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This comment critiques the idea of geographic regions being "left behind." It argues that the term frames the regions in question as passive experiencers of natural phenomena, in turn obfuscating the structural forces that have shaped those regions and local populations' efforts to pursue better living conditions. The comment draws on three examples from the rural United States to illustrate how the designation of being "left behind" serves to mask subjugation and struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial development has ramifications for women's participation in labor markets and society, in the short and long run. We explore the Gold Rush that took place in the Western United States in the second half of the 19th century. The Gold Rush led to high male-skewed inward migration and created gender-specific job market opportunities, with men entering mining employment and women entering the service sector. In gold mining counties, both men and women worked less in farming. After revealing the baseline patterns, we disentangle the direct effect of gold mining from the mediating effect of the skewed sex ratio, using formal mediation analysis. The skewed sex ratio is driving lower marriage rates for men, and higher female participation in the service sector. The results are consistent with surviving written accounts from the time, suggesting a high premium for traditionally female services. Using census data spanning almost a century, we show that these differences persisted long after the initial conditions of the Gold Rush had passed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering ethics calls the attention of engineers to professional codes of ethical responsibility and personal values, but the practice of ethics in corporate settings can be more complex than either of these. Corporations too have cultures that often include corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and policies, but few discussions of engineering ethics make any explicit reference to CSR. This article proposes critical attention to CSR and role ethics as an opportunity to help prepare engineers to think through the ethics of their professional practice. After a brief overview of the evolution of social responsibility within engineering ethics in the United States, this article shares empirical research with practicing engineers in the mining and energy industries to explore how their formal ethics training did and did not prepare them to grapple with the ethical dimensions of their professional practice. It then illustrates the ways in which these dilemmas and the strategies employed for navigating them are framed within CSR policies and practices and resonate more strongly with role ethics rather than ethical theory as currently taught in most US engineering programs. The article concludes that engineering ethics teaching and learning would benefit from explicitly incorporating critical discussions of role ethics and CSR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the role of the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) within a business and human rights framework. A qualitative data analysis of cases on multinational enterprises (mnes) identifies the following: that the obligations the IACtHR places upon States explicitly contemplate soft law instruments, such as the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights; and that there exist shared obligations with companies and attempts to regulate mne conduct by establishing conditions for due diligence, such as prior consultation, benefit-sharing and reparation measures for affected communities. Therefore, IACtHR rulings may contribute to the rule of law in so far as they have normative effects on member States, but they can also prove to be ineffective given the nature of corporate conduct and certain non-enforceable responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Based on the 2011 Annual Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group Lecture, this paper makes the case for a political ecology of the subsoil. Arguing that subsoil resources have received comparatively little attention within the wider corpus of political ecological writing, the paper explores several ways in which the extraction of mineral and hydrocarbon resources is constitutive of, and constituted by, wider capitalist political, economic and institutional arrangements. Drawing on material from El Salvador and the Andean countries, the paper explores the contemporary governance of extractive industries, and points to significant convergence among the approaches taken by neoliberal and ostensibly post-neoliberal regimes alike. The intersections between the extractive economy, livelihoods and patterns of social protest are also explored. Through these examples, the paper also highlights the ways in which “activist political ecologists” play important roles in counter-movements seeking to re-govern the extractive economy. These countermovements are found in both civil society and different parts of the state. Such activist political ecologists are central to the broader enterprise of an “underground political ecology” and are often vital to the success of scholarly interventions in such political ecologies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Marginal employment stands as a major obstacle to the economic health of American families and communities. This is particularly true among those who work in extractive industries. We conceptualize marginal employment as underemployment, which goes beyond unemployment to include discouraged workers, involuntary part-time workers, and the working poor. Analyzing data from the March Current Population Survey from 1974 through 1998, we find that workers in extractive industries face far higher rates of underemployment than do those employed in other major industrial sectors. However, this aggregation masks great intracategory heterogeneity. The high rates of underemployment observed in extractive industries are largely a driven by the disadvantages of those employed in agriculture and forestry/fishing. In contrast, those employed in mining enjoy substantially lower rates of underemployment. The relative employment circumstances found in each industry are only partly explained by conventional predictors of underemployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]