Stop FEMA Now: Social media,activism and the sacrificed citizen

In an era of late capitalism and climate crisis, an expanding, heterogeneous network of people find themselves precariously positioned at the edge of disaster. This paper explores how Stop FEMA Now, a coalition of U.S. flood disaster survivors and other coastal homeowners, used social media to challenge neoliberal policies that produced – and then privatized – environmental risk. I find that social media played a crucial and sometimes unexpected role in enabling activists to organize across difference and cohere around an identity that emphasized their multiple layers of vulnerability and responsibilization. Through images that reembedded natural disasters in their political and economic contexts, activists exposed their historic and ongoing abandonment by neoliberal policies and state failures. Ultimately, such abandonments forfeited coastal homeowners to a future marked by fiscal and climate crisis, constituting them as sacrificed citizens. And yet, I also propose that the struggles of sacrificed citizens offer new possibilities for coalitions and pluralisms.     

The social licence to operate and its role in marine governance: Insights from Australia

Traditionally, the ‘social licence to operate’ (SLO) refers to the societal expectations imposed on corporate and commercial activities, often displayed by the willingness for corporations to go beyond the requirements of formal regulations. Alternatively, this paper investigates the emerging influence of the SLO in shaping government decisions regarding the use and impact of the marine environment and its resources. Using expert interviews, text analysis and case study analysis, this research delineated the contemporary SLO as it has manifested in Australian marine governance, with the results indicating that this is potentially occurring at a pace faster than can be systematically reacted to within the current political decision-making processes. Under these emerging conditions, the risk has been identified that traditional government decision-making and stakeholder consultation processes are lagging in their capacity to adapt to ensure that public policy processes can support and engage in this shifting dialogue and ensure the influence of information is appropriately weighted. This research highlights an emerging adjustment of community presence in marine governance and the immediate complexities and challenges this creates for government decision-making. In particular, it begins to explore the interaction of differing information, how this information is carried through communication channels, stakeholder behaviour, approaches to withholding or granting a SLO and the responsibility this carries.     

Selecting and assessing social objectives for Australian fisheries management

This paper details Australian research that developed tools to assist fisheries managers and government agencies in engaging with the social dimension of industry and community welfare in fisheries management. These tools are in the form of objectives and indicators. These highlight the social dimensions and the effects of management plans and policy implementation on fishing industries and associated communities, while also taking into account the primacy of ecological imperatives. The deployment of these objectives and indicators initially provides a benchmark and, over the life of a management plan, can subsequently be used to identify trends in effects on a variety of social and economic elements that may be objectives in the management of a fishery. It is acknowledged that the degree to which factors can be monitored will be dependent upon resources of management agencies, however these frameworks provide a method for effectively monitoring and measuring change in the social dimension of fisheries management.Essentially, the work discussed in this paper provides fisheries management with the means to both track and begin to understand the effects of government policy and management plans on the social dimension of the fishing industry and its associated communities. Such tools allow the consideration of these elements, within an evidence base, into policy arrangements, and consequently provide an invaluable contribution to the ability to address resilience and sustainability of fishing industries and associated communities.     

Church-based social capital, networks and geographical scale: Katrina evacuation, relocation, and recovery in a New Orleans Vietnamese American community

This research examines the role of social capital and networks to explain the evacuation, relocation, and recovery experiences of a Vietnamese American community in New Orleans, Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. As the single largest community institution, the parish church’s complex bonding and bridging social capital and networks proved particularly critical in part because of its historically based ontological security. The process of evacuation, but especially relocation and recovery, was dependent on deploying co-ethnic social capital and networks at a variety of geographical scales. Beyond the local or community scale, extra-local, regional, and national scales of social capital and networks reproduced a spatially redefined Vietnamese American community. Part of the recovery process included constructing discursive place-based collective-action frames to successfully contest a nearby landfill that in turn engendered social capital and networks crossing ethnic boundaries to include the extra-local African American community. Engaging social capital and networks beyond the local geographical scale cultivated a Vietnamese American community with an emergent post-Katrina cultural and political identity.     

西部省会城市新型城镇化水平综合测度研究

新型城镇化是中国经济社会健康、稳定、可持续发展的根本途径,也是消除中国城乡社会经济"二元结构"的根本出路。根据新型城镇化的内涵,从人口、经济发展、生活质量、基础设施、资源环境、城乡统筹6个方面,构建了包含24项指标的新型城镇化水平综合测度指标体系,运用熵值法,对西部11个省会城市2005—2015年的城镇化发展水平进行综合测度。研究表明:西部省会城市的新型城镇化发展水平存在显著差异,总体上可分为"高等水平"、"中等水平"、"低等水平"3个级别,基础设施建设是造成差异的主要驱动力。各城市不同年间的城镇化单项水平影响因素呈现多元化,在今后的发展中应有所侧重,同时兼顾城镇化质量,推动城乡协调发展。     

资源产业依赖、人力资本与“资源诅咒”假说——基于资源型城市的再检验

利用2003—2013年中国典型资源型城市的面板数据,在考虑潜在内生性的条件下,使用动态面板系统广义矩估计方法,开展"资源诅咒"假说的再检验,进一步讨论资源型城市的人力资本能否有效缓解"资源诅咒"。结果表明:中国资源型城市普遍存在"资源诅咒"现象;人力资本对经济增长的正向作用虽在一定程度上可以弥补资源产业依赖对增长的负向作用,但却不能明显抑制"资源诅咒";资源型城市普遍存在资源产业依赖对人力资本投资的"挤出"。     

Transition in place: Dynamics,possibilities, and constraints

The Transition Movement is a translocal phenomenon circulated through transnational grassroots networks. This study explores the geographies of the Transition Movement with a theoretical framework that perceives it as both a social movement and a grassroots innovation. Participant-observation of Transition Salt Lake (TSL), located in the suburban metropolis of Salt Lake City, Utah, was conducted, as the United States remains a largely understudied country in regards to this particular movement. In this pursuit, we asked: (i) how and what this transition initiative draws from geographically extensive and intensive relations, (ii) how it combines place-specific elements and generalized models (embeddedness), and (iii) how this impacts the success of the transition initiative and how these impacts (positive or negative) are generated. Place, space, and scale played a large role in defining the nature, dynamics, possibilities, and constraints of this transition initiative. Specifically, geographically intensive and extensive relations were critical for the mobilization of complementary resources. The Transition model was found to be flexible, allowing for the initiative to adopt those elements that worked in place and to focus on locally relevant topics. TSL faced many challenges identified by previous researchers regarding finances, participation, diversity, and intragroup competition. While networking with other similar groups, TSL demonstrated that fertile environments of activism are incubatory pools for grassroots innovations and social movements, and a trade-off was found with competition for resources between local groups.     

人力资本促进区域旅游经济效率的空间差异研究

在DEA-MI模型的基础上,采用空间计量模型就人力资本与区域旅游经济效率的关系进行分析,探究人力资本对区域旅游经济效率的贡献。结果发现:旅游经济效率具有典型的"胡焕庸线"空间特征,旅游业及其子行业的区域旅游经济效率以1为标准线上下波动;人力资本与区域旅游经济效率空间关系也基本具备"胡焕庸线"空间特征。宁夏等西北地区区域经济效率较高,虽然人力资本存量不足,但其贡献率较大。福建等东南地区、四川和云南等沿线地区旅游业存在"人力资本错配"现象,东南地区虽然人力资本富集,但其贡献率较低,星级饭店业和旅行社业打破"胡焕庸线"的区域特征;中等人力资本在旅游业及其子行业中能正向促进区域旅游经济效率,高水平人力资本在旅游子行业中能推进经济效率的增长,但在旅游业整体中反而抑制旅游经济效率,这说明旅游业整体上还是一个典型的劳动密集型行业,而星级饭店和旅行社业已经初步具备知识密集型行业特征;区域地理性、对外开放度、基础设施等是人力资本效能发挥的主要影响因素,制约着区域旅游经济效率的提升。因此需要健全旅游人才匹配体系,最大程度地发挥人力资本效能,科学构建人力资本与区域旅游经济效率协同机制。     

The social relations of catfish production in Vietnam

The growth of intensive export-oriented Pangasius catfish production in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta is unparalleled in terms of rapidity and scale by any other agricultural sector, with production climbing from a low base to more than 1 million tons in a single decade. This paper examines the effects of this remarkable change on the rural class structure in locations where catfish farming has boomed, and analyses the role of local state-society relations in mediating outcomes resulting from the integration of local actors into the global value chain. We conclude that private economic activity is deeply embedded in informal relations with the state bureaucracy in Vietnam, with the result that the expansion of catfish aquaculture has generally acted to reproduce and entrench existing class relations rather leading to a radical reconfiguration of the rural class structure.     

利用探矿权引进外资合作勘查有关问题的探讨

本文根据探矿权人的具体情况,阐述了引资勘查的重要性;结合现行法律,法规,论述了利用探矿权引进外资勘查项目的特殊性和复杂性,并就西部大开发和招商引资的要求,对贵州省的探矿权招商引资政策和法规出台,促进我省的矿产资源勘查开发,提出一些建议。