历史上永定河筑堤的环境效应初探

金、元以后永定河水害急剧增多,由北京的母亲河变成了常常威胁京城安全的害河。金代以来各朝都十分重视对永定河的治理,元明清三朝更是把修筑永定河的堤防作为京畿事务中的重大问题。历史上永定河的大规模筑堤为京城减少了洪水之虞,但同时也带来了包括北京水环境在内的一系列地理环境的变化。本文追溯永定河筑堤后北京地区水环境变迁以及下游地貌改变的重要史实,阐述筑堤工程对于流域整体环境的深远影响,以期引起人们对历史上一些重大水利工程的环境效应的反思。     

Multi-element analysis for dietary reconstruction at a balearic Iron Age site

The number of studies using trace elements as indicators of diet has increased with time, but the majority have used few elements and a small sample. The present study has as a principal objective a multi-element analysis of diet in a large sample in which diagenetic changes have been shown to be unimportant. The analysis was made using concentrations of seven elements—Sr, Ba, Mg, Cu, Zn, V and Ca—in 197 individuals from the necropolis of ‘S' Illot des Porros’ (Majorca, Spain). The results show that these individuals would have had a mixed diet with a high meat component, principally of marine origin (molluscs and fish), but with an important consumption of seeds and cereals and a low proportion of vegetables.     

流动性视角下中国流行菜系的空间扩散格局及其文化地理逻辑

流动性的增强不但意味着人口、信息、资金流动强度增加,也意味着流动范围的扩大。在此背景下,以稳定的人口构成为基础的传统地域饮食文化区的边界也开始发生变化。同时,流动性也使多元地方饮食文化在空间扩散的基础上展开了互动与交融。本研究将除港澳台地区以外的中国全域作为研究区域,基于海量餐饮服务设施POI数据,运用核密度分析方法分析中国目前的流行菜系空间扩散格局并描述其特征,并从流动性视角阐释其形成与扩散的文化地理逻辑。研究发现,中国现流行的菜系主要包括川菜、湘菜、粤菜、东北菜、徽菜、云贵菜、西北菜、鲁菜;中国流行菜系的空间扩散格局具有差异明显、多中心发展的特点。其中,川菜、湘菜、粤菜数量多分布广;鲁菜、徽菜分布集中,扩散较少;东北菜、云贵菜、西北菜数量较少但分布范围广。这种流行菜系空间扩散格局背后的文化地理逻辑与流动性密不可分,人口、资金等的流动促使地方饮食文化在空间内扩散,同时也带来了地方饮食文化间的交融互构。     

Exposure to Cadmium and Lead in an Agropastoral Iron Age Population

Metals present in the environment (soil, water and atmosphere) can affect food safety and human health through bio‐accumulation and bio‐magnification phenomena. Human exposure to the metals may take place through the environment and by ingesting contaminated food (including water), determining harmful effects usually detectable over the long term. Starting with the Industrial Revolution, local occurrence and concentration of metallic contaminants in the environment have been exponentially increasing: it has been assessed that, nowadays, daily absorption of lead, by North American people, is noticeably greater than that during prehistoric times. In this study, we measured concentrations of cadmium, lead and zinc in 153 bone samples (femurs) of Iron Age inhabitants of Central Italy (Abruzzo): the Samnites from the Alfedena Necropolis (2600–2400 bp ). The data found are in agreement with the results of similar published studies. Heavy metal concentrations varied widely among samples with the exception of zinc. A significant difference (p same Mann–Whitney test <0.05) in cadmium bone levels was found between male (0.08–1.8 mg/kg, median 0.31 mg/kg) and female samples (0.05–1.3 mg/kg, median 0.53 mg/kg). Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Disparity Despite Diversity: Social Injustice in New York City's Urban Agriculture System

Many studies have documented the benefits of urban agriculture, including increased food access, job creation, educational opportunities, and green space. A focus on its social benefits has fed an association of urban agriculture with social justice, yet there is a distinction between alleviating symptoms of injustice (such as disparate access to food or environmental amenities) and disrupting structures that underlie them. Despite its positive impacts, urban agriculture systems may reinforce inequities that practitioners and supporters aim to address. This paper reports findings from a 2‐year study of urban agriculture in New York City, which found race‐ and class‐based disparities among practitioners citywide. Using the lens of critical race theory, it argues that a failure to examine urban agriculture's role in either supporting or dismantling unjust structures may perpetuate an inequitable system. The paper concludes with recommendations for urban agriculture supporters and scholars to help advance social justice at structural levels.     

Champions of the Movement or Fair‐weather Heroes? Individualization and the (A)politics of Local Food

We ask to what degree consumers who act out movement practices (eg local food consumption) may do so without regard for larger environmental and social justice implications, and how focus on individual concerns reflects the partial (but increasing) neoliberalization and depoliticization of the alternative food movement. Coupling narratives from five citizen‐consumers with analysis of organizational discourse from a major food movement organization in Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley, we examine the interplay of individual and collective identity to point to places where modified discourse and movement tactics may produce more fruitful outcomes (eg greater community food security). Ultimately, we argue that individualistic interpretations of alternative food are reinforced by organizational campaigns that shape collective identity, casting “buying local” as a heroic act, thereby re‐casting others as anti‐heroes. Counteracting individualization with a new politics of possibility should be prioritized, as citizen‐consumers will inevitably determine future landscapes of food, environmental sustainability and social justice.     

Neighbourhood food environments revisited: When food deserts meet food swamps

This study uses service area–based coverage and various count regression methods to assess neighbourhood-level healthy and unhealthy food environments, and food access associated with different socio-economic groups in Edmonton, Canada. We identify three types of vulnerable neighbourhoods according to different food environments: food deserts (i.e., neighbourhoods lack sufficient access to healthy foods); food swamps (i.e., neighbourhoods have excess access to unhealthy foods); and those with overlaps of food swamps and food deserts. We also identify neighbourhoods with superior access to healthy foods (i.e., food oases). Additionally, our results from regression analyses indicate: (1) child population is negatively associated with both healthy and unhealthy food resources; (2) good access to public transportation is associated with good coverage of all healthy food outlets and convenience stores; and (3) deprived neighbourhoods with higher percentages of minority populations have better coverage of both healthy and unhealthy foods in general. The results from this study can help the City of Edmonton identify the key neighbourhoods with high potential for local business and the hotspot neighbourhoods that require particular support. Tailored strategies are proposed to effectively and efficiently improve food environments with limited resources.     

Advancing culture’s role in sustainable development: social change through cultural policy

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the potential for cultural policy to shape sustainable development in the context of expectations arising from research and policy work on development. We use, as the basis of a critique, the categorisation of the relationship between culture and sustainable development proposed by a major study funded by the European Union, being emblematical of how researchers and policymakers understand this relationship. The critique highlights a need for multiscalar social change, towards revaluing relations with the natural world, and reforming social relations between producers and consumers. This paper locates cultural policy as an arm of governance, with the capacity to lead social change across several interdependent pathways (revaluing technological change; fostering an aesthetic appreciation and environmental ethical consciousness; and pro-social behaviour) alongside the development of more sophisticated governance frameworks. The paper further proposes that through (re)education, cultural policy can and should play a more active role in shaping social change.     

The quest for a traditional style: architecture and heritage processes in a Pyrenean valley

In this article, I focus on the construction and restoration of houses in the Catalan Pyrenees, on their materiality, and specifically on the relationship between architectural and heritage processes that shapes them. I provide an analysis of how architectural forms, norms and regulations, as well as building aesthetics and materials, were transformed in the past decades following a parallel process of changes in the region. The aim is to explore the relationship between the built environment and the cultural and economic shift of the area in recent times. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research conducted in a valley of the Catalan Pyrenees, I show how the material culture, architecture and built environment evolved in close relationship to the spread of heritage discourses leading to a mutually constituting association that helped shape the elements of the new social realities.     

A feminist-phenomenology of women’s activism against hydropower plants in Turkey’s Eastern Black Sea region

Taking a feminist-phenomenological perspective of the body, this article provides an empirically grounded analysis of the embodied subjectivity of women in the movement against hydropower plants (HPPs) in the culturally and spatially specific context of the Eastern Black Sea region of Turkey. Informed by a feminist engagement with Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of ‘the body-subject’, ‘the flesh’ and Einfühlung, the article places subjectivity within a relational ontology of sentience and intelligence in which corporeal experiences, senses and affects condition cognitive and agential processes. Bodily senses and affects are thus treated as media of subjectivity. The relationship between water and identity, established through memory, heritage and history, is also produced and/or conserved by the embodied relation between women’s bodies and bodies of water, within the connective ‘flesh’ of the physical world. The case of the Eastern Black Sea demonstrates how political subjectivity of women in the movement against HPPs is conditioned by an intimate embodied relationship with river waters that is sustained by a series of sensory-affective experiences. Their statements emphasize, over and over again, an interconnectedness with the rivers, which makes the cause of anti-HPP struggle vital and urgent for them. This feeling of urgency is a source of women’s radicalism in opposing HPPs. The article maintains the female subject as embodied and transversal, and stresses the centrality of corporeal experience, sense and affect in formation of political subjectivity. By developing a body-centred feminist-phenomenological approach to political subjectivity, it introduces a novel way of analysing women’s activisms within and beyond environmental movements.