‘Nature makes people happy,that’s what it sort of means:’ children’s definitions and perceptions of nature in rural Northwestern Ontario

ABSTRACT

Nature exposure positively impacts children’s physical, socio-emotional, and cognitive health and development. We know less about how children perceive their connection with nature and what nature means to them. This study uses focus groups to understand how rural Canadian children define, experience, and perceive benefits of nature. Using thematic analysis, we identified three primary themes. First, while children associate nature with specific activities, natural elements, and locations, they also conceptualize nature as ‘a whole community.’ Second, children experienced nature through doing, highlighting how activities connected them with nature while recognizing constraints on those engagements. Finally, children demonstrated agency in accessing nature to improve their emotional states. These findings indicate that from children’s views, nature is more than just space with natural elements. Children are also knowledgeable about the health benefits of nature, and capitalize on this knowledge. These findings can inform interventions to increase children’s interactions with outdoor environments.     

北京城中村居民“数字鸿沟”测量及其影响因素研究

移动互联网的快速发展，特别是2020年的新冠疫情加速了远程医疗等数字经济业态的发展，促使学者们重新重视“数字鸿沟”现象，探讨“数字不平等”和“社会不平等”的相互影响。文章以北京5个典型城中村为调研地，发现：移动互联网发展，4G网络普及和国产智能手机崛起缩小了城中村居民在设备接入上的鸿沟，但其上网技能还受到个体社会经济属性影响。产生“数字鸿沟”的传统因素如年龄、受教育程度等仍然在起作用，一些新的因素如户籍、网龄、上网时长催化了其在网络内容利用上的差异，社会结构分层同样嵌入到其网络产品和内容选择中。研究加深了我们对“数字鸿沟”的理解，也帮助我们分析其他社会弱势群体遭遇“数字鸿沟”的可能性。     

Joan Barfoot's Exit Lines and the Pastoral of Old Age

This article traces the way in which Canadian author Joan Barfoot's novel Exit Lines draws upon the pastoral tradition in its representation of old age. Pastoral literature has traditionally encoded ideologies of age, and it is the inclusion of pastoral tropes that structures Barfoot's participation in the discussion of population aging currently taking place across disciplines and in the popular media. Pastoral writing is characterized by an acceptance of vulnerability and loss, and this provides Barfoot with an effective counterpoint to a contemporary culture of “positive” aging founded on an ethic of bodily control that alternately stigmatizes and masks the existence of decline and dependency in late life. The novel questions the way in which the rhetoric of crisis that characterizes discussions of population aging threatens to generate resentment against the dependent elderly, whom the novel depicts as vulnerable to exploitation by those who stand to profit from this “crisis.”     

UPWARDS,OUTWARDS AND WESTWARDS: RELOCATION OF ETHNIC MINORITY GROUPS IN THE OSLO REGION

Our purpose in this article is to examine socio‐economic and spatial integration of ethnic minorities in the Oslo region. We analyse relocation between 1998 and 2008 for members of ten minority groups along three overlapping dimensions: upwards in the neighbourhood hierarchy, outwards from the inner city to all suburbs, and westwards from a less affluent to a more affluent part of the region. The results provide some limited support for spatial assimilation theory. Two minority groups, Iranians and Vietnamese, comply partly with the theory. Another group, Filipinos, has stagnated in its socio‐economic and spatial integration. The remaining groups do not relocate in accordance with the native pattern, or fail to integrate in socio‐economic terms. The discrepancy between theory and results is most pronounced along the westward axis. We interpret the results in a broader context of regional and national circumstances: spatial assimilation theory may have different utility in different welfare regimes, depending on spatial inequality and the politics of place.     

The distribution and provenance of archaeological obsidian in central and eastern Europe

The sources of archaeological obsidian in central and eastern Europe are briefly described and analyses of 48 samples from 10 of these sources in northeast Hungary and southeast Slovakia are reported. Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis was used to determine 16 trace elements and two major elements. Principal Components Analysis supported by Discriminant Analysis showed seven analytical groups in these data. A total of 270 pieces of archaeological obsidian were assigned by Discriminant Analysis to three of the Carpathian source groups defined, the remaining four source groups not being represented in the archaeological record. The three source groups used are: (1) Szöllöske and Málá Toron?a in Slovakia (designated group Carpathian 1); (2) Csepegö Forrás, Tolcsva area, Olaszliszka and Erdöbénye in Hungary (Carpathian 2a); and (3) Erdöbénye (Carpathian 2b). Carpathian 2a and 2b type obsidians are both found at the re-deposited source of Erdöbénye. Carpathian obsidian was used most widely in Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, and also reached south to the Danube in Yugoslavia, west to Moravia, Austria and to the Adriatic near Trieste, and north to Poland. Carpathian 2a obsidian was used in the Aurignacian period, Carpathian 1 in the Gravettian and Mesolithic, and Carpathian 1, 2a and 2b in the Neolithic, when Carpathian 1 predominated and obsidian use was at its most intensive. Only Carpathian I type has been identified in the Copper and Bronze Ages. There is no evidence at present for any overlap between the Carpathian obsidian distribution and the distributions of the Near Eastern or Aegean sources, but there is an overlap with Mediterranean obsidian at the Neolithic site of Grotta Tartaruga in northeast Italy where Liparian and Carpathian 1 material were identified. The distribution of obsidian from the Carpathian sources is considered in terms of linear supply routes. Based on limited available evidence the supply zone is significantly smaller and the rate of fall-off with distance slightly lower than that reported for Near Eastern obsidians.     

DAMS AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN MALAYSIA: DEVELOPMENT,DISPLACEMENT AND RESETTLEMENT

Large dams have proliferated in Malaysia in recent decades. Constructed mainly to meet mounting domestic demand for water and energy, they have destroyed large tracts of species‐rich tropical rain forest and displaced many already poor and marginalized indigenous groups from their homes and ancestral lands without their consent. Evicted indigenes were promised a better life in resettlement villages, but for the most part this has not occurred. Invariably traumatized by resettlement and widely forced into cash‐based economies for which they were ill prepared, many resettled indigenes suffered from frayed social relationships, high rates of unemployment and enduring poverty, in large part because the authorities failed to internalize project costs. The consequences for indigenous groups of dam‐induced environmental change and development‐forced displacement and resettlement (DFDR) are explored through a critical reading of the literature on four large dams: Sungai Selangor, Babagon, Batang Ai and Bakun. More large dams are under construction and many others have been proposed, resulting in threats to the future well‐being of many indigenous communities. Generally speaking, the experiences of Malaysia's dam‐affected indigenes mirror those of other indigenous minorities in the greater Southeast Asian region.