Human Ecology Forum

It’s been a while since I last posted, sorry! These days I’ve just run short of time and energy to keep Human Ecology Forum alive on my own. But when I heard of this project, FreeRice.com, I told myself that I had to let others know of it too!

“For each word you get right, we donate 20 grains of rice through the UN World Food Program to help end hunger”

Play their little game and while you learn a thing or two, you help feed the hungry across the world. Give it a try! There’s nothing to lose.

“…there’s a reason that Elm Street and Main Street resonate in our cultural memory. It’s not because we’re sentimental saps. It’s because this pattern of human ecology produced places that worked wonderfully well, and which people deeply loved.” - Jim Kunstler

There is a great post on “What’s Makes a Community Walkable?”, from Walkable.org. Great insight into what to look for when moving, or designing new communities.

“This is one of the most important and necessary questions anyone should ask before settling down in a permanent location. Many corporate leaders looking to expand or move locations are now looking for towns offering appropriate start up breaks, but also where they and their middle managers want to live many years, raise a family and retire. Our web site, has a 12-step program for defining and achieving or strengthening community walkability.”

More from the press room at the Scotsman. If you looking for a good book to read, Human Ecologist Jamie Whittle’s new book, White River, might just be the one. “The environment is at the heart of [this] book, … which charts Whittle’s journey to the source of the River Findhorn, along with his return trip, in a canoe.”

“Although still a young man, Jamie Whittle has already quartered the globe and packed in the experience of two lifetimes,” says Alastair McIntosh, visiting professor at the Centre for Human Ecology (CHE), in his introduction to Whittle’s book.

Jamie Whittle completed his masters degree in human ecology “through (what was then) the Open University CHE. That was the platform for what became White River.”

“The CHE has since become part of Strathclyde University while Whittle’s masters dissertation became the basis for his book.”

Pete Shelton reminds us that “the electronic archive of our journal “GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society” has recently been completed and now comprises all 73 issues published since 1992. To celebrate this, we are offering free access to GAIA’s archive at IngentaConnect until April 30, 2008.” Get it while it’s hot!

He continues:

Access GAIA’s archive at www.ingentaconnect.com/content/oekom/gaia (sign in with user name “GAIA2008″ and password “archive”).

GAIA is a transdisciplinary journal for scientists and other interested parties concerned with the causes and analysis of environmental and sustainability problems and their solutions. The journal has been covered by the Institute for Scientific Information’s databases (Social Science Citation Index, SSCI, and Current Contents/Social and Behavioral Science) since 2005.

The journal “GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society”

* publishes original scientific articles on environmental and sustainability research.
* keeps you informed about important events in environmental and sustainability research.
* reports on the activities of institutions affiliated with GAIA: German Society for Human Ecology (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Humanoekologie, DGH); Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres; Austrian Consortium GAIA, German research programmes fona – research for sustainability and Social-ecological Research (SOEF); Hochschule Liechtenstein; Swiss Academic Society for Environmental Research and Ecology (Schweizerische Akademische Gesellschaft für Umweltforschung und Oekologie, SAGUF).
* Presents and reviews new publications.

More information: www.oekom.de/etc/gaia.html

From the headlines at LSU Human Ecology Department, comes this announcement:

Loren Marks, assistant professor of human ecology at LSU, along with several colleagues, published one of the only studies hallmarking positive, long-lasting African-American marriages. The study, “Together, We Are Strong: A Qualitative Study of Happy, Enduring African American Marriages,” will be published in “Family Relations” in April.

“This all started about five years ago, when two of my students came up to me after class to ask me a question I couldn’t answer,” said Marks. “They asked me why there wasn’t any research done on strong, marriage-based black families like the ones they came from.”

According to the study, scholars tend to view African American families through what is known as a “deficit perspective,” a manner that emphasizes problems and negatives. “We felt it was time that someone stepped up and researched the many solid, long-lasting African American marriages that are out there,” said Marks.

This qualitative study, which relies on in-depth interviews rather than numerical data, was based on discussions with 30 African American married couples identified across the country.

Four key themes rose out of the interviews:

1) Challenges to African American Marriages
Approximately one-half of African Americans – and 24 out of the 30 interviewed couples – live in inner-city neighborhoods typified by poverty, deficient schools, unemployment, street violence and high levels of stress. It is difficult to get married and stay married in such an environment.

2) Overcoming External Challenges to Marriage
Due to their stability, these marriages serve as a primary source of support for those around them. “Knocks of need,” or calls for financial, emotional and social support, come to these couples in a seemingly disproportionate amount. The couples’ household incomes weren’t high by national standards but they typically had more liquid assets than their neighbors – at least until they shared.

3) Resolving Intramarital Conflict
Like all relationships across racial and economic boundaries, each couple reported arguments, disagreements and generally being “different” from one another, but they found ways to work through their conflicts.

4) Unity and the Importance of Being Equally “Yoked”
90 percent of the couples interviewed were actively religious in the same church. Only three of the couples did not regularly attend church, instead choosing to spend Sundays home together. However, the single common factor found was that every couple was in agreement about their religious views, whatever they might be. The couples referred to this as being “equally yoked.”

“The goal of the study was to tell the stories of real people, facing real challenges and struggles, but who pull together in their marriages and continue to make it through,” said Marks. “We want young people, black and white, to see that strong, happy marriages do exist but that they don’t look like the movies. These marriages involve work, sacrifice, patience, unselfishness and commitment. It is tough, but it is possible.”

For more information about this study, contact Loren Marks at 225-578-2405 or lorenm [lorenm - #AT# - lsu.edu] .

High-resolution photos available for download at www.lsu.edu/pa/photos

View video (Windows Media, 4:40) at
multimedia.lsu.edu/media/Marks.wmv

Download broadcast quality version of video (H.264) at
multimedia.lsu.edu/media/Marks.mov

Kristin Czubkowski writes for the Univeristy of Wisconsin news press:

UW-Madison center makes a name for retail

About three years ago, a group of University of Wisconsin-Madison alumni debating the revival of the School of Human Ecology’s Center for Retailing Excellence asked many retail companies what their opinions were on the school’s graduates. The overwhelming answer: “We don’t know.”

Kelly Mansell, a UW-Madison student, right, gets firsthand experience in the retail industry by working as an intern at The Purple Goose, a Verona women and children’s clothing store. Halley Jones, the shop’s owner, center, says, “I just love interns. They just bring this energy because they’re here to learn.”

One executive, though, the CEO of Kohl’s Department Stores, said he would get back to them.

“He did a little research, and called back and said, ‘Well, we hire more from UW, they stay longer and they promote faster. We like it a lot. What can we do to help it be better?’” says Jerry O’Brien, the center’s director. Using a seed grant of $200,000 from that company, along with other prominent sponsors such as Target and Shopko, O’Brien was hired to reinvigorate the center, which had become less active over time due to funding issues.

Besides making a name for UW-Madison students among retail companies, another main objective for the center is promoting retail as a career path for all types of students — from history to retail to pharmacy majors — and dispelling myths about working in retail. Myths such as low pay and long hours are untrue, O’Brien says.

“It’s becoming increasingly likely that 2008 will go down in history as the year the Second Great Depression began,” said Bill Totten in his opening discusses on the implications of credit crisis the world banks are experiencing these day. But maybe it’s a good thing, he thinks.

He supposes it all depends on how the contracting economies deflate. This isn’t the first time global economies have gone bust, but Bill strongly believes this time it’s different. “Now the problem is not just financial mismanagement; there is a deeper instability: the global economy is based on a fundamentally unsustainable exploitation of depleting natural resources, and that whole system is teetering.”

“UBC Professor of Human Ecology Bill Rees summed up our collective situation this way:”

“To raise the human enterprise ever further from thermodynamic equilibrium, we must degrade and dissipate ever-greater quantities of available energy and material resources extracted from the ecosphere. We have passed the point where the ecosphere can provide sustainably all that we are extracting. Resources are depleted; entropy accumulates. In effect, techno-industrial society has become pathologically parasitic on nature.”

Bill Totten continues, “The implication is clear: if we hope to survive as a species, and if there is to be hope for millions of other creatures, we need to shrink the human enterprise. Economic contraction may be bitter medicine, but it’s part of the cure for what ails our planetary home.”

Here’s the rest of the essay: Making the Most of Global Depression”.

Interesting perspective. Although, honestly, as much as I agree with the idea that we are exploiting the worlds natural resources at an unsustainable rate, I’m not convinced however by the argument that our planet is already starved of resources and this is the underlying cause of the looming recession. To me, as usual, it’s greed of liquid cash itself that is the problem; we still have plenty of natural resources.