Indigenous Rights in Freshwater: Mapping the Contested Space in Australia, New Zealand and Canada

Indigenous water rights are emerging as a critical contemporary issue in many countries. In Australia, New Zealand and Canada legal progress in this field has been slow, expensive and selectively dispute driven - and policy progress has been piecemeal, fragile, and often focused on procedure over substance. Yet the socio-political context for consideration of these issues has changed – particularly through the ongoing development of international Indigenous rights standards, the strengthening of local Indigenous voices, and improving public understanding of the issues. A common thread is the resurgence of Indigenous laws and knowledges – which has produced some renaissance in Australian native title doctrine, a re-framing of questions in New Zealand in terms of Māori laws and governance rights, and some ‘occupation’ of recognition space in Canada through the assertion of jurisdiction and traditional legal authority. These are potentially significant developments as regards the contested space of freshwater. Each opens new opportunities for Indigenous voices to be better heard and understood

Establishing the Liminal-Liminoid Distinction in Organization Studies:How individuals pursue a liminoid transition in a social venture incubator

While the notion of liminality has improved our understanding of individuals going through transition, its widespread use in a variety of organizational contexts has led to a dilution of the concept’s analytical precision. By analysing ‘liminoid’ transitions we simultaneously widen our field of vision and narrow down the precise meaning of the twin terms, liminal and liminoid. Following Turner’s original understanding, ‘liminality’ focuses on a pre-planned change of an individual within a conventional organizational structure, whereas liminoid addresses individuals seeking to make changes to the structure itself from ‘outside’. Through an ethnographic study of individuals in a UK-based social venture incubator, we address the question: what practices do individuals engaged in a liminoid transition adopt? Our analysis suggests that venturers deploy five practices: detaching and reorienting, exploring, structuring, compromising, and self-evaluating. We make three contributions. First, our empirical account of individuals’ practices provides a deeper insight into the specific social dynamics that unfold in a liminoid transition. Second, we contribute greater analytical precision and conceptual grounding for theorizing liminoid transition processes and practices by detailing their distinguishing features from liminal transitions in terms of motivation, context and conditions. Third, we contribute by discussing how different degrees of detachment from conventional organizational structures may impact the possibilities for social change and the personal lives of the transitioning individual

Establishing the liminal-liminoid distinction in organization studies:How individuals pursue a liminoid transition in a social venture incubator

While the notion of liminality has improved our understanding of individuals going through transition, its widespread use in a variety of organizational contexts has led to a dilution of the concept’s analytical precision. By analysing ‘liminoid’ transitions we simultaneously widen our field of vision and narrow down the precise meaning of the twin terms liminal and liminoid. Following Turner’s original understanding, ‘liminality’ focuses on a pre-planned change of an individual within a conventional organizational structure, whereas liminoid addresses individuals seeking to make changes to the structure itself from ‘outside’. Through an ethnographic study of individuals in a UK-based social venture incubator, we address the question: what practices do individuals engaged in a liminoid transition adopt? Our analysis suggests venturers deploy five practices: detaching and reorienting, exploring, structuring, compromising, and self-evaluating. We make three contributions. First, our empirical account of individuals’ practices provides a deeper insight into the specific social dynamics that unfold in a liminoid transition. Second, we contribute greater analytical precision and conceptual grounding for theorising liminoid transition processes and practices by detailing their distinguishing features from liminal transitions in terms of motivation, context, and conditions. Third, we contribute by discussing how different degrees of detachment from conventional organizational structures may impact the possibilities for social change and the personal lives of the transitioning individual

Work spaces in two small firms: the management of people beyond organizational walls

Recent work (Baldry, 1999) reminding work and organisational sociologists of the importance of spatial aspects of employee and organisational control may be bounding "the organisation" and the "organisational space" too closely. The homogeneity and unitarism of work space and organisation has been emphasised to the detriment of the plurality of places actually used in organisational and managerial processes. This paper presents empirical data from two ethnographic studies. The studies demonstrate that although the actual office or work place may be the primary spatial arena of workplace relations, other locales also serve as sites of organisational habitation and practice. The implications of such an analysis for the management of the employment relationship are explored

Static and dynamic views of European integration

There is a theoretical and empirical need to distinguish between static support for the EU as it now is and dynamic support for further integration. Although most Europeans endorse the EU as a good thing today, the European Election Study finds no popular majority for an ever closer union, the commitment of EU institutions. Less than one-third endorses further integration and less than one-third thinks integration has gone too far. The largest group favours keeping the EU as it is. Their outlook reflects ambivalence; they see the EU as having both strengths and weaknesses. It does not reflect lack of EU knowledge or of socio-economic resources, as is the case with ‘don't knows’. While eurozone institutions are committed to further integration, most EU citizens are not. Likewise, there is no majority supporting eurosceptic demands for returning powers to national governments

Ageing and entrepreneurial preferences

Previous research on age and entrepreneurship assumed homogeneity and downplayed age-related differences in the motives and aims underlying enterprising behaviour. We argue that the heterogeneity of entrepreneurship influences how the level of entrepreneurial activity varies with age. Using a sample of 2566 respondents from 27 European countries we show that entrepreneurial activity increases almost linearly with age for individuals who prefer to only employ themselves (self-employers), whereas it increases up to a critical threshold age (late 40s) and decreases thereafter for those who aspire to hire workers (owner-managers). Age has a considerably smaller effect on entrepreneurial behaviour for those who do not prefer self-employment but are pushed into it by lack of alternative employment opportunities (reluctant entrepreneurs). Our results question the conventional wisdom that entrepreneurial activity declines with age and suggest that effective responses to demographic changes require policy makers to pay close attention to the heterogeneity of entrepreneurial preferences

Collective Emotions in Institutional Creation Work

In this paper, we explain how and why collective emotions enable institutional creation work. Based on an ethnography in Limonade, a Haitian community affected by the 2010 earthquake, we identify social practices that elicit collective emotions through the creation of new institutions across the three disaster recovery phases. Our study’s key insight is that new institutions converge collective emotions such that they in turn justify ongoing, as well as motivate engagement in new, institutional creation work practices. Theorizing from our findings, we develop a generative model that describes the justifying and motivating function of collective emotions in the establishment of embedded institutions. In conclusion, our paper advances theory on collective emotions in institutional work and generates implications for post-disaster management practice

Functional characterization and signalling systems of corazonin and red pigment concentrating hormone in the green shore crab, Carcinus maenas

Neuropeptides play a central role as neurotransmitters, neuromodulators and hormones in orchestrating arthropod physiology. The post-genomic surge in identified neuropeptides and their putative receptors has not been matched by functional characterization of ligand-receptor pairs. Indeed, until very recently no G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) had been functionally defined in any crustacean. Here we explore the structurally-related, functionally-diverse gonadotropin-releasing hormone paralogs, corazonin (CRZ) and red-pigment concentrating hormone (RPCH) and their G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) in the crab, Carcinus maenas. Using aequorin luminescence to measure in vitro Ca2+ mobilization we demonstrated receptor-ligand pairings of CRZ and RPCH. CRZR-activated cell signaling in a dose-dependent manner (EC50 0.75 nM) and comparative studies with insect CRZ peptides suggest that the C-terminus of this peptide is important in receptor-ligand interaction. RPCH interacted with RPCHR with extremely high sensitivity (EC50 20 pM). Neither receptor bound GnRH, nor the AKH/CRZ-related peptide. Transcript distributions of both receptors indicate that CRZR expression was, unexpectedly, restricted to the Y-organs (YO). Application of CRZ peptide to YO had no effect on ecdysteroid biosynthesis, excepting a modest stimulation in early post-molt. CRZ had no effect on heart activity, blood glucose levels, lipid mobilization or pigment distribution in chromatophores, a scenario that reflected the distribution of its mRNA. Apart from the well-known activity of RPCH as a chromatophorotropin, it also indirectly elicited hyperglycemia (which was eyestalk-dependent). RPCHR mRNA was also expressed in the ovary, indicating possible roles in reproduction. The anatomy of CRZ and RPCH neurons in the nervous system is described in detail by immunohistochemistry and in situ hybridization. Each peptide has extensive but non-overlapping distribution in the CNS, and neuroanatomy suggests that both are possibly released from the post-commissural organs. This study is one of the first to deorphanize a GPCR in a crustacean and to provide evidence for hitherto unknown and diverse functions of these evolutionarily-related neuropeptides