Journals at the University of Arizona
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Insurrection for land, sea and dignity: resistance and autonomy against wind energy in Álvaro Obregón, Mexico
No full textProviding a glimpse into the reality of wind energy development, the story of Álvaro Obregón is one of resistance. Álvaro Obregón is a primarily Zapotec semi-subsistence community located near the entrance of the Santa Teresa sand bar (Barra), where in 2011 Mareña Renovables initiated the process of building 102 wind turbines. Demonstrating the complicated micro-politics of land acquisition, conflict and unrest, this article argues that climate change mitigation initiatives are sparking land grabs and conflict with the renewed valuation of wind resources. Insurrection against the Mareña Renovables wind project has spawned a long-term conflict, which has created social divisions and a type of low-intensity civil war within the town. This article will chronicle the uprising against the wind company, battles with police, and the town hall takeover, which includes analyzing the conflict taking place between the cabildo comunitario and the constitucionalistas. Subsequent sections examine the different perspectives within the village and how this battle between the Communitarians and the wind company continues today. The article reveals the complications associated with land deals, the conflict generating potential of climate change mitigation practices and, finally, concludes by reflecting on the difficulties of formulating alternatives to development within a conflict situation
Agriculture as spectacle
No full textIn the influential "performance" model of agriculture, the appearance of the farm is the unintentional result of improvisational decision-making rather than the intentional result of design. However in many ways agriculture is explicitly intended to produce an appearance, often aimed at a specific audience. This phenomenon, termed agricultural spectacle, comes in many forms and serves varied aims. This article offers a theoretical framework beginning with a consideration of how agricultural spectacle differs from other classes of spectacle and from generalized societal spectacle as theorized by Debord. Most important in this regard is that agricultural spectacle generally functions as a form of synecdoche as it presents a temporal or spatial part as a representation of the whole agricultural operation. It also often relies on "captioning" to render ambiguous sights striking to viewers. But agricultural spectacle is highly diverse, as shown by exploring three axes of variation. The first axis concerns the extent to which agricultural activities are adjusted for their impact on viewers, as opposed to being conducted purely for utility and rendered spectacular after the fact. The second compares the intent of the agricultural spectacle. The last axis distinguishes scale, from plant part to field to farm to landscape.Key Words: agriculture, spectacle, indigenous knowledge, propaganda, performanc
Potential Use of Willingness to Accept (WTA) to Compensate Herders in Maqu County, China, for Reduced Stocking
No full textIn grassland areas subject to degradation caused by overgrazing such as the Maqu grasslands, excess livestock could be removed in order to balance available forage and animal numbers. As the number of animals owned by a herder family represents wealth, income, lifestyle, and culture, reducing livestock numbers is problematic and some form of compensation is required to encourage change. Willingness to accept compensation (WTA) was assessed with the use of contingent valuation (CV)methodology to estimate the value that herder families place on the livestock numbers that lead to overgrazing. The minimum acceptable compensation was estimated as 3 717 RMB (~75) per head of sheep at 2005 prices. The total compensation required for herder families in Maqu was estimated to be between 2.53108 RMB and 3.73108 RMB at 2005 prices to reduce stocking to levels considered sustainable based on an estimate of 53105 sheep overgrazing equivalents in 2006
Mapping Total Vegetation Cover Across Western Rangelands With Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer Data
No full textRemotely sensed observations of rangelands provide a synoptic view of vegetation condition unavailable from other means. Multiple satellite platforms in operation today (e.g. Landsat, moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer [MODIS]) offer opportunities for regional monitoring of rangelands. However, the spatial and temporal variability of rangelands pose challenges to consistent and accurate mapping of vegetation condition. For instance, soil properties can have a large impact on the reflectance registered at the satellite sensor. Additionally, senescent vegetation, which is often abundant on rangeland, is dynamic and its physical and photochemical properties can change rapidly along with moisture availability. Remote sensing has been successfully used to map local rangeland conditions. However, regional and frequently updated maps of vegetation cover in rangelands are not currently available. In this research, we compare ground measurements of total vegetation cover, including both green and senescent cover, to reflectance observed by the satellite and develop a robust method for estimating total vegetation canopy cover over diverse regions of the western United States. We test the effects of scaling from ground observations up to the Landsat 30-m scale, then to the MODIS 500-m scale, and quantify sources of noise. The soil-adjustedtotal vegetation index (SATVI) captures 55% of the variability in ground measured total vegetation cover from diverse sites in New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, and Nevada. Scaling from the Landsat to MODIS scale introduces noise and loss of spatial detail, but offers inexpensive and frequent observations and the ability to track trends in cover over large regions
Open Educational Resources in Higher Education
No full textOpen Educational Resources (OERs) are changing the learning and teaching landscape in many different fields. In the area of higher education, OERs are swiftly becoming important elements in support of Open Educational Practices (OEPs) and the Open Education Movement. Research suggests that OERs and OEPs might be powerful vehicles for professional development, for teacher collaboration, and to enhance knowledge of technology in language pedagogy (Borthwick Gallagher-Brett, 2014). Nonetheless, in spite of the increasing popularity of open education, little is known with regard to the production and use of OERs in languages other than English (Zancanaro Amiel, 2017). This paper examines concepts, advantages and challenges related to Open Education and briefly reviews studies which discussed the production of OERs in languages other than English in higher education. The few studies addressing the development and use of OERs in languages other than English show that more research is needed to increase visibility of open education for less prominent languages and to support the Open Education Movement in higher education.DOI:10.2458/azu_itet_v6i1_bert
Gender, school and class wise differences in level of Digital literacy among secondary school students in Pakistan
No full textThe survey was conducted to assess the level of digital literacy among private secondary school students in Pakistan. A total of 344 students of grade 9 and 10 from three private schools were involved in this study. The descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal- Wallis test are used to analyze digital literacy. The study revealed that majority of students possesses adequate level of digital literacy; students demonstrated high level of skills in mobile usage and showed low level of skills in preventing computer from viruses. Moreover, the analysis showed insignificant difference in terms of the students’ digital literacy between male and female and between grade 9 and 10. However, significant difference is found in terms of digital literacy between the schools. Findings indicate students’ proficiency in digital literacy and points to the importance of developing strategies at policy and school level to help students exploit technological resources in a purposeful, safe and meaningful way.DOI:10.2458/azu_itet_v6i2_ja
A study in dispossession: the political ecology of phosphate in Tunisia
No full textThis article seeks to evidence the social, environmental and political repercussions of phosphate extraction and transformation on two peripheral Tunisian cities (Gabes and Gafsa). After positing the difference between class environmentalism and political ecology, it addresses the harmful effects of phosphate transformation on the world's last coastal oasis and on various cities of the Gulf of Gabes. It then sheds light on the gross social, environmental and health inequalities brought about by phosphate extraction in the mining region of Gafsa. The confiscatory practices of the phosphate industry are subsequently linked with global production and distribution chains at the international level as well as with centralized and authoritarian forms of government at the national and local level. Dispossessed local communities have few alternatives other than violent protest movements and emigration towards urban centers of wealth. Using the recent experience in self-government in the Jemna palm grove, the article ends with a reflection on the possible forms of subaltern resistance to transnational extractivism and highlights the ambiguous role of the new "democratic state" as a power structure reproducing patterns of domination and repression inherited from the colonial period and cemented under the dictatorship of Ben Ali.Keywords: political ecology, transnational extractivism, phosphate, Tunisia.
From colonial fortresses to neoliberal landscapes in Northern Tanzania: a biopolitical ecology of wildlife conservation
No full textDrawing on critical debates in political ecology and biopolitics, the article develops a "biopolitical ecology of conservation" to study historical shifts in how human and nonhuman lives come to be valued in an asymmetric way. Tanzania and the so-called Tarangire-Manyara Ecosystem illustrate how these biopolitical shifts became entangled with conservation interventions and broader visions of development throughout colonial and post-colonial history. Colonial efforts to balance seemingly competing domains of human and nonhuman species through spatial separation gave way to the development of the post-colonial nation through the nurturing of its wildlife population. This shift from human-nonhuman incompatibility towards human dependency on wildlife and biodiversity conservation culminated in the contemporary biopolitical ecology and geography of landscape conservation. Landscape conservation seeks to entangle human and nonhuman species. Through conservation, human populations are rearranged and fixed in time and space to allow wildlife to roam free across unbounded spaces. This conservation governmentality is tied to global environmentalist concerns and political economies of neoliberal conservation, as well as to a domestic agenda of tourism-based economic growth. It secures land tenure for some, while imposing a biopolitical sacrifice on the rural population as a whole. This forecloses alternative rural futures for a land-dependent and increasingly land-deprived population
Peasant farming as improvisation: what theory do we possess and how might it be used?
No full textImprovisation is currently enjoying an intellectual vogue across fields as diverse as the musicology of free jazz to management science. But what are the theoretical moorings of this far-reaching new enterprise? First, the article offers a brief review of some potential foundations for studies of improvisation. The hypothesis that humans possess neurons for mirrored interaction because they have evolved as social animals is arguably as plausible as the notion that interactive, social behaviour is a product of a neural architecture primed for interactive cognition. Durkheim responded to a similar unresolved set of arguments about brains and cognition at the end of nineteenth century by taking his well-known late ethnographic turn (towards Australia). This takes us to the second part of the article. The ethnography of performance retains its value to nourish our understanding of larger questions regarding properties of human sociality. Specifically, the article seeks to suggest that a focus on the ritual shaping of embodied actions is crucial to understand and address the emergence of a range of competing "styles of thought." An example helps show that the "bubbles" and "echo chambers" of opinion, of which contemporary political commentators complain, are not (as supposed) products of the internet and social media, but rooted in more fundamental differences in social ordering reinforced by variations in practical and ritual performance. The article seeks to bring out the persistent "deafness" of development agencies to connections between shifting cultivation and social practices of marriage and death in a West African farming community. Calls by development agencies to abandon shifting cultivation have no effect. Approaching agrarian intervention via joint improvisation might help two circular arguments sustained by institutional differences to connect. Key words: Social theory, development, ethnography, performanc