Science and the evolution of international desertification policymaking

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 321-346).This study explores changing perceptions of dryland degradation (desertification) as revealed through twentieth century intergovernmental policies. Between the 1930s and 1990s these policies reflected markedly different ideas regarding the nature of the problem (e.g., global or local), its causes (e.g., natural or anthropogenic), and its remedies (e.g., based on modem science or indigenous knowledge). In the 1970s, for example, policies portrayed desertification as a phenomenon of worldwide extent. They identified "irrational systems of productivity" as primarily responsible for the problem and prescribed technological means for its amelioration. In the 1990s policies emphasized the local variability of land degradation. They attributed desertification to complex interactions involving ecological, political and economic factors, and called for decentralized programs and public participation. This thesis argues that the history of desertification as a policy issue does not conform to traditional notions of progress whereby advances in science enable and underwrite advances toward effective governance. In this case, varied framings of the problem, rather than emerging from improved understandings of nature, arose from interactions linking the creation of scientific knowledge with the formation of international environmental institutions. The study identifies four discrete periods of international desertification politics: colonial, modernist, internationalist and pluralist, and undertakes a comparison of expert advisory processes, quantification, and visual representations across the periods. On the basis of this comparison the thesis presents an alternative interpretation of policy change and identifies three processes by which science and international governance were mutually constitutive and evolved in tandem: authorization, inscription, and boundary work. Authorization is the process that determines whose knowledge counts and what methods of knowledge production are valid. Inscription describes the means by which institutional resources and priorities embed problem framings and causal narratives. Boundary work concerns efforts to organize activities, delegate responsibility, and determine rules of participation. In the desertification case, boundary work proved important in delineating realms of science and non-science, lay-expert, natural-social, and local-global. Recognition of these processes opens the way to redefining expertise and redesigning expert advisory processes in current international environmental regimes.by Marybeth Long.Ph.D

An Analysis of Private School Closings

We add to the small literature on private school supply by exploring exits of K-12 private schools. We find that the closure of private schools is not an infrequent event, and use national survey data from the National Center for Education Statistics to study closures of private schools. We assume that the probability of an exit is a function of excess supply of private schools over the demand, as well as the school's characteristics such as age, size, and religious affiliation. Our empirical results generally support the implications of the model. Working Paper 07-0

Interannual variablility in atmosphere water vapor transport over north European and west African regions

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 1996.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 189-193).by Marybeth Long.M.S

A Paradox of Virtue?: "Other" Knowledges and Environment-Development Politics

"Local," "indigenous," and "traditional" knowledge are emerging as important categories in environment-development policy-making. This paper provides an overview of international policies and programs for addressing these historically marginalized ways of knowing, and explores how the World Bank, and processes under the Convention to Combat Desertification, and the Convention on Biological Diversity are attempting to incorporate "other" knowledges and knowledge holders. The study argues that long-standing assumptions and practices of multilateral policy-making are often at odds with the new perspectives for which these knowledges presumably provide a vehicle. On the one hand, policy-making bodies cite "other" knowledges as alternatives to technocratic problem-solving methods of earlier decades because they are unique and situated, holistic and processual. On the other hand, international institutions are attempting to systematize "other" knowledges in ways that seem poised to render them standardized and universal, compartmental, and instrumental. Copyright (c) 2001 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Contesting Global Norms: Politics of Identity in Japanese Pro-Whaling Countermobilization

Why are anti- and pro-whaling coalitions still engaged in morally heated confrontations over whales tracing back to the 1970s? Revisiting the global whaling controversy, this article applies insights from the political sociology of social movements to highlight the importance of the politics of identity embedded in an elite-driven pro-whaling countermovement in Japan. As is well documented, Japan has proven a most difficult context for the emerging "global" anti-whaling norm. Rather than simply reflecting material interests or cultural values, however, this sustained resistance should be approached from a processual and symbolic interactionist perspective as the construction of a pro-whaling moral universe integrated around strong and inflexible claims of collective identity. Empirically, the article analyzes the major discursive master frames constituting this pro-whaling identity. Arguing for the centrality of symbolic-moral framing, it further suggests three competing normative frameworks for making sense of the controversy in the wider context of global environmental norms-in-the-making. (c) 2008 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.