How does the American public understand basic human rights issues-and what, if anything, are they willing to do to promote such rights? This article analyzes data from a 2006 national public opinion survey on human rights conducted by the authors. We explore how the American public understands three basic human rights that have not previously been included together in a single survey: the right not to be tortured, the right to freedom of thought and expression, and the right to a minimum guaranteed standard of living. We then assess respondents' willingness to promote, through their personal actions, the right to a guaranteed minimum standard of living-specifically, by purchasing "sweat-free" and/or "fair trade" products. We find public acceptance of a broad range of rights as inviolable human rights, and a strong association between willingness to pay more for both types of ethical consumption.

There is currently no generally accepted definition for the “blue economy,” despite the term becoming common parlance over the past decade. The concept and practice have spawned a rich, and diverse, body of scholarly activity. Yet despite this emerging body of literature, there is ambiguity around what the blue economy is, what it encapsulates, and its practices. Thus far, the existing literature has failed to theorise key geographical concepts such as space, place, scale, and power relations, all of which have the potential to lead to uneven development processes and regional differentiation. Previous research has sought to clarify the ontological separation of land and sea or has conceptualised the blue economy as a complex governmental project that opens up new governable spaces and rationalises particular ways of managing marine and coastal regions. More recently, geographers have called for a critical—and practical—engagement with the blue economy. This paper critically examines the existing literature of the geographies of the blue economy through a structured meta‐analysis of published work, specifically its conceptualisations and applications to debates in the field. Results offer the potential to ground a bottom‐up definition of the blue economy. In so doing, this paper provides a clearly identifiable rubric of the key geographical concepts that are often overlooked by researchers, policymakers, and practitioners when promoting economic development and technological innovation in coastal and marine environments.

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This article examines bulk sales of municipal property tax liens in the formerly industrial city of Waterbury, Connecticut, USA, in the 1990s, in order to explore the limits and contradictions of neoliberal local governance strategies. In the USA, cities and states create property tax liens by reducing delinquent real estate taxes to a judgment that creates a legal claim against the property at issue. We argue that Waterbury's efforts to resolve its fiscal stress by enhancing short-term revenues ultimately further constrained its revenue base, the tax lien sales reflected a spatial selectivity that created barriers to revitalization when neither the city nor tax lien purchasers had incentives to foreclose on distressed properties in struggling neighborhoods, and the tax lien sales' failure to resolve the city's budget crisis set in motion new efforts at tax base enhancement through real estate-led development in the central business district that also were unsuccessful.

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