Small island developing states and international climate change negotiations: the power of moral “leadership”

Being at the frontline of climate change, small island developing states (SIDS) hold a serious stake in climate negotiations. However, these countries usually are marginalized in the international political arena, due to their lack of structural power. This paper explores the strategic influence of SIDS and its representative organization, the Alliance of Small Island States, in the negotiations leading to the Copenhagen summit of December 2009. Using the concepts of leadership and discourses, the position, strategies, and impact of SIDS are analyzed on negotiation processes and their final outcome, focusing on three core demands of small island countries at Copenhagen: a temperature rise limit of 1.5 °C above preindustrial levels, funding for adaptation, and a legally binding outcome. Results reveal that SIDS practiced entrepreneurial, intellectual, and environmental leadership strategies and especially made use of moral claims in the debate. Given their near absence of structural power, they managed to secure a surprisingly large part of “their” agenda and interests in the final Copenhagen Accord, especially through (discourse) coalitions with various other state and non-state stakeholders.     

Euvoluntariness and just market exchange: moral dilemmas from Locke’s Venditio

It is a maxim of Public Choice that voluntary exchanges should not be interfered with by the state. But what makes a voluntary market exchange truly voluntary? We suggest, contra much of the economics literature, that voluntary exchange requires consent uncoerced by threats of harm, but that this is not sufficient. In particular, a person pressured to exchange by the dire consequences of failing to exchange—e.g., dying of thirst or hunger—is still coerced, and coerced exchange cannot be voluntary. The weaker party’s desperation gives the other party unconscionable bargaining power. We argue for a distinction, based on a neologism: in the case of coercion by circumstance but not by threat, exchange is still voluntary in the conventional sense, but it is not euvoluntary (i.e., truly voluntary). We will argue that all euvoluntary exchanges are just, while non-euvoluntary exchanges may or may not be unjust; that in competitive markets all exchanges are just, even those that are not euvoluntary, while in bilateral monopolies some exchanges are neither euvoluntary nor just. We will propose a mental device, the “fictitious negotiation”, to determine the just price in non-euvoluntary market exchanges. A primitive version of these ideas can be found in a little known monograph by John Locke, which we will analyze in detail.     

Immigrant sexual citizenship: intersectional templates among Mexican gay immigrants to the USA

Existing literature on sexual citizenship has emphasized the sexuality-related claims of de jure citizens of nation-states, generally ignoring immigrants. Conversely, the literature on immigration rarely attends to the salience of sexual issues in understanding the social incorporation of migrants. This article seeks to fill the gap by theorizing and analyzing immigrant sexual citizenship. While some scholars of sexual citizenship have focused on the rights and recognition granted formally by the nation-state and others have stressed more diffuse, cultural perceptions of community and local belonging, we argue that the lived experiences of immigrant sexual citizenship call for multiscalar scrutiny of templates and practices of citizenship that bridge national policies with local connections. Analysis of ethnographic data from a study of 76 Mexican gay and bisexual male immigrants to San Diego, California, reveals the specific citizenship templates that these men encounter as they negotiate their intersecting social statuses as gay/bisexual and as immigrants (legal or undocumented); these include an ‘asylum’ template, a ‘rights’ template, and a ‘local attachments’ template. However, the complications of their intersecting identities constrain their capacity to claim immigrant sexual citizenship. The study underscores the importance of both intersectional and multiscalar approaches in research on citizenship as social practice.     

DNA genotyping of unbuffered formalin fixed paraffin embedded tissues

Formalin-induced DNA degradation was studied at different fixation times (3, 7, 16 and 32 days) each on 10 formalin fixed paraffin embedded tissues (FFPET) stored for 15 years at room temperature.The four different extraction protocols used in this study showed that Chelex100 extracts performed the best at 3 and 7 days of formalin fixation (DFF) (with regard to the quantity and the quality of the DNA). However, Qiamp extracts showed better results for long sized alleles, as well for single polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplifications after 16 and 32 DFF, as for multiplex PCR at shorter fixation times. DNA degradation is expressed by the size of the amplified alleles, only 100 bp templates surviving after 32 DFF (AMG locus). Single locus amplifications (CD4 and FES/FPS alleles) performed better than multiplex PCR (ProfilerPlus), with nearly 100% positive results at 7 DFF. In both types of amplifications, the success rate decreased proportionally with the time of formalin fixation and, consequently, with the size of the required DNA template.