The behaviour of Dutch fresh water ecologists in response to environmental concern

Due to the rise of environmental concern ecologists have been asked for advice more frequently since the late 1960s. This article discusses how the changing relationship between ecologists and society has affected the behaviour of one particular group of ecologists, namely Dutch fresh water ecologists, by focussing on their behaviour towards job market control and public interest activities. The analysis has been based on interviews with 65 Dutch fresh water ecologists together with an analysis of their publications.In contrast with American ecologists, Dutch fresh water ecologists have made little effort to control their job market by formal arrangements such as formulating a code of ethics and certification procedures. Secondly, Dutch fresh water ecologists generally conceive of their own role in contributing to the solution of environmental problems in relation to that of the environmentalists by doing good research and reliable advisory work. Although a significant number of researchers also address lay publics by writing popular articles and/or holding lectures, only a minority actively participates in environmental politics.     

Bootlegging on a desert mountain: The political ecology of Agave (Agave spp.) demographic change in the Sonora river valley,Sonora, Mexico

Recent studies suggest that wild agave (Agavespp.) plants in Sonora, Mexico, are being over-harvested by mescal makers on communal lands. Using the conceptual framework of regional political ecology (Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987), I discuss the ecological processes of agave depletion, and investigate the social, economic, and political contexts in which unsustainable harvest practices arise. Whereas all the mescal makers have knowledge of sustainable harvest methods, population growth, expansion of agriculture onto ecologically marginal lands, and increasing dependence on wild harvested products from communal lands created the socioeconomic context for increased demand for mescal income. The ideology of household autonomy, and the belief that the village has no right to internally regulate use of the commons, created the political context for rapid, unsustainable harvesting—a tragedy of the commons. However, recent cultural changes have caused a reversal of this trend, and some wild agave populations may be recovering.     

Biopolitics: the newest synthesis?

On first impression, the disciplines of genetics and political science would appear to be unrelated. And yet, commencing more than 30 years ago, the interdisciplinary field known as Biopolitics has now taken hold. This essay traces the central thrust of the biopolitical research agenda. It describes, analyzes, and assesses how political scientists have sought to show connections between our species' genetic constitution and our species' political behavior. Important bridges between the two are the neurophysiology of the human brain and the role of evolutionary theory in charting man's adaptational political profile. The parameters of the emerging biopolitical literature raise profound policy questions, some of which are also characterized. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

View on donated life: Construction of philosophical ethics on human organ donation

With the emergence of organ donation and donation technology, the previous indivisibility of the human body becomes divisible, and different human organs form a new life subject. With reference to specific case studies in China, a new life, consisting of donated organs from different bodies by donation, can be called “donated life.” Donated life is a win-win action between altruism and egoism, that is, to save the lives of others and to regenerate the organs of donors or their relatives. Due to the emergence of this kind of life, traditional social ethics theories based on the marriage-related family find it difficult to difficult to explain the new realities. Thus, new thinking about social ethics is necessary.     

基于文化与政治生态学的社会生态系统演进机制研究 ——以杭州与西湖为例

科学认识社会生态系统演进机制是对其进行有效管理的重要基础。以文化与政治生态学为理论基础,提出适合杭州—西湖社会生态系统的综合研究框架,识别了杭州—西湖社会生态系统的5个演进阶段,并分析出系统演进中的3种潜在状态。自然、政治、经济以及社会驱动力是影响杭州—西湖社会生态系统的主导因素,人类行为影响整个生态系统中扰动的频率、大小和形式并改变西湖生态系统的结构与功能,进而影响西湖为城市提供生态系统服务的潜能。在不同历史时期,基于自然、社会、经济、文化等多层面的需求,西湖在不同系统状态下为城市供给不同类别和质量的生态系统服务,总体而言供给与调节服务比例逐渐下降,文化服务逐渐上升,并且后者逐步成为最主要的生态系统服务类别。杭州与西湖在长期的互馈共生中建立了社会生态系统的自适应性调节机制,其背后的生态智慧可为现代风景园林规划提供重要启示。     

The language of systematics,and the philosophy of ‘total evidence’

This contribution analyses the primacy of classification over generalization, and the philosophy of total evidence that emerges from the relation of homology to character statements. Primary conjectures of homology are basic character statements, i.e. statements that predicate properties of organisms, properties that are instantiated by those organisms and/or their parts. Secondary conjectures of homology are embedded in a second‐level (metalinguistic) discourse that turns on the coherence or incoherence of those basic character statements relative to a hierarchy. The coherence or incoherence of character statements is a logical relation between statements, not a causal (historical) relation between organisms. The choice of the hypothesis of relationships that is supported by the largest set of coherent basic character statements is based on the empirical presupposition that the properties referred to by the set of coherent character statements are grounded in causally efficacious relations of inheritance and ontogeny, and co‐instantiated because they are inherited through common ancestry (Hennig's auxiliary principle). Unless that empirical presupposition is causally grounded, phylogeny reconstruction is of an inherently probabilistic nature, whether under parsimony or other models of analysis. The causal grounding of a coherent set of character statements typically seeks a link between character statements and causally efficacious generative mechanisms for morphological characters (as is defeasibly indicated by topology and connectivity), or secondary structure information for molecular characters.     

Distinguishing ecological from evolutionary approaches to transposable elements

Considerable variation exists not only in the kinds of transposable elements (TEs) occurring within the genomes of different species, but also in their abundance and distribution. Noting a similarity to the assortment of organisms among ecosystems, some researchers have called for an ecological approach to the study of transposon dynamics. However, there are several ways to adopt such an approach, and it is sometimes unclear what an ecological perspective will add to the existing co‐evolutionary framework for explaining transposon‐host interactions. This review aims to clarify the conceptual foundations of transposon ecology in order to evaluate its explanatory prospects. We begin by identifying three unanswered questions regarding the abundance and distribution of TEs that potentially call for an ecological explanation. We then offer an operational distinction between evolutionary and ecological approaches to these questions. By determining the amount of variance in transposon abundance and distribution that is explained by ecological and evolutionary factors, respectively, it is possible empirically to assess the prospects for each of these explanatory frameworks. To illustrate how this methodology applies to a concrete example, we analyzed whole‐genome data for one set of distantly related mammals and another more closely related group of arthropods. Our expectation was that ecological factors are most informative for explaining differences among individual TE lineages, rather than TE families, and for explaining their distribution among closely related as opposed to distantly related host genomes. We found that, in these data sets, ecological factors do in fact explain most of the variation in TE abundance and distribution among TE lineages across less distantly related host organisms. Evolutionary factors were not significant at these levels. However, the explanatory roles of evolution and ecology become inverted at the level of TE families or among more distantly related genomes. Not only does this example demonstrate the utility of our distinction between ecological and evolutionary perspectives, it further suggests an appropriate explanatory domain for the burgeoning discipline of transposon ecology. The fact that ecological processes appear to be impacting TE lineages over relatively short time scales further raises the possibility that transposons might serve as useful model systems for testing more general hypotheses in ecology.     

Chocolate cities: A brief note from a race and capitalism perspective

Marcus Hunter and Zandria Robinson have provided us with an innovative methodology for analysing “maps” of African Americans’ lived political, social and cultural experiences past and present. Their powerful innovation is creating maps of the black experience based on black people’s lived experience. They argue that carefully tracing spatially blacks’ political, social and cultural patterns over time leads one to the conclusion that the shared experiences of blacks throughout the polity (and indeed throughout the Diaspora) have far more in common than not. I argue that we can better understand not only the maps that black people have created, but also chocolate cities themselves by using an analytical framework that integrates the analysis of the lived experience of black people with a structural analysis that interrogates the articulation of white supremacy, capitalism and patriarchy. This framework is related to the developing research into racial capitalism that is now being conducted globally.     

Purity and Corruption: Chinese Communist Party Applicants and the Problem of Evil

In contemporary China, university students play a key ideological role as the future vanguard of the nation and for this reason they are intensely courted by the Chinese Communist Party. This article addresses the moral ambiguities of this courtship for students, who face the paradox that while the party centre and collectivist authoritarian ideology invariably claims moral superiority, individual party cadres are frequently exposed as morally corrupt. The evil of cadre corruption becomes the nodal point for questioning party morality, a central stake in support of collectivist authoritarian ideology as well as in its denunciation. For students, the problem of evil within the force, representing the collective good is never resolved in either false consciousness or an unmasking of ideology. Doubt instead proceeds as two incommensurable interpretations of party morality persist in suggesting themselves, and this I suggest has important implications for our understanding of political legitimacy in authoritarian states.     

北京市民营医疗机构发展现状与对策探析

描述了北京市民营医疗机构发展的基本情况及其特色优势,并从政策环境及自身建设两个方面分析了北京市民营医疗机构发展存在的主要问题,由此提出加快落实相关政策、优化民营医疗机构发展环境以及民营医疗机构加强自身建设和规范化管理等建议。