Climate change,markets and standards: the case of financial accounting

Abstract

The paper examines unresolved attempts since 2005 to develop financial accounting standards for greenhouse gas emission allowances. It is a detailed empirical case study into how the large-scale experiment of carbon markets has manifested in a particular area of professional expertise – financial accounting. Theories about the role of standards usefully draw attention to the hidden work of standards in society and help explain why some things are difficult to standardise. However, there are notable gaps in conceptualising how standards are integral to wider processes of policy and technology change. Ideas from governmentality and hybrid markets (agencements) are therefore used to explore further the role of standards within markets, and provide a welcome avenue for thinking afresh about the relationship between climate change and standards.     

State Constitutions, Freedom of Expression, and Search and Seizure: Prospects for State Court Reincarnation

This article examines the decisions of ten state high courtsin the areas of access to private property for expressive purposesand exclusion of the fruits of illegal searches and seizures.The analysis centers on two questions. First, are some statesrelying on their own constitutions to resolve individual rightsissues while other continue to follow the United States SupremeCourts interpretation of the federal Constitution? Second, havethe states that do rely on their own constitutions to resolveindividual rights issues developed an independently based stateconstitutional jurisprudence, or have they simply attemptedto circumvent decisions of the Burger Court? The authors findlittle evidence that the state high courts examined here havebegun, as yet, to develop an independent approach to state constitutionalanalysis.     

Reflections on a Funhouse Mirror—Racist Violence,the Protection of Privilege,and the Limits of Tolerance

Jeannine Bell's Hate Thy Neighbor: Move In Violence and the Persistence of Racial Segregation in American Housing provides an account of racist violence as a tool for maintaining housing segregation that challenges perceptions of rising tolerance and demonstrates the importance of understanding racism as a structural feature of social organization. Bell shows how some perpetrators of move in violence deploy claims about “property values” as a defense against charges of racism. The use of such claims starkly illustrates how colorblind racism allows assertions of racial privilege to resonate as neutral articulations of rational self‐interest. The desire to defend racial privileges persists as a significant practical barrier to racial equality even when tolerance increases.     

Creating Direct Incentives for Wildlife Conservation in Community-Based Natural Resource Management Programmes in Botswana

Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) programmes in Botswana were intended to create a wildlife conservation incentive by providing rural communities with tourism rights to wildlife—with limited effect. The 2007 CBNRM policy, increasing central control of CBNRM, is likely to further undermine communities' incentive to conserve wildlife. A complementary conservation corps is needed to create direct incentives to conserve wildlife and to reduce human-wildlife conflict. Responses to contingent behaviour questions indicate broad community support for such a programme and the availability of a suitable labour force willing to work at costs that can be financed from existing CBNRM revenues.     

On field mice,butterflies, and tigers: Mark Twain’s ‘Ten Commandments’ and circumstance-based justice

The first reports that the Obama administration had deported a record number of people came as a surprise to many. As both Presidents Obama and Bush have attempted to pass moderate immigration reform laws that allowed for legalization, we must ask from where the impetus for driving up the deportation rate has come. The explanation leads to the passage of Secure Communities in 2008, which allowed state and local law enforcement to identify undocumented immigrants through federal information sharing. I seek to explain the social dynamics behind the passage of Secure Communities starting with a review of previous cycles of rapid deportation in US history. I then examine the political activities of the contemporary immigrant restrictionist movement for an understanding of their role.