Divergence In Approaches Research Articles

Mobilizing at the Frontier: Framing Social Justice Claims in a Natural Resources Management Project in Rondônia, Brazil

Drawing on critical development studies and social movements literatures, this article analyzes how civil-society actors used practical and ideological resources to frame their situations in mobilizing for change. Focusing on a case study of a World Bank-sponsored natural resources management project in Rondoˆnia, Brazil, I examine how the discourse and policies promoting “participatory, sustainable development” have been used to achieve resource conservation, and to promote social justice aims within the current neo-liberal policy framework. Based on document analysis and in-depth interviews with civil-society actors, I argue that Rondoˆnia nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and grass-roots movements successfully mobilized by effectively framing their demands and by forming strong “movement webs” with national and transnational civil-society actors. The case study also explores the divergence in approach and objectives between local NGOs and grass-roots movements, illustrating the practical and political limitations to implementing participatory and sustainable development projects.

New Caledonia: A Pacific Island or an Island in the Pacific? The Eighth Pacific Arts Festival

The Eighth Pacific Arts Festival was held late last year in New Caledonia. This was a chance to showcase the Territory's development following the signing of the Noumea Accord in 1998. The fortnight of spectacle featuring over 2000 participants brought out a pan-Pacific concern to synthesise 'tradition' and 'modernity'. The Festival included writing and contemporary art, and provided a number of fora in which artists and administrators discussed common concerns beyond folkloric representations of culture. The place of the art of 'first nations' in museums was also raised. Finally, these fora revealed some divergence in approach between the francophone and anglophone Pacific.

Resolving Conflicting International Data Privacy Rules in Cyberspace

International flows of personal information on the Internet challenge the protection of data privacy and force divergent national policies and rules to confront each other. While core principles for the fair treatment of personal information are common to democracies, privacy rights vary considerably across national borders. This article explores the divergences in approach and substance of data privacy between Europe and the United States. Professor Reidenberg argues that the specific privacy rules adopted in a country have a governance function. The article shows that national differences support two distinct political choices for the roles in democratic society assigned to the state, the market and the individual: either liberal, market-based governance or socially-protective, rights-based governance. These structural divergences make international cooperation imperative for effective data protection in cyberspace. Professor Reidenberg postulates that harmonization of the specific rules for the treatment of personal information will be harmful for the political balance adopted in any country and offers, instead, a conceptual framework for coregulation of information privacy that can avoid confrontations over governance choices. The theory articulates roles for institutional players, technical codes, stakeholder summits and eventually a treaty-level “General Agreement on Information Privacy” to develop mutually acceptable implementations of the universally accepted core principles. The article concludes with a taxonomy of strategies and partners to develop international cooperation and achieve a high level of protection for personal information in international data transfers. *. Professor of Law and Director of the Graduate Program, Fordham University School of Law. A.B., Dartmouth; J.D., Columbia; D.E.A., Univ. de Paris I-Sorbonne. For provoking my early thoughts on this article at the 20 th International Conference of Data Protection Authorities, I thank

My Paradigm or Yours? Alternative Development, Post‐Development, Reflexive Development

Alternative development has been concerned with alternative practices of development—participatory and people‐centred—and with redefining the goals of development. Mainstream development has gradually been moving away from the preoccupation with economic growth toward a people‐centred definition of development, for instance in human development. This raises the question in what way alternative development remains distinguishable from mainstream development—as a roving criticism, a development style, a profile of alternative positions regarding development agency, methodology, epistemology? Increasingly the claim is that alternative development represents an alternative paradigm. This is a problematic idea for four reasons: because whether paradigms apply to social science is questionable; because in development the concern is with policy frameworks rather than explanatory frameworks; because there are different views on whether a paradigm break with conventional development is desirable; and finally because the actual divergence in approaches to development is in some respects narrowing. There is a meaningful alternative development profile or package but there is no alternative development paradigm—nor should there be. Mainstream development is not what it used to be and it may be argued that the key question is rather whether growth and production are considered within or outside the people‐centred development approach and whether this can rhyme with the structural adjustment programmes followed by the international financial institutions. Post‐development may be interpreted as a neo‐traditionalist reaction against modernity. More enabling as a perspective is reflexive development, in which a critique of science is viewed as part of development politics.

“Without regard to the interests of others”: Canada and American Unilateralism in the Post-Cold War Era

Introduction In October 1993, the election of a Liberal government was seen by many as the harbinger of a souring in Canadian-American relations. After all, the new prime minister, Jean Chretien, had explicitly rejected the essential pro-Americanism of his Progressive Conservative predecessor, Brian Mulroney, which was described disparagingly as a camp-follower approach; the Liberal party was on record as favoring the rejection of the North American Free Trade Agreement unless it could be renegotiated; and at least two members of the Liberal front bench then being touted for key roles in Chretien's cabinet--Sheila Copps and Lloyd Axworthy, the Liberal foreign policy critic--had well-established records of anti-American sentiment. (1) As Joseph T. Jockel has noted, however, the anticipated downturn in relations did not occur. Instead, in the first two years of the government's mandate, there was a persistent in the Canada-U.S. relationship, marked by the absence of major disputes between the two countries and the lack of evidence of deep-seated differences between Jean Chretien and President Bill Clinton. (2) Jockel suggests that one explanation for the calm was that the new government in Ottawa wanted to concentrate on the Quebec issue and the economy, a reflection of what he describes as Chretien's general cautiousness on both domestic and foreign policy matters. (3) It might also have been a function of a more careful reading of the mood of the Canadian public in the mid-1990s. According to J.L. Granatstein, anti-Americanism was at a weak point in Canada at the time, (4) and it might have been that Chretien sensed that, while Canadians might have been uncomfortable with Mulroney's closeness to American presidents, there was little desire to see their government pursue an overtly anti-American policy. Finally, the calm may have been a result of personnel choices by Chretien: both Axworthy and Copps were given portfolios (human resources and environment, respectively) that did not involve them in issues then on the Canadian-American agenda. Instead, the Foreign Affairs portfolio was given to Andre Ouellet, whose experience with international affairs was slight; Axworthy would not be given Foreign Affairs until the cabinet shuffle of January 1996. Equally, Chretien's first minister for international trade was Roy MacLaren, a member of the faction of the Liberal party which favored free trade. While Jockel was not wrong to describe the relationship as calm, that calmness nevertheless masked a mounting divergence in approach to the international system in the post-Cold War period. At issue was the willingness of both governments to attach themselves to the principles of multilateralism in international politics. (5) The Canadian government, which had a historical commitment to multilateralism, began expressing concerns about what it saw as the increasing tendency of the United States government to abandon the multilateralism that a succession of administrations had demonstrated during the Cold War. (6) Instead, the United States was seen as increasingly willing to take a unilateralist approach to some key elements of trade and diplomacy in the post-Cold War period. Unilateralism, in this context, included the willingness of the government in Washington to define the rules for itself, decide what rules it would choose to follow, and generally act, as Axworthy was to put it in 1996, without regard to the legitimate interests of others. (7) Canadian concerns about American unilateralism in the post-Cold War period focused on three areas: trade remedies, financing for the United Nations, and the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996, or the Helms-Burton Act, as it is commonly called after its sponsors. In each area, the Canadian government pursued essentially the same policy: Ottawa devoted fairly sustained efforts to dampen American unilateral impulses by engaging in open and public criticism of American policy, and included a healthy dose of what can best be described as preaching the virtues of multilateralism to the United States. …

Weather Modification A Theoretician's Viewpoint

Abstract Early progress in weather modification is attributed to a healthy interaction between theory and experiment. During the 1970s, a divergence of approaches took place. A “theoretical/experimental” approach, exemplified by the Cascade Project, focused on testing scientific hypotheses; an “observational/experimental” approach, exemplified by the Colorado River Basin Pilot Project, sought to enhance understanding of the seeding process through more detailed observations. The theoretical/experimental school soon came to focus almost exclusively on natural cloud processes, leaving the field of weather modification nearly devoid of a theoretical component. It is suggested that this theoretical component is necessary to revitalize the field of weather modification. Key questions are addressed. These include 1) identification of clouds that are amenable to seeding; 2) glaciogenic versus hygroscopic seeding; 3) optimizing critical seeding variables, such as seed particle concentration for glaciogenic seedin...

UPS and downs of Czech environmental awareness and policy: Identifying trends and influences

Roughly since the beginning of the 1970s, and particularly as a consequence of the 1972 Stockholm Conference, environmental issues have been gradually acquiring prominence, reaching a peak - for the time being - at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The same period also witnessed a growing variety and divergence in approaches towards the environment. While for a number of states, at least in the developed part of the world, the beginning of the 1970s marked a turning point, other countries remained more or less frozen, allowing (or even further promoting) the continuity of the dreadful processes of over-exploitation of natural resources, careless consumption of the global commons and extending their borrowing from the future [see Kara, 1992]. Typically, this held true for central and eastern European countries, and the Czech Republic (the western part of former Czechoslovakia and from January 1993 an independent state) was no exception.

Quality-of-Life and Psychosocial Oncology Research in Europe

During the fall of 1988, the authors conducted a survey of British and European investigators to review the current state of research on quality of life and psychosocial oncology. Active areas of research on quality of life (validation studies, instrument comparison and translations, new scales, cross-cultural comparisons), (2) integration of quality-of-life measures into clinical trials, (3) the coping process, and (4) rehabilitation and supportive care. In contrast, researchers in the United States have focused on the more pragmatic aspects of psychosocial oncology, especially the psychosocial sequelae of a cancer diagnosis. This divergence in approach most likely relates to cultural characteristics as well as differences in the research funding process. Most of the survey respondents were enthusiastic about pursuing cooperative research with North American investigators, and our review identified many areas for potential collaboration. The authors hope that this review will be a first step in promoting international collaboration among researchers in psychosocial oncology.

Medieval Image Databases: Aspects of Cooperation and Exchange

As medieval databases proliferate, so do divergences in approaches and aims. Data collectors will need to decide which related projects they will follow closely and with which collections they will offer to share data. Overall uniform standards may be an impossible goal. An ‘image database’ requires (1) a collection of images, (2) a collection of verbal descriptions, and (3) the connections between them both Image catalogues designed for art history purposes, often to cover specified collections, use standardized terminology to access iconographical content, but databases in other historical disciplines demand more information about context, more possibilities for statistical analysis, and a specialized terminology, often including both modern and archaic terms. Extensive historical and relational the sauri are required, and international standards may someday be formulated. In this database, designed to facilitate research on everyday life, we have made our verbal descriptions available to many institutions. We have begun developing a digital storage procedure for images allowing the ‘zooming’, and enhancing of digital images, lifting discrete components out of context, placing them more firmly into context, and comparing contexts in addition, the database management system ‘Kleio’ has helped us create context-sensitive models and structures. Iconographic study requires wide cooperation, but at the same time, the proprietary rights and the prerogatives of database builders need to be formulated.

Home loans versus council houses: The formation of American and British housing policy, 1900–1920

Abstract In 1919, the federal government in the United States looked to the building and loan associations to solve the postwar housing problem: in Britain, the government turned to the local authorities and ignored the building societies. The explanation of this divergence in approach is located in part in the existing institutional framework the nature of the building and loan associations and building societies, and their place in the working‐class economy; and the character of local government The character of the housing problem also differed. In America, the problem was perceived to be the tenement, which could be solved by regulation, rather than a failure of the private market. In Britain, there was a greater sense of crisis. Housing policies cannot be easily transferred between countries, for they arise from a wider historical context.

Field Operation of Drilling Marine Risers

Structural analysis techniques have been used since the 1950's to predict stresses in marine riser systems. However, little effort has been focused on the input design criteria, their interpretation, and field application. Taking into consideration the rig's characteristics, mooring capability, and riser system, this paper presents design and operating criteria for the engineer and rig personnel. Introduction Since the first marine riser (or mud riser) was run and operated in the late 1950's off the coast of California,1,2 the industry has analyzed and studied the structural aspects of drilling riser systems rigorously. Literally millions of dollars have been spent on computer programs and their refinement in an effort to analyze accurately the beam column structure as it is used on a floating drilling vessel.3–6 In search of field verification of developed analytical techniques, additional large sums of mopney have been spent for strain gauge and accelerometer measurements along with digital and analog recording systems.7 As of the mid-1970's, the industry generally had come to the conclusion that, from an analytical standpoint, the analysis techniques and conclusions were sound. This is apparent from the publication of API Bull. 2J8 as compiled by the Marine Riser Task Group, in which close agreement was obtained between nine different independent contributors. The literature is full of presentations on riser structural analysis. However, no major piece of work has been presented on the methodology of taking the beam column computer output and implementing it on a daily basis in actual field operation. Because of this lack of attention, some interesting and varied results on how to design and operate a drilling riser in the field have taken place. It is our purpose (1) to show the tremendous divergence in approaches currently being used to determine a recommended tension and (2) to present a specific method for analysis that is based on operational considerations as well as riser structural stability. We also will discuss field operations such as riser space-out, riser tensioner wire rope slip programs, and the inspection of marine riser joints and connectors.

A Study of Hazardous Location Practices

Although several countries that have long been associated with chemical and petroleum industries have developed recommendations for safe electrical practices in what have usually become known as "hazardous locations," internationally active operators are still troubled by the divergence of approach in these recommendations.

Viewpoint of Financial Management: Considerations Underlying Cost of Capital

COST OF CAPITAL is in the air. The economists, both quantitative and institutionalist, are analyzing the concept; the lawyers have dealt with it even at the level of the Supreme Court of the United States; the accountants now manifest an interest in it; and financial management must comprehend it in discharging the vital planning function in business enterprise. The planning responsibility is closely interdependent with the analytical, creative, protective, and disclosure functions of management. The very essence of business enterprise is economic in adaptation of productive endeavor to the satisfaction of wants under profit objective; enterprise operates within a framework of law; success or failure in the quest of profit is measured and disclosed in the accounts and accounting statements; the implementation of the enterprise is through capital, in the sense of dollar funds committed to its uses. Accordingly, the managerial viewpoint is properly conditioned by economic, accounting, legal, and financial considerations with substantial reciprocity as well as divergence among the respective associated approaches. The reciprocity and divergence of approach are logically inherent in an analysis of cost of capital. Both cost and capital are terms widely employed in the literature of economics, accounting, law, and finance, and it might be difficult to determine which of the two has the greater diversity of meanings in the arrays of their uses. The concepts of the terms differ not only among these four areas of inquiry, but also within each of the respective fields. However, the implications are less of confusion than of challenge to an understanding of the refinements of thought identifiable with the several lines of its development.