English Brutes, Eastern Enlightenment

British Academ

Speciesism, identity politics and ecocriticism : a conversation with humanists and posthumanists

An electronic conversation between 7 scholars from the fields of animal studies and early modern studies aimed at confronting "speciesism," and constructing what Cary Wolfe calls a "posthumanist theory of the subject.

Emigrants, Refugees, and the Post-Colonial Novel, or the In-Between as an Articulatory Space. Editorial Introduction

Author: Natalia Lemann; Consulting co-editor: Donna Landry.The issue of emigration and refugees is one of the major global problems of the contemporary world. The challenges faced by nations, states, and cultures in the face of the above-mentioned phenomena include issues of social, historical, and cultural policy, but also an ethical dimension and the character of practical social involvement. Challenges to work through historical legacies and traumas in a spirit of respect for difference and the cultural legacy of peoples who were once colonised play an extremely important role. The multicultural tendency of the politics of history is inclined towards a project of entangled history or histoire croisée. In the context of increased emigration phenomena, it is necessary to rework and refashion the notion of nation, to remove from it the traces of an essentialist approach marked by nationalism and ethnocentrism. The most important challenge, however, is to change the way we think about the concepts of nation, emigration, and exile, i.e., to ‘decolonise minds’. The postcolonial novel is a literary genre that is closely related to the aforementioned challenges. The key issues of the postcolonial novel are emigration and exile. The genre addresses the theme of emigration both synchronically, diagnosing current problems, but also historically, recalling the colonial conditions of current relations. Emigrant narratives are about articulating the experience of being between cultures, countries, and times. The postcolonial novel provides an insight into the dynamics of changing attitudes of successive generations of emigrants towards the culture of the ancestral country and the country of present residence. The generational dynamics of the postcolonial and expatriate novel show the transformation of rhetoric from nostalgia to irony. As proposed by Rosi Braidotti, one can speak of a transition from the figure of the outlaw to that of the nomad; the figure subversively oriented, questioning all restrictions and top-down imposed political and cultural orders

Integrated Management: A Coastal Community Perspective

This paper was prepared for the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations Regional Workshops on Small-Scale Fisheries "Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries: Bringing together responsible fisheries and social development". It presents a review of what are seen as 'good practices' globally in policy and governance of small-scale fisheries, with a particular focus on addressing rights-based issues, viewed broadly as incorporating fishery rights, other rights to natural resources, and rights and entitlements in relation to human, social and economic rights. It draws extensively on the 1995 Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries and related technical guidelines, particularly those concerning small-scale fisheries and their roles in poverty alleviation and food security, and the human dimensions of the ecosystem approach to fisheries. The paper is also strongly informed by the papers prepared for and outcomes of the 2008 Global Conference on "Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries: Bringing together responsible fisheries and social development" and the relevant rights-oriented components of the 'Bangkok Statement' produced by the Civil Society Preparatory Workshop for the Global Conference. It also draws upon a set of research documents in the international literature focusing on small-scale fisheries and related policy issues [e.g., Allison et al. (2010), Charles (2009, 2011), McConney and Charles (2009); Kurien (2000, 2007)]

Variability in age and size at maturation, reproductive longevity, and long-term growth dynamics for Kemp's ridley sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico

Effective management of protected sea turtle populations requires knowledge not only of mean values for demographic and life-history parameters, but also temporal and spatial trends, variability, and underlying causes. For endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys kempii), the need for baseline information of this type has been emphasized during attempts to understand causes underlying the recent truncation in the recovery trajectory for nesting females. To provide insight into variability in age and size at sexual maturation (ASM and SSM) and long-term growth patterns likely to influence population trends, we conducted skeletochronological analysis of humerus bones from 333 Kemp's ridleys stranded throughout the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) from 1993 to 2010. Ranges of possible ASMs (6.8 to 21.8 yr) and SSMs (53.3 to 68.3 cm straightline carapace length (SCL)) estimated using the "rapprochement" skeletal growth mark associated with maturation were broad, supporting incorporation of a maturation schedule in Kemp's ridley population models. Mean ASMs estimated from rapprochement and by fitting logistic, generalized additive mixed, and von Bertalanffy growth models to age and growth data ranged from 11 to 13 yr; confidence intervals for the logistic model predicted maturation of 95% of the population between 11.9 and 14.8 yr. Early juvenile somatic growth rates in the GOM were greater than those previously reported for the Atlantic, indicating potential for differences in maturation trajectories between regions. Finally, long-term, significant decreases in somatic growth response were found for both juveniles and adults, which could influence recruitment to the reproductive population and observed nesting population trends