A commentary on rewilding in Europe

As relationships between people and nature are being reassessed, not least as concerns about climate change gather increasing momentum, so a range of environmental and conservation themes are moving up public and political agendas. Rewilding, simply defined as increasing the role of natural processes within landscapes, is one such theme. This commentary paper outlines the variety of definitions and origins of the concept of rewilding, illustrates some of the elements of rewilding within Europe, and offers some general reflections on the rewilding process. The paper suggests that although many benefits have been claimed for moves to increase the role of natural processes within landscapes and environments, rewilding faces several challenges, in that it means different things to different people, public perceptions of rewilding can generate unease, hostility, and concern and it has only limited scientific support. At the same time, there is no clear statutory policies to guide the rewilding process. As such, rewilding organisations may increasingly look to communication and public relations to garner public and financial support for their cause.     

Productive specialization,peaceful cooperation and the problem of the predatory state: lessons from comparative historical political economy

Public Choice - This paper reconceptualizes and unbundles the relationship between public predation, state capacity and economic development. By reframing our understanding of state capacity theory...     

Resource Extraction,Economic Growth,and the Climate Dilemma in Canada and Australia

Canada and Australia are two of the economic success stories of the last thirty years, enjoying rapid growth during the 1990s and 2000s and (unlike the UK and US) escaping the worst effects of the 2008 financial crisis. In both countries, however, economic growth has become highly dependent on commodities extraction, leaving them vulnerable to fluctuations in commodity prices, and imposing political constraints on tackling climate change. This article explores the economic and political challenges which the role of the natural resource sector has posed in Australia and Canada in recent years, and examines the contrasting ways in which Scott Morrison and Justin Trudeau’s governments deployed the climate issue in the two countries’ 2019 federal elections.     

A commentary on the United Kingdom's leading food retailers' resilience plans in the face of climate change

In September 2019, the U.K. House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee warned that the United Kingdom's food supply was vulnerable to climate change. Within the U.K. food retailing is highly concentrated with the four leading food retailers accounting for almost 70% of all food sales. In the face of the threat of climate change to food supplies, a focus on resilience might be seen to have much to offer retailers. However, little work has been published in the academic literature on if, and how, retailers are employing the concept of resilience in their business plans. With these thoughts in mind, this commentary paper provides an exploratory review of how the United Kingdom's four leading food retailers, namely Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, and Morrisons, have publicly acknowledged the importance of resilience in the face of climate change. The paper outlines definitions of resilience and retail resilience, draws out four general themes within the U.K. food retailers' resilience plans, and offers some wider reflections on the retailers' resilience plans in the face of climate change.     

The makings of a man: social generational masculinities in Bangladesh

Abstract

The emergence of specific forms of masculinity is bounded by space and time. While attention has been given to the contexts within which forms of masculinity develop, rather less is known about men’s enactment of masculinity from a social generational perspective. To address this gap, insights from Mannheim’s work on social generations, and Connell’s notions of masculinity are drawn upon to advance understanding of social generational masculinities in modern-day Bangladesh. A multi-site cross-sectional study was conducted in three cities, using interviews to elicit narratives of masculinity from 34 men of three social generations: an older generation (aged 53–75 years and growing up in the 1950s and 1960s), a middle generation (aged 30–46 years and growing up in the 1980s), and a younger generation (aged 19–27 and growing up post-1995). Thematic analysis was used to identify key notions around what it meant to be a man. While all men subscribed to the view that ‘real’ men should be providers, they differed by social generation with respect to perspectives on work, religion and sexuality. Historical, economic and cultural changes across the generations have shaped these differences, highlighting the importance of a social generational perspective for understanding masculinities in Bangladesh.     

Heterosexuality and Race in the Australian Same-Sex Marriage Postal Survey

ABSTRACT

This article argues that race and class are central aspects of sexual citizenship in a Australia. It does so by investigating representations of heterosexuality that were produced and circulated during the 2017 same-sex marriage postal survey. Engaging with feminist and critical race theorists, we position same-sex marriage as not exceptional but part of a wider distribution of sexual citizenship within Australia's ongoing settler colonial history. We do so by introducing a number of illustrative examples of representations of heterosexuality produced during the survey. These representations reveal how same-sex marriage perpetuated heterosexual authority by asserting claims to authenticity and the occupation of space. We observe how heterosexuality in the survey material reproduced fantasies linking these three themes, for example, in an authentic white heterosexual family who speaks from their suburban backyard. It reveals that ceding to a bifurcated view of either progressive or conservative voices forestalls rather than advances other visions which may exceed the limited imaginings of sexual citizenship offered by the white liberal settler colonial state.     

Management strategies in response to an institutional crisis: The case of earthquakes in the Netherlands

When a policy sector is confronted with a relatively strong and steep decline in legitimacy, we speak of an institutional crisis. We know little about the causes or consequences of these crises. This article explores how institutional crises are managed. It focuses on the effects of management strategies observed in a case study of an institutional crisis in the Netherlands. While we found that policy elites displayed a tendency to maintain the status quo of a policy sector, we also found that the effectiveness of their response strategies was negated by the counter‐response it evoked among freshly energized interest, advocacy and citizen groups. We conclude that the resolution of an institutional crisis is inherently contested. Based on our case study, we develop a theoretical model and formulate propositions that may help to improve our understanding of institutional crisis management.     

Global poverty and inequality: are the revised estimates open to an alternative interpretation?

The level of, and trends in, global inequality and global poverty are indicative assessments of who has benefited from economic growth. The revision of price data has led to a reassessment of those estimates. Through an extensive overview of the implications, we argue that the data can be read in different ways. Official estimates show global extreme poverty and global inequality are considerably lower than previously thought. We argue that these changes are much less significant than they at first appear, and we present a more nuanced alternative interpretation by exploring changes across the entire global distribution.