The potential of destruction in art and science

ABSTRACT

Artist and researcher Neal White argues for the potential role of radical engagements in science by drawing on the work of pioneers of conceptual art: John Latham (1921–2006), Gustav Metzger (1926–2017) in the UK, and György Kepes (1906–2001) and Robert Smithson (1938–1973) in the US. Starting with destruction as a positive force in artistic practice, White examines the ideas developed by these artists as a conceptual framework for thinking through time, chemical process and event structures within the context of the Cold War. In further examining the social context and contemporary landscape of cultural forms servicing science in terms of the communication of ideas, or underpinning further a knowledge economy, he argues for artists to engage science on their own terms, through a renewal of radical practices. This would in turn create new and critically framed work of benefit to culture and society more generally.     

A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING AND ANALYZING ATTITUDES TOWARDS ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOUR

Encouraging environmental action by citizens in developed nations has become a major priority for governments who are seeking to reach environmental targets by exhorting individuals to participate in a range of behaviours to ameliorate the negative impact of their lifestyles. Such activities conventionally include energy saving, water conservation, waste management and forms of ‘green’ consumption. Current policy discourses are focused around a linear model of behaviour, which assumes that an awareness of environmental problems and knowledge of how to tackle them will lead to individual ameliorative actions. This paper explores these assumptions by applying a previously developed conceptual framework (Barr et al. 2001) to a range of environmental actions, to show how a variety of different factors influence environmental action. Using data from a major (UK) Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded research project in Devon, United Kingdom, data on environmental actions collected during the project are interrogated to uncover the relationships between environmental actions and how these are influenced by values, personal situations and attitudes. The research demonstrates that environmental action is structured around people's everyday lifestyles (rather than a compartmentalized notion of behaviour) and that these have radically different antecedents.     

现代中国环境考古研究模式的分析

本文将1987年以来的中国环境考古研究称为"现代中国环境考古研究",并将之归纳为"考古地理的环境考古研究模式"、"文化历史环境考古研究模式"和"资源环境考古研究模式"。本文对这三种研究模式的合理性进行了分析。接下来,从考古学的基本理论假设出发,指出环境考古学、文化历史考古学之间并没有严格的继承关系,中国环境考古研究的最大问题是核心概念的不匹配。最后,通过考察西方环境考古研究和考古学史,本文提出应该用文化适应,即"考古学中的文化"取代考古学文化而将之作为核心概念进行环境考古研究,让中国环境考古摆脱文化历史考古学概念体系的束缚。     

The Age of Environmental Impasse? Globalization and Enviromental Transformation of Metropolitan Cities

Metropolitan cities are undergoing a major spatial and environmental transformation. The proliferation of business districts, corporate headquarters and international hotels is prompting a massive verticalization and densification of land use, which is affecting the urban environment and infrastructure in a number of ways. Nowhere are urban environmental pressures so accentuated as in Third World metropolitan cities. Here the rush to gain a competitive edge in the global economy, in order to attract multinational firms and become a ‘global city’, is leading to an inconsistent urban policy framework in which development policies frequently clash with environmental policies. This article explores the environmental complexity of Third World metropolitan cities, focusing on the cases of Beijing and São Paulo. After a conceptual review of the relationship between globalization, cities and urban environmental problems, it examines how globalization is prompting spatial and environmental transformations in both cities; looks at the dichotomy between development policies and environmental policies by analysing the instruments in place; and investigates the role of globalization vis‐à‐vis urban sustainability issues.     

Transitions to Clean Government: Amnesty as an Anticorruption Measure

Anti-corruption research has been dominated by inquiries into the formal structures of clean governance, while the actual process of changing the culture of corruption has been overlooked. This paper views ‘transition to clean government’ as a conceptual parallel to ‘democratisation’ and anti-corruption measures as instances of transitional justice. Contrary to the mainstream scholarship, it argues that: (1) Measures that lead to clean government differ from measures that contribute to its maintenance; and (2) amnesty may play a crucial role in establishing clean government, if it inspires a change in political culture. To illustrate its propositions, this paper applies the literature on transitional justice and democratisation to anti-corruption strategies and re-examines the particular circumstances surrounding amnesty in Hong Kong's successful transformation into one of the cleanest governments in Asia.     

Policy Feedback in a Racialized Polity

American public policy is and has always been profoundly racialized. Yet, the literature on policy feedback lacks cohesive theorization of how race matters for feedback processes. This article offers a conceptual road map for studying policy feedback in the context of racialized politics. Drawing together the substantial (but largely disconnected) work that already exists in the fields of public policy and racial politics, I develop the racialized feedback framework to provide theoretical guidance on (i) when race should be a core focus of policy feedback research and (ii) how race structures the relationship between policy and polity. I argue that both the scope of the questions that scholars ask and the nature of the answers they find are altered when race is afforded an appropriately central role in research on policy feedback.     

Innovation in environmental assessment of community‐based projects in sub‐Saharan Africa

Although environmental assessment (EA) has been applied to large resource and infrastructure projects in developing countries, recent innovations in EA concepts, processes and tools have facilitated its application to small projects focused on basic human and livelihood needs. This paper describes innovations in the application of EA to community projects implemented by Canadian nongovernment organizations and their partners in sub‐Saharan Africa. Innovations include: (1) the dovetailing of environmental constructs in neopopulism with a conceptual shift in EA toward participatory, transactive planning; (2) assessment methodologies adapted from participatory rural appraisal; (3) development of grassroots EA capacity; and (4) linkage of community EA with project planning. Community EA is demonstrated for five cases involving agriculture and charcoal retail in Uganda, water supply and flood control in Niger and integrated rural development in Zambia. Future prospects and challenges include cultural adaptation, community empowerment through realignment of power relationships, mutual development of local and national EA capacity and increased training and resources for enhancing grassroots EA capacity .     

Environmental Quality and User Satisfaction in Mass Housing Areas: The Case of Istanbul

In a residence environment, housing and housing groups constitute a fundamental life space to meet the needs of the residents, to satisfy them, and to maintain the overall health of individuals and public. Various needs that appear due to the problems caused by housing and residence environment situated in a physical, psychological and socio-cultural environment together with their surroundings affect resident satisfaction and attitude, while directing the overall individual/family and public health, happiness and welfare. Most researchers argue about and try to determine the residents' needs related to their expectations of and satisfaction in housing and residence environment, within the framework of basic needs of human beings. In this study, in order to assess the factors that improve housing and environmental quality satisfaction, the concepts of housing and its environment, and the subject of housing and environmental quality satisfaction have been investigated; the conceptual model of housing and environmental quality satisfaction has been developed, which takes up the subject of user satisfaction in housing and environment quality as a whole; and the factors to increase the level of satisfaction in housing and environmental quality have been specified. A sum of 400 questionnaire inquiries has been made in planned mass housing areas in the Istanbul Metropolitan Area. Applying factor analysis to the data that have been gathered as a result of questionnaire inquiries, the following factors have been determined according to their order of importance to increase the level of user satisfaction in housing and environmental quality. The findings of this study show that, the elements influencing these factor groups include accessibility to various function areas in the inhabited housing area, environmental features of the housing, satisfaction in the various facilities in the inhabited environment, environmental security, neighbour relationships, and the appearance of the housing environment. A logistic regression model has been made to assess whether there are any differences among the factors influencing housing and environmental quality satisfaction for mass housing users on location choice (central districts and peripheral districts) at the metropolitan level.     

The “Commons” Versus the “Commodity”: Alter‐globalization,Anti‐privatization and the Human Right to Water in the Global South

Abstract: In response to the growth of private sector involvement in water supply management globally, anti‐privatization campaigns for a human right to water have emerged in recent years. Simultaneously, alter‐globalization activists have promoted alternative water governance models through North‐South red‐green alliances between organized labour, environmental groups, women's groups, and indigenous groups. In this paper, I explore these distinct (albeit overlapping) responses to water privatization. I first present a generic conceptual model of market environmentalist reforms, and explore the contribution of this framework to debates over ‘neoliberalizing nature’. This conceptual framework is applied to the case of anti‐privatization activism to elucidate the limitations of the human right to water as a conceptual counterpoint to privatization, and as an activist strategy. In contrast, I argue that alter‐globalization strategies—centred on concepts of the commons—are more conceptually coherent, and also more successful as activist strategies. The paper concludes with a reiteration of the need for greater conceptual precision in our analyses of neoliberalization, for both academics and activists.     

RETHINKING THE BUILDING BLOCKS: ONTOLOGICAL PLURALISM AND THE IDEA OF 'MANAGEMENT'

ABSTRACT. The persistence of indigenous ontologies rooted in human systems that pre-date the creation of colonial property rights and assertions of frontier conquest and dispossession unsettles the dominant idea that 'management' is an unproblematic and universally endorsed goal for communities, regions and nations in their environmental and development discourses. This paper argues that conceptual building blocks which render management, be it of environments, economies or people, as unquestionably good, need to be reconsidered. Drawing on diverse indigenous knowledges in Australia, particularly in relation to wildlife management, the paper examines the hidden cultural specificity of management, planning, institutional strengthening and capacity building as well as their implicit silencing of alternative narratives of the economic, environmental and cultural dimensions of social life.     

Indigenous sovereignties: relational ontologies and environmental management

Indigenous nations have always and continue to assert their sovereignties to resist colonialism. This paper makes explicit the ways in which environmental management has been and continues to act as a tool of colonialism, particularly by privileging Western science, institutions, and administrative procedures. We argue that to decolonise environmental management, it is crucial to understand and challenge the power relations that underlie it—asking who makes decisions and on what worldview those decisions are based. Indigenous ways of being deeply challenge the foundations of environmental management and the colonising power structures that underlie it, and invite further thought about posthuman and relational ontologies. We provide a range of case studies that showcase the role of Indigenous nations in redefining and reimagining environmental management based on Indigenous sovereignties, knowledges, and ways of being. The case studies emphasise the crucial connection between Indigenous decision‐making authority and self‐governance for the enhanced protection and health of the environment. We argue that Indigenous agency, grounded in Indigenous governance and sovereignties, is driving innovation and decolonising environmental management by making space for new ways of thinking and being “in place”.     

Blueing business as usual in the ocean: Blue economies,oil, and climate justice

Oceans are increasingly looked toward for their contribution to addressing climate change. These so-called ocean-based climate “solutions” often fall under the umbrella of the “blue economy,” a term used to refer to new ways of organizing ocean economies to provide equitable economic and environmental benefits. Yet, thus far the literature exploring blue economies and blue economy governance has largely overlooked or downplayed its equity and justice roots and implications, including how blue economies are embedded in multiple scales of environmental injustices. This is particularly important when blue economies include offshore oil production. The purpose of this paper is to both emphasize the need and provide an approach to incorporate justice and equity—specifically climate justice—into blue economy planning and scholarship. We build on conceptualizations of blue economies as assemblages to draw attention to the global reach of climate impacts associated with oil that are often overlooked or ignored at sites of production and through regional governance. We argue that greenhouse gas emissions from the life cycle of oil should be included in policies and planning (including blue economy planning) at sites of production, but that this must also incorporate underlying power structures that lead to uneven impacts and climate injustice. We look at environmental assessments as a regional governance tool that could be used to shape opportunities and openings to organize blue economies differently. To illustrate these points, we look at how environmental assessments are playing (and could play) a role in enacting and shaping Newfoundland and Labrador's blue economy.     

Gendering environmental geography

Despite sharing common interests in being advocates for social change, feminist and environmental geographers have yet to acknowledge interests they share in common. Environmental geographers, particularly those focused on policy and institutional analysis, have not embraced feminist theories or methodologies, while few feminist geographers have engaged issues associated with environmental policy-making. Our purpose is to initiate a dialogue about how linkages might be forged between feminist and environmental geography, particularly among Canadian environmental geographers working on institutional and policy analysis. We begin by illustrating that environmental geographers working on Canadian problems have neglected to introduce gender as an analytical category or feminist conceptual frameworks to guide their research. Second, we identify four feminist research approaches that should also be pursued in environmental geography. Third, we consider examples of how feminist perspectives might be incorporated in three themes of environmental geography: institutional and policy analysis, participatory environmental and management systems and alternative knowledge systems. Fourth, we consider two research frameworks—political ecology and environmental justice—and suggest that these may be useful starting points for integrating feminist analysis into environmental geography. Last, we summarise our suggestions for how future research of feminist and environmental geographers could benefit from a closer association.     

The platform business model and business ecosystem: quality management and revenue structures*

A platform is a two-sided market. It is an environment established to allow multiple groups such as suppliers and consumers to exchange their views for fair transactions. Platforms evolve through the connection and interaction of participants, and act as ecosystems of coexistence that can provide values and benefits to all participants. Care must be taken in building such a business ecosystem to successfully stabilize the platform model. This research indicates how a business ecosystem can be constructed by analysing quality management and revenue structures – core elements in any platform business model with a distinct group of users on either side. Through 12 case studies using 30 in-depth interviews and 2 focus group interviews, this research suggests the conceptual framework, ‘12 different types of quality management and revenue structure strategies’. These will serve as the conceptual framework from which to build platform business model ecosystems.     

South African palaeoenvironments during marine oxygen isotope stage 4: a context for the Howiesons Poort and Still Bay industries

Spanning the period from ∼74–58 ka, and being broadly coeval with marine oxygen isotope stage 4 (MIS 4), the Still Bay and Howiesons Poort industries represent important phases in the development of the material culture of early modern humans. How and why these industries occurred when they did, however, remain matters for speculation. A key element of this debate has been the question of what role environmental change during the early stages of the last glacial period may have had on influencing human activity. Unfortunately, well-dated palaeoenvironmental evidence from this period is limited, and the debate has, out of necessity, been driven by the application of conceptual models of environmental change, many of which associate colder and warmer global climates with increased aridity and humidity respectively. In this paper, the regional marine and terrestrial evidence is synthesised to create an evidence-based palaeoenvironmental context. Based on the information available to date, it appears that rather than being characterised by dry conditions, MIS 4 was a period of relatively cool, moist climates, the ubiquity of which transcends the modern regional climate boundaries. It is suggested that orbital parameters at this time created greater interaction between tropical and temperate circulation systems, bringing more moisture to the subcontinent. These findings highlight the distinct nature of southern African climate systems, and caution against the application extra-regional conceptual models or inferring linear relationships with polar records.     

红色文化氛围、游客态度与拥护关系研究

探究红色旅游目的地红色文化氛围营造与游客态度和拥护的关系,对于体现红色旅游价值意义重大.本文依据思辨文化氛围、态度与拥护三者之间的关系构建概念模型,通过问卷工具在韶山抽样调查获得基础数据,采用结构方程模型进行验证分析.结果显示:第一,红色文化氛围对态度和拥护具有显著的正向影响;第二,态度在红色文化氛围与拥护的关系中起中介作用.本文认为,红色旅游目的地应注重文化氛围的营造,通过红色文化的感召力影响游客态度,实现游客拥护.     

New approaches to economic development in peripheral rural regions

This paper explores new approaches to economic development in peripheral regions in the context of constraints on public expenditure, declining employment in traditional natural resource based industries, and globalisation of the economy. Three conceptual pairs ‐resource mobility and immobility; tangible and intangible factors; and global‐local interrelations — underpin three ideas about these new approaches, and their impact on differential economic performance observed in otherwise similar localities and regions. A case study is given to illustrate the role played by less mobile cultural, social and environmental assets in these strategies. However, a key feature of the cases is the importance of both local and extra‐local linkages, often at international level, whether this has to do with market or non‐market activity. The conclusions raise questions for research about the root causes of differences in economic performance between rural localities, whether local initiatives will suffice to counter further likely declines in public subventions and natural resource based employment and also about the focus of policy in such regions.     

Limiting Risks: Environmental Ethics as a Policy Primer

This article constructs a conceptual and normative framework for policy-oriented discussions of environmental uncertainty and risk. Human-caused environmental risks are unavoidable in a technologically and economically advanced society. Contemporary environmentalists deploy ecological and ethical axioms to structure the debate over environmental uncertainty and risk management. They adopt the "imperative of sustainability" and the "precautionary principle" as the foci of an ethical and ecological effort to evaluate and limit environmental risk. The policy implications of these axioms for those engaged in environmental risk and cost/benefit analysis are explored.     

Exploring the context and elements of local environmental stewardship: An embedded case study of the Niagara Region,Canada

Environmental stewardship—a concept that describes the relationships between humans and the environment—is gaining increased attention as an approach that can address planetary sustainability issues. In-depth empirical investigations of local environmental stewardship are needed to understand how social-ecological context influences stewardship, as well as the arrangement of conceptual elements in applied settings. This study addresses these needs by conducting an in-depth exploration of environmental stewardship in the Niagara Region of Canada. A single embedded case study design is employed, with environmental stewardship initiatives constituting the individual units of analysis with the case. Analysis of the spatial arrangement of a total of 89 initiatives indicated that initiatives tended to cluster closer to the Niagara River and in more populous municipalities. The significance of collaboration, tensions between the environment and economic development, and concerns about political impacts emerged as themes across contextual factors. The configuration of stewardship elements reveals interesting discrepancies between initiatives and previous stewardship research focused on larger scales, individuals, and organizations. Further analysis is encouraged to illuminate environmental stewardship in other settings as well as advance relational understanding of conceptual elements.