Mediated territoriality: rural workers and the efforts to scale out agroecology in Nicaragua

The Spanish word formación can be translated as ‘training’ or ‘education’, but Latin American social movements use it as inspired by Che Guevara’s notion of ‘molding’ the values of the new woman and new man for egalitarian, cooperative social relations in the construction of a ‘new society’. This contribution presents findings on the dialectical linkages between the formación processes led by the Rural Workers’ Association (ATC) and the gradual transformation of the Nicaraguan countryside by peasant families choosing to grow food using agroecological practices. We use Vygotsky’s sociocultural historical theory to explore the developmental processes of formación subjects and the pedagogical mediators of their transformation into movement cadre. The motivations of active learners to develop new senses and collective understandings about their material reality become a counterhegemonic process of internalization and socialization of agroecological knowledges and senses. In this paper, we further explore the formación process by identifying territorial mediators: culturally significant elements within and outside of individuals that facilitate the rooting of agroecological social processes in a given territory where the social movement is active. By placing the territory, rather than the individual, at the center of popular education processes, new synergies are emerging in the construction of socially mobilizing methods for producing and spreading agroecological knowledge.     

Democracies in crisis

The main contribution of this study is to identify democracies in the world that are at risk of becoming non-democracies. It is hypothesized that if democracies have a low level of legitimacy and have low effectiveness, they are at risk of becoming non-democratic regimes. These types of democracies are called weak democracies. Of the seven democracies that are identified as weak democracies between 2000 and 2010, the weakest of them, Mali, has already fallen. However, looking at the results of this study, it is not surprising that the democratic regime in Mali fell. The other six countries that are identified as weak democracies are Benin, Mongolia, Lesotho, El Salvador, Belize, and Mexico. The democratic regimes in these six weak democracies should be observed in more detail in the future to predict whether they are close to falling and losing their democratic institutions, or whether they will recover and no longer be weak democracies.     

Reply to ‘The politics of evidence: a response to Rulli and D'Odorico’

ABSTRACT

Indicators of carbon storage in forests and other land uses have gained much prominence to evaluate and endorse land-based climate change mitigation policies. The outcomes of such assessments can have direct livelihood implications for dwellers living at the forest–agriculture frontier, such as shifting cultivators or subsistence farmers. This contribution critically discusses the methodological relevance of carbon stock indicators to assess long-term emission dynamics of land uses, and furthermore addresses the ‘politics of measurement’ that can be involved in policy practice. From a complex socio-ecological systems perspective, the paper argues that carbon stock indicators provide necessary but not sufficient information to endorse land use policies with mitigation aims. While they may indicate one-off sequestration gains through vegetation and land-use change, they cannot account for permanent hidden emissions that emerge as part of the broader agrarian transitions that accompany land-use change. Over the long term, this may render related mitigation interventions ineffective, if not counterproductive. Furthermore, carbon stock estimates for future land-use scenarios sometimes draw on biased assumptions, or are constructed within histories of discrimination, through which they may further marginalize subaltern groups such as shifting cultivators. A paradigm shift is needed that includes more integrative assessment approaches.     

影响女性生育二孩意愿的因素预测及女性权益保护 —— 基于马尔科夫链模型

在全面放开二孩的政策背景下,女性的生育意愿受到越来越多的关注,影响女性生育二孩意愿的因素和女性权益的保护问题,已经成为社会关注的热点。本文通过发放问卷收集数据,应用马尔科夫模型分析预测影响生育意愿的因素和选择影响生育意愿因素之间的转移概率。通过概率推测出女性身体健康为影响生育意愿的最重要因素,其次为经济因素,与以往研究相比,经济因素不再是面对生育问题时考虑的最重要因素,新时代的生育观点已经发生改变,身体健康状况和女性的权益保护备受关注。根据模型的分析结果提出:女性权益适度保护;加强顶层设计,完善二胎配套措施;大力推动诚信服务业的发展,营造环境友好型工作氛围等相关政策建议。     

State Transitions from Rigidity to Fragility and Failure: The Case of Middle East and North Africa

ABSTRACT

The taxonomy of the state’s effective governance capacity present in the literature is evolving around state fragility. However, this article argues that a state moves along the state transition curve, resulting in governance capacity variations over time. It begins as a fragile state, consolidating to becoming a vibrant state, only to embark, eventually, on a downward trajectory through phases of rigidity, decaying, and fragility, before becoming a failed state. About one-third of MENA (Middle East and North Africa) countries are either fragile or failed states. Only technological change and knowledge accumulation and diffusion can shift this curve upward, thereby increasing a state’s effective governance capacity.     

东北亚的历史变局与中国的战略调整——以中日力量转移为线索

近一个半世纪以来,东北亚经历了"数千年未有之变局"。造成这一局面的原因纷繁复杂,但有一个因素十分关键,那就是发生在中日间的力量转移。历史和东北亚地缘结构均证明:作为地区主体板块,中国的强大是东北亚地区稳定的核心要素,东北亚力量中心向中国转移有助于促进东北亚安全机制的形成。但是,随着中日力量转移进入持平期,中日安全关系也将更加敏感、更加复杂,变数加大。中国必须充分把握这一趋势,塑造强国心态,构建新的身份认同,更加主动地推动地区安全与共同发展。     

Failure of authoritarian learning: explaining Burma/Myanmar’s electoral system

What explains why some authoritarian governments fail to take all the steps they can to preserve their positions of power during democratic transitions? This article examines this question using the example of the leading pro-military party in Myanmar, which lost badly to the National League for Democracy (NLD) in the transitioning elections of 2015. This article argues that a key to understanding how the military failed to perpetuate its power in the electoral sphere resides in its choice of electoral system. In 2010, the military junta chose an electoral system, first-past-the-post, that was distinctly ill-suited to preserve its power. We explore several hypotheses for why this occurred and ultimately conclude that the military and its allies did not understand electoral systems well enough to act strategically and that they overestimated their support relative to the NLD. This failure of authoritarian learning has important implications for understanding authoritarian politics, democratic transitions, and the challenges faced by authoritarian governments seeking to make such transitions.     

Democratization in clan-based societies: explaining the Mongolian anomaly

Mongolia is a long-standing democratic anomaly – a democracy in a clan-based society – that is rarely discussed in research. This article addresses the question, why did Mongolia and the Central Asian countries embark upon markedly different regime trajectories following 70 years of Soviet rule? I argue that the prospects of democracy were shaped by a complex relationship between clan-based traditional authority structures, social relations based on nomadism and the style of Soviet rule. In Mongolia, Soviet authorities carefully enforced collectivization across kin groups and provided all necessary public goods to citizens, effectively dismantling clan-based authority structures. This process unintendedly fortified nomadic social relations that enabled re-emergent elements of opposition and forces in civil society to fill the void of authority generated by the Soviet collapse and to use this counterweight to state power to push for competitive politics. In contrast, the Soviet authorities’ “divide and rule” with clans in Kyrgyzstan reproduced clans that easily took on a dominant role on the eve of the Soviet breakdown and filled the void of authority by placing themselves at the apex of political power providing welfare services and political order. This placed Kyrgyzstan on the path to a post-communist non-democracy.     

旅游人类学在美国

20世纪70年代,旅游成为当代人生活的一个重要组成部分,同时带来各种社会文化的碰撞和变迁.这一问题引起了美国人类学家的注意,他们就旅游者及其类别,旅游的目的、动机和方式,旅游给东道国带来的文化影响和社会问题等论题进行研究,形成了人类学的一个分支学科--旅游人类学,并形成由格雷本、史密斯、马康耐、马格丽特·丝旺等为代表的一批旅游人类学家.     

The Postcapitalist Transition: Policy Implications for the Left

The postcapitalism thesis asserts that open source and collaborative non-profit organisations represent a new, non-market sector in which the profit motive and monetary exchange no longer drive economic activity; in Marxist political economy terms, they are a new means for suppressing the law of value . Information technology has produced four systemic dysfunctions, limiting capitalism’s ability to function as a complex adaptive system: the zero marginal cost effect, the tendency to delink work from wages, positive network effects, and information asymmetries. In response, in addition to the traditional remedies of social democracy for a stagnant neoliberal economic model, left parties must adopt a programme of transition: aggressively breaking up technological monopolies; promoting universal basic income and basic service solutions; outlawing rent-seeking business models; and promoting data democracy.