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Issue 5.1 Abstracts

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Extinction by Exhibition: Looking at and in the Zoo

By Ralph A. Acampora

This paper compares the phenomenological structure of zoological exhibition to the pattern prevalent in pornography. It examines several disanalogies between the two, finds them lacking or irrelevant, and concludes that the proposed analogy is strong enough to serve as a critical lens through which to view the institution of zoos. The central idea uncovered in this process of interpretation is paradoxical: zoos are pornographic in that they make the nature of their subjects disappear precisely by overexposing them. Since the keep are thus degraded or marginalized through the marketing of their very visibility, the pretense of preservation is criticized. It is suggested that the zoo as we know it be phased out in favor of more authentic modes of encountering other forms of life.

Keywords: zoos, pornography, captive animals, wildness, exhibition, inter-species ethics, conservation, biophilia

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A Consideration of Collective Memory in African American Attachment to Wildland Recreation Places

By Cassandra Y. Johnson

This study examines the effect of race on place attachment to wildland areas. It is generally assumed that African Americans have a more negative impression of wildlands, compared to white ethnic groups. Studies from past decades report that blacks show less aesthetic preference for wildland, unstructured environments and are also less environmentally aware than whites. While it is assumed that blacks are wildland averse, few studies have considered some of the sociohistorical factors that may have contributed to the formation of such attitudes. One possibility is that blacks' collective "memory" of sociohistorical factors such as slavery, sharecropping/Jim Crow, and lynching may have contributed to a black aversion for wildland environments. Racial differences in aesthetic appreciation of wildlands are tested with a place attachment scale developed by Williams et al. (1992) using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The data are from a 1995 survey of residents in a rural, southern county in the Florida panhandle. Results show significant racial variation, with African Americans having less attachment to wildland recreation areas. Sex and age are also significant predictors of place attachment.

Keywords: African American, collective memory, environmentalmeaning, place attachment, wildland recreation

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Demographic Change and Fisheries Dependence in the Northern Atlantic

By Lawrence Hamilton and Oddmund Otterstad

Northern Atlantic fisheries have experienced a series of environmental shifts in recent decades, involving collapse or large fluctuations of the dominant fish assemblages. Over roughly the same period, many fisheries-dependent human communities have lost population, while their countries as a whole were growing. Population loss tends to increase with the degree of fisheries dependence, among communities and sub-national regions of Newfoundland, Iceland and Norway. A close look at Norway, where municipality-level data are most extensive, suggests that population declines reflect not only outmigration, but also changes in fishing-community birth rates. Multiple regression using 1990 and 1980 census data for 454 municipalities finds that fisheries dependence exerts a significant negative effect on population, even after controlling for six other predictors including unemployment and income. The general pattern of changes seen in northern Atlantic fishing communities resembles those identified by migration research elsewhere. Fishing communities are unusual among contemporary first-world societies, however, in that rapid and large-scale environmental shifts appear to be among the forces driving population change.

Keywords: fisheries, North Atlantic, environment, demography, population, migration, Newfoundland, Iceland, Norway

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Steps to a General Theory of Habitability

By Ardeshir Mahdavi

A theoretical basis is presented for a unified discussion of the sustainability and habitability of the built environment. This theory is inspired by concepts in human ecology, information theory, and thermodynamics. It suggests, in a first approximation, to subsume the quality of the built environment in view of provision of comfort, flexibility, control, and informational quality as a "Habitability Index," which, ideally, could be ordered on a negentropic scale. Likewise, the environmental impact of buildings may be captured in terms of a "Sustainability Index," which is assumed to inversely correspond to the entropy increase (in the relevant environmental system) attributable to the building activity.

Keywords: habitability, sustainability, entropy, negentropy

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Ken's Problem: Environmental Activism in an Age of Deconstructionist Biology

By John Visvader

New biological perspectives describe the members of the ecosystem as less tightly connected than earlier models. This deprives many environmentalists of one of their most important arguments that claims that harm to one species will harm all others. The nature of argument in ethics is raised and it is claimed that its structure is closer to analogical argumentation in the law than to the deductive model in logic or some parts of science. The loss of the "house of cards" argument is only a problem if one misconstrues the nature of ethical argumentation.

Keywords: ethics, ethical reasoning, deconstruction, practical ethics

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