Final Evaluation: WA8 - Sustainable Management of Small Pelagic Fish Stocks and Critical Habitats in West Africa 2018-2022

In the coastal countries of West Africa, small pelagic fish are vitally important to food security. At the same time, their exploitation is a major economic and social factor, which means that these fish stocks are subject to strong pressure from the fishing industry. What's more, they are sensitive to changes in environmental conditions and face significant habitat degradation, especially at spawning sites.Our action plan worked to reduce the overexploitation of small pelagic fish by 2022, through more sustainable stock management and effective protection of critical habitats along the coast. For this, it was essential to first identify and then protect critical small pelagic habitats, produce quality data, and improve transparency in the fishing industry

The epiphenomenal mind

The Epiphenomenal Mind is both a deflationary attack on the powers of the human mind and a defence of human subjectivity. It is deflationary because in the thesis I argue that consciousness is an epiphenomenal consequence of events in the brain. It is a defence of human subjectivity because I argue that the mind is sui generis real, irreducible, and largely an endogenous product (i.e. not dependent on society or its resources). Part I is devoted to arguing that the conscious mind is epiphenomenal. Arguing from, the irreducibility of mental states, the causal closure of the physical domain, and the principle of causal explanatory exclusion, I seek to demonstrate that all theories of mental causation necessarily violate one or more of these premises. Contemporary approaches to mental causation come under two broad categories, those that argue that mental events are supervenient on physical events (such as Davidson, Kim and Horgan) and those (like Haskar) who argue that the mind is an emergent property of the brain. Supervenience based theories, I argue, end up reducing mental states in their search for a theory of mental causation and emergence based theories end up violating the principle of the causal closure of the physical. In part II, I explore some of the consequences of epiphenomenalism for social theory. This exploration comes in the context of a defence of human subjectivity against (i.) those sociological imperialists who view the mind and self as a 'gift of society', and (ii.) social situationalists who have abandoned the concept of action and an interest in 'what's in the head' of the actor, in favour of a concept of social action which views behaviour as action only to the extent that it is socially meaningful. The conclusion is that the social sciences should return to an interpretative style (Weberian) methodology

Staged Action: Six Plays From the American Workers\u27 Theatre

[Excerpt] This collection is an attempt to restore and revitalize interest in a largely forgotten American theatrical genre, the workers\u27 theatre movement. Workers\u27 theatre is a term that is used broadly to define theatre from the working class or theatre about working-class people. Here it refers to a unique and specific movement in the American theatre of the 1920s and 1930s to employ the stage to address issues concerning the worker and the workers\u27 movement. A simple definition was given by Hollace Ransdell of the Affiliated Schools for Workers in 1936: a workers\u27 theatre play deals truthfully with the lives and problems of the masses of the people, directly or suggestively, in a way that workers can understand and appreciate . These plays need not be written by workers themselves, and, in fact, many were written by figures sympathetic to the labor movement. The plays themselves are a series of fascinating, moving, occasionally frustrating dramas that often passionately explore the possibilities of the workers\u27 movement. Even during the Great Depression, these plays never displayed the pessimistic images of the future as reflected in the contemporary fiction of Steinbeck and Dos Passos. Instead, the plays of the American workers\u27 theatre clung tightly to stirring, Utopian visions, as was hoped for in the early writings that formed a basis for the movement

What's the matter with realism?

International relations, as an academic discipline, is not known for its strength in the area of theory. It has no immediate equivalent to the rich contrasts of perspective generated in sociology by the legacy of Max Weber, Marx and Durkheim—a lack so felt that Martin Wight once wrote a paper called ‘Why is there no International Theory?’ His own answer was, in part, that there is nothing further to theorize after the discovery of the repetitive mechanisms of the balance of power. This was a sad conclusion for such an acute and creative mind to reach. But it does illustrate a central feature of IR theory. For the balance of power, it can be argued, is the limit of any Realist theory of international relations. And Wight's conclusion was perhaps more an index of the dominance of a Realist orthodoxy than a relection of the inherent properties of ‘the international’

The management of conversational topic by a ten year old child with pragmatic difficulties

A case study is presented of a ten year old child described as having 'pragmatic difficulties', for the initiation and management of conversational topic. Video-recorded naturallyoccurring conversations between the child and his peers at school are subjected to a detailed sequential analysis, drawing on some of the insights gained into the collaborative management of topic by researchers working in the tradition of conversation analysis (Button and Casey 1984, 1985). We find that our subject uses some helpful devices to generate and manage conversational topics but has difficulty collaborating with his conversational partners. We consider some of the different ways in which social-cognitive abilities are implicated in alternative courses of action available for the initiation and management of topic, and find that our subject's behaviours support the suggestion of Bishop (1997) that a difficulty in the development of social cognition underlies the interactional problems experienced by children with pragmatic language impairment. Consideration is given to ways in which the child's conversational behaviours are subject to influence from the styles of talk he is exposed to in interactions with adults in the language unit setting in which he spends much of his time

What's the matter with realism?

International relations, as an academic discipline, is not known for its strength in the area of theory. It has no immediate equivalent to the rich contrasts of perspective generated in sociology by the legacy of Max Weber, Marx and Durkheim—a lack so felt that Martin Wight once wrote a paper called ‘Why is there no International Theory?’ His own answer was, in part, that there is nothing further to theorize after the discovery of the repetitive mechanisms of the balance of power. This was a sad conclusion for such an acute and creative mind to reach. But it does illustrate a central feature of IR theory. For the balance of power, it can be argued, is the limit of any Realist theory of international relations. And Wight's conclusion was perhaps more an index of the dominance of a Realist orthodoxy than a relection of the inherent properties of ‘the international’

What\u27s Working in Family-Based Services--or, What\u27s Left to Believe in During a Time of Such Doubt?

This article is a qualitative, personal report from the field, designed to highlight current developments in family-based theory and practice that bring hopefulness to workers and clients. The author, an experienced human services consultant and family therapist, draws from his recent experience in a number of states to identify exemplars of practice in the following areas: integrative theory building, functional family assessment, systems change in regard to inter-agency coordination and foster care, community building in low income neighborhoods, developing humility as helpers, and addressing issues of hope and spirituality with clients and with co-workers. Given the turbulent and hostile political environment for family-based services, this article challenges us to remember that effectiveness in helping others is directly related to our feelings of hopefulness about ourselves and our world

Reports from the different Clean Clothes Campaigns and projects: November 2006 – February 2007

A compilation of country reports on the activities of the various European Clean Clothes Campaigns from November 2006 to February 2007

New Working-Class Studies

In this book, contributors trace the origins of the new working-class studies, explore how it is being developed both within and across fields, and identify key themes and issues. Historians, economists, geographers, sociologists, and scholars of literature and cultural studies introduce many and varied aspects of this emerging field. Throughout, they consider how the study of working-class life transforms traditional disciplines and stress the importance of popular and artistic representations of working-class