From a sample of 51 major international airlines, we offer a critical discourse analysis of so-called loyalty or frequent-flyer programmes and their related business-class services. As examples of cultural capital par excellence, these seemingly innocuous discursive formations act as significant agents of, and channels for, globalist relations of power in the context of international travel and tourism. The principal logic of frequent-flyer programmes hinges on establishing a synthetically personalized (see Fairclough, 1989) framework by which ‘loyalty’ is defined and rewarded, and by which privilege is then awarded and regulated. However, what actually sustains this commodified interpersonal appeal is the airlines' skilful reworking of symbolic capital, their manipulation of the illusion of distinction, and the exploitation of social anxieties about status. This is all achieved through a series of discursive strategies that stylize(see Cameron, 2000a) ‘preferred’ passengers as elite. Our analysis of frequent-flyer programmes and business-class services exposes some of the ways social privilege and superiority are nowadays measured, as well as the normative production of luxury. We argue that, for the sake of global marketability and profit, the semiotic realization of super-elitism by the airline industry powerfully ‘re-organizes' anachronistic modes of tourism while also reformulating very traditional notions of class distinction.
Mixed mountain forests of European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.), Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst), and silver fir (Abies alba Mill.) cover a total area of more than 10 million hectares in Europe. Due to altitudinal zoning, these forests are particularly vulnerable to climate change. However, as little is known about the long-term development of the productivity and the adaptation and mitigation potential of these forest systems in Europe, reliable information on productivity is required for sustainable forest management. Using generalized additive mixed models this study investigated 60 long-term experimental plots and provides information about the productivity of mixed mountain forests across a variety of European mountain areas in a standardized way for the first time. The average periodic annual volume increment (PAI) of these forests amounts to 9.3 m3ha−1y−1. Despite a significant increase in annual mean temperature the PAI has not changed significantly over the last 30 years. However, at the species level, we found significant changes in the growth dynamics. While beech had a PAI of 8.2 m3ha−1y−1 over the entire period (1980–2010), the PAI of spruce dropped significantly from 14.2 to 10.8 m3ha−1y−1, and the PAI of fir rose significantly from 7.2 to 11.3 m3ha−1y−1. Consequently, we observed stable stand volume increments in relation to climate change.
Stomach data were examined to assess the key factors that determine diet composition in some of the most important demersal fish species in Icelandic waters and to identify major feeding guilds. The data were collected during the groundfish surveys conducted by the Marine Research Institute in 1992. The factors examined included geographic position, depth, season, and fish size. Data were analysed using multivariate methods: canonical correspondence analysis (CCA), non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (NMDS), and hierarchical clustering. For the CCA, important explanatory variables for the observed feeding patterns were found using forward stepwise selection. Fish size was the most important explanatory variable for most species, reflecting distinct ontogenetic shifts in diets. A large variation in diet composition was observed, and the CCA model explained 6–16% of the total variation. The spatial and seasonal variability in diets reflected, in general, patterns of prey availability. Among the main predators, the two major feeding guilds were (i) species preying mainly on echinoderms, supplemented with fish and other benthic invertebrates, and (ii) species preying mainly on crustaceans and fish.
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