'The Greek Fall: Simulacral Thanatotourism in Europe'

The paper explores the socio-cultural dynamics of Greek demonstrations in 2011, suggesting that their function exceeds that of social movements as we know them. A form of what I term ‘simulacral thanatotourism’, including marches and demonstrations to Greek cities in protest for austerity measures, actualised in this context a form of mourning about the end of Greece’s place in European polity. This mourning, which places Greece at the centre of a withering European democratic cosmos, inspires in today’s dystopian Greek Raum two conflicting forms of social action: one is geared towards consumption of the country’s political history in terms similar to those we examine as ‘tourism’. This symbolic consumption of history re-writes the European past from a Greek standpoint while simultaneously promoting relevant entrepreneurial initiatives – in particular, the global circulation of imagery linked to riots and protests and thus the movement of the abject aspects of Greek culture in global spaces. The second form of action is directed against the image of contemporary Greece as a corrupt topos that does not deserve a place in Europe’s political Paradise; this places the blame for the nation’s demise on its political factions. The two forms of action may be antithetical but do coexist in Greek social movements to the date, articulating a cosmology of nostalgia for Greece as an idyllic tourist object. The paper explores these themes through the proliferation of imagery in recent demonstrations, highlighting how a tourist-like marketing of activist visual culture partakes in reproductions of theological ideas rooted in Europeanist discourse

The Canadian ‘Model Forest’ approach : a way forward for Tasmania?

Forest policy and forestry management in Tasmania have undergone a number of changes in the last thirty years, many explicitly aimed at improving industry sustainability, job security, and forest biodiversity conservation. Yet forestry remains a contentious issue in Tasmania, due to a number of interacting factors, most significant of which is the prevalence of a ‘command and control’ governance approach by policymakers and managers. New approaches such as multiple-stakeholder decision-making, adaptive management, and direct public participation in policymaking are needed. Such an approach has been attempted in Canada in the last decade, through the Canadian Model Forest Program, and may be suitable for Tasmania. This paper seeks to describe what the Canadian Model Forest approach is, how it may be implemented in Tasmania, and what role it may play in the shift to a new forestry paradigm. Until such a paradigm shift occurs contentions and confrontations are likely to continue

Preserve or retreat? Willingness-to-pay for Coastline Protection in New South Wales

Coastal erosion is a global and pervasive phenomenon that predicates a need for a strategic approach to the future management of coastal values and assets (both built and natural), should we invest in protective structures like seawalls that aim to preserve specific coastal features, or allow natural coastline retreat to preserve sandy beaches and other coastal ecosystems. Determining the most suitable management approach in a specific context requires a better understanding of the full suite of economic values the populations holds for coastal assets, including non-market values. In this study, we characterise New South Wales residents willingness to pay to maintain sandy beaches (width and length). We use an innovative application of a Latent Class Binary Logit model to deal with Yea-sayers and Nay-sayers, as well as revealing the latent heterogeneity among sample members. We find that 65% of the population would be willing to pay some amount of levy, dependent on the policy setting. In most cases, there is no effect of degree of beach deterioration characterised as loss of width and length of sandy beaches of between 5% and 100% on respondents willingness to pay for a management levy. This suggests that respondents who agreed to pay a management levy were motivated to preserve sandy beaches in their current state irrespective of the severity of sand loss likely to occur as a result of coastal erosion. Willingness to pay also varies according to beach type (amongst Iconic, Main, Bay and Surf beaches) a finding that can assist with spatial prioritisation of coastal management. Not recognizing the presence of nay-sayers in the data or recognizing them but eliminating them from the estimation will result in biased WTP results and, consequently, biased policy propositions by coastal managers.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1902.0241

An Accidental Oil Spill Along the Belgian Coast: Results from a CV Study

This paper offers an economic assessment of the loss of non-use values resulting from different oil spill scenarios along the Belgian Coast. Estimation results show that if no oil spill prevention policy action is undertaken, a significant welfare loss may result. As a matter of fact, contingent valuation estimation results show such a welfare loss ranges from 120 million Euro to 606 million Euro, depending on the size and the frequency of the oil spill under consideration. Therefore, any investment program targeted at the prevention of oil spills, and its damage on the marine environment, can be clearly defended from a cost-benefit perspective as long as its cost is no higher than 120 million Euro.Oil Spill, Prevention Scenario, Contingent Valuation, Cost Benefit Analysis

The 2008 Protests in Tibet : Main Facts & Analysis

Preprin

The eyes of the world are upon us : the role of visual images in the fight over Alberta's oil sands

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on June 2, 2011).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Thesis advisor: Dr. Craig T. Palmer.Includes bibliographical references.M.A. University of Missouri--Columbia 2011.In the controversy over the mining of the Alberta oil sands, tourism has become a tool used by both those who want to stop further development of the oil sands and perhaps also by those who want it to continue. The goal of this research is to examine how the visual images of the environment, within the context of tourism, are being used to influence public opinion over the oil sands operations. Through a multistep process, promotional materials from tourism brochures, guidebooks, and websites, and also from anti-oil sands campaign websites, were analyzed according to their content, with just under 2000 images examined. Nature-tourism is the dominant form of tourism in the oil sands region, and therefore tourism experiences and images from the oil sands region largely feature images of wildlife, scenic views, and outdoor activities in the oil sands region. In contrast, images used by the Rethink Alberta campaign and other anti-oil sands organizations focus on mining operations themselves and their immediate negative effects on the environment. Results of the examination found differences in means of distribution, environmental emphasis, and geographical scale between material from tourism and from anti-oil sands campaigns. The differing goals of the tourism industry and the anti-oil sands campaigns were also reflected in the imagery used, with tourism attempting to attract visitors to pristine environments, while anti-oil sands groups are trying to discourage visitation as a form of protest. By promoting the availability of outdoor experiences through advertisements for nature-tourism activities, and wide use of visual images featuring aspects of nature, the tourism industry may be unintentionally countering anti-oil sands campaign groups' allegations of wanton ecological destruction and unsustainability

Economic Valuation of Environmental Values of the Landscape Development and Protection Area of Volcji Potok

When the market for a certain good is competitive enough, economic activities can be studied by the market pricing mechanism. Because this is usually not feasible in case of environmental goods with embodied natural and cultural heritage, particular methods for economic valuation of such goods have to be applied. The present article represents the economic valuation of the Landscape Development and Protection Area of Vol誩 Potok, which is an important Slovenian cultural landscape area with internationally recognized characteristics. For this purpose we have chosen the method of contingent valuation and performed an econometric analysis of stated and true willingness-to-pay. We obtained the value of willingness-to-pay and determined its determinants. We also made an attempt to control for different biases that arise in such analyses. At last, we used the adjusted average individual value of willingness-to-pay to calculate the aggregate willingness-to-pay.bivariate probit model; contingent valuation method; discrete choice method; embedding effects; environmental values; starting point bias; willingness-to-pay

Too big, will fail. Megaevents and protest participation

The paper examines the relationship between "social democratic megaevents" (Olympic Games and World Expos) and political protests. It tries to analyze the reasons that led these popular ceremonies to act in our societies as catalysts of social conflict and activators of an "agonistic citizenship". Today some structural characteristics of the network society - growth of urban populations; increase in migration flows; widening of socioeconomic disparities - determined a renewed "political" interest for these great public rituals, which in a previous season of the modernity had shown themselves capable to patch up the lacerations of the social fabric. But in recent years something is broken in the relationship between megaevents and urban populations and we are witnessing a growing antagonism against events historically conceived with a function of social "glue". The aim is therefore to reflect on the meaning of this "antagonistic drift" of "social democratic megaevents" through the analysis of a specific case study: the Attitudine NoExpo Network (Milan 2015). We identified four crucial dimensions to trace the NoExpo movement's physiognomy and define the reasons for its opposition to the world fair: the historical relation between Milan and a cultural form of antagonism; the crucial role of the territorial factor in the formation and evolution of the movement; the centrality of the practices in the structuring of the movement's identity; the adoption of an instrumental and tactical approach in the choice and use of media