Veil over the nets (unravelling corporate liability for IUU fishing offences)

The illegal plundering of fishing stocks worldwide is masked behind a maze of corporate structures that makes discovery of the beneficiaries of such activity, difficult, if not impossible to identify. This paper outlines the problem of illegal fishing and then develops a multi-layered response to avert the veil of corporate entity being used as a means of preventing domestic States from answering the principal thematic question—who is the true beneficiary of this illegal behaviour, and who should be held responsible.     

Corporate-cooperative management of fisheries: A potential alternative governance structure for low value small fisheries?

While the economic and environmental benefits of fisheries management are well accepted, the costs of effective management in low value fisheries, including the research necessary to underpin such management, may be considerable relative to the total economic benefits they may generate. Co-management is often seen as a panacea in low value fisheries. Increasing fisher participation increases legitimacy of management decision in the absence of detailed scientific input. However, where only a small number of operators exist, the potential benefits of co-management are negated by the high transaction cost to the individual fishers engaging in the management process. From an economic perspective, sole ownership has been identified as the management structure which can best achieve biological and economic sustainability. Moving low value fisheries with a small number of participants to a corporate-cooperative management model may come close to achieving these sole ownership benefits, with lower transaction costs. In this paper we look at the applicability of different management models with industry involvement to low value fisheries with a small number of participants. We provide an illustration as to how a fishery could be transitioned to a corporate-cooperative management model that captures the key benefits of sole management at a low cost and is consistent with societal objectives.     

Right to food,right to mine? Competing human rights claims in Bangladesh

The right to food is increasingly evoked by a range of actors, but there is not sufficient critical analysis of distinct interpretations of what this right means in practice. Through examination of a mineral extraction project with agricultural implications, this article explores diverse human rights narratives and illuminates associated corporate efforts to minimize recognition of food as a fundamental right. A British mining company proposes the Phulbari open pit coal mine in an agriculturally important region of Bangladesh. Highly contested by affected populations, clashes in 2006 between the police and protestors turned deadly in the area. In February 2012, a group of UN Special Rapporteurs cautioned the Government of Bangladesh regarding human rights violations associated with the planned mine. They warned that the project would displace hundreds of thousands of people, while destroying fertile agricultural land. In contrast, an ongoing publicity campaign by the corporation attempts to promote their intervention as a positive step, fully compliant with international human rights and corporate social responsibility standards. Taking this case as an exemplar, the article illuminates the pursuit of mining profit and the distinct use of human rights narratives by corporations and UN Special Rapporteurs. These diverse actors represent the layering of voices weighing in on mineral extraction and associated right to food concerns. Collectively, these layered narratives represent a new terrain for the promotion and contestation of mining and highlight the need to scrutinize mining practices in light of social responsibility and human rights claims being voluntary and self-regulated.     

Private agri-food governance and greenhouse gas abatement: Constructing a corporate carbon economy

Private sector actors are playing an increasingly significant role in the definition and governance of ‘sustainable’ agri-food practices. Yet, to date little attention has been paid by social scientists to how greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are addressed as part of private agri-food governance arrangements. This paper examines how private actors within agri-food supply chains respond to emerging pressure for measures to reduce GHG emissions from agriculture. Drawing upon the Anglo-Foucauldian governmentality literature, we introduce the notion of the corporate carbon economy to conceptualise the practical techniques that enable private agri-food actors to make GHG emissions thinkable and governable in the context of existing market, regulatory, and supply chain pressures. Using a case study of the Australian dairy industry, we argue that private agri-food actors utilise a range of techniques that enable them to respond to existing government environmental regulations, balance current market pressures with future supply chain requirements, and demonstrate improved eco-efficiency along food supply chains. These techniques – which include environmental self-assessment instruments, tools for measuring GHG emissions, and sustainability reporting – have little direct relevance to the ‘international climate regime’ of carbon trading, and carbon markets more broadly, yet individually and in combination they are crucial in enacting an alternative regime of GHG governance. In concluding, we contend that the growing use of sustainability metrics by international food companies is likely to have the most powerful implications for GHG governance in the agri-food sector, with potentially far-reaching consequences for how future action on climate change is rendered thinkable and practicable.     

Escaping the corporate net: Pragmatics of small boat direct marketing in the U.S. Salmon fishing industry of the Northeastern pacific

This article considers corporate power in the fishing industry of southeast Alaska and Puget Sound, Washington State, USA, as experienced by direct marketing salmon gillnet fishermen. Tracing the evolution of a small family-based fish business, this paper examines survival strategies of independent fishermen in a context of concentrated corporate power. Topics addressed include corporate domination of the fishing industry, “niche” alternatives to the commodity system, alliance with the farmers’ market movement, obstacles to direct sales and the critical role of family participation.     

Subcultural enterprises,brand value,and limits to financialized growth: The rise and fall of corporate surfing brands

Geographical political economy increasingly scrutinises the socio-spatial contexts for brands and branding. Less understood is the influence of subcultures – neo-tribal groups sharing passions, a leisure pursuit or practice - on enterprise formation and the pathways through which brands emerge, trading on perceived authenticity. Subcultural contexts, we argue, unleash distinctive trajectories of enterprise formation, reputation-building, value-creation, global expansion and accumulation, and ultimately destruction. Here we focus on how particular subcultural values – of authenticity, competition, risk-taking, and active participation in ‘scenes’ – interact with capitalist growth dynamics, and where over time and space such intersections bring brands unstuck. Using the case of surfing subculture and collapse of corporate surf enterprises (Quiksilver, Billabong), we theorise subcultural brand value creation and its interaction with financialized expansion, culminating in destructive contradictions. Subcultural enterprises with ‘authentic’, ‘back-of-the van’ origins convert subcultural values of credibility, localism, risk-taking, and scene participation into brand value. Trading on place-origins and subcultural authenticity, enterprises expanded in two phases. First by widening distribution using specialist ‘surf’ retailers, and second by offshoring production, public floating, and debt-financing brand acquisitions and massive retail expansion. Dictates of shareholders and investment banks spurred market saturation, and high-volume/low-quality goods. Surfing’s cherished insouciance gave way to unhinged expansionism and unmanageable debt. The subcultural authenticity that spawned brand popularity was undermined, amplifying financial risk. Disenchanted consumers who once co-created successful brands also co-destroyed them. As subcultural brands proliferate, geographical political economy must be attentive to subcultures as spawning-grounds for enterprises with accompanying limits to market growth, (dis)connections, and values.     

“This is a Montreal Issue”: Negotiating responsibility in global production and investment networks

While geographers have increasingly focused on how global commodity and production networks create new ‘geographies of responsibility’ there has been little empirical work considering how responsibility is worked into management systems and social activism in such networks. Drawing on literature from global production networks, geographies of responsibility and other literatures, this paper explores the dynamic and contested ways in which concepts of responsibility can play a role in network regulation. Both foreign direct investment and commodity networks (here referred to as ‘global production and investment networks’) are subject to complex negotiations and compromises involving corporate social responsibility and sustainability initiatives as well as shareholder activist, human rights, labor, and environmental activism. This is illustrated by reference to conflicts in Canada over Alcan, Inc.’s investments from 1993 to 2007 in the Utkal Alumina Project in Orissa, India. The project involved significant socio-environmental conflict. In Canada, Alcan’s investment was met by civil society campaigns that tested the company’s commitments to sustainability and corporate social responsibility. The case study suggests revising theories of geographies of responsibility. While foreign direct investment can create new relationships between distant others, these are fluid and contingent and not necessarily desirable. Rather than see networks as a source of responsibility we should work to ensure that the relationships that networks foster be structured to ensure our deeper values are respected.     

Methodological challenges posed in studying an elite in the field

This paper engages with recent debates in geography and associated disciplines that are concerned with the wider analytic issues to be confronted in researching an elite. Drawing on a case study of the construction of a policy position on GMOs and the Environment in Ireland, the methodological challenges encountered researching up the hybrid elite central to this development are interrogated. In particular, emphasis is placed on the politics of time, which becomes central when a new sector is emerging, and meanings and definitions are being constructed.     

中国企业本土并购双方的地理格局及其空间关联研究

借鉴已有理论与实证研究成果,综合运用GIS空间分析与计量模型等方法,重点分析省区空间尺度上中国本土并购双方企业的地理格局,从企业地域“根植性”视角探讨并购双方区位选择与空间关联的影响因素。研究结果表明：① 买方和标的企业在空间上呈现共同集聚特征,总体形成了与中国沿江沿海“T”形区域发展格局、“核心-边缘”城镇等级体系相似的地理格局;② 并购双方企业主要集聚于经济发达区域,虽然2010年代以来中西部省区企业参与并购投资事件有所增长,但省区间差异逐渐固化,北京、长三角、珠三角等大都市地区更多以买方角色主导企业跨区域并购,而中西部及资源型区域企业则多以并购标的角色为主;③ 企业并购投资行为根植于地方经济社会和制度环境,买方和标的企业的区位选择机制较为相似,并购双方更偏好集聚于证劵和金融市场繁荣、区域创新系统完善、经济和产业基础雄厚的区域。     

Knowledge makes the money go round: Conflicts of interest and corporate finance in London’s financial district

This paper argues that the conflicts of interest cases brought against Wall Street investment banks in the early 2000s were neither geographically nor institutionally isolated events. Rather, by combining recent work on financial knowledges in both economic geography and the social studies of finance with the growing interest in topological spatial imaginaries, I explore how London’s corporate finance industry was unable to distance itself from both the conflicts of interest allegations and the ensuing regulatory changes of the ‘Global Settlement’ in the US. Analysis of 36 semi-structured interviews conducted in London in the early 2000s is used to explore how a range of individual interests, institutional demands and structural changes within London’s financial district affected analysts’ ability to produce ‘objective’ research. As well as pointing to the problematic nature of certain aspects of knowledge rich ‘communities of practice’ [Wenger, E., 1998. Communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge], I explore how the resulting contingent and situated nature of research practice is at odds with a weakly defined notion of ‘objective’ research that underpins the Financial Services Authority’s regulatory response.