Green Dots, Pink Hearts: Displacing Politics from the Malaysian Rain Forest

Recent years have witnessed the progressive envelopment of environmental politics within institutions for local, national, and global environmental governance. Such institutions inscribe particular forms of discourse, simultaneously creating certain possibilities and precluding others, privileging certain actors and marginalizing others. Apparently designed to ameliorate environmental destruction, these institutions may in fact obstruct meaningful change through endless negotiation, legalistic evasion, and compromise among "stakeholders." More importantly, however, they insinuate and naturalize a discourse that excludes moral or political imperatives in favor of indifferent bureaucratic and technoscientific forms of institutionally created and validated intervention. Drawing on Rappaport's insights about "the subordination of the fundamental to the contingent and instrumental" (in "The Anthropology of Trouble"), I examine this process of institutional development with reference to an international rain forest campaign that focused on Sarawak, East Malaysia, from the late-1980s to the mid-1990s, [environmentalism, institutionalization, governmentality, rain forest politics, Sarawak (Malaysia)]     

Taste the Traditions: Crabs, Crab Cakes, and the Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab Fishery

For centuries, people in the Chesapeake Bay watershed have harvested and consumed blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus). Historically, the production of the crabs was intimately connected to the work and knowledge of commercial watermen. In recent years, declining crab populations have resulted in an increased local use of pasteurized crab meat imported from Asia and South America. Also emerging is an ecological discourse that emphasizes pollution reduction to save crabs to eat. In this article, I analyze these production and consumption changes for Chesapeake Bay blue crabs within a broad-ranging framework of cultural models and environmental anthropology. Explicit textual information increasingly suggests that the cultural model of Chesapeake blue crabs as food is one of crab cakes made (with imported crab meat) in the "local tradition" and, to a lesser degree so far, is an emerging discourse presenting blue crabs as a culinary poster child for antipollution campaigns.     

Focus, newness and their combination: processing of information structure in discourse

The relationship between focus and new information has been unclear despite being the subject of several information structure studies. Here, we report an eye-tracking experiment that explored the relationship between them in on-line discourse processing in Chinese reading. Focus was marked by the Chinese focus-particle "shi", which is equivalent to the cleft structure "it was… who…" in English. New information was defined as the target word that was not present in previous contexts. Our results show that, in the target region, focused information was processed more quickly than non-focused information, while new information was processed more slowly than given information. These results reveal differences in processing patterns between focus and newness, and suggest that they are different concepts that relate to different aspects of cognitive processing. In addition, the effect of new/given information occurred in the post-target region for the focus condition, but not for the non-focus condition, suggesting a complex relationship between focus and newness in the discourse integration stage.     

Impact of the topology of global macroeconomic network on the spreading of economic crises

Throughout economic history, the global economy has experienced recurring crises. The persistent recurrence of such economic crises calls for an understanding of their generic features rather than treating them as singular events. The global economic system is a highly complex system and can best be viewed in terms of a network of interacting macroeconomic agents. In this regard, from the perspective of collective network dynamics, here we explore how the topology of the global macroeconomic network affects the patterns of spreading of economic crises. Using a simple toy model of crisis spreading, we demonstrate that an individual country's role in crisis spreading is not only dependent on its gross macroeconomic capacities, but also on its local and global connectivity profile in the context of the world economic network. We find that on one hand clustering of weak links at the regional scale can significantly aggravate the spread of crises, but on the other hand the current network structure at the global scale harbors higher tolerance of extreme crises compared to more "globalized" random networks. These results suggest that there can be a potential hidden cost in the ongoing globalization movement towards establishing less-constrained, trans-regional economic links between countries, by increasing vulnerability of the global economic system to extreme crises.     

Multiple conservation criteria,discursive conflicts and stakeholder preferences in the era of ecological modernization

Implementation of conservation plans as the final stage of a long process of institutionalization of modern strategic environmental management theory meets with difficulties in real world conditions. When actual application of scientific principles is confronted with public appreciation and engagement on the ground, the perception per se of—and reaction to—the scientific discourse and technical arguments regarding conservation value(s) of designated areas, it often turns into a critique by local communities of the preponderant role of experts and the dominance of a western scientific worldview in the ecological modernization era. In this paper, we develop the formalism—and use variations—of a multiplicative model of conservation value, involving concepts that are central to the IPBES decomposition of values into interacting meanings: principles and preferences. Technically, overall valuation after a suite of conservation criteria of an exemplary designated site, i.e. the Natura 2000 Kalloni Gulf, Greece, is decomposed into the product of two factors, technical score and appreciation, as perceived by a series of local influential stakeholder groups. We use a multi-criteria valuation profile adopted and promoted by scientific experts as reference to which respective valuations of stakeholder groups are contrasted. The study refers to a case where a two decade-long fierce social conflict drove to stagnation the implementation process. Divergence(s) in scoring and appreciation of conservation criteria between scientific experts versus local stakeholder groups are measured using our models variables and classic decomposition analysis techniques. Our model(s) treat the following problems: (1) the relative effects of singular conservation criteria when only one conservation criterion in one site is considered; (2) the relative effects of multiple conservation criteria when applied in one site. A narrative story is attempted regarding discursive conflicts between social groups in the studied case: (1) a pattern of mistrust of the public against scientific discourse on conservation planning: scientists are perceived just as ‘another stakeholder group’ promoting their own pro-conservation agenda; (2) a NIMBY-like reaction based on individuals’ property-defence discourse; and, (3) the by-effects of poor governance in downscaling decision-making from centralized to regional/local level.     

Natural selection, larval dispersal, and the geography of phenotype in the sea

Populations evolve generalist, specialist, and plastic strategies in response to environmental heterogeneity. Describing such within-species variation in phenotype and how it arises is central to understanding a variety of ecological and evolutionary topics. The literature on phenotypic differences among populations is highly biased; for every one article published on a marine species, at least 10 articles are published on a terrestrial species and eight focus on terrestrial plants. Here, I outline what we know from the marine literature about geographic variation in phenotype in the sea, with a principal focus on local adaptation. The theory of environmental "grain" predicts that the most likely evolutionary response (e.g., local adaptation, phenotypic plasticity, generalism, and balanced polymorphism) depends on the spatial scale of environmental variation relative to the distance that an organism disperses. Consistent with these predictions, phenotypic plasticity is stronger among invertebrates with geographically broad dispersal versus restricted dispersal (i.e., planktonic-dispersers versus direct-developers). However, contrary to predictions, the relative frequency, and spatial scale of local adaptation is not consistently greater among direct-developers relative to planktonic disperers. This indicates that the likelihood of local adaptation depends on other organismal or environmental traits. Two of the most vexing issues that remain include (1) predicting the extent to which barriers to dispersal are a cause versus consequence of phenotypic differentiation and (2) delineating the relative importance of evolutionary forces that favor or impede local adaptation. Understanding the mechanistic basis of the geography of phenotypic differences, or phenogeography, has gained recent momentum because of a need to predict impacts of global climatic change, anthropogenic disturbances, and dispersal of organisms to non-native habitats.     

人类文明演化的生态观

自从地球上出现生命以后 ,生命就与环境构成了复杂庞大的生态系统。人类的出现使得生态系统日益复杂化 ,纯粹的天然系统逐渐被打上了人类活动的烙印 ,人类根据自身的需要 ,不断地改变原有的纯自然的生态平衡 ,创造出更适合人类生存、生活和生产的人工生态系统 ,达到新的平衡 ,不断建造了人类文明 ,因此 ,人类文明史实际上是一部人与自然环境、社会环境及心理环境竞争与共生、改造与适应的生态史。1　农业文明的兴衰在旧石器时代末 ,地球上人口总数不到 30 0万 ,到中石器时代也只有 1 0 0 0万 ,这一时期 ,人类还仅仅是自然生态系统食物网中的…     

A historical perspective of the resources and issues of Pak Phanang Bay,southern Thailand

The Coastal Resources Institute (CORIN) at Prince of Songkla University worked with local communities to understand coastal issues and opportunities of the Pak Phanang Bay in Nakhon Si Thammarat, Southern Thailand. Historically, the area has been an important agricultural field and trading town but now it is characterized by slow population growth due to out migration and a decreased economic base. Residents have noted major environmental degradation within their lifetimes. Through the Ecological History, which means a history of the way people and nature have interacted over time, an initial identification and assessment of the key environmental problems were made with the participation and support of the people of Pak Phanang. The approach is based on the belief that for successful resources management, it needs action by local people, supported by the government, that will safeguard and restore local ecosystems.     

Sultans of Spin: Syrian Sacred Music on the World Stage

This article examines how the performance of a variety of Islamic music in transnational cultural circuits helps to promote the idea of a style of sacred music within the category of world music. Taking as an example the performance of the mawlawiyya, or "Whirling Dervish," music and dance by a Syrian–based ensemble, I show how the idea of an authentic local Syrian sacred music tradition requires its performance globally. I use the concept of the "world stage" to examine how musical performance practices that are represented as authentic local traditions obtain both their authenticity and their local specificity through their staging in global contexts. I further explore how such musical styles as sacred and Sufi emerge as naturalized categories in world music discourse, and how processes of differentiation and commodification reconfigure both the "local" and "global." [Keywords: world music, globalization, style, Syria, Islam]     

舟曲藏文化生态环境观对比分析

采用资料分析和指数分析两种方法对舟曲县3个藏汉村寨的生态环境进行了差异分析,从生态观的角度分析了导致这种差异性的原因,说明舟曲县3个村寨村民不同的生态观是决定其生态环境质量差异的关键因素。分析了舟曲藏文化的生态环境观与当地生态环境之间良性循环、相互影响的作用机理,并挖掘了这种生态观背后特定的文化内涵,总结了舟曲藏族生态文化主要包括苯教生态文化和藏传佛教生态文化。从地理学角度进行了思考,阐述了舟曲藏族生态文化与当地地理环境之间相互作用、相互影响的关系,指出要从根本上解决当前生态危机,应当将藏族传统生态文化与现代文化有机结合,树立合理的生态观。     

Volcanic perturbations of the marine environment in South China preceding the latest Permian mass extinction and their biotic effects

The Dongpan section in southern Guangxi Province records the influence of local volcanic activity on marine sedimentation at intermediate water depths (~200-500 m) in the Nanpanjiang Basin (South China) during the late Permian crisis. We analyzed ~100 samples over a 12-m-thick interval, generating palynological, paleobiological, and geochemical datasets to investigate the nature and causes of environmental changes. The section records at least two major volcanic episodes that culminated in deposition of approximately 25- to 35-cm-thick ash layers (bentonites) and that had profound effects on conditions in both the Dongpan marine environment and adjacent land areas. Intensification of eruptive activity during each volcanic cycle resulted in a shift toward conifer forests, increased wildfire intensity, and elevated subaerial weathering fluxes. The resulting increase in nutrient fluxes stimulated marine productivity in the short term but led to a negative feedback on productivity in the longer term as the OMZ of the Nanpanjiang Basin expanded, putting both phytoplankton and zooplankton communities under severe stress. Radiolarians exhibit large declines in diversity and abundance well before the global mass extinction horizon, demonstrating the diachroneity of the marine biotic crisis. The latest Permian crisis, which was probably triggered by the Siberian Traps flood basalts, intensified the destructive effects of the earlier local eruptions on terrestrial and marine ecosystems of the South China craton.     

Moving beyond nostalgia and motives: towards a complexity science view of medical professionalism

Modern-day discourse on medical professionalism has largely been dominated by a "nostalgic" view, emphasizing individual motives and behaviors. Shaped by a defining conflict between commercialism and professionalism, this discourse has unfolded through a series of waves, the first four of which are discovery, definition, assessment, and institutionalization. They have unfolded in a series of highly interactive and overlapping sequences that extend into the present. The fifth wave-linking structure and agency-which is nascent, proposes to shift our focus on professionalism from changing individuals to modifying the underlying structural and environmental forces that shape social actors and actions. The sixth wave-complexity science-is more incubatory in nature and seeks to recast social actors, social structures, and environmental factors as interactive, adaptive, and interdependent. Moving towards such a framing is necessary if medicine is to effectively reestablish professionalism as a core principle.     

Systematics,biological knowledge and environmental conservation

Systematics and taxonomy are essential: they respectively elucidate life's history, and organize and verify biological knowledge. This knowledge is built of interrelated concepts which are ultimately accounted for by biological specimens. Such knowledge is essential to decide how much and what biodiversity survives human onslaughts. The preservation of specimens in natural history collections is the essential part of the process which builds and maintains biological knowledge. These collections and the human expertise essential to interpret specimens are the taxonomic resources which maintain accurate and verifiable concepts of biological entities. Present and future knowledge of the complexities and diversity of the biosphere depends on the integrity of taxonomic resources, vet widespread ignorance and disregard for their fundamental value has created a global crisis. Preservation of specimens in natural history collections is chronically neglected and support to study and manage collections is very insufficient. The knowledge held by experienced taxonomists is not being passed on to younger recruits. Neglect of collections has destroyed countless specimens and threatens millions more. These threats to taxonomic resources not only impinge on systematics but all biology: this tragedy jeopardizes the integrity of biological knowledge. The consequences for environmental conservation and therefore humanity are also of dire severity and the biodiversity crisis adds unprecedented weight to the barely recognized crisis in taxonomy and systematics.Where correspondence should     

Socioeconomic Metabolism and Colonization of Natural Processes in SangSaeng Village: Material and Energy Flows, Land Use, and Cultural Change in Northeast Thailand

Conceptualizing environmental problems as sustainability problems contributing to local and global environmental change requires an understanding of how societies cope with their natural environment. Indicators for society–nature interactions are fairly well developed for national-level analyses. This study adapts some of these indicators to the local level and relates them to a qualitative assessment of economic and cultural change in a single community. Indicators are derived from material and energy flow accounting methods and address two major objectives: Firstly, to identify mutual influences between the global and the local level. Secondly, to assess future potentials of environmental pressures and impacts that can be expected to occur as such communities follow a path of further modernization. This study of a small rice-farming community in Northeast Thailand deals with physical as well as sociocultural aspects in order to produce a broad picture of society–nature relations. The indicators developed portray a society in the midst of transition and rapid modernization. This becomes apparent when comparing the results to those of similar studies in traditional and industrial societies. What we see is a community struggling to adapt to global influences, while at the same time maintaining subsistence with traditional coping mechanisms.     

A theoretical quantitative genetic study of negative ecological interactions and extinction times in changing environments

Background  

Rapid human-induced changes in the environment at local, regional and global scales appear to be contributing to population declines and extinctions, resulting in an unprecedented biodiversity crisis. Although in the short term populations can respond ecologically to environmental alterations, in the face of persistent change populations must evolve or become extinct. Existing models of evolution and extinction in changing environments focus only on single species, even though the dynamics of extinction almost certainly depend upon the nature of species interactions.     

Wild-ing the Ethnography of Conservation: Writing Nature’s Value and Agency In

When reading ethnographic literature on nature conservation, one may wonder: where has nature gone? Social anthropologists have written nuanced ethnographies of how the environmental projects of governments and transnational NGOs encounter, dispossess, clash culturally with, and try to govern native people across the world. Yet, these diverse ethnographies often say little about what motivates those encounters firstly: local and global nature, especially wildlife, plants, and the planet’s ecological crisis. Thus, this paper seeks ways how ethnographic writing on conservation practice could better reflect that the planet’s many self-willed, struggling, and valued non-humans, too, enter conservation’s encounters. To find paths toward such a ‘wild-ing’ of ethnography, the paper locates and reviews disparate materials from across the social-anthropological literature on biodiversity conservation. The review is structured through three questions: How does and could the ethnography of conservation represent nature’s value? How can it show that animals, plants, and other nature make and meet worlds? How can it incorporate natural science data about non-human worlds and ecological crisis? Altogether, we understand nature conservation clearer through the interdisciplinary and more-than-human ethnography of world-making encounters. Such wilder ethnography may also better connect people’s suffering and nature’s vanishing – as problems both for anthropology and conservation science.     

The properties of global risk networks and corresponding risk management strategies

Global risks interconnect with one another and threaten our society as a highly interdependent system. However, knowledge on how risk materializations influence one another is limited. Thus, this study provides a network model to measure risk interdependence and presents recommendations on the integrative risk management framework.

This study develops a global risk network and calculates its key indicators of structural characteristics. Results show that global risks are closely interconnected and a particular triangle relationship exists among environmental, geopolitical, and societal risks. To improve the resilience of a risk system, the systematic important risks, which are “man-made environmental catastrophes” and “interstate conflict” in this study, should be monitored and controlled. Furthermore, we simplify the risk system by entirely managing risks in the same group based on our reclassification. Our method is considerably effective in detecting upcoming crisis and assists supervisors take timely action to prevent crisis.     

Biodiversity and ecosystem stability across scales in metacommunities

Although diversity–stability relationships have been extensively studied in local ecosystems, the global biodiversity crisis calls for an improved understanding of these relationships in a spatial context. Here, we use a dynamical model of competitive metacommunities to study the relationships between species diversity and ecosystem variability across scales. We derive analytic relationships under a limiting case; these results are extended to more general cases with numerical simulations. Our model shows that, while alpha diversity decreases local ecosystem variability, beta diversity generally contributes to increasing spatial asynchrony among local ecosystems. Consequently, both alpha and beta diversity provide stabilising effects for regional ecosystems, through local and spatial insurance effects respectively. We further show that at the regional scale, the stabilising effect of biodiversity increases as spatial environmental correlation increases. Our findings have important implications for understanding the interactive effects of global environmental changes (e.g. environmental homogenisation) and biodiversity loss on ecosystem sustainability at large scales.     

Hydrogen exchange of the tryptophan residues in bovine, goat, guinea pig, and human alpha-lactalbumin

Hydrogen exchange of the individual tryptophan residues of bovine, goat, guinea pig, and human alpha-lactalbumin has been studied by both ultraviolet and NMR spectra. The assignment of the slowly exchanging imino proton resonances to the tryptophan residues (Trp26 and Trp60) was obtained by comparison of the nuclear Overhauser effect difference spectra of bovine, guinea pig, and human alpha-lactalbumin. Taking account of the thermal unfolding of each alpha-lactalbumin, the hydrogen exchange rates of the individual tryptophan residues are analyzed. The temperature dependence of the exchange rates classified their exchange mechanisms into two exchange processes: the "low activation energy process" and the "high activation energy process" which is associated directly with the global thermal unfolding of the protein. Trp26 of alpha-lactalbumin exchanges through the high activation energy process. The exchange behavior of Trp26 of guinea pig alpha-lactalbumin suggests a difference of the globally unfolded state of the protein from the other species. The exchange mechanism of Trp60 of human alpha-lactalbumin is the low activation energy process in contrast with those of the bovine and goat proteins, although their global thermodynamic properties are similar to each other. Trp104 and Trp118 of alpha-lactalbumin exchange through the low activation energy process, and the reaction rates are affected by the local structural differences around the tryptophan residues among these proteins. The results presented in this paper indicate that the hydrogen exchange rate through the low activation energy process provides the information only about the local nature of a protein while that through the high activation energy process provides the information about the global nature of a protein.     

The homeopathy/agroecology nexus: a discourse-centered analysis in a Brazilian agrarian settlement

Since the end of the Uruguay Round, mainstream policies have considered agriculture as a global business. Alternative movements argue that agriculture should have a special status among commodities, using a set of concepts such as harmony, territory, sobriety, and sociality, which do not refer to economic vocabulary, precisely because a revolution cannot occur if the hegemonic ideology and rhetoric are not challenged. Our discourse-centered analysis suggests that neoliberal discourse recycles Marxist concepts to impose its hegemony, and that agrarian movements build another narrative grounded on non-materialistic values. We expose a Brazilian case study situated in the Amazonian State of Rondonia to illustrate this shift from conventional agriculture to a specific homeopathy/agroecology nexus embracing human and natural health.