Political ecology and the epistemology of social justice

Piers Blaikie’s writings on political ecology in the 1980s represented a turning point in the generation of environmental knowledge for social justice. His writings since the 1980s demonstrated a further transition in the identification of social justice by replacing a Marxist and eco-catastrophist epistemology with approaches influenced by critical realism, post-structuralism and participatory development. Together, these works demonstrated an important engagement with the politics of how environmental explanations are made, and the mutual dependency of social values and environmental knowledge. Yet, today, the lessons of Blaikie’s work are often missed by analysts who ask what is essentially political or ecological about political ecology, or by those who argue that a critical approach to environmental knowledge should mean deconstruction alone. This paper reviews Blaikie’s work since the 1980s and focuses especially on the meaning of ‘politics’ within his approach to political ecology. The paper argues that Blaikie’s key contribution is not just in linking environmental knowledge and politics, but also in showing ways that environmental analysis and policy can be reframed towards addressing the problems of socially vulnerable people. This pragmatic co-production of environmental knowledge and social values offers a more constructive means of building socially just environmental policy than insisting politics or ecology exist independently of each other, or believing environmental interventions are futile in a post-Latourian world

Inequality and identity in contemporary processes of labour market restructuring

Contemporary processes of labour market restructuring have resulted in increasing social and spacial inequalities in the United Kingdom. While the well discussed-issues of class, race and gender continue to be correlated to inequality, the decline in manufacturing jobs and rise in low-level service work has brought a new reality of identity-correlation. To remain employed, workers must increasingly transcend their geography and current job role; presenting an identity that is appealing to employers. Thus, in today's labour market with its increasing economic polarisation, previously strong social and work identities are now challenged by the logic of capital

Sorcery and the Criminal Law in Vanuatu

This paper examines the problems of incorporating norms of customary law into the substantive criminal laws of a Melanesian state system. It focuses on the particular crime of sorcery in Vanuatu. It explores the historical and sociological contexts to the belief in sorcery in society today, and also how behaviour generated by the belief (allegations of sorcery and sorcerer-related attacks) is dealt with by the non-state customary legal system. It then investigates how the state has treated the issue of sorcery, discussing both legislative initiatives and also a number of cases brought before the courts in recent years. The paper argues that merely transplanting substantive norms from the customary system into the state system without consideration of the procedural and institutional framework those norms were developed within, or the ramifications the law may have on other aspects of the legal system, is doomed to failure. Finally, it highlights a number of issues that must be considered in order to successfully initiate a more fruitful process of legal pluralism

The Tell-Tale Hand: Gothic Narratives and the Brain

The opening story in Winesburg, Ohio (1919) by Sherwood Anderson is called simply “Hands.” It is about a teacher’s remarkable hands that sometimes seem to move independently of his will. This essay explores some of the relevant contexts and potential links, beginning with other representations of teachers’ hands, such as Caravaggio’s St. Matthew and the Angel, early efforts to establish a sign-language for the deaf, and including the Montessori method of teaching children to read and write by tracing the shape of letters with their hands on rough emery paper. The essay then explores filmic hands that betray or work independently of conscious intentions, from Dr Strangelove, Mad Love, to The Beast With Five Fingers. Discussion of the medical literature about the “double” of our hands in the brain, including “phantom hands,” leads on to a series of images that register Rodin’s lifelong fascination with sculpting separate hands

Understanding Judicial Independence in Vanuatu

This paper is intended to fill a gap in the literature concerning the Vanuatu judiciary, as this topic is rarely addressed other than in reports by international non-government organisations, such as Transparency International and its local chapter, Transparency International (Vanuatu), or bilateral donors and multilateral organisations engaged in law and justice work (which is often unpublished). The paper also identifies potential sources of influence that threaten judicial independence, and reflects upon what insights Vanuatu's experiences may provide into the influence of informal networks on judicial independence more broadly. The paper also raises a number of unanswered questions relating to broader questions about the sources of respect for the judiciary in Vanuatu and the role of culture in relation to this respect.AusAI

The effect that rounding to prototypical values has on expected duration estimation accuracy

The scheduling component of the time management process was used as a ‘paradigm’ to investigate the estimation of duration of future tasks. Two experiments looked at the effect that the tendency to provide estimates in the form of rounded close approximations had on estimation accuracy. Additionally, the two experiments investigated whether grouping tasks together prior to scheduling would decrease duration estimation error. The majority of estimates provided in both experiments were categorised as rounded close approximations, and were overestimates of the actual time required to complete the experimental tasks. The grouping together of the relatively short tasks used in Experiment 1 resulted in a significant increase in estimation accuracy. A similar result was found in Experiment 2 for relatively long tasks. The results are discussed in relation to the basic processes used to estimate the duration of future tasks, and means by which these scheduling activities can be improved

The false friends problem for foreign norm transplantation in developing countries

This article investigates the difficulties in transplanting global legal norms into developing countries, specifically the problem of 'false friends.' This is a linguistics concept describing the situation where there is a striking resemblance between two words in two different languages, leading speakers of each language to assume, incorrectly, that they understand the word's meaning in the other language. Even more problematically, the misunderstanding is hidden by the assumption of understanding. We argue that similar problems can occur when there is a superficial similarity (but a fundamental mismatch) between particular global and local norms. We illustrate this through the example of global intellectual property regimes and their reception in Vanuatu and Mexico, showing how reforms are sometimes welcomed into developing countries on the basis of false assumptions that their aims are congruent with existing understandings. Finally, the paper develops some policy implications for avoiding the 'false friends' problem in a transnational legal context