The Defence of Community in the Anti‐Mining Movement of Guatemala

Mining is one of the most controversial activities in contemporary Guatemala. The anti‐mining movement was studied during five months of participant and qualitative research, focusing on its strategies and discourses. The movement is multiscalar, with local, national and transnational dimensions, but the defence of community is a central claim in its discourse. The community is reclaimed as a legitimate scale for decision‐making by the anti‐mining movement because it is: (a) the scale that suffers the material impacts of mining; (b) the place of Maya cultural resistance for reimagining alternative development projects; and (c) an historically marginalized sector of the population, that should be empowered in order to achieve more participative and fair decision‐making processes. As in other peasant struggles, defending the community is not an objective per se, but a strategy to contest domination. The community is dialectically redefined in relation to Guatemala's historical injustices.     

Implementing social policy through the criminal justice system: youth,prisons, and community-oriented policing in Nicaragua

Nicaragua has implemented a community-oriented policing model in addition to providing a prison system that is based on the premise of prisoners’ re-education. Though these are part of the criminal justice system, they are also presented as social policies with the objective of social (re)insertion of marginalised urban youth particularly. On the premise that detention is temporary and beneficial, these policies claim to prevent (youth) criminality and to reform its perpetrators. Yet they mostly push these youths into a spiral of continued state interventions. Through an analysis of youth-oriented public policy and an examination of the expansion of criminal justice services, complemented by ethnographic research material collected with young (former) prisoners, this article demonstrates how and why social policy for youth is being carried out by the criminal justice system. This development is underpinned by the securitisation of social policy and a political culture of social conservatism that renders marginalised youth unworthy of social protection.     

“The tribe of pundits called economists” and economic debate in post‐independence India

Abstract

The rise of an economics profession in post‐Independence India is outlined, and something of the contribution of that profession to economic debate in India considered. The roots of the economics profession and of economic debate after 1947 are traced to the colonial era, and the institutions and the institution‐builders essential to its emergence after 1947 discussed. Five “generations” of Indian economists, active both before and after 1947, are identified. Attention is drawn to the high quality of debates on the Indian economy, the high level of theoretical discourse and the quality of political economy traditions. Particular attention is paid to the remarkable contribution of the Economic Weekly/Economic and Political Weekly, and there is treatment of the relationship between the academy, on the one hand, and the state and its representatives on the other.     

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Agriculture, the Countryside and Land Use: An Economic Critique. By J. K. Bowers and Paul Cheshire Planning and Decision in Agribusiness: Principles and Experiences. Edite by C-H. Hanf and G. W. Schiefer The Farm and Food Policies of the European Community. By Simon Harris, Alan Swinbank and Guy Wilkinson Prospects for Soviet Agriculture in the 1980s. By D. Gale Johnson and Karen McConnell Brooks Agriculture and Human Health. Edited by J. L. Jollans Rural Development and the State. Edited by David A. M. Lea and D. P. Chaudhri Cocoa and Kinship in Ghana: The Matrilineal Akan of Ghana. By Christine Okali Land Market: Theory and Practice in Rural Indian. By Baldev Singh Global Deforestation and the Nineteenth Century World Economy. Edited by Richard P. Tucker and J. F. Richards     

An optimal phased replanting approach for cocoa trees with application to Ghana

This study solves for the optimum replacement rate (ORR) and initial replacement year (IRY) of cocoa trees (Theobroma cacao) in Ghana to maximize net present value and achieve steady state by employing a phased replanting approach. The annual ORR is 5%–7% across the three production systems studied: Low Input, Landrace Cocoa, High Input, No Shade Amazon Cocoa, and High Input, Medium Shade Cocoa. The optimal IRY ranges from year 5 to year 9 as a function of cocoa prices, fertilizer prices, labor prices, and percentage yield loss due to disease outbreaks. Deterministic results project economic gains that exceed currently practiced replacement approaches by 5.57%–14.67% across production systems with reduced, annual income volatility. The method applied in this study can be used to increase cocoa yields and stabilize income over time, and facilitate substantial quality of life improvements for many subsistence cocoa farmers in Ghana and around the world.     

Long distance commuting: A tool to mitigate the impacts of the resources industries boom and bust cycle?

Western Australia experienced a prolonged resources boom for more than a decade commencing in 2001. The majority of mining industry employees commute long distances from their homes, living onsite in company accommodation and working compressed rosters for a prescribed period before commuting home again for furlough and recommencing the work and commute cycle. Many community leaders, politicians and businesses complain that company policies and industrial relations arrangements, which enabled long distance commuting (LDC), undermine regional economic development. They argue that the host communities closest to mining operations bear the brunt of globally driven boom and bust markets and experience many of the disadvantages but few of the opportunities associated with booms or busts, while source communities, particularly large cities, reap the benefits from repatriated salaries, increased populations and investment derived from mining activities in the host communities.This paper examines the role of long distance commuting as a tool for mitigating the impacts of the boom and bust cycles in the resources industries of Western Australia, focusing on the resources-rich region of the Pilbara. The paper will also speculate the social and economic impact on the mining communities and the state more broadly if government had capitulated and restricted long distance commuting.     

Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Economic Change and Agriculture. An Agricultural Adjustment Unit Symposium. Agriculture in the Australian Economy. Commons and Village Greens.–a study in land use, conservation and management based on a national survey of commons in England and Wales 1961–1966, financed by the Nuffield Foundation. Co-operation, Land Reform and Land Settlement–Report on a survey in Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ghana, Nigeria and Iran. Glimpses of Co-operative Farming in India. Obstacles to Develooment. Agricultural Development and Economic Growth. Economic Aspects of Low Labour-Income Farming. Smallholder Farming and Smallholder Development in Tanzania. The Food Problem of Developing Countries. Linear Programming and Animal Nutrition.     

我国新兴民营矿业发展趋势分析——以天宝矿业为例

近年,国内民营矿业崛起,并成为矿业市场一支不可忽视的重要力量。1996年矿法修改前以乡镇矿业、个体矿业为代表的“第一代民营矿业”,在矿业发展史上创造过业绩,做出过贡献;但由于客观和主观条件的制约,没能实现持续发展,难以参与国内外矿业竞争。以福建天宝矿业集团股份有限公司为代表的“第二代民营矿业”,通过采取资源扩张、技术创新、勘查风险资本运作、灵活的经营决策机制、规范管理等先进的经营管理措施,使企业具备持续发展能力,实现跨越式发展。当前,随着一批国有大型矿业企业资源面临枯竭,同时国家投资逐步从矿业领域退出,民营矿业经济在整个矿业经济中的比重增大,第二代民营矿业正面临一个新的发展机遇。     

东部地区商业性地质工作发展态势与运行特点——山东、福建商业性勘查的调查与思考

在例举大量实际材料的基础上,从勘查技术劳务市场、矿业权市场、矿业资本市场三个方面,介绍了山东、福建两省商业性地质工作运行态势.东部地区勘查技术劳务市场初具规模,矿权运作形式多样,商业性勘查资金来源多渠道.     

基于国家所有权的矿业权价值的实现

我国的矿产资源是国家所有的,但是我国的矿产资源开发的法律政策实际上是将矿业权定位为用益物权,考虑到矿产资源的耗竭性,矿业权的使用权事实上转化成为一种对矿产资源的所有权。矿产资源的国家所有权并未实现,这直接导致了矿产资源开发利益分配的不均衡,影响了矿业的可持续发展,迫切需要通过顶层设计,确定矿产资源的国家所有价值,完善制度,确保矿产资源开发对经济社会的持续保障。因此,要通过改善税费政策、完善矿业权评估、落实环境保护、建立利益分配机制来实现矿业权的国家所有权,促进矿业开发的持续发展。     

Evolutionary governance in mining: Boom and bust in peripheral communities in Sweden

This study investigates the consequences of dramatic price fluctuations on the global iron ore market between boom and bust for the Swedish communities Kiruna and Pajala, located above the polar circle, in the years 2006-2018. It focuses on the impact of the Swedish state’s reorientation towards neoliberal policies that have entailed reduced state involvement in peripheral communities still dependant on heavy industry. This reorientation was manifested in the Mineral Strategy presented by the liberal-conservative government in 2013, in which the state was prescribed a role as facilitator of investment of foreign and private capital in the Swedish mining sector, but not as an active owner or developer of mining enterprises. The neoliberalisation of Swedish mining has established a fundamental conflict of interests between communities whose economic, social and cultural wellbeing depends on long-term state commitment, and the state whose main interests are aimed at global capital flows rather than the maintenance of industrial production in peripheral regions. This conflict remained latent as long as global mineral prices were high, but as boom turned to bust around 2012, it was activated in a way that highlighted asymmetric relations of power and economic development between the sparsely populated and resource-rich northern parts of the country and the densely populated south.     

For the Environment: An Assessment of Recent Military Intervention in Informal Gold Mining Communities in Ghana

This article reflects critically on the impacts of the recent ban on artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) – low-tech, labour-intensive mineral extraction and processing – in Ghana. Government officials claimed that a ban was necessary because the country’s ASM activities, most of which are found in the informal economy, pose a serious threat to local waterbodies and that security forces were needed for its enforcement. It is argued here, however, that projecting the ban and associated military intervention as actions taken specifically to protect the environment has helped the government escape scrutiny over its choice of strategy to combat illegal mining. Perhaps more importantly, it has masked what may be the real reasons behind these moves: 1) to help the government regain control of the purchasing side of an ASM sector that is now heavily populated and influenced by foreigners; and 2) to put it in an improved position to demarcate parcels of land to the multinational mineral exploration and mining companies that supply it with significant quantities of revenue in the form of taxes, royalties and permit fees.     

Marketing Practices and Distribution System of Rice in Punjab,India

Abstract

The study focuses on the marketing practices, market structures, and firms' motives for vertical co-ordination of the paddy-rice distribution system during the post green revolution period in the Punjab state of India. The study is based upon secondary data taken from several published sources and intensive interviews with the market agents in the entire distribution chain from growers to the retailers. Study highlighted the emergence of public sector as a giant player in the paddy (non-basmati) wholesale markets, unscrupulous practices for paddy/rice supplies, wide disparities in the issue prices for the below and above poverty line families, reduced off take from the public distribution system, launching of several schemes to off load excessive stocks, and improve market efficiency. Open market segment of the industry is highly fragmented wherein a large majority of the market agents have confined at the levels they can be best managed, vertical co-ordination plays a pivotal role to cope up with market imperfections and supply agents constitute a strategic link for rice sales. However, private milling gains momentum particularly during the downward phase of the industry due to increased profitability.     

拉萨市矿产资源开发与经济跨越式发展

近年来,拉萨市矿业发展速度逐渐加快,矿业在国民经济和社会发展中的地位越来越重要.但是,在矿产资源勘查开发利用中还存在"三低一弱"的问题,在一定程度上制约了矿业的发展.按照中央第五次西藏工作座谈会的要求,结合拉萨市资源和开发特点,需要从加大勘查投入、改善环境、协调利益和严格规划管理等方面,保障拉萨市矿业及经济社会的可持续发展.     

我国矿业走循环经济之路的策略选择

矿业是国民经济的基础产业,我国矿业的基本特点及其面临的资源环境压力决定了其走循环经济之路的必然。我国矿业实现循环经济的策略选择:第一,树立起循环经济的资源观;第二,明确"四综合"的目标理念;第三,系统化推进循环经济;第四,努力突破矿业发展循环经济的关键工艺与技术;第五,政府引导、企业主体、公众参与。     

Local economic impacts of an unconventional energy boom: the coal seam gas industry in Australia

Complementing the scarce economic literature about local impacts of energy extraction booms, this paper empirically investigates economic outcomes related to the new coal seam gas (CSG) industry located across southern Queensland. This Australian state has seen an unprecedented inflow of investments into the extraction of this previously unexploited unconventional natural gas over the last decade. We analyse census data to study income and employment effects associated with the CSG boom, exploiting the quasi‐experimental conditions provided by CSG extraction areas (treatment regions) and regions without this development (control regions). Findings show that treatment regions have higher income growth than control areas during 2001–2011 for families residing locally and for individuals present on census night. Employment in the mining sector also shows higher growth as has non‐mining employment in some areas. We include comparisons between CSG areas with no major mining history (the Surat basin) and CSG areas where mining was important before the CSG boom (the Bowen basin), to better understand boom effects in areas with different initial mining industry importance in their economies. Local job multipliers are also analysed for Surat basin CSG areas, where positive impacts (job spillovers) are restricted to construction and professional services jobs, while agricultural jobs have decreased.     

矿业经济可持续发展初探--以郴州矿业开发现状为例

我国矿产资源丰富,矿业已成为国民经济的支柱产业之一,如何有效保护和合理开发矿产资源,变资源优势为经济优势,促进矿业经济的持续、健康、稳定、快速发展,是摆在人们面前的一大课题,本文从郴州矿业开发现状入手,对矿业经济的可持续发展提出了有关对策措施。     

Civil Society as Idea and Civil Society as Process: The Case of Ghana

The concept of civil society is ubiquitous in debates about democracy in Africa. This article distinguishes civil society as idea from civil society as process. The idea of civil society provides a shared language, which obscures fundamental differences. The process of civil society refers to the complex interactions of historically generated social structures, political issues, personal networks, material incentives, state resources and international linkages. In Ghana, there are continuities in the centralization of national decision-making, reinforced by international agencies, and the mobilisation, demobilisation and selective exclusion of social groups. 'Civil society' is the outcome of the process in which the idea of civil society is discursively constructed and used by donor agencies, international NGOs, the Ghanaian government and Ghanaian social organizations to legitimate their actions.     

美国矿业管理体制及税费政策研究

文章主要从美国的法律、土地和矿产归属等方面探讨了美国矿业管理机构的组成、职能等,对美国联邦和各州的矿产资源税费政策、税费征收情况等进行了较系统的归纳、总结和分析,并得出以下结论:美国的油气资源税费结构、水平等比较合理,值得借鉴,其暴利税征收的利弊对我国油气行业管理和税费征收有参考价值。