as well as physically built structures. Additionally, a wide variety of legal boundary types mark out the spatial limits of the individual parts of each legal interest. These legal boundaries are typically delineated by either relying on fixed surveying measurements or referencing physically existent objects. This article provides a critical assessment of 3D spatial information models in terms of their capabilities for modelling legal interests and legal boundaries defined in the Victorian jurisdiction. We classify these models into three categories: purely legal, purely physical and integrated. This assessment provides the basis for developing a new 3D spatial information model, which would subsequently support a pathway towards realising the Victorian land administration system in a 3D digital environment.     

Identifying and Preventing Biopiracy in Australia: patent landscapes and legal geographies for plants with Indigenous Australian uses

There are legal and moral imperatives to protect biological resources and the ‘traditional knowledge’ associated with them. These imperatives derive from complex legal geographies: international law (such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol), State and federal laws, Indigenous customary law, codes of ethics and research protocols. This paper reports on a ‘patent landscape’ analysis of patents that refer to Australian plant species for which there is Indigenous Australian knowledge. We have identified several patents of potential new biopiracy concern. The paper highlights the way in which actors can gain private property monopolies over biological resources and associated traditional knowledge, even though there are overlapping sovereign rights and Indigenous rights claims. Regulatory gaps need to be closed nationally to fully govern the diverse human–plant bio-geographies in Australia. Further, Indigenous laws and governance have largely been ignored by these actors. We suggest that the introduction of ‘disclosure of origin’ requirements in patent applications, sui generis Indigenous knowledge protections, the development of biocultural protocols, and a more nationally consistent system for ‘access and benefit-sharing’ are required to ensure more ‘fair and equitable’ use of plants and Indigenous knowledge in/from Australia, and to ensure the recognition of Indigenous rights to knowledge.     

'In the shadow of hierarchy': meta-governance, policy reform and urban regeneration in the West Midlands

This paper explores the relationship between political hierarchy and the complex webs of political organization associated with urban governance. Deploying the concept of meta-governance and a study of urban policy reform in the West Midlands region of England, this paper claims that state and governmental hierarchies continue to have a crucial role in coordinating the activities of governance regimes in the UK. This paper concludes by considering the effects of hierarchical power on the systems of political participation and representation that are associated with urban governance.     

MOZAMBIQUE,NEOLIBERAL LAND REFORM,AND THE LIMPOPO NATIONAL PARK*

ABSTRACT. Central to its transformation from a state‐centered to a neoliberal, free‐market economy, in 1997 the Mozambican state passed a radical new land law that guarantees the rights of individuals and communities to occupy land and transfer land‐use titles, a move seen as necessary for attracting private investment. By comparing how the land law has been applied to the Limpopo National Park and several adjacent villages, I show how it has led to geographically uneven land reform. More specifically, outside the park, the law has enabled the semiprivatization of community lands, in theory protecting community land rights. However, the application of the law within the park has resulted in the further nationalization of this space, which is leading to land dispossession for communities within the park's borders. I thus show how neoliberal land reform is giving rise to a seemingly contradictory type of “neoliberal state space.”     

Courtroom Ethnography: Researching the Intersection of Law,Space, and Everyday Practices

This article argues for a more sustained use of courtroom ethnography by geographers as a means to research legal phenomena, especially in matters of court trials. To do this, I begin by referencing two main threads of courtroom ethnographies conducted in disciplines outside geography, specifically the spaces of the courthouse and courtrooms and the study of emotion and bodily performances by sociolegal and sociology scholars. To then underscore the ways in which a geographical perspective can enhance this existing research and point to topical and theoretical interventions that courtroom ethnography might offer geography, I draw on my experiences with courtroom ethnography on the criminal trial against former Enron chief executives Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. This experience produced a nuanced and lively understanding of how law, justice, and space comingle through the court’s physical spaces and performative embodiments. My conclusions emphasize courtroom ethnographies’ scholarly opportunities for researchers who study the intersection of law and space, while also reflecting on its challenges. Key Words: corporation, courtroom, Enron, ethnography, legal geography.     

Legal Geographies—Skating Around the Edges of the Law: Urban Skateboarding and the Role of Law in Determining Young Peoples' Place in the City

This article argues that urban skateboarding and the laws by which the city is governed must be understood as intertwined. The transformation of skateboarding's most popular practices from the 1970s onward are a product of an ongoing dialectical engagement between young people and the law. When faced with shifting landscapes of property and liability, young skaters have adapted their practices, seeking out new types of terrain. This search has led skateboarding into the public spaces of the city and regimes of urban governance. Contemporary efforts to build public skateparks in cities such as Seattle, Washington are properly contextualized as part of a continuing evolution of skaters' agency in responding to and capitalizing on openings in the legal landscape. By working both within the political system and constructing skateparks outside conventional political avenues, skatepark advocates seek spaces that are free from increasingly restrictive conventional logics of private and public property.     

Up Against the Law: Legal Structuring of Political Opportunities in Neighborhood Opposition to Group Home Siting in Massachusetts

Abstract

Conflicts over siting of group homes for people transitioning out of homelessness or struggling with addiction illustrate the multiscalar dynamics at play between locally-based activism and supra-local laws. In Massachusetts, the state-scale legal environment limits the effectiveness of opposition to group housing; nonetheless, such opposition occurs at the municipal level. Drawing on media accounts, official documents, and interviews with stakeholders in conflicts over group home siting in Worcester, Massachusetts, I investigate the dynamics between neighborhood place claims, the responses of the local state, and the state-wide laws governing group home siting. Examining the legal frameworks relevant to social movement grievances demonstrate that law structures the political opportunities available for protest and local government response.     

都市聚落系统的形成规律——递增报酬与幂次法则的计算机与数理仿真

幂次法则是一个普遍存在于自然科学与社会科学界的现象,在都市体系中亦可观察到此一现象。过去的文献仅仅对于幂次法则现象进行了观察和解释,并未能完整地解释其形成的机制。本研究尝试由复杂理论中“递增报酬”的观念来探讨幂次现象的成因,采用计算机程序来仿真都市聚落体系形成的过程,并观察递增报酬与幂次现象之关系。该仿真包含了3 种不同的区位发展吸引模式,分别为相邻关系、规模吸引以及同时考虑规模与相邻的混合模式。计算机仿真显示：① 规模吸引与混合两种模式比相邻吸引模式能够更好地解释都市聚落的成长;② 依照递增报酬法则而仿真形成的都市聚落,与幂次现象呈高度相关。随后的数理仿真演算显示,幂次法则为一统计上的普遍现象,但在递增报酬等经济因素驱动下的都市聚落体系结构与真实的状况较为吻合。因此我们推测,递增报酬极可能是形成真实世界幂次现象的机制之一。     

沿海地区海洋经济与社会变迁关联度评价——以辽宁省为例

改革开放以来,中国沿海地区经济发展与社会变迁极其迅速,海洋经济发展同样迅速,海洋经济与沿海地区社会变迁之间的关联日益紧密。海洋经济介入沿海地区的社会生活领域,导致社会结构的重组、生活质量的改善和科学技术的建构。从动态系统的视角看,海洋经济系统与社会系统的互动耦合维持着两个系统的稳定性,最终形成一个复杂的相互制衡机制。本文通过对海洋经济与不同社会变迁因素的复杂关联和互动机制的研究,运用数量计算与定性分析相结合的方法,描述和分析了辽宁省2000-2010年间的海洋经济与社会变迁关联情况,并对其的关联度进行科学度量。结果表明：在所选取的社会变迁因素之中,海洋科学技术对海洋经济贡献较大,是海洋经济与社会变迁的关键因素;社会结构和生活质量对海洋经济贡献较小。     

Geographic Influences in the Atlanta Campaign

Abstract

The growing importance of law in American society and the potential contribution that geographers can make in implementing America's legal system point to rewarding future linkages between law and geography. This paper suggests the need for a course on Law and Geography to cultivate these linkages. The proposed course outline draws examples from water law and criminal justice law and other legal bodies that suggest significant avenues for future geographical research.     

Legal implications of mobile shorelines in Great Britain

This paper highlights the three legally defined property areas that lie in the coastal zone in Great Britain (land, foreshore and seabed), and considers the mechanisms used by the two legal systems that operate on the mainland (Scots and English law) to cope with natural processes of erosion and accretion. The two legal systems are shown to be slightly different in how they accommodate erosion and accretion. However, they both have difficulty in coherently addressing the issues of coastal mobility and land ownership, which raises important questions of social justice, as they are based on the perceptions of judges in historic cases.     

GIS research to address tensions in geography

The rise of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technologies has been producing powerful tools for spatial data processing, management, analysis, modeling, and visualization. While supporting many tasks, GIS technologies have evoked new thinking and advanced intellectual inquiries in geography. Technological advances in other fields often stimulate new research questions and lead to revolutionary discoveries. The Hubble telescope revolutionizes our understanding of the universe, and 3D digital microscopes transform our knowledge of the coordination among biological, neurological, and physiological systems in living organisms. Can GIS claim similar revolutionary effects on geography? The answer is much up for debate. With GIS technologies, geographic studies can explore a broader extent across multiple scales in space and time and tackle problems through increasingly complex spatial statistics, visual analytics, computation, simulation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Both the Hubble telescope and 3D digital microscope were built based on scientific research that subserves the technological advances for inquiries into space and life systems. Likewise, GIScience research innovates GIS methods that enable novel geographic investigations and therefore contribute to geographic knowledge production. For the sake of simplicity, the term GIS used here represents both GIScience and GIS technologies. This essay attempts to clarify the intellectual contributions of GIS to geography on the following two questions: (1) What novel geographic thinking is driven by GIS? (2) How may GIS provoke new geographic inquiries and knowledge? Building on Nystuen's notion of four tensions that trigger geographic questions, the essay discusses how GIS innovations mediate historical tension, space‐time tension, dimensional tension and scale tensions.     

有关循环经济下农业政策法制建设的探讨

如今，发展循环经济，建立循环型社会已经成为世界各国的潮流和趋势。在中国，要想发展循环经济，必须在各个产业逐步建立起与之相支持的文化、法律、政策、经济和生态体制。中国是一个农业大国，发展循环农业经济建设，无论对循环经济的发展和循环型社会的形成还是对农业经济的发展都具有重要意义。从中国现阶段农业政策法制状况出发，借鉴国外的先进经验，探讨在农业方面实现循环经济的可能性和必要性以及如何完善中国农业制度来适应这一新兴理念。     

Issues in the Conservation and Management of Forests in Laos: The Case of Sangthong District

Amidst the increasing concern about steadily depleting forests in Laos, this paper examines its causes and existing forest management systems in Sangthong District. Forests in Sangthong were virtually undisturbed until the early 1970s. Guided by customary law, a relatively small local population utilised the forest sustainably for food, fodder, wood fuel and construction materials. Subsequently the government effectively abolished customary law through the declaration of forests as state property and the sanctioning of logging. Logging was banned in the early 1990s but forest degradation continues as a result of ongoing logging, the open access to forests, the government policy of utilising degraded forests for agriculture, and population pressure from in-migration. Village surveys show that local people appreciate ecological and economic values of forest resources and are willing to contribute to their management. These social qualities lay the foundation of a sustainable forest management system, but the evolution of this type of system has been prevented by the "open access" to forest resources. For effective forest conservation a management strategy focused on property rights reform, public participation and integrated rural development is proposed.     

Environmental Resources, Population and Sustainability: Evidence From Zimbabwe

This paper examines four issues central to the relationships between environmental resources, population and sustainability in Zimbabwe. First, the conceptualisation of population-resource interrelationships and sustainability. Second, the legal basis of land use practices and origins of land use conflict within and between Zimbabwe's main population groups. Third, the demographic threats to sustainable resource development and the impact of the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) on rural and urban communities. Fourth, the dynamics of population change and environmental resource use constraints including resettlement and land redistribution or reform programmes. It is concluded that the relationships between environmental degradation and population pressure are complex. Sustainable environmental resource use to supply basic livelihoods can be achieved if appropriate technical expertise or backup is provided to the population. Developing and implementing sustainable resource development strategies in Zimbabwe requires attention to socio-economic and political challenges.     

Advocates in East Germany after 1949

The article deals with the development of the legal profession in the former German Democratic Republic after 1949 and in the five new Bundesländer since 3 October 1990, the day of German unification. It shows the transition from the traditional western concept of an independent bar to a profession bound by socialist ideals. The process of change before, and the development after, unification are highlighted from the viewpoints of the East German bar's perception of itself, the financial and social background and of the inequality in the provision of legal services within East Germany and in comparison to the West. The paper concludes that there are still significant differences in the provision of legal services in East and West Germany, and that the legal profession faces a formidable challenge to its self-regulating abilities.     

渔民视角下中国南海的领域构建

南海的战略态势对中国经济和安全利益具有重大影响。基于对中国海南省渔民的实地调研,探讨了不同权力主体在南海的领域化过程及其中渔民的能动作用。结果表明：中国的南海主权边界明晰,具有历史延承性,但近代空间行为主体的多元化,多重领域相互叠置,使得南海的领域矩阵呈现出多尺度复合性和权力逻辑复杂化的特点,进而诱发不同层次领域间的潜在冲突和不稳定性。着眼于其中渔民自下而上的主体作用,探讨渔民基于生存动机和日常生活实践,对南海家园式的领域化,这种行为使渔民成为国家领域空间秩序的维护者,也因其特有的族群惯习,对国家的领域治理结构形成挑战。