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Issue 5.2 Abstracts

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Diverging Attitudes Towards Predators: Do Environmental Beliefs Play a Part?

By Bjørn P. Kaltenborn, Tore Bjerke and Einar Strumse

Human ecology is concerned with how humans adapt to a changing environment. Environmental change is often manifested as conflicts over the meaning and use of natural resources. Successful resource management is becoming increasingly dependent upon knowledge about how conflicts are constructed, and this entails identifying attitudes and beliefs held by various interest groups. This paper describes results from a study of environmental beliefs and attitudes towards large carnivores among sheep farmers, wildlife managers, and research biologists in Norway. The New Ecological Paradigm scale was tested, and environmental beliefs were found to be relatively stable across the three groups comprising two distinct dimensions. For the overall sample, positive attitudes toward large carnivores generally correlated with pro-environmental beliefs, while negative attitudes towards carnivores correlated with the general belief that humans are exceptional in relation to nature. While there are smaller differences among the three groups of respondents, sheep farmers endorse pro-ecological beliefs less than wildlife managers and research biologists. Information about the environmental beliefs of different cultures involved in disputes over resources can help explain the nature of resource conflicts. Improved knowledge of the 'meaning' of resources can be salient in terms of understanding how different interest groups adapt to environmental change.

Keywords: resource conflicts, environmental beliefs, new environmental paradigm scale, attitudes toward large carnivores

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Age, Perceptions, and Neighborhood Quality: An Empirical Test

By Michael Greenberg

Research has shown that adult Americans react to their neighborhoods and the attributes of their neighborhoods in predictable ways. A survey was made of matched pairs of 15 to 24-year-old and older Americans who resided in the same dwelling unit in order to determine if younger Americans perceive their neighborhoods in the same way as their older counterparts. The survey found almost identical neighborhood quality ratings among the matched pairs of younger and older adults. Crime and other forms of fear-provoking behaviors, blight, and littered buildings and streets were clearly the strongest correlates of neighborhood quality ratings among both the younger and older populations. Neighborhood amenities and resident characteristics were weakly or less strongly associated with neighborhood quality ratings. These results clearly point to the key factors that need to be controlled for good neighborhoods to maintain their status.

Keywords: age, blight, crime, litter, neighborhood quality, race, vandalism

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Global Change from Local Decisions: An Archaeologist's Perspective

By Michael J. Kimball

Archaeology provides time depth to considerations of cultural change at global and local levels. I focus on the Neolithic Revolution, which swept the globe from 8000 to 3000 bc (uncalibrated radiocarbon years). Although agriculture became widespread over a relatively brief period, it developed independently in many places. No single factor or set of factors has been identified to explain this global phenomenon. When the scale of analysis is changed to the local level, diversity characterizes the reasons for both agricultural invention and adoption. I consider patterns of adoption by Southern Scandinavian societies, which exhibit a complex, sedentary hunter-gatherer lifeway, and early Irish societies, which conform to a simple, mobile hunter-gatherer model. I suggest that a new paradigm may be needed to explain global patterns that emerge from diverse, local decisions. I conclude with a brief critical discussion of the Santa Fe Institute's approach to the study of emergent complex phenomena.

Keywords: archaeology, complexity, cultural change, Ireland, Neolithic

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Rethinking the Agrarian Question: The Limits of Essentialism and the Promise of Evolutionism

By Paul McLaughlin

Drawing on the insights of evolutionary epistemology, I examine the persistence of essentialism in the context of the Marxian and Neo-Marxian debate over the Agrarian Question. Specifically, I argue that Marxian theorists' failure to provide a convincing explanation for the survival of the family farm derives from their inability to construct systematic theories of "obstacles" to account for "deviations" from predicted "natural" paths of change and not, as is sometimes asserted, because essentialism is inherently deterministic, ahistorical or in some way non-scientific. The persistence of essentialism in light of the former difficulties is explained in terms of Wimsatt's concept of generative entrenchment as well as the need for scientific theories to adapt to both intellectual and social environments. Organizational ecology is put forward as an alternative, non-essentialist approach to theorizing the structural dynamics of agriculture.

Keywords: Agrarian Question, essentialism, constructivism, evolutionary epistemology, organizational ecology.

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An Ecological Analysis of Political Ideologies

By Agustí Galiana

In this paper, progress in human ecology is used to help understand political ideologies. Two processes that occur in advanced, dense, urban, agricultural societies are highlighted: impoverishment due to population growth and stratification due to diverging breeding strategies. Political ideologies are classified according to how they go about both obtaining resources and controlling population. The "aggressive strategy" seeks new resources and leaves population control to spontaneous "social chaos," resulting in a climactically poor, stratified society. The ecological shortcomings of the liberal, communist and fascist variants that unsuccessfully try to avoid this result are reviewed. The "religious strategy" does not seek new resources, but conforms to poverty, however the outcome is identical. Therefore, the only possibility of achieving a stable, rather egalitarian society with high standards of living is the "ecologist strategy," which seeks population control and a sustainable use of renewable resources.

Keywords: Malthus, breeding strategies, stratified societies, tragedy of the commons, environmentalism

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From the Interpersonal to the Environmental: Extending the Ethics of Levinas to Human Ecology

By Michael Welsh

This paper draws on the ethical theory of Emmanuel Levinas (and to a lesser degree Martin Buber) for insight into the identification and preservation of authentic relations in human ecology and human communities. Borrowing from Levinas it develops the idea that an authentic relation between people and place - one that transcends a common but false dualism between ethical preservation and instrumental use - follows a pattern most readily experienced in the interhuman erotic. Borrowing from Buber the paper suggests that authentic human communities have at their foundation individuals with a mutual relation with place (or "living Center") discernible in the pattern of the erotic above. The paper connects these thinkers and justifies their application to these issues by demonstrating their presence in the fiction and poetry of agriculture written by Wendell Berry. Finally the paper suggests application of these ideas to real communities caught at decision points in their development.

Keywords: Emmanuel Levinas, Martin Buber, Wendell Berry, environmental ethics, agriculture

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Communal Participation and Sociocultural Change in Rural Yucatan: Participatory Research, Health, and Quality of Life

By Federico Dickinson, Dolores Viga and Teresa Castillo

Participatory research (PR) methodology strengthens the community's capability to identify, rank and solve its main problems, to negotiate with outside agents such as official and private agencies, and to change local behavioral patterns that contribute to impoverishing human health and well-being. Here we report results of the application of PR methodology to health and environmental issues in The Port, a rural coastal community in Yucatan, Mexico, and how PR methodology helped to improve cultural, social, biotic, and abiotic characteristics of the environment. Our results suggest that microenvironmental changes in the socialization and resocialization processes of participants in PR have positive effects on health and the quality of community life. Such changes respect the communal culture (local timetables, places and ways of meeting, political and religious affiliation, and relevant issues), while providing the community with new methodological tools to analyze its problems.

Keywords: communal participation, sociocultural change, rural, Mexico, participatory research, well-being, rural women

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