Citizenship and the Politics of Nature: The Case of Chile's Alto Bío Bío

To date, most treatments of ecological citizenship have been concerned with identifying the ways in which particular approaches to citizenship might provide political tools for working toward more sustainable futures. The present analysis builds on an alternate perspective, which instead treats nature and citizenship as dynamic interconnected sites of power relations. While not dismissive of the existing literature, this approach is partly informed by a concern for promoting a more democratic politics of nature, rather than simply “greener” practices of citizenship. Furthermore, it calls for a more empirically-based analysis of the way in which nature is politicized by different social actors. By way of putting this perspective into practice, the essay examines the case of a conflict over hydroelectric development on the Bío Bío River, in southern Chile, seeking to document the way that nature is constructed vis-à-vis the country's dominant citizenship regime, and also to identify the insurgent voices of alternate ecological citizenships. This is achieved by comparing the discourses of nature and citizenship employed by various actors in the conflict, including proponents of the dams, environmentalists, and the Pehuenche indigenous people, whose lands were at the centre of the struggle. While environmentalists and the Pehuenche can be seen to have advanced significant challenges to the market-based citizenship of Chile's post-dictatorship liberal democracy, the failure of the resistance ultimately led to a re-consolidation of the central ideological components of the existing eco-political order.     

Filtration based DNA preparation for sexual assault cases

Police departments in the United States currently have as many as 500,000 unprocessed swabs taken from rape victims. The standard method for purifying sperm from these swabs is to resuspend first all cells and to digest selectively the excess of the victim's epithelial cells. The intact sperm are then separated from the contaminating solubilized DNA by centrifugation, careful removal of supernatant, and extensive washing of the sperm pellet, all steps that are difficult to automate. Vacuum driven filtration is an alternative method for separating sperm from digested epithelial cells that requires only pipetting steps and can be readily automated in a 96 well format. Sperm DNA is enriched 45-fold using this process and the yield of PCR ready DNA is roughly 20% of the amount originally present on the swab.     

Review

Richard Abraham, Alexander Kerensky: The First Love of the Revolution, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1987, xxii + 503 pp. £20.00.

R. F. Miller et al. eds. Gorbachev at the Helm: A New Era in Soviet Politics? London: Croom Helm, 1987, viii + 251 pp., £30.00.

Mervyn Matthews, Poverty in the Soviet Union: The Life‐Styles of the Underprivileged in Recent Years. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986, xv + 227 pp., £22.40 h/b £7.95 p/b.

Angus Roxburgh, PRAVDA: Inside the Soviet News Machine. London: Gollancz, 1987, 285 pp., £16.95.

Cynthia S. Kaplan, The Party and Agricultural Crisis Management in the USSR, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1987, xvi + 203 pp., $30.75.     

Reviews

Gordon B. Smith, Soviet Politics: Continuity and Contradiction. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan Education, 1988. xi + 388 pp. £30.00 h/b, £8.95 p/b.

Daniel Thorniley, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Rural Communist Party. 1927 39. London: Macmillan Press, 1988, xiii + 246 pp., £29.50.

Zenovia A. Sochor, Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov‐Lenin Controversy, Cornell University Press, 1988, $32.95 ($29.95 USA and Canada.

Robert Edelman, Proletarian Peasants. The Revolution of 1905 in Russia's Southwest. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987, xv + 195 pp., no price.

Robert W. Thurston, Liberal City, Conservative State: Moscow and Russia's Urban Crisis, 1906 1914. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, viii + 266 pp., £27.50.

Douglas R. Weiner, Models of Nature: Ecology, Conservation, and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia. Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1988, xiv + 312 pp., $35.00.

Werner G. Hahn, Democracy in a Communist Party: Poland's experience since 1980. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987, xxv + 368 pp., $42.00.

Jaroslav Bilocerkowycz, Soviet Ukrainian Dissent: a Study of Political Alienation. Boulder: Westview Press, 1988, xii + 242 pp., $27.50 p/b.

Petro R. Sodol, UPA: They fought Hitler and Stalin, New York: Committee for the World Convention and Reunion of Soldiers in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, 1987, 128 pp., $12.00.

Bruce McFarlane, Yugoslavia: Politics, Economics and Society. London and New York: Pinter Publishers, 1988, xxii + 240 pp., £25.00 h/b., £8.95 p/b.     

Reviews

R. W. Davies, The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia 3: The Soviet Economy in Turmoil. 1929–1930. London: Macmillan, 1989, xx+601 pp., £47.50.

Peter Nolan, The Political Economy of Collective Farms: An Analysis of China's Post‐Mao Rural Reforms. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988, viii+259 pp., £29.50.

Adam Zwass, The CMEA: The Thorny Path from Political to Economic Integration. Armonk, NY: M E Sharpe inc., 1989, xiii+268 pp., $45.00.

Szymon Jakubowicz, Wer rettet Polens Wirtschaft? Das Ringen urn die Arbeiterselbstverwaltung. (Who will save Poland's Economy? The Struggle about Workers’ Self‐Management). Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder Taschenbuch Verlag, 1989, 334 pp., DM18.90.

Jim Riordan ed., Soviet Youth Culture. London: Macmillan, 1989, x+148 pp., £27.50 h/b, £9.95 p/b.

Richard Sakwa, Soviet Politics: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 1989, xvi+356 pp., £12.95 p/b.

Walter D. Connor, Socialism's Dilemmas: State and Society in the Soviet Bloc. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988, x+299 pp., $37.00.

R. W. Davies, Soviet History in the Gorbachev Revolution. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan in association with the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, 1989, viii+232 pp., £29.50 h/b, £7.99 p/b.

Takayuki Ito, ed. Facing Up to the Past: Soviet Historiography under Perestroika. Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, 1989, 290 pp.

Seweryn Bialer and Michael Mandelbaum, The Global Rivals: The Soviet‐American Contest for Supremacy. London: I. B. Tauri's, 1989, 220 pp., £14.95.

Matthew Evangelista, Innovation and the Arms Race. New York: Cornell University Press, 1988, xvi+ 300 pp., $32.95.

Steven Merritt Miner, Between Churchill and Stalin: The Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the Origins of the Grand Alliance. North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1989, 319 pp., $39.60.

Olimpiad S. Ioffe, Soviet Civil Law, ser. Law in Eastern Europe, no. 36. Dordrecht, Boston, MA, Lancaster: Reidel, 1988, ix+382 pp.

Stephen White, Soviet Communism: Programme and Rules. London and New York: Routledge, 1989, vii+141 pp., £25.00.

Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History. Toronto, Buffalo, NY, and London: The University of Toronto Press in association with the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1988, xii+666 pp., £35.00, $57.50.

Francesco Benvenuti, The Bolsheviks and the Red Army, 1918–1922, translated by Christopher Woodall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, viii+264 pp., £27.50, $44.50.     

The Refugee Crises: a Study of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees

Recent events in international relations have raised the prospect of the United Nations organization attempting to provide a much more positive role in world affairs. This is also true for the constituent parts of the United Nations, in particular the United Nations High Commission for Refugees whose responsibilities have grown in recent years as the world's refugee population has multiplied and changed in character. The paper analyses the general development of the UNHCR from its establishment in 1951 and assesses its contemporary role as an actor in a post-Cold War environment. The claims of both critics and supporters of the UNHCR are considered on the light of the contemporary, political and financial pressures facing the organization. The paper also considers the character of UNHCR policy and durable solutions to the problem of a rising refugee population. The general analysis is illustrated by the changing role of the UNHCR in dealing with the arrival of the Vietnamese Boat People into Hong Kong from 1979.     

Romantic partners and young adult offending: Considering the role of partner's socioeconomic characteristics

In this study, we examined whether and to what extent the effects on offending of marriage and different types of cohabitating partnerships depend on the romantic partner's socioeconomic status (SES). Such research addresses a key gap in knowledge regarding potential heterogeneity of effects on behavior of romantic partnerships. Drawing on the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, we examined the within‐individual effects of three romantic partner's socioeconomic characteristics–education, employment, and income–on offending from ages 18 to 34. Results revealed that marriage was related to reductions in arrest only for those whose spouse was employed (full or part time) and had income. In contrast to marriage, partner SES was not related to arrest among those who cohabited with a partner they never married. Additionally, partner SES was often associated with reductions in arrest among those who cohabited with a partner they later married, but the reductions were statistically indistinguishable across levels of partner SES. Lastly, these effects were experienced similarly for low‐ and high‐SES individuals alike, and no gender differences were detected in these effects. Our findings suggest that important life events such as marriage and cohabitation can be behavior‐altering transitions, but the effects of these events are variable.     

Routine activity theory and malware,fraud, and spam at the national level

Crime, Law and Social Change - Email spam is one of the primary means to facilitate the perpetration of internet fraud and the distribution of malware. The present research sought to examine the...