Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The identity and cultural politics produced by and contained in blood discourses, such as the 1867 Dawes Act and the 1990 Indian Arts and Crafts Act, are unpacked in order to illustrate the stakes in the debates over Indian collective self identity, tribal sovereignty, and cultural/artistic representations. The tactics and strategies involved in these discourses are revealed, amounting to the blurring of Indian identity and cultural boundaries and to the inception of inter-tribal surveillance and policing with both strategies serving to lessen the individual and collective powers of American Indians.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In recent years, North American labour law scholars such as Karl Klare and Katherine Stone have proposed the re/formulation of transnational regulatory regimes to mediate the harsh effects of globalized capital. The transnational turn in labour law scholarship flows from mounting concerns about the impact of globalizing economic and other pressures on both state sovereignty and law-making powers, and national legal regimes. The considerable interest shown in the transnational approach has been warranted; the idea of sovereignty and domestic lawmaking appear threatened by intensified global production. But in turning to �the transnational�, exponents of the approach have, comparatively speaking, neglected to inquire into the impact of globalization on individual nation-states. The point is not that comparativism guarantees a fundamentally different understanding of globalization than transnationalism offers � although this could in fact be the case. Rather, the neglect of comparativism reveals a methodological bias. I examine the implications of the bias in the context of regional integration in the Americas � with specific reference to the Commonwealth Caribbean. With the increasing rate of economic integration in the western hemisphere, and with the potential debut of a free trade agreement encompassing the region, the absence of support for a comparative approach to globalization and labour law in North America is problematic. To illustrate this, I borrow and re-develop the post-colonial construct of "colonization of the mind". I conclude with potential areas of study for comparative labour law in the Americas.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Norms matter. But where do they come from? While the “influence” of norms and ideas has been demonstrated for virtually every aspect of global affairs since their study became en vogue some twenty years ago, the question of normative change remains undertheorized. Conventional accounts refer to exogenous factors such as the appearance of norm entrepreneurs or environmental changes thus merely transposing the problem to a different level. Why do these external factors change in the first place? How do norm entrepreneurs come to entertain certain ideas and why and under what circumstances do they resonate? Modern systems theory provides a promising way to tackle these questions to the extent that it situates normative expectations in the context of an ongoing communicative evolution of world society. However, the light modern systems theory sheds on communicative processes remains a functionalist one, leaving dynamics of power and authority unclarified and downplaying the contentious character of processes of social differentiation. In contrast to the idea of self-sufficient lateral world systems put forth in a theoretical context informed by Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory the paper will thus argue that the notion of global differentiation needs to be politicized, i.e. stripped of its functionalist logic, in order to be capable of grasping how struggles for the recognition of political authority respond to relations of power rather than functional demands. Power relations under conditions of functional differentiation can then be described in terms of processes of semantic colonization, which seem to indicate that the very process of drawing functional boundaries is itself a political one. However, re-politicizing questions of governance and differentiation should not lead to hasty optimism. The paper will thus end on a sceptical note as to how the prospects for democracy might look like if struggles for the recognition of political authority are de-territorialized and take place along the lines of functional differentiation and in terms of semantic colonization.Mutual understanding is not something Habermas would take to be ubiquitous in modern capitalist societies. Quite the contrary, the diagnosis of contemporary Western societies which Habermas has to offer is centered around the idea of a systemic colonization of the lifeworld increasingly impinging on the residual potentials of communicative freedom. Politics and the economy are conceived of as functionally differentiated subsystems of modern society integrated through abstract steering media such as power and money. From a systemic perspective the economic system encroaches upon the private sphere by means of monetary exchange while the political system trades administrative decisions for mass loyalty in terms of power. Even though the potential of communicative rationality is introduced as an ineradicable element of everyday language, Habermas thus ends up with a scenario where the communicative rationality situated in the lifeworld is acutely threatened with extinction. The image of systemic colonization serves to refine an argument which had been developed already in the Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, that communicative freedom was increasingly curtailed as the process of rationalization proceeded.

Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: The Nashville crayfish (Orconectes shoupi) is restricted to 1 small watershed in Tennessee. Recovery from local extinction events depends upon the species� ability to re-colonize. Also, the method of protecting segments of the population in areas to be disturbed has been removal and upstream transport before disturbance. But time required for the depleted area to be re-colonized was unknown. I monitored re-colonization of sites where crayfish had been removed. A 50m site was chosen in each of 3 streams, with differing characteristics in amount of stream flow, substrate, and past history of capture rates and species mix. Sweeps of each site were conducted until an estimated 80% of the site crayfish population were removed. Crayfish were transported 1-2 km upstream. Sites were surveyed at regular intervals until capture rates indicated that crayfish densities were at pre-removal levels. Population density and species relative abundance varied greatly between the 3 sites. All sites showed rapid re-colonization, with capture rates increasing significantly in the first few days after depletion. Depletion did not appear to affect relative densities of species. Results indicate that in order to remove a significant proportion of the population prior to disturbance, a series of sweeps need to be made. Further, rapid re-colonization may result in population levels at pre-removal levels during disturbance activities that last more than a few days, unless follow-up removals are done.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This qualitative study engages the theoretical metaphors of post-colonial hybridity and symbolic colonization to examine narratives of race and ethnicity circulated through popular communication. It positions the U.S. evening news as a form of popular public discourse informative of dominant ideologies about race, ethnicity and the imagined nation. Through a case study analysis of the Eli�n Gonz�lez controversy, this study problematizes the journalistic discursive practices used to construct Latinidad through televisual representations of the Cuban American community. This paper theorizes that while the post-colonial hybridity of Latina/o identity vexes mainstream U.S. narratives of identity, dominant narratives about Latina/os are always produced against the ideological context of whiteness resulting in mainstream stories that work to symbolically colonize already marginalized groups.