Environmental Sociology - Science topic

Thank you very much! Muchammad Taufiq Affandi

I appreciate it! It is indeed!

There are a number of excellent researchers who draw on environmental sociology to examine biodiversity.

In no particular order, and apologies to whomever I forget, I would start by looking for studies by the following researchers.

Laura McKinney

Richard York

John Shandra

Rebecca Clausen

Brett Clark

I would add that there is a differential between some rural Americans and their more-urban compatriots. Appalachians and Cajuns are two particular groups that still hunt smaller game: squirrels, wild rabbits, even opossum and raccoon; and small game birds: quail and even pigeon/dove. My own uncle hunted squirrel in the 1960's; and a family friend often recounted eating "bang-belly", a heavily-spiced opossum-based dish, as a child in northern Kentucky.

Future scientific researches will be far more dependent on technology. In the field of Biological Research, use of living animals for testing of some drugs or as some models may be stopped very soon, within 10 years. Animal/animal body part models will be replaced by software based models.

In other branch of Science, I think same thing may happen. I can not say the possible changes as it require very deep knowledge about the research procedures running presently.

If you have not started reverse citation with Sara Vickerman (Defenders of Wildlife) or Bob Hernbrode Jr. (Colorado Division of Wildlife), you should give that a try at your library. Sara and Bob were on the ground floor in looking at this very question and have published and cited voluminously. Some of it will be gray literature (including WAFWA and IAFWA [now AFWA] annual proceedings) or published by Island Press and other green publishing houses but dig and ye shall find. Another excellent contact for the subject, and wildlife diversity and conservation programs in general, is Naomi Edelson (try National Wildlife Federation).

Hi, Jitendra Kumar Meher

Thank you. Your guideline is very much helpful and relevant. However, at this moment i have to complete my research proposal immediately with an appropriate method. Therefore , i am trying to write a good methodology.

Best regards

Nipa Dutta 

Realmente considero que lo mas importante es la filosofia de vida y de sociedad que puedas tener, puesto que en funcion del conjunto de valores y normas que tu tengas establecido sobre la vida, podras desarrollar un proceso que genera estabilidad o por lo mneos que se oreinte a promover las mejoras en todos los ambitos de la vida, incluido el proceso tecnologico que es parte importante para nuestro desarrollo.

Management is a basic social principle that can be transported a cross any disciplines, including the fisheries. But in the contextual theory and norm of social capital, you have to be more specific to determine the concept of social capital itself due to your research project. for example, you can connecting the social aspects or indicators such as integration, cohesiveness and social support as a tool to managed the competitive advantage of your management fisheries matters.   

Can you specify what area you are looking at?

Certainly, within performance management metrics largely used in the public sector to measure school/hospital/university performance on an organisational level and at an individual employee level, many problems can be identified. These relate to the quantitative metrics used and the politics of performance management ie. making public services more like the private. The metrics and assumptions underlying them - that public service delivery is like car production on an assembly line are deeply flawed and a major cause/indicator of public sector crises. New and critical approaches are urgently required that are informed by an understanding of the distinctiveness of public sevice organisations, staff and services.

I would like to present our paper research that about Dietary habits and neurological features of Parkinson's disease patients: Implications for practice.We conducted a large case-control study. Consecutive PD patients (N = 600) receiving systematic nutritional care and healthy controls (N = 600) matched (1:1) for age, gender, education, physical activity level and residence were studied using a 66-item food frequency questionnaire. The relationship between dietary habits and the following features of PD were investigated in patients: body weight, energy balance, constipation, and levodopa therapy (dose) and its related motor complications.

Hi Manuel

I found this article really useful, specially in thinking about practical examples of some of the "tenets", if you wish, of social-ecological systems. 

Liu et al 2007

Some other more recent work by the same group goes in detail about some of these issues:

Hull et al 2015 on feedbacks: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol20/iss3/art17/

Liu et al 2016 on Telecoupling: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/16-0188.1/abstract

Cheers

Hi Ghulam,

I am attaching three papers here by Peluso and Vandergeest that present analyses of the Thai forest estate from a political ecology perspective (follow others who have cited them to find more recent work). I have also published a couple of papers on social aspects of Lao protected areas, which you may find relevant (though not Thai), these are also attached. I have worked for several years with WWF-Greater Mekong and would be happy to connect you to WWF-Thailand protected area managers, who may be able to help.

Best regards,

Micah

Hello Dear, like mention before for John about Tangible mean you can be touch it, Also is use for countable purpose.  " Physical is more  relating to that which is material:

the physical universe; the physical sciences."(from Dictionary.com). for that reason you are writing about Physical Environment .   From my point of view Physical is more deep relate to material and Tangible to monetary purpose.

Dear Talles,  you are welcome. The paper 3) is available for download on my profile, while for 1) and 2) please send me a private full-text request if your institution has no access to the journals where they are published.

The no-growth platform is a fetishism of use-values, and ignores the production and distribution of value as a totality. Furthermore, as a war of position, it is politically deadly.

Hi Tobias.

Do you know the Cabo Pulmo experience? This is a fisherman community which began to be aware about the beauty and relevance of the coral reef in front of their lands at Baja California. They made of the management to establish a natural protected area and changed their way of life, to do ecotourism. This process has taken around 20 years with a lot of outcomes in the social and ecological systems, as an increasing income to local and regional families because of the tourism and the recovery in around 200% of the fish biomass for fisheries in the region. A lot of mega-projects have been rejected with the civil society action. There is a new configuration of the local governance, joining market of tourism + a federal natural protected area + local people / organization. It is interesting and the results are systematized not only in the biophysical aspects but in the social ones, too.

Yes and no. "Treadmill" thinking comes out of Molotch's work on urban growth machines. O'Connor's insight, gradually elaborated -- and in 1973 only glimpsed -- was that social reproduction was being internalized by capital. Of course that's a fraught process, but it helped us to understand how social reproduction -- health care, education, etc. -- has become one of the great battlegrounds of the class struggle in the Global North. And notwithstanding neoliberalization, reproduction costs continue to rise -- and state spending as a share of GDP with it. 

Dear Shailaja,

in my opinion, there are two scientific sources for your special interest:

1. The emotion "feeling at home" can bei conceptualized as a part of environmental psychology and "psychology of housing" (and the related emotion "feeling at home") can be regarded as a part of environmental psychology. So have a look at:

L. Steg, A.E. van den Berg (2012): Environmental Psychology: An Introduction (There are many hints in several chapters; see particularly chapter 10, 11 and 16). Link:

[I couldn't find a scientific source for "psychology of housing". Perhaps you find literature in the scientific field "architecture", because the "feeling at home" is there also discussed.]

2. Abraham Maslow discussed "feeling at home" as an existential basic need. He developed a theory of needs. See:

Abraham H. Maslow: Hierarchy of Needs: A Theory of Human Motivation. Link:

Hope there are valuable hints for you!

Kind regards, Detlef

The EKC hypothesis - formulated 1992, partly as an antithesis to the sustainable development concept discussed in Rio, has long and intensively been discussed in the economics literature. It was found to be true for certain pollutants in certain places, but generally not for energy and overall material flows. So the changing of economic structures as well as the changing composition of environmental pressures have to be taken into account. Doing that, little remains of the hypothesis, and that explains why the once dense sequence of publiucations on the issue has died down the last half decade or so.

Marx was an avid student of the natural sciences: Liebig and Darwin especially, but not only. See John Bellamy Foster's wonderful book, Marx's Ecology (2000).

CT Scan and like wise equipment are valuable in this type of research, if you want to have objective data. Before and After a walk in University area or else where, volunteers should have  a CT scan to observe which parts of the brain are affected to what extent and observe the correlation that part with some sensory limbs.

Based on my experience with passive solar design, it is difficult to convince people of a benefit if they can't actually see it in money terms; similarly with risk. In the UK people are spending a lot of money on PV panels at present. I imagine many would get a better return from insulation, but it wouldn't show up on a meter. You need to show financial return.

Having seen the destruction of Cockatoo, Victoria many years ago and more recent damage in Canberra, I believe Australians are sleep-walking or in denial about bush fires. I cannot believe you are still building timber houses in the midst of resinous gum trees that fill the eaves gutters with highly inflammable dead leaves.

When there is a bush fire risk, people in Canberra now have to pack their car with their most treasured possessions and be ready to flee at short notice, not knowing whether their house will be there when they come back. It is a tragedy (the 'tragedy of the commons?') since the car and the suburban lifestyle are a major part of the problem.

After the Great Fire of London in 1666 a city of timber houses was transformed into a city of brick houses with no timber allowed on facades. This reminds me that after the fire in Cockatoo the only constructions still standing were the brick fireplaces with their slender chimneys. I don't know what you mean by 'mitigation', (and I suppose you are talking mainly about existing houses) but I imagine a lone brick house that survived a bush fire intact would be a massive encouragement. Approach the insurance industry? By the way, passive, masonry construction can work really well in hot climates.

Now I have read Debra Schleffs book ”Managing elites”. Actually much was read on my trip to Belfast were I visited a friend. The book did not help me that much though, regarding the question that we have running here, but I can highly recommend the book. It was very interesting. I found the sections about the transformation of social responsibility especially exiting./Jesper

Hi

just another link. The interactive 'think tank map' provided by the International Center for Climate Governance helps you tracking environmental think tanks around the globe

Best, Alex

Sustainable development strategies address the issue of how do we have to change the structure of systems we live in to produce more of what we want (sustainable) and less of that which is undesirable (unsustainable). This question gives me a chance to recall the classic work of Donella Meadows (1941 – 2001), late research fellow at MIT. She was a pioneering American environmental scientist, teacher and writer an best known as lead author of the influential book "The Limits to Growth", which made headlines around the world. She proposed a list of places (leverage points) to intervene in complex systems in increasing order of effectiveness. Here they are (from Meadows 2009):

• 12. Numbers: Constants and parameters such as subsidies, taxes, and standards

• 11. Buffers:The sizes of stabilizing stocks relative to their flows

• 10. Stock-and-Flow Structures: Physical systems and their nodes of intersection

• 9. Delays: The lengths of time relative to the rates of system changes

• 8. Balancing Feedback Loops: The strength of the feedbacks relative to the impacts they are trying to correct

• 7. Reinforcing Feedback Loops: The strength of the gain of driving loops

• 6. Information Flows:The structure of who does and does not have access to information

• 5. Rules: Incentives, punishments, constraints

• 4. Self-Organization: The power to add, change, or evolve system structure

• 3. Goals:The purpose or function of the system

• 2. Paradigms: The mindset out of which the system—its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters—arises.

• 1. Transcending Paradigms

As you can see the most effective leverage points are paradigms and trascending paradigms, very difficult to change but the most effective for a really sustainable change. In the words of Donella "the shared ideas in the minds of society, the great big unstated assumptions, constitute that society’s paradigm, or deepest set of beliefs about how the world works. These beliefs are unstated because it is unnecessary to state them—everyone already knows them. Money measures something real and has real meaning; therefore, people who are paid less are literally worth less. Growth is good. One can “own” land. Those are just a few of the paradigmatic assumptions of our current culture, all of which have utterly dumbfounded other cultures, who thought them not the least bit obvious". Notice, however, that most of the current sustainability research, even the most advanced on complex systems, instead, is focused on the least effective leverage points like the economical aspects likely because decision makers and politicians believe that sustainability is mainly an economic problem (welfare) and it is more approachable in this way (i.e., GDP as a welfare measure). So, "Numbers" like constants and parameters such as subsidies, taxes, and standards become the main focus. This happens for sustainability in environmental protection science too, by just providing numbers, standards, thresholds for pollutants that should not be trespassed, and for species diversity too. However this is a quite myopic viewpoint and I doubt that it can lead to real sustainability ever.

Here is the link for Donella's work www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/419.

I wrote a short piece that compares a few different theories-of-change. I tried to highlight what interventions promote durable behavior change.

I've also attached some slides I use in reviewing some of the common models of behavior change. The last slide compares a few models and shows that they may be using the same constructs but with slightly different names. (A version of the "toothbrush problem." No one want to use someone else's toothbrush).

there are two areas of criminology that can come under the environmental title. One is looking at the kinds of 'harms' that are produced as a result of pollution, denigration of habitat for humans and animals, abuse of environmental human rights (See rob White's work on Green Criminology for an introduction. The other is related to crime prevention through environmental design, lighting, street furniture, CCTV, town planning etc

Mmmm... too much. Perhaps you could check some bibliography on social impact assessment, to realize about it. Or for free (but in spanish) my introductory book: Environmental Sociology at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227340113_Sociologia_ambiental?ev=prf_pub

Good luck