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Political Circumstances (political + circumstance)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

Two-Timing: Politics and Response Latencies in a Bilingual Survey

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2000
Joseph F. Fletcher
Through the recording of response times in a national four-wave bilingual panel survey, this study reports improvements in the prediction of vote choice up to 1 year in advance of a federal election. These results were achieved with conventional computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) software, indicating that the immediate use of response time measures isboth practical and attractive for commercial as well as academic survey units. Even so, response latencies were found to be sensitive to political circumstance, such that timings should be analyzed separately for minority and majority populations. Moreover, a broad analytic focus, beyond timing only vote intention and partisan commitment, is recommended because latency data on core questions of identity and allegiance reveal a great deal about the contours ofpolitical context. [source]

The Spatially Splintered State: Myths and Realities in the Regulation of Marine Fisheries in Tamil Nadu, India

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 4 2003
Maarten Bavinck
The spatial dimension of law is a neglected field of study. This article responds to suggestions that have been made to develop a ,geography of law', and investigates expressions of State-centred law regarding common pool natural resources. It asks how variations in law between lower-level territorial units are to be explained in situations where patterns of resource exploitation are similar and the overarching State proclaims an even approach. To explore these issues, the article focuses on a case study of Tamil Nadu marine fisheries. Comparing the reality of State regulation in different coastal districts, the author argues that the State occupies a relatively weak position vis-ŕ-vis user groups, and strives to maximize its legitimacy by adapting to local political circumstances. The end result is a legal patchwork with strong spatial connotations. [source]

COMPARING INVASIVE NETWORKS: CULTURAL AND POLITICAL BIOGRAPHIES OF INVASIVE SPECIES,

GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW, Issue 2 2004
PAUL ROBBINS
ABSTRACT. Under what cultural and political conditions do certain species become successful invaders? What impact does species invasion have on human culture and politics? The work assembled in this special issue of the Geographical Review suggests complex interspecies interactions that complicate any answer to these questions. It demonstrates the need to advance a more integrative human/environment approach to species invasion than has hitherto been seen. Reviewing the concepts demonstrated in these articles and applying them to case histories of Mimosaceae (a family that includes genera such as Acacia, Prosopis, and Mimosa) invasion, two general principles become clear. The status and identification of any species as an invader, weed, or exotic are conditioned by cultural and political circumstances. Furthermore, because the human "preparation of landscape" is a prerequisite for most cases of invasion, and because species invasions impact local culture and politics in ways that often feed back into the environmental system, specific power-laden networks of human and non-human actors tend to create the momentum for invasion. It is therefore possible to argue a more general cultural and political account of contemporary species expansion: It is not species but sociobiological networks that are invasive. [source]

Conservation Geographies in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Politics of National Parks, Community Conservation and Peace Parks

GEOGRAPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1 2010
Brian King
Sub-Saharan Africa has been the location of intense conservation planning since the colonial era. Under the auspices of wilderness protection, colonial authorities established national parks largely for the purpose of hunting and tourism while forcibly evicting indigenous populations. Concerns about the ethical and economic impacts of protected areas have generated interest in community conservation initiatives that attempt to include local participation in natural resource management. In recent years, the anticipated loss of biodiversity, coupled with the integration of ecological concepts into planning processes, has generated interest in larger-scale initiatives that maximize protected habitat. Central to this shift are transboundary conservation areas, or Peace Parks, that involve protected territory that supersedes national political borders. This study provides a review of national parks, community conservation, and Peace Parks, in order to understand the development politics and governance challenges of global conservation. Although these approaches are not mutually exclusive, the study asserts that they represent major trajectories to conservation planning in Sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the developing world. In considering the histories of these models in Sub-Saharan Africa, I argue that conservation planners often prioritize economic and ecological factors over the political circumstances that influence the effectiveness of these approaches. The study concludes by suggesting that an analysis of these three models provides a lens to examine ongoing debates regarding the employ of conservation as an economic development strategy and the challenges to environmental governance in the 21st century. [source]

Lives in limbo: Temporary Protected Status and immigrant identities

GLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 4 2002
Alison Mountz
The United States formulates much of its immigration and refugee policy to match economic and political circumstances. We interpret these policy shifts as a set of graduated positions on immigration and refugee flows that attempts to discipline the lives of newcomers and, in so doing, shapes immigrant identities. In this article, we analyse the interplay between the US government and Salvadoran asylum applicants negotiating procedures that grant only temporary relief from deportation via the policy of Temporary Protected Status (TPS). We find that each policy shift results in the strategic renegotiation of asylum applicants' identities so as to achieve the best opportunity for a successful outcome. Based on Foucault's ideas of governmentality and Ong's concept of flexible citizenship, we argue that what appears more superficially as a patchwork strategy of immigration laws and asylum practices may be theorized more deeply as a set of flexible responses by the state that turn on identity construction at different scales, and that aim to mediate transnational relations. [source]

,Carleton and Buckingham: The Quest for Office' Revisited

HISTORY, Issue 289 2003
Robert Hill
In 1970 John Barcroft produced an influential article in which he claimed that the ambition of Dudley Carleton to attain high office only moved towards fruition after Carleton presented the duke of Buckingham with a massive bribe in the shape of a marble chimneypiece for his principal London residence, York House. This is too simplistic a view, but it serves as a reminder that the role of works of art in the early Stuart patronage system has not so far been the subject of detailed scrutiny. The present article is intended as a case study of a particular instance. It argues that Carleton used works of art as part of a long-term strategy to keep Buckingham aware of his existence, but that he did not become a serious contender for high office until the duke moved towards an anti-Spanish stance that was close to Carleton's own position. In other words, it was changing political circumstances and not the presentation of objets d'art, however welcome these were in their own right, which transformed the ambassador's prospects. [source]

Cereals, Cities and the Birth of Europe: R.I. Moore's First European Revolution c.970,1215: A Review

JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, Issue 3 2002
John O. WardArticle first published online: 7 FEB 200
The First European Revolution c.970,1215 by R. I. Moore, Professor of History at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, challenges traditional understandings of the twelfth century, which have accorded perhaps undue significance to religious developments. Placing the period under study in a global chronological and geographical context, the book is very up to date but presents a generally difficult line of argument, an oblique rather than a descriptive reference to key events and developments, and displays a tendency to overemphasise French socioeconomic and political circumstances. Moore's book is nevertheless a landmark contribution, and no one will be able to say anything about European development in the timespan chosen without taking into account everything its author has argued. If convinced, the reader will go away satisfied that the period 970,1215 in European history was a decisive one, if not the most decisive one. [source]

Mission Encounters in the Colonial World: British Columbia and South-West Australia

JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, Issue 2 2000
Peggy Brock
This paper considers various aspects of the interactions of missions and indigenous peoples in regions of Canada and Australia. An analysis of first encounters indicates that the introduction of Christianity was dependent on both evangelist and client population agreeing to a modus operandi for the mission. The structure and operation of the mission were determined by the pre-existing indigenous society and the financial and personnel resources of the mission organizations. Attitudes towards, and acceptance of, Christianity were not static, they depended on changing material and political circumstances both within and outside indigenous communities. This comparative analysis indicates that religious change was not only negotiated between missionary and "convert," but among indigenous peoples themselves. The decision to profess Christianity was not a one-off decision made by individuals or communities. Rather it was a long process of change which was contingent on the perceived advantages and disadvantages of the mission world and countervailingpressures from within indigenous and colonial societies. [source]

How Do Real Indians Fish?

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 4 2009
Contested Indigeneities in the Colorado Delta, Neoliberal Multiculturalism
ABSTRACT There has been a growing interest in anthropology regarding how certain political conditions set the stage for "articulations" between indigenous movements and environmental actors and discourses. However, relatively little attention has been paid to how these same conditions can suppress demands for indigenous rights. In this article, I argue that the pairing of neoliberalism and multiculturalism in contemporary Mexico has created political fields in which ethnic difference has been foregrounded as a way of denying certain rights to marginalized groups. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in northern Mexico, I analyze how the arguments of a group of Cucapá for fishing rights in the Colorado Delta have been constrained within these political circumstances. I argue that cultural difference has been leveraged by the Mexican federal government and local NGOs to prevent the redistribution of environmental resources among vulnerable groups such as the Cucapá. [source]

The 1892 General Election and the Eclipse of the Liberal Unionists

PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY, Issue 3 2010
IAN CAWOOD
This article seeks to establish that the 1892 general election marked a major change in the relative positions of the parties in the Unionist alliance. Not only did it reveal the limitations of the Liberal Unionist Party's strategy and appeal in an age of increasingly organised, mass politics, but it also acted as a brake on the ambitions of the new leader of the Liberal Unionists in the house of commons, Joseph Chamberlain. It argues that the Liberal Unionist Party suffered a more severe setback in 1892 than has been recognized hitherto and that Chamberlain's attempts to revive his party both before and after the general election were now prescribed by the reality of the political position in which the party now found itself. Rather than regarding the fluid political circumstances of the 1890s as the outcome of an emerging struggle between increasingly polarised ideologies, it seeks to reinforce the significance of local political circumstances and the efficacy of party management in the growing dominance of Lord Salisbury and Arthur Balfour and the Conservative central organisers. [source]