Negotiating “intervention”: Shifting signifiers in the UK’s response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria

This paper investigates the articulation of meanings around the key signifier ‘intervention’ during the first UK parliamentary debate on the UK response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria (29 August 2013). The contribution combines Laclau & Mouffe’s (1985) approach to Discourse Theory with Fairclough & Fairclough’s (2012) Political Discourse Analysis (PDA) of argumentation structure. Discourse Theory is used here to explore how elements of discourse articulate around the empty signifier ‘intervention’ and the emergent meanings that arise in real-time interaction. While this approach brings to light the range of meanings that are articulated, Fairclough & Fairclough’s approach provides a more detailed analysis of the argumentation structures of the debate to demonstrate the specific mechanisms by which these articulations take place and the strategic uses to which they are put in real time discourse. Our findings show the contestation around the meaning of ‘intervention’ and how deliberative argumentation can be used to legitimate/delegitimate an action or set of actions through the reconstrual of key concepts and the articulation of existing ideas in novel and competing constellations. We argue, therefore, that combining these two approaches helps us to understand “why social realities are as they are, and how they are sustained or changed” (Fairclough & Fairclough, 2012: 79)

Meeting irrigation demands in a water-challenged environment

Presented at Meeting irrigation demands in a water-challenged environment: SCADA and technology: tools to improve production: a USCID water management conference held on September 28 - October 1, 2010 in Fort Collins, Colorado.The Prior Appropriation Doctrine formulated in early-day Colorado as a means of appropriating water used primarily by the mining industry became the framework of water law for most states of the western United States. Colorado has also been a frontrunner in establishing legal recognition of the hydraulic connection between surface streams and the tributary aquifers in within stream basins. Colorado's Water Right Determination and Administration Act of 1969 was passed to integrate administration of groundwater pumped from tributary aquifers with the administration of diversions from surface streams. The impact of the 1969 act on well users was magnified by a 2001 Colorado Supreme Court ruling, (Empire Lodge Homeowner's Association vs. Moyer), subsequent to which eastern Colorado water users that depend at least in part on groundwater wells have faced a dramatic increase in requirements for measuring and recording water flows. A case-study is presented documenting an effort spearheaded by the South Platte Ditch Company (SPDC) in northeastern Colorado with objectives of improving flow measurement capabilities and of simplifying data collection and data management tasks. After an initial season with two field sites, representing SPDC's first experience with electronic flow monitoring equipment, the district quickly recognized that integration of electronic technologies represented a steep learning curve, and saw evidence that significant mutual benefits could be realized if multiple small districts like themselves (along with individual irrigators) could jointly establish and utilize a wireless data collection network. A grant to fund a broader scale demonstration project was awarded to SPDC by the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) in late 2005. The key objective of the project is to enable water users to make water management decisions – including augmentation of stream flows to offset depletions due to past well pumping – based on real-time data. In the aftermath of the 2001 Empire Lodge ruling, well augmentation requirements are being quantified based on "worse-case" projections using data whose availability is typically lagged a month or more. Cooperating partners in the demonstration project include the South Platte Ditch Co.; shareholders of the Johnson and Edwards Ditch Co.; the Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District; the Colorado Division of Water Resources; US Bureau of Reclamation; Control Design Inc. along with limited support of other water entities and equipment manufacturers

Negotiating “intervention”: Shifting signifiers in the UK’s response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria

This paper investigates the articulation of meanings around the key signifier ‘intervention’ during the first UK parliamentary debate on the UK response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria (29 August 2013). The contribution combines Laclau & Mouffe’s (1985) approach to Discourse Theory with Fairclough & Fairclough’s (2012) Political Discourse Analysis (PDA) of argumentation structure. Discourse Theory is used here to explore how elements of discourse articulate around the empty signifier ‘intervention’ and the emergent meanings that arise in real-time interaction. While this approach brings to light the range of meanings that are articulated, Fairclough & Fairclough’s approach provides a more detailed analysis of the argumentation structures of the debate to demonstrate the specific mechanisms by which these articulations take place and the strategic uses to which they are put in real time discourse. Our findings show the contestation around the meaning of ‘intervention’ and how deliberative argumentation can be used to legitimate/delegitimate an action or set of actions through the reconstrual of key concepts and the articulation of existing ideas in novel and competing constellations. We argue, therefore, that combining these two approaches helps us to understand “why social realities are as they are, and how they are sustained or changed” (Fairclough & Fairclough, 2012: 79)

A FUTURISTIC LOOK AT THE USE OF GRAZED FORAGES IN THE WESTERN UNITED STATES

Scenario analysis was used to develop scenarios the grazed forage industry in the western U.S. will most likely face over the next several decades. Five major factors were identified as being most consequential. Scenarios indicated that livestock use of grazing lands will most likely decline while wildlife use will increase.Land Economics/Use, Livestock Production/Industries,

Scaling the incommensurate: discourses of sustainability in the Western Isles of Scotland

No abstract available

Spin lattices with two-body Hamiltonians for which the ground state encodes a cluster state

We present a general procedure for constructing lattices of qubits with a Hamiltonian composed of nearest-neighbour two-body interactions such that the ground state encodes a cluster state. We give specific details for lattices in one-, two-, and three-dimensions, investigating both periodic and fixed boundary conditions, as well as present a proof for the applicability of this procedure to any graph. We determine the energy gap of these systems, which is shown to be independent of the size of the lattice but dependent on the type of lattice (in particular, the coordination number), and investigate the scaling of this gap in terms of the coupling constants of the Hamiltonian. We provide a comparative analysis of the different lattice types with respect to their usefulness for measurement-based quantum computation.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, comments welcome; v2 added some new results about exact solutions to this model; v3 published versio

Time, the deer, is in the wood: chronotopic identities, trajectories of texts and community self-management

This paper opens with a problematisation of the notion of real-time in discourse analysis – dissected, as it is, as if time unfolded in a linear and regular procession at the speed of speech. To illustrate this point, the author combines Hasan’s concept of “relevant context” with Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotope to provide an analysis of Sorley MacLean’s poem Hallaig, with its deep-rootedness in space and its dissolution of time. The remainder of the paper is dedicated to following the poem’s metamorphoses and trajectory as it intertwines with Bartlett’s own life and family history, creating a layered simultaneity of meanings orienting to multiple semio-historic centres. In this way the author (pers. comm.) “sets out to illustrate in theory, text analysis and (self-)history the trajectories taken by texts as they cross through time and space; their interconnectedness with social systems at different scales; and the manner in which they are revoiced in order to enhance their legitimacy before the diverse audiences they encounter on their migratory paths.” In this process, Bartlett relates his own story to the socioeconomic concerns of the Hebridean island where his father was raised, and to dialogues between local communities and national and external policy-makers – so echoing Denzin’s call (2014. Interpretive Autoethnography (2nd Edition). Los Angeles: Sage: vii) to “develop a methodology that allows us examine how the private troubles of individuals are connected to public issues and to public responses to these troubles”. Bartlett presents his data through a range of legitimation strategies and voicing techniques, creating transgressive texts that question received notions of identity, authorship, legitimacy and authenticity in academia, the portals of power, and the routines of daily life. The current Abstract is one such example. As with the author’s closing caveat on the potential dangers of self-revelation, offered, no doubt, as a flimsy justification for the extensive focus in the paper on his own life as a chronotope, I leave it for the individual reader to decide if Bartlett’s approach is ultimately ludic or simply ludicrous

AN EVALUATION OF THE PRIA GRAZING FEE FORMULA

The federal grazing fee is currently set using the Public Rangeland Improvement Act (PRIA) fee formula established in 1978 and modified in 1986. The formula is adjusted annually using indices of private land grazing lease rates (Forage Value Index, FVI), prices received for beef cattle (Beef Cattle Price Index, BCPI), and costs of beef production (Prices Paid Index, PPI). The FVI tracks price movement in the private forage market and was the only index originally proposed to be included in the fee formula. Public land ranchers and an Interdepartmental Grazing Fee Technical Committee assigned to study grazing fee alternatives in the 1960s questioned the ability of the FVI to account for short-term demand, supply, and price equilibrium, and, for this reason, the BCPI and PPI were added to the fee formula. Over 30 years of data are now available to evaluate whether adding the BCPI and PPI did, in fact, help explain short-term market fluctuations. This analysis shows, as earlier studies did, that, if tracking the private forage market is the primary objective, then the fee formula should have included only the FVI. Including the BCPI and, especially, the PPI has caused calculated grazing fees to fall further and further behind private land lease rates. Had the $1.23 base fee in the PRIA formula been indexed by only the FVI, the federal grazing fee would have been$3.84/AUM instead of $1.35/AUM in 2000. It is time to consider the feasibility of a competitive bid system for public lands, or, at the very least, adopt a new fee formula that generates more equitable grazing fees.Land Economics/Use,