Whales, Sustainability and International Environmental Governance

The international governance structures in place with respect to whales are dominated by the International Whaling Commission (IWC). However, the IWC's constitutive document, the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), lacks many critical elements of good governance which have evolved since the conclusion of the convention. Since the signing of the ICRW, there have been significant and far-reaching developments in the ways and means by which sustainable development and environmental policy is formulated and implemented.
Sustainability principles have expanded well beyond limited conservation objectives to include, in particular, the precautionary and ecosystem approaches. International governance has also evolved to require efficient and participation-based decision-making processes, including integrated management and sustainability, efficient and participation-based decision-making processes, international cooperation between States and coordination between international agencies, transparency, and dispute-resolution and compliance mechanisms. These are all elemental aspects of modern environmental governance.
Necessary reforms to the ICRW are substantial, and in light of the unanimity required, it is likely that only a new convention will achieve the necessary changes. A governance framework for whales must enable and encourage participants and stakeholders to cooperate in a spirit of global partnership. The goal should be to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the global whale populations as part of the overall goal of the sustainability of the oceans and seas implementing the ecosystem and precautionary approaches. It must integrate with other elements of international governance to that wider goal.     

Battered women and the state: From the failure of theory to a theory of failure

Within the context of legal reform, the Battered Wife Movement has divided feminists on the question of criminal justice as a desirable component of a feminist agenda. Thus it provides a good example of the dilemmas of developing a feminist theory about the state as the basis for informed practice. In this paper, Currie overviews the way in which the BWM has been transformed from a radical demand for the redistribution of social power into an expansion of current patriarchal institutions. As an example of the institutionalization of feminist issues, however, she rejects explanations of this transformation as simply ideological revision by the state. Rather, Currie notes that it occurs through and not against feminist discourse, meaning that we must acknowledge theory as practice if we are to develop a truly subversive and liberatory discourse within feminist scholarship.     

“Disrupting the surface of order and innocence”: Towards a theory of sexuality and the law

Conclusion The dominant male discourse as expressed in the law of sexuality constructs the male subject. In each area — rape, incest and prostitution, it creates and extends the power which underpins the sexuality of the male subject to facilitate the non-consensual taking of women in rape and incest and the buying of them on the subject's own terms in prostitution.Further, the law constructs the female as Other not as freely consenting subject but as Other for the male subject in the space of unreason, for the logic of desire.In these constructions, lie the paradox of the law of sexuality. It exists purportedly to defend and protect the victims of rape, incest and prostitution but even in so far as it does so, it reasserts, through its constructions, the power of the speaking male subject through and the exclusion of the woman as Other from, the dominant male discourse as it is expressed in and enshrined by that law.The author is grateful for the comments of Glynis Cousin, Mike McConville, Brendan McSweeney and an anonymous referee on this work.     

People and places left behind: work,culture and politics in the rural United States

Using interview and survey data, we argue there are three types of places in the rural United States, and that their social and economic conditions help us understand emerging political trends, including the rural support for Donald Trump. More rural votes were cast for the Republican presidential candidate in 2016 than in other recent elections, yet shifts to Republican votes were greatest in places undergoing the most significant economic transitions. Work in rural communities has been a source of pride and cultural identity for people as well as places, but many feel the new economy is not working for them.     

Exploring Jilin's Winter Wonderland

<正>Winter in northeast China is long.And very cold.During these frozen months,China’s northeast corner comes into its own.The countryside becomes caked with snow,and the icy streets of its cities wake up to a bitter frost every day as the sun struggles