Political Concern Research Articles

Krill: The invention of a global resource in the long 1970s

Abstract Krill, a little shrimp best known as a food source for whales and seals, occupies a central role in the food chain of the oceans. In the 1970s it gained increased attention as a potential food source for humans as well. With its supposedly inexhaustible amounts of biomass, Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) seemed to be a feasible alternative to fish, whose populations were suffering from overharvesting, and promised to provide enough protein for a growing world population at a time when the limits to growth were an issue of great political concern. Krill is a key object that brings together different actors from science, politics, and industry in a global struggle for living resources. There were many scientific and especially technical questions to be solved concerning the harvesting and processing of krill that will be addressed in this paper. I will argue that there were biological as well as cultural limits to these far-reaching technocratic visions that were not fully taken into account by fisheries experts in the 1970s.

Water Use for Energy Production and Conversion in Hebei Province, China

In recent years, with the socio-economic development, energy production and water consumption have been given more and more scientific, political and public concern. Taking Hebei Province, China as an example, this paper performs an in-depth analysis of the energy production and water consumption. In this study, the water withdrawal and water consumption associated with energy production in Hebei Province from 2015 to 2050 were estimated by using the bottom-up Long-range Energy Alternative Planning (LEAP) model, which establishes three scenarios based on three different development models. The results show that the energy production and their associated water requirements would continue to grow at a high speed in the Reference Scenario (REF). The energy production and their associated water withdrawal and water consumption were found to have decreased sharply in the Coordinated Development Scenario (CDS) and the Strong Emission Reduction Scenario (SER) compared to the REF. It shows that industrial restructuring, energy structure optimization and the renewable energy replacement have plaid an important role in energyand water-efficient in CDS and SER. Further coordinated management policy on water and energy should be fully considered to promote the sustainable management of water and energy in Hebei Province.

Medical Liability of Healthcare Professionals Under Omani Law: A Primer.

Professionals in healthcare face, not infrequently, medical liability issues in their practice. Worldwide, patient safety has become a major medical, legal, ethical, political, and economic concern. Oman has witnessed a leap in its medical and legal spheres over the last half a century. Developments in healthcare services in the country have taken place in parallel with developments in legal awareness regarding patient safety and bodily integrity. However, many healthcare practitioners remain unaware of medical liability essentials in their daily practice. Neither basic medical education nor professional development education incorporates medical law in general and, specifically, medical liability in their courses and curricula. Hence, this article attempts to present the essentials of medical liability in healthcare practice in accordance with existing Omani legislation. It defines medical liability and identifies four types of liability that healthcare practitioners might be prone to penal, civil, disciplinary, and administrative liabilities. Each of these forms of liability is discussed with examples illustrating it from enacted Omani laws. This paper concludes by recommending a further focus on medical law in basic and professional education of healthcare practitioners in Oman.

On Music and Political Concerns: An Interview with Hilda Paredes

En esta entrevista, la compositora mexicana Hilda Paredes habla de las preocupaciones politicas y eticas que estan implicadas en su musica. Expone sus ideas sobre la relacion de su musica con la poesia indigena mexicana, la conexion entre cuestiones de genero y la justicia social, el peso del racismo, la experiencia corporal de la violencia, la destruccion del lenguaje, y la relacion que tiene su proceso creativo con preocupaciones medioambientales. Abordamos estas cuestiones en relacion con varias de sus obras, en especial Kamex ch’ab (2010), El Palacio imaginado (2003), La tierra de la miel (2013), Harriet (2018) y Rainy days (2019). El resultado es una exploracion de como aborda en cada obra las cuestiones mencionadas mediante la construccion de redes de eventos, lugares y personas.

Risk Shifts in the Gig Economy: The Normative Case for an Insurance Scheme against the Effects of Precarious Work*

Risk Shifts in the Gig Economy: The Normative Case for an Insurance Scheme against the Effects of Precarious Work*

Drivers of COVID-19 Stay at Home Orders: Epidemiologic, Economic, or Political Concerns?

What factors affected whether or not a U.S. state governor issued a state-wide stay-at-home order in response to the COVID-19 pandemic of early 2020? Once issued, what factors affected the length of this stay-at-home order? Using duration analysis, we test a number of epidemiological, economic, and political factors for their impact on a state governor’s decision to ultimately issue, and then terminate, blanket stay-at-home orders across the 50 U.S. states. Results indicate that while epidemiologic and economic variables had some impact on the delay to initiation and length of the stay-at-home orders, political factors dominated both the initiation and ultimate duration of stay-at-home orders across the United States.

The Nexus Between Crime and Violent Extremism in Kenya

The link between crime and violent extremism (VE) has been the subject of increasing scholarly and political concern. While there is evidence to suggest a link between crime and VE, such evidence is particularly limited in developing countries. In an attempt to address this gap in understanding, Gayatri Sahgal and Martine Zeuthen conducted a study in a prison environment to investigate the relationship between criminality and VE in Kenya. The study finds a tenuous link between other types of crime and VE at the individual and organisational levels, with some indication of specific institutional patterns of recruitment and radicalisation within prisons.◼

Georgia`s Security Environment and Combating Terrorism - New Challenges and Threat in 21st Century

The article discusses Georgia’s security environment in the lens of terrorism. Taking into account that 21st century took the importance of terrorism on a global scale it became not only concern of word politic but domestic politics as well. It is the act of violence initiated by humans and are often of a malicious nature. That is a reason for increased attention toward it. Although Georgia is not among the countries with high risk of terrorist attack, there are some challenges in this respect. However, before estimating the threats coming from terrorism, first, we need to clarify conceptual meaning of security for Georgia and what are the main threats for it. Security environment in Georgia is linked with Russian occupation and terrorism, especially with Chechen fighters in Syria and Iraq who sometimes are associated with Pankisi gorge (east Georgia). Returning back these fighters in Georgia may cause some danger for its security. But Georgia has close ties with international society and it cooperates with different organizations with this respect.

Attitudes, Anxiety, and Behavioral Practices Regarding COVID-19 among University Students in Jordan: A Cross-Sectional Study

.The COVID-19 pandemic represents a major public health, economic, political, and scientific concern in most countries around the globe where COVID-19 cases and deaths have been confirmed. This study assessed the attitudes, anxiety, and behavioral practices of university students in Jordan regarding COVID-19 during the early period of the infection (March 19–21, 2020) using a validated, self-administered survey questionnaire. Positive attitudes or low-risk practices were given 1 point, whereas negative attitudes or high-risk practices were scored 0. Percentages of the total score were used for categorizing data into negative attitudes or high-risk practices (≤ 60%), moderate attitudes or moderate-risk practices (60.01–80%), and positive attitudes or low-risk practices (> 80%). Generally, the university students displayed positive attitudes and low-risk practices toward preventing COVID-19, with an average score of 81.1% and 84.3%, respectively. Approximately two-thirds (69.1%) of the students showed a positive attitude toward COVID-19 seriousness, concern of contracting the virus, and the appropriate prevention measures, and low-risk practices (67.6%) toward preventing COVID-19 including implementation of social distancing and good hygiene. Female, older, medical, or postgraduate students practiced significantly more (P ≤ 0.05) appropriate hygiene and social distancing behaviors toward COVID-19 than their counterparts of each group. More than two-thirds (69.2%) of the students were anxious that they might become infected with COVID-19. These results are important for health authorities to develop appropriate educational programs and protective health measures including good respiratory etiquette and handwashing practices, to enhance safer lifestyles and prevent COVID-19 transmission.

The Evolution of Ecological Consciousness: A Political Issue

The paper involves an attempt to focus on the question of how sustainable development became a political issue. The path to discuss the ideology and its growth as a political concern leads to an emphasis over its origin. First, an attempt to trace the ecological sentiments back to the dawn of the Neolithic or Paleolithic times where people respected nature and had a more caring and responsive view and how and how they establish harmonious practices for resource management. Second, the emphasis on some of the most dangerous and threatening exercises by the biologists through their books. Thirdly, is the phase of the late 20th century when intense use of land, industrialization, over population etc. became a source of origin for ecological consciousness. The individual and international conditions and impacts in the 20th century are supported by some examples. Industrialization and capitalism was a main cause for the evolution of ecological consciousness as it focused on profit generation and consumerism gradually over populating the humans and eventually becoming threat to their well being. Further an attempt is made to trace the conditions in India and the relation between poverty and ecological degradation is explained and simplified. Later the question about the comprehension of ecological damages with the decreasing availability of natural resources is been dealt with help of some examplesThe desire is to answer the question of how the idea of sustainable development and ecological consciousness became political that is how this issue being social, economic and scientific turned out to be a political issue or how the people became politically active and felt the need for their deliberate action over the concernThe dilemma of limited natural resources and their exploitation due to unending human aspirations for growth and development has also raised the question whether the natural capital stock which includes environment and other natural resources will be affected by these human aspirations.Therefore the paper is to make people aware about how certain evolution of ecological consciousness has been emerging to be a political issue by referring to the origin, evolution and related social complications.

Migration and Inequality

Migrants are omnipresent in cosmopolitan societies. Propelled from their homelands by poverty, violence, and environmental disasters—and the promise of better opportunities and security—migrants have found their way into metropolitan regions. At the same time, we see steep increases in economic inequality. These changes, which are intrinsically connected to the rise of neoliberal polices, have pushed immigration to the top of the political agenda for both the political right and left in many nations. The right seeks to erect walls, restrict immigration, and deport the undocumented. The left seeks amnesty, sanctuary policies and other measures to advance human rights in response to the migration crisis. Yet neither approach addresses the underlying causes of migration nor growing inequalities that together animate populist revolts on both the left and right across the globe. 
 In this paper, I employ a framework that foregrounds capitalist accumulation at the center of these processes. Focusing on urban areas in the US, I highlight the ways economic, social and political structures contribute to growing inequalities between immigrants and the native born -- as well as sharp inequalities within each group -- which, in turn, affect patterns of immigrant incorporation, politics and options for reform. The paper examines US immigration and immigrant policy, assessing their impacts on inequality and immigrant incorporation processes and outcomes. I conclude by pointing to contemporary social movements and evolving political alignments, which have the potential to achieve more egalitarian outcomes capable of sustaining social cohesion in metropolitan regions, as well as more stable and robust democratic systems across borders. Given that immigrants and their offspring comprise nearly one in four people in the U.S., addressing such inequalities is theoretically important and a pressing political concern.

Asian food and culinary politics: food governance, constructed heritage and contested boundaries

This introduction outlines the conceptual framework of the special issue. Culinary politics involves a contest over the social organization and cultural meanings of food by a variety of actors: both civil and state, the powerful and the grassroots. In particular, we consider food governance as a form of culinary politics entailing a two-way traffic, in which policies and regulations are set by state actors, while the responses of civil actors often reshape the foodscape and complicate the outcome of food policies. Food governance also points to the reshaping and contestation of collective and individual food identities, and how different power hierarchies can be challenged through acts of food-making. While food is an enduring cultural concern in human life, food governance and culinary politics should be two important concepts for researchers to engage with when examining individuals' soft skills of food-making and the exercise of soft power through food.

Constelaciones metafóricas de la memoria: Sumar de Diamela Eltit

En este artí­culo me propongo analizar la novela Sumar (2018) de Diamela Eltit a partir de la configuración discursiva de tres tópicos que funcionan como metáforas asociadas a la problemática de la memoria: el cuerpo de la narradora, el desplazamiento de los ambulantes hacia La Moneda y la idea de nube/archivo. Sostengo, a modo de hipótesis, que la noción de memoria se presenta en esta novela como un punto de exploración estética y como una preocupación polí­tica central para pensar el presente.

Generating a critical dialogue on gentrification in Latin America

Studies on gentrification in Latin America currently face two main obstacles. On the one hand, there appears to be a refusal by the academy in Latin America to use the term, regarding it as an expression of cultural imperialism. On the other hand, there has been an excessively flexible and ambiguous use of the term, obscuring political and scholarly debates on the issue. Both obstacles are partly a consequence of the lack of dialogue between the different authors in the field. This article generates a critical dialogue with the most relevant works and researchers on gentrification in Latin America, as well as with those scholars reluctant to use the term. Specifically, the author advocates for a more restrictive and clarifying definition of the phenomena and defends the utility of the concept as a tool to promote the critical analysis of the specific processes in many Latin American cities, as well as in cities outside the region. The paper concludes that, even though it should not be the main political concern for urban researchers in the region, gentrification is a relevant ongoing process in some Latin American cities and its study would contribute to a better comprehension of recent processes of urban restructuring.

‘Say on pay’ regulations and director remuneration: evidence from the UK in the past two decades

ABSTRACT The UK was the first country to introduce so-called ‘say on pay’ regulation in 2002, by providing shareholders with an advisory vote on the Directors’ Remuneration Report. That approach recognised that disclosure alone was not an adequate regulatory response to the widening gap between directors’ pay and company performance nor to the broader political concern over the implications of this trend for social solidarity. A second stage in the evolution of the regime began in 2013 when shareholders were granted a binding vote on remuneration policy. In this article we present the results of the first longitudinal survey of the entire phase of ‘say on pay’ regulation in the UK to date. We examine the link between each stage of ‘say on pay’ regulation and the level and growth of directors’ remuneration. We conclude by linking our empirical evidence to broader developments in shareholder engagement with listed companies.

Resource warfare, pacification and the spectacle of ‘green’ development: Logics of violence in engineering extraction in southern Madagascar

Bringing political ecology's concern with the critical politics of nature and resource violence into dialogue with key debates in political geography, critical security studies and research on the geographies and phenomenology of violence and warfare, this paper explores strategies ‘from above’ in relation to the establishment and operation of the Rio Tinto QIT-Madagascar Minerals (QMM) ilmenite mine in southeast Madagascar. While QMM claims to be a responsible ‘green’ self-regulator and sustainable development actor, it has triggered serious social, environmental and legal conflicts since its inception, including allegations of a ‘double land grab’ to accommodate mining activities and compensatory biodiversity offsetting. We argue that ‘pacification’, theorised as a productive form of violence that works through the re-ordering of socio-nature, underwrites the forms of ‘security’, ‘stability’ and even ‘sustainability’ that facilitate multiple and overlapping strategies of value extraction in the territorial and extra-territorial spaces occupied by the QMM mine partnership. By situating these dynamics historically, we identify ways in which pacification draws upon sedimented and evolving logics of racialised violence to facilitate operations and silence opposition.

The envoy

In 2016, Colombia said “No” to peace in a referendum, after a staunch misinformation campaign. Responding to society’s calls for official information on the Peace Accord, the government employed a strategy called “peace pedagogy” to counter the “No” campaign’s “myths” with “realities”. But can we really know which is which? Based on ethnographic research in the government’s peace office, this narrative article invites us into the shoes of a government official and a conflict victim during a peace pedagogy session, to imagine what it means to bear, and receive, this official message. In our global concern for post-truth politics, peace pedagogy offers a tool for government–society communication in contexts of misinformation and polarisation.

Somalia

This paper discusses Somalia’s Second Review Under the Staff-Monitored Program and Request for Three-Year Arrangements Under the Extended Credit and the Extended Fund Facility. The three-year financing package will support the implementation of the authorities’ National Development Plan and anchor reforms between the heavily indebted poor countries Decision and Completion Points. Reforms will focus on a continued strengthening of public finances to meet Somalia’s development needs in a sustainable manner; a deepening of central bank capacity; improvement of the business environment and governance; and enhancing statistics. Risks to the program and outlook remain elevated, although there is also upside potential. The immediate political risks concern the upcoming elections, while frequent climate shocks continue to contribute to agricultural loss and human displacement. On the upside, greater-than-expected impact from reforms under the program and additional development financing, together with the development of new industries, could lead to higher and more inclusive growth than the baseline.

Land Concentration, Land Grabbing and Sustainable Development of Agriculture in Romania

Land grabbing has become a priority topic in academic research and a political concern, due to interests in the dynamics of the phenomenon and its negative impact on the sustainable development of agriculture in rural areas. This phenomenon generates changes in production systems of agriculture with adverse environmental consequences, adversely affects socio-economic and cultural conditions and leads to lower overall efficiency in agriculture. This article analyses the links between land concentration, land grabbing and sustainable development of agriculture in Romania compared to other old and new EU-28 countries. The results of the research show that the land grabbing in Romania has a significant dimension compared to the other countries analyzed, which has led to an inadequate agrarian structure and adverse effects on the sustainable performance of agricultural holdings and the sustainable development of rural areas.

Possible Connections Between Intervention Research (IR-Brazil) and Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR-USA)

The purpose of this article is to analyze possible connections between research in social psychology based on critical participatory action research (CPAR) in the North American context and on intervention research (IR) in Brazil. Participatory research questions positivism and neutrality in the social sciences by creating mechanisms for the researcher’s participation in the field. In the scope of social psychology, CPAR in the USA and IR in Brazil radicalize collaborative processes, where researchers and community members become co-researchers. For the discussion of the possible connections between CPAR and IR, the epistemological, ethical, and methodological bases of both are considered. In the epistemological discussion, the differences and approximations between the historical context and the theoretical foundations of CPAR and IR were drawn. In the ethical discussion, based on the concept of contact zone in CPAR and analysis of implication in IR, the relationship between researchers and community members was analyzed. Finally, some methodological tools were discussed, such as group formation and the dissemination of results as regularly research strategies. It is concluded that both CPAR and IR have a centrality in the political concern of engagement in the social sciences in general, in the social psychology, as well as in the social change and justice.