Academic literature on the topic 'Politics and literature – caribbean area'

[First paragraph]Caribbean Revolutions and Revolutionary Theory: An Assessment of Cuba, Nicaragua and Grenada. BRIAN MEEKS. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1993. ix + 210 pp. (Paper n.p.)The Grenada Invasion: Politics, Law, and Foreign Policy Decisionmaking. ROBERT J. BECK. Boulder: Westview, 1993. xiv + 263 pp. (Cloth US$ 49.95)The Gorrión Tree: Cuba and the Grenada Revolution. JOHN WALTON COTMAN. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. xvi + 272 pp. (Cloth US$ 48.95)These three books might be thought of as a second generation of studies concerned with the rise, rule, and destruction of the People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) in Grenada. The circumstances surrounding the accession to power in 1979 of the government led by Maurice Bishop, the nature of its rule, and its violent demise in 1983 resulted in the appearance during the mid-1980s of an extensive literature on the Grenada Revolution. Some of these works were scholarly, others polemical. But what they all had in common was the desire to examine, either critically or otherwise, something which was unique in the historical experience of the English-speaking Caribbean. Never, before the rule of the New JEWEL Movement (NJM) in Grenada, had a Leninist party come to power; never had a violent coup initiated a new political regime; never had a Caribbean government so explicitly rejected U.S. hegemony in the area; and never, before October 1983, had a government experienced quite so dramatic a crisis as that in Grenada, one which resulted in the killing of the Prime Minister and numerous others of his supporters.

This article seeks to accomplish four goals. First, it will examine the historical circumstances of the rise of the U.S.-Caribbean garment production circuit from the standpoint of economic restructuring within the U.S. industry and U.S.-Caribbean trade relations and from the perspective of the major political interests involved. It will also examine the impact of this restructuring on local garment sectors and the wider host economies in the Caribbean. The article will then explore the role of the “Big Three” Asian suppliers in the contemporary restructuring as well as their role in the offshore garment sector in the Caribbean. The latter effort constitutes a preliminary investigation of an emerging area of political and scholarly interest, and it will be partly integrated into the treatment of the first two topics. Finally, while I will refer more broadly to the major garment-producing Caribbean islands, Jamaica will provide a case-study focus for my remarks here. The essay will conclude by looking briefly at the “free-zone” or “free-trade-zone” model of industrial relations and its impact on older traditions of trade unionism and labor-management practices, taking the experience of a number of Hong Kongese garment factories in the state-owned Kingston and Garmex Free Zones in Kingston, Jamaica, as an example.

Abstract This interview was conducted in September 2014 by the noted African novelist and writer Nuruddin Farah and the Caribbean intellectual historian and scholar Anthony Bogues. George Lamming, a seminal Caribbean novelist, writer, and thinker, is the author of six novels and a remarkable volume of essays, along with several other works. He belongs to a generation of Caribbean writers and intellectuals who carved out a space for Caribbean literature and thought in the twentieth century. In 2014 he was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.

In examining Caribbean identity, it is essential to examine the demarcation of the area, delimit the boundaries, assess how local people have defined or redefined themselves in space and time, and how this is influenced by economics and politics. Obviously the key is the geographic proximity of the Caribbean Sea and its history, which result in many similarities in time, but there is variation, and there are differences. Two significant researchers who investigated the most important common elements like colonization, plantation economy and slavery, Charles Wagley and Sidney Mintz cultural anthropologists, conducted their fieldwork in Brazil, Puerto Rico, Haiti and Jamaica. In defining the “Caribbean” within Plantation America cultural sphere, Charles Wagley took into account the geography, the environment, linguistics, the modes of production, the local histories. Both anthropologists made sociocultural, ethnographic and demographic analyses, comparing the colonial structures in the plantations to delimit the culturally identical area, which, however, today is not followed by geopolitical boundaries, nor is the locals' perceptions of their own interpretation about the Caribbean area.

This essay reads Kamau Brathwaite’s seminal 1975 essay “Caribbean Man in Space and Time” in terms of its rhetorical politics. Conceptually, the essay’s hybrid and heterogeneous discourses and registers are theorized in terms drawn from Clifford Geertz, Leah Rosenberg, and Mandy Bloomfield. Brathwaite’s style effectively instantiates “Caribbean Man” as an exemplary model of the practice of Caribbean studies. The essay is posited as a palimpsestic text, haunted by Brathwaite’s prior creative and critical texts as well as the work of other Caribbean writers and intellectuals and animated by metaphors of creolization that derive from the archipelago’s geology, geography, and history. Ultimately, “Caribbean Man,” while immured in the nationalist sensibility of the 1970s, eschews a reductive nationalist politics for a more expansive notion of nation and community akin to Wilson Harris’s shamanic espousal of Indigenous and ancestral presences in the Caribbean imaginary.

Review of:Pleasures and Perils: Girls’ Sexuality in a Caribbean Consumer Culture. Debra Curtis. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009. xii + 222 pp. (Paper US$ 23.95)Economies of Desire: Sex and Tourism in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Amalia L. Cabezas. Philadelphia PA : Temple University Press, 2009. xii + 218 pp. (Paper US$ 24.95)Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora. Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. xxvii + 242 pp. (Paper US$ 22.50)[First paragraph]Over the last ten years the field of Caribbean Studies has seen a precipitous expansion of work on sexualities, as recent review essays by Jenny Sharpe and Samantha Pinto (2006) and Kamala Kempadoo (2009) have observed. The three books under review here, all based on dissertation research and all published in 2009, make important contributions to this growing literature. While each one approaches sexual politics from a distinctive disciplinary, geographic, and theoretical vantage point, all three ask readers to take seriously the central place that sexual desires and practices occupy in the lives of Caribbean people, both at home and in the diaspora. Caribbean sexuality studies are still sometimes thought of as belonging to a domain outside of, or auxiliary to “real” politics, but these studies demonstrate without hesitation how sexuality functions as an important prism through which we might understand broader debates about ethics, politics, and economics in the region. Building from the insights of feminist theorists who connect the “private” realm to community, national, and global geopolitics, they show that sex is intimately connected to certain freedoms – be they market, corporeal, or political – as well as to their consequences. Taken together, they consider sexual subjectivity, political economy, and cultural production in unexpected ways and point to exciting new directions for the scholarship on sexuality and sexual politics in the region.

This thesis considers the relationship between literary modernism and visual culture in the work of Caribbean modernist Jean Rhys. Through analysis of a range of visual modes—theatre, fashion, visual art, cinema and exhibition culture—it examines the racialised sexual politics of Rhys’s modernist aesthetics, as represented in her texts of the 1920s—30s. I read Rhys’s four interwar novels—Quartet (1928), After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1930), Voyage in the Dark (1934) and Good Morning, Midnight (1939)—in the context of contemporary visual practices and the politics of empire. Rhys’s descriptions of artistic practices, acts of viewing and interpreting art, and the identification of her protagonists as both objects and consumers of art are a crucial aspect of her anti-colonial feminism. The politics of vision and of empire are always intertwined for Rhys. Chapter One studies theatrical spectacle and everyday performances of the self. Chapter Two moves to the fashioning of female identities and sartorial constructions of Englishness. Chapter Three turns to Rhys’s use of ekphrasis to question representational structures as they exist in the modernist, primitivist art context. Chapter Four reads Rhys and cinema, focusing on divided or fractured subjectivities as relayed through allusions to distorted mirrors. This conveys Rhys’s powerful evocation of themes of alienation and dislocation. I conclude by analysing what ‘exhibition’ means for those occupying both subject and object visual positions within the imperial metropolis. Analysis is supported by readings of unpublished short stories, letters and poems, works that are relatively absent from current Rhys scholarship. The conjunction of revolutions in the visual arts and the destabilization of the empire in the modernist period provides clear space for investigation into the creation of new ways of seeing that provided a degree of visual agency for those deemed incapable of aesthetic production. Crucial to this is Rhys’s own Creolité. Situated within and outside of European visual subjectivity, Rhys’s work becomes vital to any study of social acts of seeing, in terms of individual subjectivity and within the wider systems of vision produced through the arts.
published_or_final_version
English
Doctoral
Doctor of Philosophy

Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. "The major argument of this work is that French Caribbean novels pursue a political agenda"--P. iv. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-185). Also available online in Scholars' Bank; and in ProQuest, free to University of Oregon users.

This thesis examines the involvement of the United States in the decade-long trade dispute before the World Trade Organization (WTO) over the European Union's preferential banana regime. Washington's justification for bringing this case to the WTO comes from Section 301 of the U.S. trade act, which allows for disputes to be undertaken if U.S. "interests" are violated; however, this is the first case ever undertaken by the United States that does not directly threaten any American banana industry, nor affect any American jobs. Why, then, would the United States involve itself in this European-Caribbean-Latin American dispute? It is the contention of this thesis that the United States thrust itself headlong into this debate for two reasons: domestically, the United States Trade Representative came under pressure, via the White House and Congress, from Chiquita CEO Carl Lindner, who in the past decade donated more than $7.1 million to American politicians to take the case to the WTO. Internationally, the United States used the case as an opportunity to assert its power over Europe, with the Eastern Caribbean islands being caught in the economic crossfire. According to existing literature, in undertaking this case, the United States did as any nation would: it operated within both domestic and international levels, satisfying at each level key interests, with the overall goal of maintaining the nation's best interests.

xi, 236 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.
Writers in the Caribbean, like writers throughout the postcolonial world, return to colonial texts to rewrite the myths that justified and maintained colonial control. Exemplary of a widespread, regional phenomenon that begins at mid-century, writers such as Aimé Césaire and George Lamming take up certain texts such as Shakespeare's The Tempest and recast them in their own image. Postcolonial literary theory reads this act of rewriting the canon as a political one that speaks back to power and often advocates for political and cultural independence. Towards the end of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Caribbean women writers begin a new wave of rewriting that continues in this tradition, but with certain differences, not least of which is a focused attention to gender and sexuality and to the literary legacies of romance. In the dissertation I consider a number of novels from throughout the region that rewrite the romance, including Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), Maryse Condé's La migration des coeurs (1995), Mayra Santos-Febres's Nuestra señora de la noche (2006), and Dionne Brand's In Another Place, Not Here (1996). Romance, perhaps more than any other literary form, exerts an allegorical force that exceeds the story of individual characters. The symbolic weight of romance imagines the possibilities of a social order--a social order dependent on the sexual behavior of its citizens. By rewriting the romance, Caribbean women reconsider the sexual politics that have linked women with metaphorical constructions of the nation while at the same time detailing the extent to which transnational forces, including colonization, impact the representation of love and desire in literary texts. Although ultimately these novels refuse the generic requirements of the traditional resolution for romance (the so-called happy ending), they nonetheless gesture towards a reordering of community and a revised notion of kinship that recognizes the weight of both gendered and sexual identities in the Caribbean.
Committee in charge: Karen McPherson, Chairperson, Romance Languages; David Vazquez, Member, English; Tania Triana, Member, Romance Languages; Judith Raiskin, Outside Member, Womens and Gender Studies

The purpose of this study is three-fold. The first is to provide the reader with a review of the literature concerning the topic of regional political integration. The second purpose is to provide an operational definition of regional political integration which can be useful in the testing of hypotheses. Regional political integration is defined in terms of the regional decision-making process. Various levels of regional political integration are defined, operationalized, and identified. The levels from lowest to highest are as follows: regional promotion, regional information exchange, regional policy coordination, regional monitor, and regional authoritative decision-making. The third purpose of the study is to analyze the factors which are hypothesized to be correlated with and responsible for the changing levels of regional political integration.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007.
Title from first page of PDF file (viewed October 4, 2007). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 234-245).

AbstractLarge-scale military platform procurement is an essential but understudied component in policy and administrative studies. Procurement decisions in this area, which include major platforms and systems such as ships and aircraft, are very expensive and feature complex multi-actor and multi-year processes which can be highly conflictual. The extant administrative literature on the subject is of limited help: on the one hand, most procurement studies in public administration and public management focus on smaller, short-term, more routinized and less conflictual purchases. On the other hand, studies centred on military acquisitions tend to treat each major purchase as idiosyncratic. Hence, military procurement provides an excellent source of case studies to expand our knowledge and understanding of larger and more complex types of procurement processes. It allows us to draw lessons about successes and failures that will be relevant to similar expensive and large-scale purchases, such as railways, hydroelectric dams, highways and port development, while also drawing out the similarities and lessons for future defence purchases.

AbstractBased on a systematic and organized literature review, the academic production for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) on Material Flow Analysis (MFA) was evaluated. This allowed us to know the research developments and to identify the influence of the “Barcelona School” (EB) and Professor Joan Martínez-Alier in this field of work in the region. The general balance of the literature reviewed (47 texts), shows the important influence of the EB for LAC: more than half of the publications have its origin, more than a third correspond to doctoral theses linked to the ICTA-UAB and 30% are published in journals originating in the ICTA-UAB. Thematically, the articles evaluated incorporate the main topics promoted by the EB. They are oriented towards studying the relationships between the metabolic dynamics of economies, environmental pressures and liabilities, and ecological distributive conflicts. These orientations correspond precisely to Professor Martínez-Alier’s central field of work: the link between ecological economics and political ecology. Methodologically, the potential and weaknesses of MFA were identified. Long-term material flow series have the potential to study large material-economic transitions, but little depth. Short and more detailed series, combining MFA with other methodologies, allow to better delve into the black box of energy-material flows and the environmental impacts of economic dynamics.

AbstractThis chapter analyses the norms, agendas, and initiatives implemented by regional organizations in Latin America regarding climate change, and focuses on the Southern Cone Market (MERCOSUR), the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), the Forum for the Progress and Integration of South America (PROSUR), and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). Drawing on the secondary literature and official documents and the concepts of path dependence and unintended consequences from historical institutionalism, the chapter explores the role that these regional organizations have played so far in addressing climate change, as well as the key actors promoting and hindering environmental and climate change commitments. The conclusions advance recommendations based on the premise that climate change should be a key area in a new cycle of regionalism following the period of paralysis and disintegration that culminated at the end of the decade of 2010s.

In academic and/or cultural debate, the word «Mediterranean» elicits mixed reactions and is revealing of normative considerations and the role of politics. This chapter explores two different perspectives that emerge from the extensive literature on this subject, and suggests a third, inspired by the contemporary trend of the debate (or rather, its absence). First, the chapter examines conceptions of the Mediterranean as a unitary entity or political actor in and of itself. The Mediterranean as a «cradle of civilization», originally described by Braudel, has been taken up more recently by Horden and Purcell, who emphasized the central role of connectivity between local communities, and by the Italian school of geo-philosophy headed by Bassano, for whom the Mediterranean is a specific value system to be respected. A second perspective emphasizes instead the Mediterranean as an area of conflict, characterized by deep fault lines. Huntington's position, captured by the expression «clash of civilizations», has been taken up and reworked by the post-colonial perspective, which sees the Mediterranean as an area characterized by permanent tensions. The chapter suggests a third option, however, noting that the word «Mediterranean» is disappearing from political vocabularies.

ZusammenfassungMit dem anwachsenden Wolfsbestand nehmen auch die Übergriffe auf Nutztiere in Deutschland von Jahr zu Jahr zu. In einem Punkt sind sich Landwirtschaft, Naturschutz und Politik einig: Wolfsübergriffe auf Nutztiere sollen nachhaltig minimiert werden. Darüber, wie dieses Ziel am besten erreicht werden kann, gibt es jedoch unterschiedliche Ansichten. In der öffentlichen Debatte werden Forderungen nach einem vereinfachten Abschuss von Wölfen oder einer generellen Bejagung immer lauter. Dabei wird davon ausgegangen, dass durch solche Maßnahmen Nutztierschäden durch Wölfe nachhaltig minimiert werden könnten.Bevor Maßnahmen des Wildtiermanagements angewandt werden, braucht es klare Zielvorgaben. Die erste Frage muss daher lauten: Was ist das primäre Ziel der Managementmaßnahme? Auf Basis wissenschaftlicher Evidenz muss dann vorab evaluiert werden, ob die in Frage kommenden Maßnahmen geeignet sind, das Ziel zu erreichen. Dies ist zwingend, wenn die Maßnahmen auch das Töten von empfindungsfähigen und noch dazu streng geschützten Tieren beinhalten. Um überprüfen zu können, wie wirksam die gewählten Managementmaßnahmen im konkreten Einsatz sind, werden Kriterien zur Bewertung des Erfolgs benötigt.In diesem Kapitel gehen wir der Frage nach, welche Managementmaßnahmen nach aktuellem Wissensstand geeignet sind, das Ziel, Wolfsübergriffe auf Nutztiere nachhaltig zu minimieren, zu erreichen. Wir erläutern zunächst, warum Wölfe Nutztiere töten und ob es einen Zusammenhang zwischen der Anzahl der Wölfe und der Höhe der Nutztierschäden gibt. Dafür untersuchen wir unter anderem die Daten von Wolfsübergriffen auf Nutztiere in Deutschland. Anhand einer umfangreichen Literaturübersicht analysieren wir, ob die folgenden Managementmaßnahmen geeignet sind, Wolfsübergriffe auf Nutztiere nachhaltig zu minimieren: 1) eine generelle Bejagung von Wölfen, 2) die selektive Entnahme von einzelnen schadensverursachenden Wölfen und 3) nicht-letale Herdenschutzmethoden. Abschließend legen wir Empfehlungen zu einem evidenzbasierten und lösungsorientierten Wolfsmanagement in Bezug auf den Wolf-Nutztierkonflikt vor.In Deutschland steigen mit der Zunahme der Wolfsterritorien auch die Übergriffe auf Schafe und Ziegen. Allerdings unterscheidet sich die Stärke des Anstiegs zwischen den Bundesländern erheblich. Einzelne Bundesländer erreichen bei der gleichen Anzahl an Wolfsterritorien sehr unterschiedliche Schadensniveaus. Dies deutet darauf hin, dass das Ausmaß der Schäden nicht allein durch die Anzahl der Wölfe bestimmt wird. Wir vermuten, dass die Unterschiede im Schadensniveau vor allem in der unterschiedlichen Umsetzung von Herdenschutzmaßnahmen in den einzelnen Bundesländern begründet sind.Die Ergebnisse der Literaturrecherche bezüglich der Wirksamkeit von letalen und nicht-letalen Managementmaßnahmen zum Schutz von Nutztieren zeigen klar: Eine generelle Bejagung von Wölfen führt nicht zu einer Reduktion von Nutztierschäden. Es gibt keine wissenschaftlichen Belege dafür, dass durch eine Bejagung die Schäden deutlich und nachhaltig verringert werden, es sein denn, der Bestand wird drastisch reduziert oder ganz ausgelöscht. Das ist in Deutschland und in der Europäischen Union bei aktueller Rechtslage nicht möglich. Im Gegensatz zu einer undifferenzierten Bejagung des Wolfs kann der gezielte Abschuss von Einzeltieren wirksam sein, wenn es sich tatsächlich um Individuen handelt, die gelernt haben, empfohlene funktionstüchtige Schutzmaßnahmen zu überwinden. Allerdings sind solche Fälle selten, und es ist schwierig in der freien Natur, ein bestimmtes Individuum sicher zu identifizieren und zu töten. Nicht-letale Herdenschutzmaßnahmen sind im Vergleich zu letalen Maßnahmen deutlich besser geeignet, eine nachhaltige Reduktion der Schäden zu erreichen. Der einzige Weg, um in Koexistenz mit Wölfen eine dauerhafte Reduktion von Schäden an Nutztieren zu erreichen, ist die fachgerechte Umsetzung von Herdenschutzmaßnahmen in breiter Fläche. Übergriffe auf Nutztiere lassen sich zwar auch dadurch nicht vollständig verhindern, sie können jedoch durch korrekt angewandte Herdenschutzmaßnahmen deutlich reduziert werden.Das Wissen, wie Schäden an Weidetieren durch Herdenschutzmaßnahmen verringert werden können, ist auch in Deutschland vorhanden. Viele Tierhaltende haben hier inzwischen ein hohes Maß an Fachkompetenz entwickelt. Die Erfahrung aus den vergangenen 20 Jahren zeigt allerdings auch, dass die Auszahlung von Fördergeldern für Herdenschutzmittel allein nicht ausreicht, um die Anzahl der Übergriffe deutlich zu senken. Es muss auch gewährleistet werden, dass die fachliche Expertise für die korrekte Anwendung und Wartung zur Verfügung steht. Vor allem in Gebieten mit Prädations-Hotspots sollte aktiv auf die Tierhaltenden zugegangen werden und sollten die Gründe für die vermehrten Übergriffe analysiert und abgestellt werden.Bisher fehlen aus Deutschland Daten zur Funktionstüchtigkeit der geförderten und im Einsatz befindlichen Schutzmaßnahmen. Solche Daten sind notwendig, um zu verstehen, warum trotz steigender Präventionsausgaben die Nutztierschäden teilweise auch in Gebieten mit jahrelanger Wolfspräsenz nicht zurückgehen. Sie sind zudem die Grundlage für wissenschaftliche Studien zu möglichen Unterschieden in der Wirksamkeit verschiedener Herdenschutzmethoden. Daten zur Funktionstüchtigkeit von geförderten Herdenschutzmaßnahmen sollten zumindest stichprobenartig gesammelt werden, unabhängig davon, ob es in dem jeweiligen Gebiet Wolfsübergriffe gibt. Neben der Untersuchung der rein technischen Aspekte des Herdenschutzes ist es ebenso wichtig herauszufinden, wie die Akzeptanz gegenüber Herdenschutzmaßnahmen bei den Tierhaltenden verbessert und deren Eigenmotivation erhöht werden kann. Hierfür sind Daten zur Umsetzbarkeit und Akzeptanz der eingesetzten Herdenschutzmaßnahmen erforderlich. Nutztierhaltende sollten schon in die Konzeption entsprechender Studien mit eingebunden werden, um sicherzustellen, dass die Fragen untersucht werden, deren Beantwortung für sie am dringendsten ist.Der Weg von einem emotionsbasierten zu einem evidenzbasierten Wolfsmanagement führt über wissenschaftlich robuste Daten und Analysen. Entsprechende Untersuchungen sind nur in enger Zusammenarbeit zwischen Weidetierhaltung und Wissenschaft möglich. Basierend auf der Fachkompetenz und den praktischen Erfahrungen der Weidetierhaltenden kann die Wissenschaft helfen, die Herdenschutzmaßnahmen zu identifizieren und weiterzuentwickeln, die Nutztierübergriffe am effektivsten reduzieren.SummaryAs the wolf population grows, the number of attacks on livestock in Germany also increases from year to year. Agriculture, nature conservation and politics agree on one point: that wolf attacks on livestock should be reduced sustainably. However, there are differing views on how this goal can best be achieved. In the public debate, calls for simplified shooting of wolves or general hunting are becoming louder and louder. The assumption is that such measures could sustainably reduce livestock damage caused by wolves.Before wildlife management measures are applied, clear objectives are needed. The first question, therefore, must be: What is the primary objective of the management measure? Based on scientific evidence, it must be evaluated in advance whether the measures under consideration are suitable for achieving the objective. This is mandatory if the measures include the killing of sentient animals, particularly if they are strictly protected. Criteria for evaluating if the objective was reached are needed in order to be able to verify how effective the selected management measures are when applied.In this chapter, we address the question of which management measures are suitable, based on current knowledge, to achieve the goal of sustainably reducing wolf attacks on livestock. We first explain why wolves kill livestock and whether there is a relationship between the number of wolves and the amount of livestock damage. To do this, we examine, among other things, data on wolf attacks on livestock in Germany. Based on an extensive literature review, we analyse whether the following management measures are suitable to sustainably reduce wolf attacks on livestock: 1) a general hunting of wolves, 2) the selective removal of individual wolves causing damage, and 3) non-lethal livestock protection methods. Finally, we present recommendations for evidence-based and solution-oriented wolf management with respect to wolf-livestock conflict.In Germany, as wolf territories increase, attacks on sheep and goats also increase. However, the magnitude of the increase differs considerably among the federal states. Individual federal states achieve very different levels of damage with the same number of wolf territories. This suggests that the extent of damage is not solely determined by the number of wolves. We suspect that the differences in damage levels are mainly due to the different implementation of livestock protection measures in the individual federal states.The results of the literature review regarding the effectiveness of lethal and non-lethal management measures to protect livestock clearly show that general hunting of wolves does not reduce livestock damage. There is no scientific evidence that hunting significantly and sustainably reduces damage, unless the wolf population is drastically reduced or completely eradicated. This is not possible in Germany and in the European Union under the current legal situation. In contrast to an undifferentiated hunting of the wolf, the targeted shooting of individual animals can be effective if they are actually individuals that have learned to overcome recommended functional livestock protection measures. However, such cases are rare and it is difficult in the field to safely identify and kill a specific individual. Non-lethal livestock protection measures are much better at achieving sustained reductions in damage compared to lethal measures. The only way to achieve a lasting reduction of damage to livestock in coexistence with wolves is the professional implementation of livestock protection measures on a broad scale. Non-lethal livestock protection measures do not completely prevent attacks on livestock. However, if correctly applied they can significantly reduce wolf caused damages on livestock.The knowledge of how to reduce livestock depredation by wolves through herd protection measures is also available in Germany. Many livestock farmers have developed a high level of expertise in this field. However, experience from the past 20 years also shows that the funding of livestock protection measures alone is not enough to significantly reduce the number of wolf attacks. It is also necessary to ensure that technical expertise is available for proper application and maintenance of the measures. Especially in areas with predation hotspots, livestock owners should be actively approached and the reasons for increased attacks analysed and remedied.To date, there is a lack of data from Germany on the functionality of funded and applied protection measures. Such data are necessary to understand why, despite increasing prevention expenditures, livestock damage has not decreased in some cases, even in areas where wolves have been present for years. Moreover, such data are the basis for scientific studies on possible differences in the effectiveness of different livestock protection methods. Data on the functionality of funded protection measures should be collected at least on a random basis, regardless of whether there are wolf attacks in the respective area. In addition to investigating the purely technical aspects of herd protection, it is equally important to find out how the acceptance towards livestock protection measures can be improved among livestock owners and how their self-motivation can be increased. This requires data on the feasibility and acceptance of the applied protection measures. Livestock keepers should be involved already in the conception of appropriate studies to ensure that the investigations will answer the most urgent questions for them.The path from emotion-based to evidence-based wolf management is through scientifically robust data and analysis. Appropriate research is only possible through close collaboration between livestock owners and science. Based on the expertise and practical experience of farmers, science can help identify and improve the livestock protection measures that most effectively reduce wolf attacks on livestock.

Caribbean children’s literature reflects an ecological Caribbean aesthetic, as well as a historically inherited force of dynamics that includes imperialistic politics. Through textual analysis of a Caribbean-based picture book, this chapter examines the role of nature in relation to an ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) theoretical framework. The Black Lake (2014) by Grace Achoy and illustrated by Jade Achoy is one example of story bearing key characteristics of Caribbean environmental children’s literature such as mythical figures connected to the natural landscape. Through stories for children there are opportunities for cultivating ecoliteracy alongside an appreciation and consciousness of the environmental culture of the region. This chapter examines how an eco-perspective reflects factors that inform the current Caribbean region and support a deeper understanding of the imprint of humanity on the environment.

Abstract Figures from the Scots-Irish Andrew Jackson to the Caribbean-Irish Rihanna, as well as literature, film, caricature, and beauty discourse, convey how the Irish racially transformed multiple times: in the slave-holding Caribbean, on America’s frontiers and antebellum plantations, and along its eastern seaboard. This cultural history of race and centuries of Irishness in the Americas examines the forcibly transported Irish, the eighteenth-century Presbyterian Ulster Scots, and post-1845 Famine immigrants. Their racial transformations are indicated by the designations they acquired in the Americas: ‘Redlegs,’ ‘Scots-Irish,’ and ‘black Irish.’ In literature by Fitzgerald, O’Neill, Mitchell, Glasgow, and Yerby (an African-American author of Scots-Irish heritage), the Irish are both colluders and victims within America’s racial structure. Depictions range from Irish encounters with Native and African Americans to competition within America’s immigrant hierarchy between ‘Saxon’ Scots-Irish and ‘Celtic’ Irish Catholic. Irish-connected presidents feature, but attention to queer and multiracial authors, public women, beauty professionals, and performers complicates the ‘Irish whitening’ narrative. Thus, ‘Irish Princess’ Grace Kelly’s globally-broadcast ascent to royalty paves the way for ‘America’s royals,’ the Kennedys. The presidencies of the Scots-Irish Jackson and Catholic-Irish Kennedy signalled their respective cohorts’ assimilation. Since Gothic literature particularly expresses the complicity that attaining power (‘whiteness’) entails, subgenres named ‘Scots-Irish Gothic’ and ‘Kennedy Gothic’ are identified: in Gothic by Brown, Poe, James, Faulkner, and Welty, the violence of the colonial Irish motherland is visited upon marginalized Americans, including, sometimes, other Irish groupings. History is Gothic in Irish-American narrative because the undead Irish past replays within America’s contexts of race.

This essay provides an extensive overview of Caribbean picture books, middle grade, and young adult books by writers from the Caribbean. The chapter explores the politically engaged nature of children’s literature in literature written in or translated into English. Categories include anti-slavery and abolition, anti-colonialism and independence, labor organizing and workers’ rights, Pan-Africanism and black consciousness, civil rights, immigrant rights, environmentalism, poverty, communism and socialism, gender and sexuality, disability rights, and political orientation. An appendix breaks down the various books according to age level, providing a rich resource for educators and librarians interested in providing literature written by those from the region, culturally authoritative stories written by Caribbean people themselves. The selections have publication dates spanning from 1949 to 2019 and are all currently in print.

Digitization in enterprises enables the application of artificial intel­ligence, especially machine learning. One area of use for artificial intelligence is in the creation of an insolvency forecast for companies. With a literature re­view, the current status on the usage of artificial intelligence in insolvency fore­casting is presented. For this purpose, the two databases Scopus and Web of Science are searched for scientific papers on the topic of artificial intelligence and corporate insolvencies to get an up-to-date impression of the status quo. A particular focus is placed on small and medium-sized companies. It is shown that artificial intelligence methods provide better results compared to classical methods. The research reveals that the most important algorithms related to the prediction of potential corporate insolvency are artificial neural networks, decision trees and support vector machines as well as hybrid models.

Equity and justice have always been important norms in the field of urban planning. With the gradual deepening of understanding of residential environment, the research context of equity and justice related to location is becoming more and more sophisticated. Recently, varieties of subjects Including Public Health and Geography focus on the inequity of public resources in spatial distribution and how to measure the degree of this gap. In general, the mainstream measurement methods can be summarized into two categories: (1) The description of phenomenon caused by the spatial inequities, and accessibility is a typical method of this type. (2) the direct quantification of inequity, such as Gink Coefficient which is originated from the economics field and introduced into the measurement of health equity, and Getis-Ord General G, together with Moran’ index is the most commonly method used into the general spatial autocorrelation. In this paper, based on the overall literature review of the concept of equity in the study using these methods and a summary of their specific context of the measurement using, nursing institution in Shanghai, China are regarded as a typical case to practice these methods and compare the differences in using. Meantime, the impact of the politics and planning related to this special facility is also been considered. Results show that, accessibility of nursing institution among elderly groups is much different under different research distance, and the overall trend seems like the research units in suburb appears higher accessibility than those in highly urbanized area. And Gink Coefficient helps us determine the proportion of the elderly population in different reachable areas in Shanghai is within a reasonable range. However, Global Moran’ index provide reliable evidence that the existence of the aggregation combined by the high-value units. It indicates that there are inequities among the distribution of aged-nursing resources, and Local Moran I （LISA）help us to find the specific boundaries of these areas. In general, in the study of the equity related to location, accessibility can only reflect the differences phenomenon in distribution, but it is not clear to describe this gap to what extent, and it’s difficult to achieve the possibility of comparison among different periods and different subjects. The Gini coefficient often focuses on the unfairness of the distribution of people, but ignored the aggregation characteristics of the spatial dimension, which the analysis of spatial autocorrelation can make up. All these methods proved that it’s necessary to consider both the spatial distribution of supply and demand. And the discussion about equity related to location should be strictly qualified in study.

Economic and political integration have been a perennial and neuralgic issue in the Caribbean agenda. This paper draws on the literature on trade, growth and regional agreements to discuss the motivation behind the Caribbean drive for integration, the results obtained so far and what is in stock for the future. It argues, with the help of descriptive statistics, an empirical growth model and a gravity model, that the traditional, trade related gains from regional integration have been and are bound to be limited because of (1) the countries¿ high openness; (2) the limited size of the "common", enlarged market; and (3) the countries¿ relatively similar factor endowments. It also argues, though, that gains in the area of "non-tradables", due to economies of scale which cannot be mitigated by trade and openness, can be substantial.

Predominant views on the political economy of Latin America and the Caribbean tend to emphasize that elite domination helps to understand the high levels of inequality. The contemporary fiscal version of that assertion goes something like “the rich are powerful and they dont like taxes, hence we have little taxation and little redistribution.” That is a good approximation to the reality of some countries, but not of others. There are cases in the region where there are high levels of taxation and non-negligible redistributive efforts. But in some of those cases such redistribution comes hand in hand with macroeconomic imbalances, high inflation, low growth, as well as low-quality public policies. When redistributive efforts are short-sighted and attempted with inefficient public policies, fiscal imbalances lead to inflation and to frequent macroeconomic crises that reduce growth and thwart poverty reduction efforts. The argument of this paper is that there are various possible political configurations (including elite domination and populism among others) that lead to different economic and social outcomes (including the degree of redistribution and others). We postulate that each configuration of social outcomes emerges out of different political economy equilibria. Different countries in the region will be in different political economy equilibria, and hence will have different combinations of political economy syndromes and of socioeconomic outcomes. In this paper, we characterize the countries regarding the size of the public sector, how much fiscal redistribution there is, and how efficient this public action is. We summarize various strands of literature that attempt to explain some elements of that fiscal vector one at a time; and then attempt to provide a simple framework that might explain why different countries present different configurations of size, distributiveness, and efficiency.

This Technical Note presents a literature review on the Center of Government (CoG). This term refers to the institution or group of institutions that support a country's chief executive (president or prime minister) in leading the political and technical coordination of the government's actions, strategic planning of the government's program, monitoring of performance, and communication of the government's decisions and achievements. These institutions are becoming more and more relevant in a context where an increasing number of crosscutting issues demand whole-of-government approaches and coherent responses. In several countries, the CoG is also increasingly involved in promoting innovations to improve government performance and support departments and agencies in achieving results. This review discusses the conceptual definitions of CoG in the literature; presents their main functions; describes the organization, structure, and management styles of the units typically performing those functions; and analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the current literature to inform an action-based agenda of CoG strengthening in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Most policy analyses and academic papers deal with finding the combination of policies that may bring about the best development outcomes. However, in the long run, it is the features of public policies that seem to matter for explaining development outcomes. Unfortunately, Latin America and the Caribbean lags behind other regions in the quality of the features of public policies. Policy features depend on the quality of government institutions, but Latin America and the Caribbean countries have done particularly poorly in that area as well. Not every country, however, fares the same. While a few countries sit alongside the developed world, more than two-thirds of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean score below the median. This policy brief should encourage researchers to use the data, and it may help policymakers to identify which institutions may be reducing the possibility of moving upward and forward. Some of the policy recommendations may help to change current paths.

The findings reported in this paper provide insights into the power dynamics and distributional politics that shape resistance to phasing out coal and to opportunities for change, as part of a broader project comparing these lessons and experiences in Colombia, South Africa and Indonesia, aiming to understand challenges to a just energy transition in coal-producing countries in the Global South. The current Colombian government has helped centre the concept of a just energy transition in public debate, encompassing a broad range of questions and concerns. National, regional and local discussions have different frameworks and visions for a future beyond fossil fuels, particularly regarding coal, which is a major export commodity but not a major fuel for domestic use in Colombia. For thermal coal–producing regions in Colombia, this debate touches on the challenges of both the legacy of extractive activities and the repercussions of losing a significant industrial sector, affecting local and regional economies and communities. Drawing on a series of workshops, a literature review, and interviews around transitions from coal in the Colombian departments of Cesar and La Guajira, researchers identified different visions of a just energy transition put forward at the national and regional levels, as well as some of the interests and strategies leveraged by different actors and groups in pushing certain visions of such a transition. In addition to presenting these results, the authors of this report provide insights into the power dynamics that shape resistance to phasing out coal and opportunities for transitions to more sustainable futures, with a strong emphasis on the efforts of civil society to create and achieve their visions of transition.

Unequal income distribution in Latin America and the Caribbean is linked to unequal distributions of (human and physical) assets and differential access to markets and services. These circumstances, and the accompanying social tensions, need to be understood in terms of traditional fragmenting forces; the sectors of the population who experience unfavorable outcomes are also recognized by characteristics such as ethnicity, race, gender and physical disability. In addition to reviewing the general literature on social exclusion, this paper surveys several more specific topics: i) relative deprivation (in land and housing, physical infrastructure, health and income); ii) labor market issues, including access to labor markets in general, as well as informality, segregation and discrimination; iii) the transaction points of political representation, social protection and violence; and iv) areas where analysis remains weak and avenues for further research in the region.

Measuring 21st century skills is one of the most important tasks of education and training systems. Measurement is what allows program managers to evaluate the effectiveness of a particular education program, diagnose the needs of individual students, or assess their development over time. Still, countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and around the world face challenges in this area. Using data from interviews, case studies, and an in-depth literature review, this policy brief evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of different types of assessment tools for measuring 21st century skills, discusses challenges of applying them in less-developed countries, and offers recommendations for stakeholders seeking to measure 21st century skills among children and youth, by utilizing existing instruments or adapting and testing them in local contexts.

The dual nature of water as a finite resource and as a basic human right creates a tension that presents important implications for water pricing. Water tariffs are a key tool used by policymakers to create incentive structures that promote efficient use; at the same time, they can create barriers to access and ignore waters socio-cultural value if not calibrated properly. This conflict between pricing as to reduce over-consumption and to guarantee accessibility exposes the difficulty of optimizing residential water pricing, and the importance of progressive tariff structures in building more resilient communities.Water policymakers view tariffs as an instrument to balance various objectives, such as efficiency, equity, cost recovery, and environmental preservation. However, these competing objectives mean that effective water tariff structures must be acutely customized to local contexts, a reality that is especially pertinent to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) due to its geographic and temporal heterogeneity in terms of water availability and demand. Prices can also be influenced by other factors. Four primary factor categories were identified as influential to water prices based on a comprehensive review of the price determination literature: (1) environmental factors, (2) urban factors, (3) political and ideological factors, and (4) management and institutional factors. The present brief examines how these factors theoretically impact pricing and what their status is throughout LAC, with the ultimate goal of providing a framework for future research.

We developed a technical efficiency analysis of container ports in Latin America and the Caribbean using an input-oriented stochastic frontier model. We employed a 10-year panel with data on container throughput, port terminal area, berth length, and number of available cranes in 63 ports. The model has three innovations with respect to the available literature: (i) we treated ship-to-shore gantry cranes and mobile cranes separately, in order to account for the higher productivity of the former; (ii) we introduced a binary variable for ports using ships¿ cranes, treated as an additional source of port productivity; and (iii) we introduced a binary variable for ports operating as transshipment hubs. Their associated parameters are highly significant in the production function. The results show an improvement in the average technical efficiency of ports in the Latin American and Caribbean region from 36% to 50% between 1999 and 2009; the best performing port in 2009 achieved a technical efficiency of 94%with respect to the frontier. The paper also studies possible determinants of port technical efficiency, such as ownership, corruption, transshipment, income per capita, and location. The results revealed positive and significant associations between technical efficiency and both transshipment activities and lower corruption levels.

Improving the effectiveness, efficiency, and openness of governments is essential to meet the key challenges that countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region face to improve service delivery to citizens. This Technical Note is meant to guide the work of the IDB's Institutional Capacity of theState Division in this area. In the literature, institutional quality and implementation capacity emerge as the key variables that underpin good government. Measurement is a central issue, as institutional quality cannot be assessed or improved without reliable indicators. While many challenges remain, the region is already adopting innovative approaches to public management, focusing particularly on the capacity of governments to manage information. In response to existing challenges and progresses, the IDB identifies three main strategic areas of action: (i) improving government effectiveness by strengthening the evidence base for policy making and enhancing the capacity of central agencies; (ii) enhancing efficiency in policy implementation by leveraging the adoption of innovative e-solutions and supporting civil service reforms; and (iii) fostering accountability and open government by strengthening accountability institutions, both internal and external, and promoting the adoption of targeted transparency policies.