An intriguing exploration of pioneering research in natural resource management and the economist who led it.
A professor of natural resources management and economics explores the work of Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012), the first woman to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, for her work focused on the governance of commons.
As Nordman notes, the term commons (also known as common-pool resources) refers to goods that can be depleted if overused but which are difficult to exclude people from using, such as water, fish, and land. Prior to Ostrom’s work, the methods for managing commons were largely influenced by the work of ecologist Garrett Hardin. In his 1968 essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” he argued that overpopulation was a large part of the problem and believed that the only ways in which common-pool resources could be properly managed were through market forces or governmental regulation. Ostrom felt that there was another way. Based on her research, she argued that communities were capable of solving their own resource problems without restrictions or government intervention. In this compelling work, Nordman explores numerous examples that support Ostrom’s claim, such as the coordination of groundwater withdrawals in Los Angeles, the formation of “lobster gangs” in Maine, and the ancient water court in Valencia, Spain. “Each Thursday at noon,” writes the author, “as they have for the last one thousand years, members of this unique court conduct a public hearing in which they resolve disputes over irrigation water.” As Ostrom noted, institutions that have successfully managed their communal resources tend to follow a recognizable pattern. These principles emerge organically through community interactions over time, and those institutions that do not succeed are frequently missing one or more of these principles. In clear language, Nordman details and examines these principles and communities that have successfully adopted them. He also shares details of his interviews with members of other communities that have created collaborative systems for sharing their resources.
An intriguing exploration of pioneering research in natural resource management and the economist who led it.Pub Date: July 8, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64283-155-9
Page Count: 275
Publisher: Island Press
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.
A deeply informed critique of the malicious initiatives currently using gender as a political tool to arouse fear and strengthen political and religious institutions.
In their latest book, following The Force of Nonviolence, Butler, the noted philosopher and gender studies scholar, documents and debunks the anti-gender ideology of the right, the core principle of which is that male and female are natural categories whose recognition is essential for the survival of the family, nations, and patriarchal order. Its proponents reject “sex” as a malleable category infused with prior political and cultural understandings. By turning gender into a “phantasmatic scene,” they enable those in positions of authority to deflect attention from such world-destroying forces as war, predatory capitalism, and climate change. Butler explores the ideology’s presence in the U.S., the U.K., Uganda, and Hungary, countries where legislation has limited the rights of trans and homosexual people and denied them their sexual identity. The author also delves into the ideology’s roots among Evangelicals and the Catholic Church and such political leaders as Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán. Butler is particularly bothered by trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), who treat trans women as “male predators in disguise.” For the author, “the gap between the perceived or lived body and prevailing social norms can never be fully closed.” They imagine “a world where the many relations to being socially embodied that exist become more livable” and calls for alliances across differences and “a radical democracy informed by socialist values.” Butler compensates for the thinness of some of their recommendations with an astute dissection of the ideology’s core ideas and impressive grasp of its intellectual pretensions. This is a wonderfully thoughtful and impassioned book on a critically important centerpiece of contemporary authoritarianism and patriarchy.
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780374608224
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!
It should come as no surprise that the gifted author of The Sea Around Usand its successors can take another branch of science—that phase of biology indicated by the term ecology—and bring it so sharply into focus that any intelligent layman can understand what she is talking about.
Understand, yes, and shudder, for she has drawn a living portrait of what is happening to this balance nature has decreed in the science of life—and what man is doing (and has done) to destroy it and create a science of death. Death to our birds, to fish, to wild creatures of the woods—and, to a degree as yet undetermined, to man himself. World War II hastened the program by releasing lethal chemicals for destruction of insects that threatened man’s health and comfort, vegetation that needed quick disposal. The war against insects had been under way before, but the methods were relatively harmless to other than the insects under attack; the products non-chemical, sometimes even introduction of other insects, enemies of the ones under attack. But with chemicals—increasingly stronger, more potent, more varied, more dangerous—new chain reactions have set in. And ironically, the insects are winning the war, setting up immunities, and re-emerging, their natural enemies destroyed. The peril does not stop here. Waters, even to the underground water tables, are contaminated; soils are poisoned. The birds consume the poisons in their insect and earthworm diet; the cattle, in their fodder; the fish, in the waters and the food those waters provide. And humans? They drink the milk, eat the vegetables, the fish, the poultry. There is enough evidence to point to the far-reaching effects; but this is only the beginning,—in cancer, in liver disorders, in radiation perils…This is the horrifying story. It needed to be told—and by a scientist with a rare gift of communication and an overwhelming sense of responsibility. Already the articles taken from the book for publication in The New Yorkerare being widely discussed. Book-of-the-Month distribution in October will spread the message yet more widely.
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1962
ISBN: 061825305X
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1962
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