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

<p>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. </p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p> 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. </p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p>

Respuestas sindicales ante el desaf��o de la empresa-red: sector petroqu��mico y nuclear

El modelo de empresa-red constituye un desaf��o para los sistemas de relaciones laborales. Dicho modelo cuestiona el papel de las instituciones colectivas de trabajo, concebidas hist��ricamente en el marco de una organizaci��n integrada verticalmente seg��n el modelo fordista. En efecto, la empresa dispersa o el recurso a la subcontrataci��n son contextos cada vez m��s habituales, en los cuales la organizaci��n del trabajo se encuentra disociada de la empresa en sentido jur��dico y patrimonial, y donde se establecen relaciones de trabajo triangulares de facto entre empresa principal, empresa de servicios y trabajadores. La b��squeda de respuestas a esta problem��tica apunta a la reconstrucci��n de solidaridades entre los trabajadores, pasando por la acci��n de los representantes de los trabajadores. A partir de un estudio de casos llevado a cabo en dos industrias de flujo, la industria nuclear y la petroqu��mica, este art��culo se propone analizar los efectos de la triangulaci��n de la relaci��n salarial a nivel de planta, y dos procesos experimentales de organizaci��n sindical y de negociaci��n colectiva territorial que buscan dar respuesta a la problem��tica de la subcontrataci��n. El art��culo analiza los resultados y l��mites de dichas experiencias para reconstruir una ���comunidad de trabajo��� inclusiva de los trabajadores subcontratistas.

Rethinking Care Through Social Reproduction: Articulating Circuits of Migration

Care has come to dominate much feminist research on globalized migrations and the transfer of labor from the South to the North, while the older concept of reproduction had been pushed into the background but is now becoming the subject of debates on the commodification of care in the household and changes in welfare state policies. This article argues that we could achieve a better understanding of the different modalities and trajectories of care in the reproduction of individuals, families, and communities, both of migrant and nonmigrant populations by articulating the diverse circuits of migration, in particular that of labor and the family. In doing this, I go back to the earlier North American writing on racialized minorities and migrants and stratified social reproduction. I also explore insights from current Asian studies of gendered circuits of migration connecting labor and marriage migrations as well as the notion of global householding that highlights the gender politics of social reproduction operating within and beyond households in institutional and welfare architectures. In contrast to Asia, there has relatively been little exploration in European studies of the articulation of labor and family migrations through the lens of social reproduction. However, connecting the different types of migration enables us to achieve a more complex understanding of care trajectories and their contribution to social reproduction.

The political economy of co-ordination challenges in the National Health Service: a postpositivist evaluation of diabetes policy and governance

The present PhD thesis develops and applies an evaluative methodology suited to the evaluation of policy and governance in complex policy areas. While extensive literatures exist on the topic of policy evaluation, governance evaluation has received less attention. At the level of governance, policymakers confront choices between different policy tools and governance arrangements in their attempts to solve policy problems, including variants of hierarchy, networks and markets. There is a need for theoretically-informed empirical research to inform decision-making at this level. To that end, the PhD develops an approach to evaluation by combining postpositivist policy analysis with heterodox political economy. Postpositivist policy analysis recognises that policy problems are often contested, that choices between policy options can involve significant trade-offs and that knowledge of policy options is itself dispersed and fragmented. Similarly, heterodox economics combines a concept of incommensurable values with an appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of different institutional arrangements to realise them. A central concept of the field is coordination, which orientates policy analysis to the interactions of stakeholders in policy processes. The challenge of governance is to select the appropriate policy tools and arrangements which facilitate coordination. Via a postpositivist exploration of stakeholder ���frames���, it is possible to ascertain whether coordination is occurring and to identify problems if it is not. Evaluative claims of governance can be made where arrangements can be shown to frustrate the realisation of shared values and objectives. The research makes a contribution to knowledge in a number of ways a) a distinctive evaluative approach that could be applied to other areas of health and public policy b) greater appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of different forms of evidence in public policy and in particular health policy and c) concrete policy proposals for the governance and organisation of diabetes services, with implications for the NHS more broadly.

Social relations and dynamics shaping the implementation of the voluntary guidelines on small-scale fisheries (SSF guidelines) in South Africa

Integral to achieving the SSF Guidelines goal of targeting the most vulnerable and marginalized persons and eliminating discrimination is the need to have adequate understanding of the power relations and intersectionalities that shape access to and control over marine and other resources according to gender, age, race, ethnicity, labour and migratory status, disability, geographic location and other characteristics relevant in each national contexts. This monograph identifies and explores the key social relations and dynamics in the SSF fisheries sector in South Africa impacting the implementation of the SSF Guidelines. The monograph will be useful for researchers, scientists, fishworker organizations, environmentalists and anyone interested in the protection of marine biodiversity and the promotion of sustainable ���sheries management.

Development Begins at Home: Women and the Domestic Economy in Brazil, 1945-1975

A number of historians of twentieth-century Latin America have identified ways that national labor laws, civil codes, social welfare programs, and business practices contributed to a gendered division of society that subordinated women to men in national economic development, household management, and familial relations. Few scholars, however, have critically explored women's roles as consumers and housewives in these intertwined realms. This work examines the Brazilian case after the Second World War, arguing that economic policies and business practices associated with ���developmentalism��� [Portuguese: desenvolvimentismo] created openings for women to engage in debates about national progress and transnational standards of modernity. While acknowledging that an asymmetry of gender relations persisted, the study demonstrates that urban women expanded their agency in this period, especially over areas of economic and family life deemed "domestic." This dissertation examines periodicals, consumer research statistics, public opinion surveys, personal interviews, corporate archives, the archives of key women���s organizations, and government officials��� records to identify the role that women and household economies played in Brazilian developmentalism between 1945 and 1975. Its principal argument is that business and political elites attempted to define gender roles for adult urban women as housewives and mothers, linking their management of the household to familial well-being and national modernization. In turn, Brazilian women deployed these idealized roles in public to advance their own economic interests, especially in the management of household finances and consumption, as well as to expand legal rights for married women, and increase women���s participation in the workforce. As the market for women's labor expanded with continued industrialization, these efforts defined a more active role for women in the economy and in debates about the trajectory of national development policies.

El papel de los Estados Unidos en la reforma energ��tica mexicana del 2013. Estudio de caso: el fin del monopolio petrolero de Pemex

Este estudio de caso analiza las razones por las cuales M��xico adelant�� una reforma constitucional en materia energ��tica en 2013, y el inter��s que tuvo Estados Unidos en esta, puesto que se destaca la intenci��n del gobierno estadounidense de convertir a Am��rica del Norte en una regi��n m��s s��lida. Es as�� como se exponen las razones por las cuales M��xico decide reformar su constituci��n y por esa v��a tener un impacto directo en Petr��leos Mexicanos (Pemex), la cual es la mayor compa����a del pa��s, encargada de adelantar los procesos de exploraci��n y explotaci��n de hidrocarburos. Asimismo, se explica el inter��s de Estados Unidos en el tema del intercambio de hidrocarburos, ya que es primordial para lograr la seguridad energ��tica en Norteam��rica, una regi��n donde se est�� realizando extracci��n de gas y petr��leo a trav��s del fracking, un m��todo no convencional, que ha propiciado un nuevo panorama en los recursos energ��ticos.

Las reformas emprendidas en T��nez de la mano del FMI y el BM ��Precedente para la revoluci��n de los Jazmines?���(1987-2010)

El estallido de la ���Revoluci��n de los Jazmines��� cuestion�� el ��xito de un pa��s que por m��s de dos d��cadas fue exaltado por el Banco Mundial (BM) y el Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) por los logros alcanzados gracias a un programa de restructuraci��n econ��mica. Las exigencias e inconformidades de los manifestantes, que iban m��s all�� de la falta de garant��as democr��ticas, permitieron ver que el pa��s sufr��a de problemas estructurales relacionados a los altos niveles de desempleo, la precariedad de la situaci��n laboral y la desigualdad. Esta monograf��a pretende evaluar el papel que tuvieron las reformas econ��micas y en general el modelo de desarrollo que sigui�� T��nez de la mano del FMI y el BM, en el surgimiento y consolidaci��n de las condiciones que dieron lugar a la Revoluci��n de los Jazmines a finales del a��o 2010.

La semilla de la discordia: un estudio de la influencia del R��gimen Alimentario Corporativo en la construcci��n de pol��ticas p��blicas alimentarias en Colombia

El hambre es un tema fundamental dentro de la agenda pol��tica internacional en la actualidad. Diariamente, seg��n la FAO, mueren alrededor de 24.000 personas a causa de no ingerir alimentos. Las estrategias planteadas por parte de las empresas y los gobiernos est��n enfocadas a generar una mayor producci��n de alimentos para disminuir el hambre y garantizar la seguridad alimentaria. Este art��culo explica c��mo el significado del alimento se transform�� para ser entendido como mercanc��a, a partir del establecimiento del r��gimen alimentario corporativo. Las normas aqu�� creadas influyen en la construcci��n de las pol��ticas p��blicas nacionales. Este estudio de caso evidencia la relaci��n entre ambas en Colombia a partir del 2008 y el nivel de dependencia alimentaria y de insumos qu��micos del pa��s hacia actores internacionales, analizado a partir de la importaci��n y producci��n de alimentos. Finalmente, este trabajo investigativo permitir�� determinar el estado de la soberan��a alimentaria en Colombia.

The arobase in the libr@ry : new political economies of children���s literatures and literacies

This essay--part of a special issue on the work of Gunther Kress--uses the idea of affordances and constraints to explore the (im)possibilities of new environments for engaging with literature written for children (see Kress, 2003). In particular, it examines a festival of children's literature from an Australian education context that occurs online. The festival is part of a technologically mediated library space designated by the term libr@ry (Kapitzke & Bruce, 2006). The @ symbol (French word "arobase") inserted into the word library indicates that technological mediation has a history, an established set of social practices, and a political economy, which even chatrooms with "real" authors may alter but not fully supplant.

Dromoeconomics: Towards a Political Economy of Speed

In this article we present an alternative theoretical perspective on contemporary cultural, political and economic practices in advanced countries. Like other articles in this issue of parallax, our focus is on conceptualising the economies of excess. However, our ideas do not draw on the writings of Georges Bataille in The Accursed Share, but principally on Virilio���s Speed & Politics: An Essay on Dromology and Marx���s Capital and the Grundrisse.4 Using a modest synthesis of tools provided by these theorists, we put forward a tentative conceptualisation of ���dromoeconomics���, or, a political economy of speed.

Local autonomy, tax morale, and the shadow economy

Policymakers often propose strict enforcement strategies to fight the shadow economy and to increase tax morale. However, there is an alternative bottom-up approach that decentralises political power to those who are close to the problems. This paper analyses the relationship with local autonomy. We use data on tax morale at the individual level and macro data on the size of the shadow economy to analyse the relevance of local autonomy and compliance in Switzerland. The findings suggest that there is a positive (negative) relationship between local autonomy and tax morale (size of the shadow economy).

Hypercapitalism : a political economy of informational idealism

In this this paper I identify specific historical trajectories that are directly contingent upon the deployment and use of new media, but which are actually hidden by a focus on the purely technological. They are: the increasingly abstract and alienated nature of economic value; the subsumption of all labour - material and intellectual - under systemic capital; and the convergence of formerly distinct spheres of analysis ���the spheres of production, circulation, and consumption. This paper examines the implications of the knowledge economy from an historical materialist perspective. I synthesise the systemic views of Marx (1846/1972, 1875/1972 1970 1973 1976 1978 1981), Adorno (1951/1974 1964/1973 1991; Horkheimer and Adorno 1944/1998; Jarvis 1998), and Bourdieu (1991 1998) to argue for a language-focused approach to new media research and suggest aspects of Marxist thought which might be useful in researching emergent socio-technical domains. I also identify specific categories in the Marxist tradition which may no longer be analytically useful for researching the effects of new media.