University of Northern British Columbia: Open Journal Systems
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Ecopoetics and ‘the Bestial’: Negotiating Human Dignity in Two Contemporary Short Stories from Singapore and Malaysia
No full textHumans often revel in their self-proclaimed ability to identify interactive possibilities between people and their environment despite common knowledge that Nature does not need humans but humans need Nature. There are significant instances of writing about humankind’s relationship with Nature, and the scientific as well as spiritual potential of this relationship that may eventually lead to a sustainable Earth. Correspondingly, creative writing is also increasingly preoccupied with mimicking ecological processes that sustain Earth. Jonathan Skinner has noted “how certain poetic methods model ecological processes like complexity, non-linearity, feedback loops and recycling.” Since its coinage, ecopoetics is a much contested term in contemporary literary theory, and has been subjected to multiple definitions. While the basis of an ecopoetic understanding of Earth centres on its scepticism about human exceptionalism, hyperrationality and consumerism, it has almost always been applied to poetry. In this paper, I view “green discourse” in fiction through the ecopoetic lens, and read representations of how human and non-human forms fail to interlock in two contemporary Southeast Asian short stories. I explore whether human dignity can be salvaged from the debris of anonymity conditioned by an anthropocentric perception of existence
Ecological Immunity and Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312
Full text linkIn this paper, I will propose the notion of “ecological immunity” as a useful conceptual tool for thinking about the Anthropocene. The term refers to a basic condition of all life: in order to flourish, an organism must insulate itself from its environment and maintain a stable interior space which can support the organism’s vital functions, immunizing it against the dangerous flux of its ecological environment. The history of the human species can be written as a process by which this internal environment is progressively explicated and exteriorized. The Anthropocene marks the historical moment when these strategies for immunization reach an absolute limit: as the biosphere is itself revealed to be a finite interior, the outside disappears. It is no longer sufficient to immunize the human collective against the ecological environment; instead, the challenge becomes the maintenance of the biosphere as a whole, now understood as the last immunitary container. Kim Stanley Robinson’s science fiction novel 2312, I argue, can be read as an extended allegory of the problem of ecological immunity and a perceptive exploration of its biopolitical implications
Heuristics for practitioners of policy design: Rules-of-thumb for structuring unstructured problems
Full text linkThis article is an attempt to bridge the divide between academics and practitioners. Informed by both design theory and the reality of policy work, its focus is on ‘problems’. From a practitioners’ perspective, policy design is both an intellectual and political process, an inevitable oscillation between ‘puzzling’ and ‘powering’, in which ‘messy’ or unstructured problems are re-structured from problems as webs of ‘undesirable situations’ to problems as specific, time-and-space bound ‘opportunities for improve- ment’. This requires a questioning habitus in practitioners of policy design. Using a socio-cognitive theory of problem processing, this paper shows how policy design is an iterative process of problem sensing, problem categorization, problem decompos- ition and problem definition. For each of these stages, appropriate rules-of-thumb for questioning and answering can be suggested that induce thought habits and styles for responsive and solid policy designs
The Fransaskois’ Journey from Survival to Empowerment through Governance
Full text linkThis article considers how governance can transform relationships of power between Francophone minority communities and the state through a case study of the Fransaskois. Using a multi-methods framework that combines historical institutionalism and empowerment theory, this study draws attention to the transformative and constitutive power of governance in shaping relationships between Francophone communities and the state. By examining how the Fransaskois claim power from above and build power from below through governance, the study posits governance as a tool for the collective empowerment of Francophone minority communities in their quest to faire communauté. In so doing, it draws attention to the Fransaskois as active agents in generating gradual change through ongoing struggles within and over institutional arrangements
Strengthening policy capability: New Zealand's Policy Project
Full text linkPolicy practitioners apply tools and frameworks to policy chal- lenges in order to improve social, economic, and environmental outcomes. Could such tools and frameworks be applied to improve the quality of policy design itself? In 2014, prompted by evidence of widespread inconsistency in the quality of policy advice being produced across agencies, the New Zealand Government launched the Policy Project. It deployed policy ana- lytic tools and frameworks to investigate current practice in policy design to improve the quality of policy advice across the whole of government. Through collaborative methods, the Policy Project identified and codified what quality policy advice looks like and the skills and processes needed to produce it. We review the con- text and creation of the Policy Project, its contributions, evidence of its impacts, and prospects for its replication across other public sectors
The 2014 Provincial Election in New Brunswick
Full text linkIn the 2006 and 2010 New Brunswick provincial elections, power changed hands as control of the government went from Progressive Conservative to Liberal (2006) and back to Progressive Conservative (2010). The 2014 election found Premier David Alward attempting to return an incumbent party to the government benches for the first time since Bernard Lord in 2003. Alward faced three new party leaders in Liberal Brian Gallant, New Democrat Dominic Cardy and the Green’s David Coon. Early polls predicted a Liberal landslide but the margin would close as Election Day approached with the Liberal earning a small 27 to 21 seat majority over the PC Party with Coon winning the first Green seat in the province and Cardy’s NDP being shutout. With the results, New Brunswick would find itself with another under-forty premier, Gallant was 32 years old when sworn-in, and a vacancy in the Progressive Conservative leadership as Alward swiftly stepped down after his party’s defeat. The election reflected another example of New Brunswick’s current turnstile party system with the two major parties differing on few issues and struggling to find electoral momentum in a stubborn provincial economy stymied by structural demographic challenges
Apocalyptic Vision in Laotian Short Story “The Roar of a Distant War” by Viliya Ketavong
Full text link“The Roar of a Distant War” begins with a picnic in Southern California on the fourth of July. However, for Nanda, the fireworks-display brings back memories of the civil war in Laos that was known to the rest of the world as the Vietnam War. Nanda’s kneejerk reaction to the fireworks display is to drop to the ground, since, as she confesses she was “a child of war”. The narrative traces the trials faced by a family in Laos caught between communist forces and the American army. This paper examines the statement made by Martha F Lee that “In all its forms, environmentalism is – at least marginally – apocalyptic” (ix). It goes on to argue that unlike traditional apocalyptic narratives that are mostly ‘user-oriented’ - a term used by Herbert Gans to discuss the fantastical nature of apocalyptic fictions and to point to the distance that mostly exists between history and apocalyptic narratives - Ketavong’s apocalyptic short story is based on recent history, real politics and human instrumentality
Empiricism, Information Management, and Environmental Humanities
Full text linkWe live in an era of too much information and too little caring. Following up on the work of Numbers and Nerves: Information, Emotion, and Meaning in a World of Data (2015), I will turn my attention in this paper to various “imaginaries” (trans-scalarity, vulnerability, and, in particular, singularity) as a way of suggesting how ecocriticism can overcome intrinsic human insensitivity to information about large, slow, distant phenomena. This paper will emphasize ecocriticism as a field deeply associated with information management and communicatio
Reconstructing the Wilderness: Finding Identity, Culture and Values in Filipino Children’s Literature
Full text linkIn children’s literature, more specifically in the Philippine setting, the symbolism of wilderness and the elements therein constitutively influence the intrinsic wildness of children. The literary wilderness becomes an exploratory platform where the stages of development that children undergo are better understood – from exploring childhood freedom to encountering a sense of self and culture. Coming from this, the research particularly focuses on the effect of the ‘essential wildness’ on children as facilitated by the images of the wilderness and its elements in Philippine children’s literature. The notion of wilderness (or wildness) ultimately shifts the idea of losing one’s self in danger to a sense of self-discovery and individuation. To concretize and show the effects of one’s encounter with the natural world through environmental children’s literature, this study presents an ecocritical reading of the best short stories of Severino Reyes in his Lola Basyang collection in order to grasp a conception of wilderness within the context and culture of the Filipino identity. This analysis will also attempt to redirect the general understanding of the concept of inner wildness, reconstructing it from an articulation of danger and peril towards a creative exploration of one’s growth and sensibilities
Policy design: Its enduring appeal in a complex world and how to think it differently
Full text linkPolicy design has re-appeared on the scholarly agenda. This special issue investigates the assumptions of the policy design concept, questioning its theoretical coherence and relevance for practitioners. The conventional idea of policy design implies an instru- mental-rational theoretical model which is out of place in contemporary governance arrangements. While the concept appeals to academic sensibilities, it has less utility in practice. It can also become caught up in the political aspect of policymaking by being used to generate legitimacy for the actions of public managers via rationalising accounts. Contributors to this issue argue that the design idea should be reconsidered from the ground up. An alternative orientation is put forward, which regards policy design as something that emerges from policymaking practice