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Certification initiatives are an innovative response to both a perceived governance gap in industry regulation and the demands made on industry by civil society groups. They develop criteria for sustainable practices along supply chains, monitor compliance, and reward acquiescent firms by mitigating reputational risks and differentiating products for environmentally conscious consumers. They seek to accomplish this with minimal cost to taxpayers, nominal disruption to trade, and trivial cost to the private sector in terms of fees or inefficiencies. This article examines the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification scheme as an example of the move toward nonstate, market-driven environmentalism. By utilizing a critical, Gramscian approach, it finds that while the FSC can be seen as embedded in, and furthering the agenda of, the neoliberal political economy, a close comparison to rival, producer-backed schemes exposes its antihegemonic underpinnings.

This article investigates emerging governance arrangements at the intersection between forest management and climate policy. The authors deploy the symposium's three‐dimensional framework to describe and evaluate developments within two distinct policy sectors (forestry/climate change adaptation and mitigation) at several levels of governance (bi‐national, national, and sub‐national) to explore the nature and operation of the emerging governance arrangements, and assessing and measuring change within these arrangements over time. Drawing on four contemporary case studies from the US and Canada, New Zealand, British Columbia and Alaska, the authors discern little evidence of a generalized, linear trend from 'government to governance'. Instead, they conclude, across institutional, political and regulatory dimensions of governance, a more variegated and diverse picture emerges. Their analysis also lends support for the Trubek and Trubek (2007) hypothesis that emerging governance arrangements typically interact with extant ones through modalities of rivalry, complementarity and transformation.

In the last years, the work by Engerman and Sokoloff (ES) on the divergent development paths within the Americas has provided an important backing to the institutionalist school. In line with the work by Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson, ES assume the existence of institutional persistence: once accepted the resilient nature of the institutional framework, it becomes easier to trace a link between an adverse colonial heritage and an unsatisfactory economic performance at present. Nevertheless, this interpretation, satisfactory as it is at the 'big picture' level, may also obscure both the presence of noteworthy causal relations and the agency of other actors. I am concerned with two questions. First: How to explain substantial differences in economic performance (particularly, land inequality) between ES's same type of colony? Second: Is it possible to include the role of non-European agency in the development narrative? The comparative study of the plantation economies of Saint Domingue and Cuba at the late colonial period sheds light on these issues. The intrinsic instability of the plantation colonies and, in some cases, the outbreak of slave rebellions with their visible impact on the institutions and the economic performance suggest more nuanced analysis. I conclude that the recognition of both political economy factors and non-European agency in the process of economic change could benefit ongoing research on the (colonial) origins of comparative development

En los últimos años el tópico de la memoria del pasado reciente argentino se convirtió en objeto de reflexión central en el campo intelectual y académico. Esto se ha evidenciado en la proliferación de trabajos que estudian la memoria desde perspectivas teóricas, enfoques metodológicos y posicionamientos ideológicos diversos. Este trabajo tiene por propósito mostrar los diferentes momentos que estructuraron el campo de estudios sobre la memoria, estableciendo conexiones con los cambios políticos y sociales que tuvieron lugar en el país desde la restauración democrática, a comienzos de los ochenta. ; In recent years the topic of memory of the recent past Argentine became the object of reflection central to the intellectual and academic. This is evidenced by the proliferation of memory work studying theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches and different ideological positions. Purpose of this paper is to show the different times that structured the field of memory studies, establishing connections with political and social changes that took place in the country since the restoration of democracy in the early eighties. ; Centro de Investigaciones Socio Históricas

International audience ; Evo Morales's electoral victories have confirmed the power of the Bolivian rural movement, but it still stays divided. In the Andes, the Aylus indigene organization fight against the rural union organization for the control of the rural world. This dualism is based on different historical processes structured from the 1953's agrarian reform. Then it grows with the elaboration of identity discourses and the constructing of a " symbolic boundary " between the two organizations, whose purpose is the conquest of the politic power and the gestion of development projects. Both of them weaving its own networks with non-governmental organizations and political groups, it creates tensions with Evo Morales' government between " politic " and " organic ". Based on the Northern Potosi's example, this work allows the decrypting of actual political and identitary processes Bolivia is going through. Indeed, the country is now in a deep change process in wich the social organizations are the main characters but fight each other defining this process. ; Si les victoires électorales d'Evo Morales ont confirmé la force du mouvement rural bolivien, celui-ci n'en reste pas moins divisé. Dans les Andes, l'organisation indigène des ayllus affronte l'organi-sation paysanne syndicale pour le contrôle du monde rural. Ce dualisme organisationnel repose, dans un premier temps, sur des processus historiques différents, structurés à partir de la réforme agraire de 1953. Il s'amplifie par la suite dans l'élaboration de discours identitaires et la construction d'une « frontière symbo-lique » entre les deux organisations, dont la finalité est la conquête du pouvoir politique et la gestion des projets de développement. Chacune d'elle tisse dès lors ses propres réseaux avec les organisations non gouvernementales et les partis politiques, non sans créer des tensions avec le gouvernement d'Evo Morales entre le « politique » et l'« organique ». A partir de l'exemple de la région du Nord Potosí, ce travail permet ainsi de ...

On 10 June 2011 the Final Round of the 2011 edition of the Moot Court Competition on the International Criminal Court in the Spanish Language (the 'ICC Moot Court Competition') was held at the seat of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Judge Silvia Fernández de Gurmendi from Argentina presided over a panel of three ICC judges including herself, Judge Sylvia Steiner from Brazil and Judge Elizabeth Odio Benito from Costa Rica. Students from the universities Carlos III (Spain), del Rosario (Colombia) and Sergio Arboleda (Colombia) presented oral arguments in the roles of Prosecution, Representatives of State and Regal Representatives of Victims in a fictitious case written by Héctor Olásolo, Professor of International Criminal law and International Criminal Procedure at Utrecht University, and his team at the Utrecht School of Law Clinical Programme on Conflict, Human Rights and International Justice. This was the first hearing ever held in the Spanish language at the ICC since its establishment. It was also the first hearing ever held in the Spanish language before any international criminal court or tribunal.

UBC Press (http://www.ubcpress.ca) published this book in December 2011. View the appropriate PDF file below for the full text of Appendix 2. ; The right to a healthy environment has been the subject of extensive philosophical debates that revolve around a key question: should rights to clean air, water, and soil be entrenched in law, in the constitutions of democratic states? In The Environmental Rights Revolution, David Boyd, one of Canada's leading environmental lawyers, answers this question by moving beyond theoretical debate to measure the practical effects of enshrining the right to a healthy environment in constitutions. His analysis of 193 constitutions and the laws and court decisions of more than 100 nations shows how the constitutional right to a healthy environment has been incorporated in legislation and is being judicially enforced in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Nations with constitutional protections have stronger environmental laws, enhanced enforcement, greater government accountability, and better access to justice, information, and public participation in decision making than nations without such provisions. As a result, they also have smaller ecological footprints, rank higher on comprehensive indices of environmental performance, and have reduced pollution faster. This important and timely book not only demonstrates that enshrining environmental protection into national constitutions has the power to make sustainability a priority, it tells inspiring stories about the difference the right to a healthy environment is making in people's lives. ; Non UBC ; Reviewed ; Researcher

Fil: Gené, Marcela M. Universidad de San Andrés. Departamento de Humanidades; Argentina.

International audience ; Evo Morales's electoral victories have confirmed the power of the Bolivian rural movement, but it still stays divided. In the Andes, the Aylus indigene organization fight against the rural union organization for the control of the rural world. This dualism is based on different historical processes structured from the 1953's agrarian reform. Then it grows with the elaboration of identity discourses and the constructing of a " symbolic boundary " between the two organizations, whose purpose is the conquest of the politic power and the gestion of development projects. Both of them weaving its own networks with non-governmental organizations and political groups, it creates tensions with Evo Morales' government between " politic " and " organic ". Based on the Northern Potosi's example, this work allows the decrypting of actual political and identitary processes Bolivia is going through. Indeed, the country is now in a deep change process in wich the social organizations are the main characters but fight each other defining this process. ; Si les victoires électorales d'Evo Morales ont confirmé la force du mouvement rural bolivien, celui-ci n'en reste pas moins divisé. Dans les Andes, l'organisation indigène des ayllus affronte l'organi-sation paysanne syndicale pour le contrôle du monde rural. Ce dualisme organisationnel repose, dans un premier temps, sur des processus historiques différents, structurés à partir de la réforme agraire de 1953. Il s'amplifie par la suite dans l'élaboration de discours identitaires et la construction d'une « frontière symbo-lique » entre les deux organisations, dont la finalité est la conquête du pouvoir politique et la gestion des projets de développement. Chacune d'elle tisse dès lors ses propres réseaux avec les organisations non gouvernementales et les partis politiques, non sans créer des tensions avec le gouvernement d'Evo Morales entre le « politique » et l'« organique ». A partir de l'exemple de la région du Nord Potosí, ce travail permet ainsi de ...

Machiavelli's reflection on Fortuna constitutes a precious alternative to the philosophical and political projects based on the desire to immunize fully the political community. Machiavelli's acceptance of the aleatory and unpredictable in human life and in the life of the state is an antidote to the risks that the processes of self-immunization constitute for the life of individuals and of the political community. Machiavelli's political philosophy is based on the acceptance of a plurality of outcomes and is, consequently, different from the totalizing aspirations of the European philosophers of history.

Anthropologists have been almost unanimous in rejecting the universalist claims of secularization theory. They have, however, engaged with notions of secularism (a political ideology of church-state separation) and secularity (a culture and habitus of areligiousness). In this article, four such approaches are sketched: Talal Asad's analysis of the interpenetration of secularism and history throughout Western history, studies of secularism as state ideology in Turkey and elsewhere, studies of secularism as an ideology of social closure against Islam in contemporary Western Europe, and studies of the role of secularity in the formerly socialist countries in the aftermath of an atheist state policy. Conclusions drawn from these approaches may point the way toward a more synchronized anthropological engagement with the secular as both an analytical and a folk concept.

This study interrogates both long and short written prose by a distinguished sample of emergent and established writers from Kenya as a microcosm of East Africa. The sample includes both novels and short stories published in English. The region produces literature that is both written and oral. It also produces literature in vernacular language, the regional lingua franca, Kiswahili beside English. The term contemporary has been used here to denote generally the written tradition of English expression in the turn of the century (c. 1991-2011). The authors under study include: M. G. Vassanji, Binyavanga Wainaina and Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor. The study conducts a critical interrogation of new works by these writers. These are: The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (2003), No New Land (1991) by Vassanji; Discovering Home (2002) by Wainaina and 'Weight of Whispers' (2003) by Owuor. We are interested in examining how ethnicity and gender as two major indexes of identity in East Africa today are treated in exemplary works of short and long prose. Specifically, how do these two indices, in the hands of the selected writers of note, contribute to the aesthetic and formal thematization, as well as treatment, of identity issues? The study emanates from the need to contribute to critical studies that trace the recent contours of literary writing across Africa in light of the call for appreciations of diversity within African identity discourses especially in the context of expanding ethnic and gender conflicts. Creative imagination is one of the pathways by which a people or culture presents itself to the world. It represents their internal and external environments. To study the sociology of literature is to contribute in the creation of awareness around a society and its vocal agents. This is our guiding assumption and it is rooted to the core of postcolonial studies as a discipline. The tendency to use or apply sociological parameters in the study of East African literature is well established. Owing to the multiracial and ...