Reports on author's findings that "contract farming does not have the effect of deskilling predicted based on the factory assembly line, because the environmental specificity of agriculture requires more independent decision making than does factory work."
4 pgs, As telecommunications companies prepare to sunset their 3G networks, some activists are worried about what that will mean for residents of rural America, particularly those who may find themselves in situations of domestic violence.
17pgs, Despite the central role of seafood in Japanese cuisine, domestic fisheries are facing a severe crisis. Based on anthropological field research in fishing communities in southwestern Japan as well as on a sampling of cultural representations of fish, this contribution examines the changing cultural and socio-economic meanings and matter of fish in Japanese seafood assemblages: from sentient beings and commons cohabitants under existential threat from anthropogenic environmental change to their use as food for human consumption and their role in the livelihoods of fishers and coastal communities. The analysis finds a growing polarisation in the Japanese seafood sector as the cyborg fish of highly-processed food products and globally traded commodities inundate markets and dinner plates, while locally caught animals turn from basic foodstuff into folklorist stars of a vanishing rurality, a symbol of authenticity and national identity advertised as cultural commodities in romanticising campaigns to revitalise rural areas.
