Lipstick and catch shares in the Western Pacific: Beyond evangelism in fisheries policy?

The push for catch shares is on in the United States, nationwide generally, and in the western Pacific specifically. The prevailing understanding of catch shares emphasizes individual private property rights and changes in fisher behavior are understood to result from changes in rights in accordance with a long-established canon in fisheries economics. It is argued that this orthodoxy misses the causal factor in catch shares and thus constricts the range of policy options for catch shares. Moreover, this standard understanding of catch shares fosters opposition. Opposition to catch shares in the western Pacific can be understood as a specific variant of a generic pattern of opposition that is often centered on concerns for distributional impacts. Blind to the fact that their own misunderstanding fuels opposition, proponents of privatization resort to explaining opposition in terms of a simple, but inaccurate, for-or-against-catch-shares dichotomy. Perpetuation of this dichotomy has become a tool in the promotion of one particular ideological conception of catch shares and is a disservice to the public policy process. A possible path forward in the context of the western Pacific is presented that is based on diminishing the role of outside policy experts while encouraging local design of programs to meet local goals. Such an approach is consistent with the nature of development as local people adopt and adapt outside influences on their own terms.     

平阴县孝直镇关于大村制新型农村社区建设的探索和实践

平阴县孝直镇属偏远的农业大镇,为解决村庄规模偏小、布局分散和＂空心村＂等问题,充分利用国家城乡建设用地增减挂钩政策,以土地综合整治为平台,积极推进大村制建设,合村并点建设新型社区,从根本上改变农村面貌,加速城镇化和城乡一体化进程。     

Gender,Work, and Household Survival in South Indian Fishing Communities: A Preliminary Analysis

This article examines the interplay of gender, caste‐religion, and household survival strategy formation among Christian and Muslim fisher folk in the south Indian state of Kerala. The methodology consisted of surveys of forty‐one households in two villages in which data pertaining to male and female work patterns and other household level data were collected in the summer of 1999. My analysis demonstrates how particular ideologies of gender and work associated with different caste‐religion communities influence the strategies individual households adopt. I discuss intersections between gender and caste‐religion with other socioeconomic factors and illustrate the manner in which gender then gets reworked in particular ways in the course of economic transformation.     

“A world in a grain of sand”: towards a reconceptualisation of geographical scale

Difficulties in relating local scale change to broader dynamics of social and economic restructuring continue to be reflected in much geographical research. This paper argues that inadequate conceptualisations of geographical scale restrict the relevance of much research to the agenda of an applied peoples' geography. A framework which conceptualises geographical scale as dialectically and internally related to the totality of social relations, is proposed and discussed with examples from remote mining regions in Australia.     

From public neighbourhoods to multi-tier private neighbourhoods: the evolving ecology of neighbourhood privatization in Calgary

The privatization of urban space, as represented in the trend towards a wide variety of common interest developments and increasing prevalence of gated communities, is an international phenomenon. Recent research has not systematically explored the ways in which these types of developments are collectively re-shaping the public and private realms of the city at large. This empirical study of community areas in a Canadian city describes a number of historical private neighbourhood development trends and their convergence in space and time. Based on the empirical generalizations, a conceptual model is developed to illustrate how the trends may have combined to produce a new geography or ecology of space privatization within the city, one in which the older public city is being circumscribed and bounded by new territories of multi-tiered privatization.     

Gated minds and gated lives as worlds of exclusion and fear

Three interrelated concepts about the “gatedness of life” are addressed in this essay: gated communities, gated lives, and gated minds. All are important components in understanding the places where gated communities are located within a city as well as those who live in them. Mapping these concepts is a further theme discussed.     

Coral bleaching on high-latitude marginal reefs at Sodwana Bay,South Africa

Coral bleaching, involving the expulsion of symbiotic zooxanthellae from the host cells, poses a major threat to coral reefs throughout their distributional range. The role of temperature in coral bleaching has been extensively investigated and is widely accepted. A bleaching event was observed on the marginal high-latitude reefs of South Africa located at Sodwana Bay during the summer months of 2000. This was associated with increased sea temperatures with high seasonal peaks in summer and increased radiation in exceptionally clear water. The bleaching was limited to Two-mile Reef and Nine-mile Reef at Sodwana Bay and affected <12% of the total living cover on Two-mile Reef. Montipora spp., Alveopora spongiosa and Acropora spp. were bleached, as well as some Alcyoniidae (Sinularia dura, Lobophytum depressum, L. patulum). A cyclical increase in sea temperature (with a period of 5–6 years) was recorded during 1998–2000 in addition to the regional temperature increase caused by the El Niño Southern Oscillation phenomenon. The mean sea temperature increased at a rate of 0.27 °C year⁻¹ from May 1994 to April 2000. High maximum temperatures were measured (>29 °C). The lowest mean monthly and the mean maximum monthly temperatures at which coral bleaching occurred were 27.5 and 28.8 °C, respectively, while the duration for which high temperatures occurred in 2000 was 67 days at 27.5 °C (4 days at 28.8 °C). Increased water clarity and radiation appeared to be a synergistic cause in the coral bleaching encountered at Sodwana Bay.     

Transformation of a border region: dispersed agricultural communities in Brasov County, Romania

A most distinctive feature of the settlement pattern of the Brasov area is the extreme dispersal of mixed farming encountered in the western extreme of the county to the north and south of Zarnesti: the Bran and Poiana Marului areas. Here a system of peasant subsistence farming developed in a political borderland between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. Despite feudal pressures, the peasantry took all available opportunities to extend their independence including elaborate transhumance systems. And after seeing transfrontier commerce as a source of plunder, in the tradition of Balkan highway robbery within relatively unregulated spaces, the peasantry has profited through employment in factories, particularly during the communist period. However, the current recession in manufacturing is throwing the rural population back on limited land resources. Although farming assumes an important subsistence role which contributes to stability, the long-term survival of these communities will depend on new sources of income. Rural tourism has considerable potential and a promising start has been made in Bran. There are, however, constraints on the further development of the business and great attention will have to be given to the conservation of the environment in both the Bucegi Mountains and the Piatra Craiului where national park status is proposed. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.