Changing Estuaries, Changing Views

During the design and the execution of the Delta project, carried out after the storm flood of 1953 in the SW Netherlands, the importance of the long-term effects of morphological and ecological developments driven by tides and currents, have been underestimated. Due to these processes the height of the dams will have to be increased for centuries to come, because the land behind the levees cannot grow in elevation anymore with the rising of the sea. Maintenance of the civil-engineering structures, and mitigating their unpredictable impacts on ecosystems, involve very high recurrent costs. The chance of flooding is reduced, but the potential damage after a storm flood is enlarged: seawalls and dykes provide a false sense of safety against flooding. Changes in the role of agricultural use in the European context, offer an opportunity to abandon arable fields and to retrocede them to the sea in order to absorb tidal energy and to allow the land to rise concomitant with the sea. A cost-benefit analysis of this approach should assess the direct and indirect economic values, as well as the non-use (intrinsic) values, whereby public engagement in management questions, facilitates decision-making processes. Reversible and resilient economic measures within the limits of the natural processes are preferable. A future, speculative perspective is an urbanised landscape, where people and investments are located in safe places, e.g. on floating, or sea-encircled artificial dwelling-mounds, surrounded by a landscape that is ruled by the forces of nature. New approaches such as developed in the Westerschelde offer flexible solutions to flooding problems, and are worth a broader evaluation. A worldwide platform of experts should be organised to study the future management of estuaries and deltas, and to develop and exchange new ideas and techniques.     

Anthropology and Africa: Changing Perspectives on a Changing Scene

Anthropology and Africa: Changing Perspectives on. Changing Scene. Sally Falk Moore. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1994. 165 pp.     

Farm Animal Production: Changing Agriculture in a Changing Culture

Western attitudes toward animals have undergone a gradual evolution during recent centuries, driven by the scientific recognition that humans and many other species share a common anatomical template, a common phylogenetic ancestry, and certain similarities in their social and emotional lives. This evolving view has been accompanied by a heightened popular respect for animals, which has caused increasing opposition to the relatively utilitarian treatment of animals in modern farming. Western culture also tends to venerate the pastoralist image of humans caring diligently for animals, and North Americans tend to venerate the agrarian life-style of farm families living in harmony with domestic animals and the land. These positive images, which have traditionally lent legitimacy to animal agriculture, have been diminished by changes in production methods during recent decades. The resulting debate between critics and defenders of modern animal production has led to widespread confusion and concern about how animal agriculture affects animal welfare, human health, the environment, and world food security. To resolve this situation will require research to create an accurate understanding of the diverse effects of modern animal agriculture, together with measures to harmonize agricultural practices with changing public values.     

Paternalism's Changing Reputation

Research on the relationship between Aborigines and pastoralists in the Northen Territory can be divided into two traditions. A ‘Liberal-managerial’ tradition, represented by the work of Stevens and the Berndts, fails to explore Aborigines' constructs about that relationship. An alternative ‘ethnographic’ tradition has begun to correct this imbalance by using Aborigines' testimony. An interpretation of these materials suggests that Aborigines applied a model of exchange to their dealings with pastoralists and that their capacity to do so has been undermined by the gradual emergence of wage-labour relations in the industry.     

Changing work systems

This paper is concerned with finding practical ways of incorporating human and organizational concerns during the development and use of new information technologies (IT). It is structured in four parts. First, we outline the work of the Institute of Work Psychology at the University of Sheffield. One major interest is with the human and organizational aspects of the new information technologies. We are especially interested in work organization and job design, the allocation of tasks between and among humans and computers, the roles of users, the roles of senior managers, the management of change, and the performance of new investments in information technology (IT). Second, we review the evidence from survey work and from detailed case studies concerning the performance of IT. This reveals that most IT investments do not meet their performance objectives, and that the reasons for this are rarely purely technical in origin. Change is too often technology-led, and too little attention is paid to human and organizational factors. Most companies fail to consider how work should be organized and how jobs should be designed to make the new technologies more effective. Usually, users have no substantial influence on system development. Senior managers are criticized for their lack of understanding and action in these areas. Third, we consider the potential in the United Kingdom for changing work systems incorporating new technology. One way forward is through the development and use of sets of theoretically derived tools that can be used by managers and others. To this end we are working with several collaborators on a portfolio of tools in the following areas: organizational design job design allocation of tasks between and among humans and computers. We then review our approach and offer views of the areas and ways in which this work could develop, including opportunities for international collaboration.