Small-scale Fisheries and the Global Economy: Understanding Common-pool Resource Governance in the Context of Market Pressures, Neoliberal Policies, and Transnational Institutions

The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to a better understanding of how global seafood trade interacts with the governance of small-scale fisheries (SSFs). As global seafood trade expands, SSFs have the potential to experience significant economic, social, and political benefits from participation in export markets. At the same time, market connections that place increasing pressures on resources pose risks to both the ecological and social integrity of SSFs. This dissertation seeks to explore the factors that mediate between the potential benefits and risks of global seafood markets for SSFs, with the goal of developing hypotheses regarding these relationships.

The empirical investigation consists of a series of case studies from the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. This is a particularly rich context in which to study global market connections with SSFs because the SSFs in this region engage in a variety of market-oriented harvests, most notably for octopus, groupers and snappers, lobster, and sea cucumber. Variation in market forms and the institutional diversity of local-level governance arrangements allows the dissertation to explore a number of examples.

The analysis is guided primarily by common-pool resource (CPR) theory because of the insights it provides regarding the conditions that facilitate collective action and the factors that promote long-lasting resource governance arrangements. Theory from institutional economics and political ecology contribute to the elaboration of a multi-faceted conceptualization of markets for CPR theory, with the aim of facilitating the identification of mechanisms through which markets and CPR governance actually interact. This dissertation conceptualizes markets as sets of institutions that structure the exchange of property rights over fisheries resources, affect the material incentives to harvest resources, and transmit ideas and values about fisheries resources and governance.

The case studies explore four different mechanisms through which markets potentially influence resource governance: 1) Markets can contribute to costly resource governance activities by offsetting costs through profits, 2) markets can undermine resource governance by generating incentives for noncompliance and lead to overharvesting resources, 3) markets can increase the costs of resource governance, for example by augmenting monitoring and enforcement burdens, and 4) markets can alter values and norms underpinning resource governance by transmitting ideas between local resource users and a variety of market actors.

Data collected using participant observation, survey, informal and structured interviews contributed to the elaboration of the following hypotheses relevant to interactions between global seafood trade and SSFs governance. 1) Roll-back neoliberalization of fisheries policies has undermined cooperatives’ ability to achieve financial success through engagement with markets and thus their potential role as key actors in resource governance (chapter two). 2) Different relations of production influence whether local governance institutions will erode or strengthen when faced with market pressures. In particular, relations of production in which fishers own their own means of production and share the collective costs of governance are more likely to strengthen resource governance while relations of production in which a single entrepreneur controls capital and access to the fishery are more likely to contribute to the erosion of resource governance institutions in the face of market pressures (chapter three). 3) By serving as a new discursive framework within which to conceive of and talk about fisheries resources, markets can influence norms and values that shape and constitute governance arrangements.

In sum, the dissertation demonstrates that global seafood trade manifests in a diversity of local forms and effects. Whether SSFs moderate risks and take advantage of benefits depends on a variety of factors, and resource users themselves have the potential to influence the outcomes of seafood market connections through local forms of collective action.

Politics and Poetics of the Novel: Using Domesticity to Create the Nation

This thesis examines how the depiction of the family during war reinforces or challenges societal values in three nineteenth-century novels. The primary focus lies in three novels by Sir Walter Scott, Leo Tolstoy, and Harriet Beecher Stowe that represent the perspectives of England, Russia, and the United States, respectively, and their evolving nationalism as the roots of the Napoleonic Wars and the American Civil War became visible. By investigating the interaction between economic classes, it can be concluded that the preservation of the family is inherently dependent on social status in some nations, while in others, it is integral to daily life regardless of class. The backdrop of impending war only serves to heighten national differences, overturn the organization of the family hierarchy, and redefine the idea of the modern household.

Quantitative Analysis of Kilohertz-Frequency Neurostimulation

Mainstream electrical stimulation therapies, e.g., spinal cord stimulation (SCS) and deep brain stimulation, use pulse trains that are delivered at rates no higher than 200 Hz. In recent years, stimulation of nerve fibers using kilohertz-frequency (KHF) signals has received increased attention due to the potential to penetrate deeper in the tissue and to the ability to block conduction of action potentials. As well, there are a growing number of clinical applications that use KHF waveforms, including transcutaneous electrical stimulation (TES) for overactive bladder and SCS for chronic pain. However, there is a lack of fundamental understanding of the mechanisms of action of KHF stimulation. The goal of this research was to analyze quantitatively KHF neurostimulation.

We implemented a multilayer volume conductor model of TES including dispersion and capacitive effects, and we validated the model with in vitro measurements in a phantom constructed from dispersive materials. We quantified the effects of frequency on the distribution of potentials and fiber excitation. We also quantified the effects of a novel transdermal amplitude modulated signal (TAMS) consisting of a non-zero offset sinusoidal carrier modulated by a square-pulse train. The model revealed that high-frequency signals generated larger potentials at depth than did low frequencies, but this did not translate into lower stimulation thresholds. Both TAMS and conventional rectangular pulses activated more superficial fibers in addition to the deeper, target fibers, and at no frequency did we observe an inversion of the strength-distance relationship. In addition, we performed in vivo experiments and applied direct stimulation to the sciatic nerve of cats and rats. We measured electromyogram and compound action potential activity evoked by pulses, TAMS and modified versions of TAMS in which we varied the amplitude of the carrier. Nerve fiber activation using TAMS showed no difference with respect to activation with conventional pulse for carrier frequencies of 20 kHz and higher, regardless the size of the carrier. Therefore, TAMS with carrier frequencies >20 kHz does not offer any advantage over conventional pulses, even with larger amplitudes of the carrier, and this has implications for design of waveforms for efficient and effective TES.

We developed a double cable model of a dorsal column (DC) fiber to quantify the responses of DC fibers to a novel KHF-SCS signal. We validated the model using in vivo recordings of the strength-duration relationship and the recovery cycle of single DC fibers. We coupled the fiber model to a model of SCS in human and applied the KHF-SCS signal to quantify thresholds for activation and conduction block for different fiber diameters at different locations in the DCs. Activation and block thresholds increased sharply as the fibers were placed deeper in the DCs, and decreased for larger diameter fibers. Activation thresholds were > 5 mA in all cases and up to five times higher than for conventional (~ 50 Hz) SCS. For fibers exhibiting persistent activation, the degree of synchronization of the firing activity to the KHF-SCS signal, as quantified using the vector strength, was low for a broad amplitude range, and the dissimilarity between the activities in pairs of fibers, as quantified using the spike time distance, was high and decreased for more closely positioned fibers. Conduction block thresholds were higher than 30 mA for all fiber diameters at any depth and well above the amplitudes used clinically (0.5 – 5 mA). KHF-SCS appears to activate few, large, superficial fibers, and the activated fibers fire asynchronously to the stimulation signal and to other activated fibers.

The outcomes of this work contribute to the understanding of KHF neurostimulation by establishing the importance of the tissue filtering properties on the distribution of potentials, assessing quantitatively the impact of KHF stimulation on nerve fiber excitation, and developing and validating a detailed model of a DC fiber to characterize the effects of KHF stimulation on DC axons. The results have implications for design of waveforms for efficient and effective nerve fiber stimulation in the peripheral and central nervous system.

Electrostatic Energetics of Bacillus subtilis Ribonuclease P Protein Determined by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance-Based Histidine pKa Measurements.

The pKa values of ionizable groups in proteins report the free energy of site-specific proton binding and provide a direct means of studying pH-dependent stability. We measured histidine pKa values (H3, H22, and H105) in the unfolded (U), intermediate (I), and sulfate-bound folded (F) states of RNase P protein, using an efficient and accurate nuclear magnetic resonance-monitored titration approach that utilizes internal reference compounds and a parametric fitting method. The three histidines in the sulfate-bound folded protein have pKa values depressed by 0.21 ± 0.01, 0.49 ± 0.01, and 1.00 ± 0.01 units, respectively, relative to that of the model compound N-acetyl-l-histidine methylamide. In the unliganded and unfolded protein, the pKa values are depressed relative to that of the model compound by 0.73 ± 0.02, 0.45 ± 0.02, and 0.68 ± 0.02 units, respectively. Above pH 5.5, H22 displays a separate resonance, which we have assigned to I, whose apparent pKa value is depressed by 1.03 ± 0.25 units, which is ∼0.5 units more than in either U or F. The depressed pKa values we observe are consistent with repulsive interactions between protonated histidine side chains and the net positive charge of the protein. However, the pKa differences between F and U are small for all three histidines, and they have little ionic strength dependence in F. Taken together, these observations suggest that unfavorable electrostatics alone do not account for the fact that RNase P protein is intrinsically unfolded in the absence of ligand. Multiple factors encoded in the P protein sequence account for its IUP property, which may play an important role in its function.