{"title":"Militarization, Risk, and the Environment","authors":"Daniel Auerbach","doi":"10.1525/sod.2023.0029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sod.2023.0029","url":null,"abstract":"Militaries are distinct social institutions that significantly impact the environment. As militaries seek to satisfy institutional goals, they put unique pressure on industries that help supply vital materials. Operating under the logic of the treadmill of destruction, militaries generate specific forms of risk. This paper focuses on the U.S. military’s use of Agent Orange during the American War in Vietnam as a markedly militarized form of risk. Through a historical case study, this paper demonstrates how the risks associated with military herbicide use differ from commercial, civilian use. Military demands and strategic goals influenced how Agent Orange was produced and used, leading to a more dangerous product used in greater quantities and at higher concentrations. This research underscores the importance of focusing on the institutional drivers of militarization, demonstrating how this can further develop our understanding of risk production and environmental degradation.","PeriodicalId":36869,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135552078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Booms to Bans","authors":"Juliet Lu, Hilary H. Smith","doi":"10.1525/sod.2023.9.2.131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sod.2023.9.2.131","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we examine the extensive use of bans (temporary prohibitions or moratoriums) on resource exploitation activities by the government of Laos as an authoritarian environmental governance tool. We focus on bans enacted recently in three sectors: on the granting of land concessions in 2012, on the expansion of banana plantations in 2014, and on logging exports in 2016. Bans have long been used in Laos, particularly in the forestry sector, despite their considerable political risk and economic costs, the way they contradict state actors’ promotion of these same activities as drivers of development, and their past ineffectiveness. Most cases in the environmental authoritarian literature explore authoritarian states with a strong capacity to employ top-down governance tools. We argue, in contrast, that the Lao government’s repeated use of bans instead of other effective governing tools, such as more incremental, conditional, or incentive-based policies, reflects not strong state capacity but rather the limits to its implementing and enforcement capacity. The bans examined emerge from central–local divides, unregulated village land leasing, and failures to extract state revenues, and we interpret them as central-state efforts to consolidate and assert a more centralized, command-and-control authority over the country’s land and resources.","PeriodicalId":36869,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66955180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Developmentalism as Internationalism","authors":"C. Thornton","doi":"10.1525/sod.2022.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sod.2022.0012","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on the methodological insights of Global Historical Sociology, this article argues for a relational reconceptualization of the origins of the international development project as rooted in demands emanating from the poorer countries themselves, particularly in Latin America. First, this article traces how sociologists and development scholars have conventionally understood the origins of the international development project, arguing that post-development scholarship has left a lasting imprint even among those scholars who might reject some of its underlying premises. It then returns to the historical record to reconstruct a new empirical history of the origins of the international development project by examining, especially, the relations between Latin American actors and those from the Global North. This reconstruction, mobilizing little-studied archival records from Latin America and reading them in relation to and against the conventional sources from the United States and Europe, reveals that the key institutions that emerged at mid-century to govern the development project were, in fact, the product of sustained demands from below—the product of an ongoing relation between North and South. The article concludes by considering what this historical reconstruction means for the ways that sociologists understand, write about, and teach the international development project, arguing that this relational understanding of its origins is necessary for any project to “decolonize development.”","PeriodicalId":36869,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66955629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Women’s Political Representation and Corruption","authors":"Manjing Gao, Matthew C. Mahutga","doi":"10.1525/sod.2022.0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sod.2022.0022","url":null,"abstract":"We assess the degree to which the policy preferences of female legislators explain the widely observed negative association between women’s political representation (known as “women in parliament,” or WIP) and corruption. While a broad literature suggests that WIP reduces corruption, there is little consensus on how. Some suggest that the effect is driven by women’s psychology—perhaps women are more prosocial or more risk-averse than men, and thus engage in less corruption. Others suggest that the effect is driven by policy preferences: because it serves the interest of their female constituents, women promote social spending, which in turn reduces corruption. We employ a mediation analysis that allows us to test the mediating effect of social spending, and to provide an upper bound for alternative explanations. Our results suggest that social spending explains as much as 69 percent of the effect of WIP on corruption, leaving as little as 31 percent for alternative explanations. These results are robust to concerns about spurious WIP effects, sample composition, and the potential for endogeneity in the link from either WIP or social spending to corruption. We conclude by implicating these findings in broader discussions about the beneficial effects of WIP for governance.","PeriodicalId":36869,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66955658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Socioenvironmental Injustice across the Global Divide","authors":"Nikhil Deb, Louise Seamster","doi":"10.1525/sod.2023.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sod.2023.0008","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the connections between two seemingly disparate cases of socioenvironmental injustice: Flint’s water crisis in Michigan, USA, and Union Carbide’s toxic chemical release in Bhopal, India. Engaging our empirical and theoretical insights from these two cases, this paper illustrates how marginalized people in distant settings can face similar socioenvironmental struggles. Considering Bhopal and Flint as instances of slow violence and institutional betrayal, the article makes two key arguments. First, treating these crises as discrete events obscures their sustained assault on people deemed expendable by their governments. Second, institutions charged with protecting people in distress can magnify and extend suffering. The paper analyzes institutional betrayal as a mechanism of slow violence: survivors can suffer lingering consequences when seeking restitution from regulatory bodies that may be responsible or complicit. We find that government responses and denials have caused prolonged violence in these regions. The paper concludes by urging scholars to compare socioenvironmental injustice globally, to believe residents, and to reject false end dates for crises.","PeriodicalId":36869,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135783852","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Layered Logic","authors":"G. Shen, Peter F Martelli, Fekadu N. Deresse","doi":"10.1525/sod.2021.0038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sod.2021.0038","url":null,"abstract":"Organizations instantiate multiple institutional logics, which operate in a nested fashion across levels of analysis. A demand on organizations in the Global South from aid donors is to adopt new management systems. Management systems like kaizen, a Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement, have an inherent logic. Kaizen’s adoption in Ethiopia, a postsocialist state, can be rendered ceremonial if its logic is not fully instantiated along with prevailing logics within recipient organizations. Our examination of the Ethiopian Sugar Corporation is an application of Besharov and Smith’s 2014 framework. We assume there is a high degree of centrality in this state-owned enterprise, because any managerial logic absorbed would have to adhere to the state logic. We conducted interviews, supplemented by archival data review, to illustrate what actors do to improve compatibility with state logic. Our findings suggest three institutional logics were instantiated, in order: the macro logic of developmental authoritarianism; micro logics of production order and social control; and the meso logic of knowledge brokerage. We propose the concept of layered logic, or ordering of institutional logics, each serving a distinct purpose yet fitted with the others.","PeriodicalId":36869,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66953682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Unpacking Authoritarian Environmental Governance","authors":"John Aloysius Zinda","doi":"10.1525/sod.2023.9.2.195","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sod.2023.9.2.195","url":null,"abstract":"Debates about whether authoritarian or democratic environmental governance have the capacity to weather the present crises tend to gloss over variation across and within regimes. Authoritarian environmental governance plays out in diverse ways; comparing across contexts can help us understand its varying outcomes. Drawing on James C. Scott’s characterization of authoritarian high modernism, I identify four dimensions along which projects of authoritarian environmental governance vary: from maximizing to optimizing desired outputs, from thin to thicker simplifications, from rigidity to constrained flexibility, and from direct coercion to cultivating compliance. Together, they comprise a phenomenon we might call authoritarian elaboration, departing from the rigidity and simplification Scott describes. I review evidence from a variety of environmental projects in China to demonstrate how authoritarian elaboration occurs in practice. Examining the reasons behind what we might call harder and softer approaches to environmental governance, as well as their impacts on people and environments, I propose hypotheses on variation in governance practices and suggest approaches to studying them.","PeriodicalId":36869,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66955214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Complex Reality of National Park Development under Authoritarianism","authors":"O. Bruun","doi":"10.1525/sod.2023.9.2.151","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sod.2023.9.2.151","url":null,"abstract":"Vietnam is simultaneously an aspiring environmental state and an authoritarian one. As such, it has clearly articulated policies for biodiversity protection, including measures to secure the livelihoods of communities adjacent to national parks. However, the realities on the ground often confound state environmental discourse. The national parks in the highlands were created through new forms of territorial domination after the war, while continued in-migration and development have made these parks contested spaces that are fraught with pervasive inequities and unsettled ethnic relations. Among the consequences of this weak legitimacy are illegal logging and poaching; indecisive management and protection; and rapidly declining biodiversity, with severe impacts on local livelihoods. Based on a study of two parks in southern Vietnam, this article explores the real-life complexities of national park development under authoritarianism, including the persistent gap between state environmental rhetoric and locally negotiated illegalities. It finds that the key characteristics of authoritarian environmentalism drive a bifurcation of environmental management regimes: a formal, top-down domain of policy- and law-making, serving multiple purposes of legitimation, and a contingent domain of provincial development priorities and locally negotiated use rights. Despite the apparent disorder, both are equally significant to the party-state’s resilience.","PeriodicalId":36869,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66955189","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"No MAS","authors":"J. Acosta","doi":"10.1525/sod.2022.0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sod.2022.0019","url":null,"abstract":"Political sociologists have spent more time investigating how charismatic leaders gain support than how they lose it. Which factors drive voters to abandon a charismatic leader? Is defection associated with social and political identity, economic circumstances, democratic commitments, interactions between these, or other factors? In this paper, I use the case of Juan “Evo” Morales and Bolivia to explore how support for a charismatic leader erodes. A mixed-methods approach enables a descriptive portrait of loyalists and defectors from nationally representative survey data, along with an analysis of how voters describe their political allegiances from in-depth interviews across two summers of fieldwork in La Paz. The study finds that in the case of Evo and Bolivia, loyalty to and defection from a charismatic leader are affected by education, ethnic identity, and sex. Using these findings, the paper shows how responses to charismatic counter-roles are shaped by voter positionality. Differences in voters’ interpretation of a given situation depend partly on identity. Support for a charismatic leader is not necessarily support for charisma, and voters defect for various reasons, including some cited by other voters as grounds for their persistent loyalty.","PeriodicalId":36869,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66955642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nhinh Thi Do, Thorkil Casse, Gvantsa Gverdtsiteli, K. Hyakumura
{"title":"Hydropower Plant Construction and Resettlement in Nghệ An, Vietnam","authors":"Nhinh Thi Do, Thorkil Casse, Gvantsa Gverdtsiteli, K. Hyakumura","doi":"10.1525/sod.2023.9.2.172","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sod.2023.9.2.172","url":null,"abstract":"The global challenge of moving toward a low-carbon energy system heightens the tension between states’ economic development efforts and environmental concerns. In Vietnam, increasing energy demand has led to a boom in hydropower development in recent decades. For local communities, dam construction has brought displacement, involuntary resettlement, deteriorating income and living standards, and rising poverty. However, from the central government’s perspective, the negative local impacts of hydropower projects are negligible compared to their national benefits. This study uses the construction of the Bản Vẽ hydropower plant to illustrate how government entities expand their control of villagers’ livelihoods in the name of environmentalism. Spanning nearly twenty years, our case study reports on changes in the Vietnamese approach to authoritarian environmentalism. The authorities initially promoted voluntary relocation with a brochure depicting the high quality of resettlement areas. When the remaining locals hesitated, because they had heard that the promised new homes had various problems, the authorities forced them to move. Overall, the case study shows the Vietnamese authorities deploying different instruments to implement their will, engaging in little meaningful dialogue with local people. Moreover, when locals sought alternative income from acacia plantations, the authorities cited environmental concerns to justify confiscating their forest holdings.","PeriodicalId":36869,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66955201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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