University for Peace

This article proposes a Foucaultian poststructuralist framework for understanding different positions within the contemporary debate concerning appropriate biodiversity conservation policy as embodying distinctive 'environmentalities'. In a recently-released work, Michel Foucault describes a neoliberal form of his familiar concept 'governmentality' quite different from conventional understandings of this oft-cited analytic. Following this, I suggest that neoliberalisation within natural resource policy can be understood as the expression of a 'neoliberal environmentality' similarly distinct from recent discussions employing the environmentality concept. In addition, I follow Foucault in describing several other discrete environmentalities embodied in competing approaches to conservation policy. Finally, I ask whether political ecologists' critiques of mainstream conservation might be viewed as the expression of yet another environmentality foregrounding concerns for social equity and environmental justice and call for more conceptualisation of what this might look like.

Following the financial crisis and its aftermath, it is clear that the inherent contradictions of capitalist accumulation have become even more intense and plunged the global economy into unprecedented turmoil and urgency. Governments, business leaders and other elite agents are frantically searching for a new, more stable mode of accumulation. Arguably the most promising is what we call 'Accumulation by Conservation' (AbC): a mode of accumulation that takes the negative environmental contradictions of contemporary capitalism as its departure for a newfound 'sustainable' model of accumulation for the future. Under slogans such as payments for environmental services, the Green Economy, and The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, public, private and non-governmental sectors seek ways to turn the non-material use of nature into capital that can simultaneously 'save' the environment and establish long-term modes of capital accumulation. In the paper, we conceptualise and interrogate the grand claim of AbC and argue that it should be seen as a denial of the negative environmental impacts of 'business as usual' capitalism. We evaluate AbC's attempt to compel nature to pay for itself and conclude by speculating whether this dynamic signals the impending end of the current global cycle of accumulation altogether.

Abstract This article contends that international tourism may be one important means by which the capitalist world-economy seeks to sustain itself in the face of inherent contradictions that threaten its long-term survival. Marxist critics have long identified an inevitable tendency towards crises of overproduction (over-accumulation) within the capitalist system, provoked by what Marx termed the central contradiction between imperatives of production and consumption. Subsequent analysts have highlighted a variety of so-called ‘fixes’ by which overproduction crises can be forestalled through spatial and/or temporal displacement of excess accumulated capital. Building upon this analysis, I outline a number of such fixes intrinsic to the development of the international tourism industry. In addition, I suggest that ecotourism development in particular provides additional fixes for capitalism's so-called ‘second contradiction’ between the imperative of continual growth and finite natural resources. In sum, I...

This paper argues that the need for a core “fourth pillar” of sustainability/sustainable development, as demanded in multiple arenas, can no longer be ignored on the grounds of intangibility. Different approaches to this vital but missing pillar (cultural-aesthetic, religious-spiritual, and political-institutional) find common ground in the area of ethical values. While values and aspects based on them are widely assumed to be intangible and immeasurable, we illustrate that it is possible to operationalize them in terms of measurable indicators when they are intersubjectively conceptualized within clearly defined practical contexts. The processes require contextual localization of items, which can nonetheless fit into a generalizable framework. This allows useful measurements to be made, and removes barriers to studying, tracking, comparing, evaluating and correlating values-related dimensions of sustainability. It is advocated that those involved in operationalizing sustainability (especially in the context of creating post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals), should explore the potential for developing indicators to capture some of its less tangible aspects, especially those concerned with ethical values.

The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House Audre Lorde (1983) ABSTRACT Recently, a number of prominent conservationists have declared the last quarter century of global efforts to unite conservation and development through so‐called integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) an overwhelming failure, asserting that there are likely to be irreconcilable trade‐offs between environmental preservation and enhancing human well‐being that future policy will have to take into account. I suggest, however, that such trade‐offs may be less an inherent feature of the world than an artefact of the neoliberal governance model upon which the global conservation movement increasingly relies, as embodied in the ICDP approach. In eschewing questions of resource redistribution and instead depending on economic growth to address social inequality, neoliberal conservation strategies often paradoxically force into opposition the very conservation and development interests they ostensibly seek to reconcile. This thesis is illustrated through discussion of Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula, a celebrated biodiversity hotspot where conservation interventions increasingly emphasize neoliberal market mechanisms designed to incentivize preservation by demonstrating the economic value of in situ natural resources.

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Advocacy of ecotourism as a sustainable development strategy emphasising local participation has tended to espouse the so-called ‘stakeholders theory’, treating interventions as wholly material endeavours and assuming that rural community members will be motivated to participate primarily through economic incentives. Observing that ecotourism is both practiced and promoted predominantly (although not exclusively) by white, professional-middle-class members of post-industrial Western societies, this essay suggests that ecotourism can also be viewed as a discursive process, embodying a culturally specific set of beliefs and values largely peculiar to this demographic group that promoters, often unwittingly, seek to propagate through ecotourism development. As a result, local peoples’ response to ecotourism promotion may depend in part on how this particular cultural perspective resonates with their own understandings of the world. Thus, future research and planning should pay greater attention to the ways in which ecotourism discourse is perceived and negotiated by local actors. The analysis is illustrated through ethnographic analysis of ecotourism development in a community in southern Chile.

Purpose The aim of this paper is to help in understanding the relationship between the construction of the male identity and how social violence may be “reproduced” (using the concept of habitus after Pierre Bourdieu), in poor and socially excluded contexts. The paper aims to inform debate and policy making. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on empirical data collected in 2008, in the form of life‐history interviews with male youths – including members and non‐members of gangs – from two poor and very violent neighbourhoods in Medellín, Colombia's second largest city. Findings Masculinities alone do not account for urban violence, but they play an integral role why violence is reproduced. In socio‐economically excluded contexts the gang becomes an attractive vehicle for “doing masculinity” for boys and young men. Youths who did not join gangs tended to have family support to develop a “moral rejection” of gangs, crime and violence during childhood, which contributed to them finding non‐gang pathways to manhood. Youths who joined gangs were less likely to develop this “moral rejection” during childhood, often due to family problems; and were more likely to admire older gang members, and perceive the gang as an attractive pathway to manhood. Research limitations/implications As the sole researcher a limited number of 32 individuals were interviewed. Originality/value There is a lack of research on masculinities and gang affiliation in the UK and across the globe. This paper provides new conceptual ideas for understanding why young men make up the vast majority of violent gang members, whilst providing an original data set from a very violent urban setting.

INTRODUCTION: Low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) are crucial in the global response to antimicrobial resistance (AMR), but diverse health systems, healthcare practices and cultural conceptions of medicine can complicate global education and awareness-raising campaigns. Social research can help understand LMIC contexts but remains under-represented in AMR research. OBJECTIVE: To (1) Describe antibiotic-related knowledge, attitudes and practices of the general population in two LMICs. (2) Assess the role of antibiotic-related knowledge and attitudes on antibiotic access from different types of healthcare providers. DESIGN: Observational study: cross-sectional rural health behaviour survey, representative of the population level. SETTING: General rural population in Chiang Rai (Thailand) and Salavan (Lao PDR), surveyed between November 2017 and May 2018. PARTICIPANTS: 2141 adult members (≥18 years) of the general rural population, representing 712 000 villagers. OUTCOME MEASURES: Antibiotic-related knowledge, attitudes and practices across sites and healthcare access channels. FINDINGS: in Salavan (75.6%; 95% CI 71.4% to 79.4%). Multivariate linear regression suggested that attitudes against over-the-counter antibiotics were linked to 0.12 additional antibiotic use episodes from public healthcare providers in Chiang Rai (95% CI 0.01 to 0.23) and 0.53 in Salavan (95% CI 0.16 to 0.90). CONCLUSIONS: Locally specific conceptions and counterintuitive practices around antimicrobials can complicate AMR communication efforts and entail unforeseen consequences. Overcoming 'knowledge deficits' alone will therefore be insufficient for global AMR behaviour change. We call for an expansion of behavioural AMR strategies towards 'AMR-sensitive interventions' that address context-specific upstream drivers of antimicrobial use (eg, unemployment insurance) and complement education and awareness campaigns. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: Clinicaltrials.gov identifier NCT03241316.

News from Iraq in the Western media is highly dependent upon Iraqi journalists and coworkers, especially fixers. This is partly due to the degradation of the security situation since the 2003 invasion, and partly due to language: few Western journalists speak Arabic at a professional level of competence. Interviews with Western journalists and fixers in Iraq reveal the high level of dependence involved. They also reveal some commonalities of understanding of the relationships between journalists and fixers and some significant differences. The dependence upon fixers is seen in the light of changes in foreign news gathering in Western media, especially the use of ‘parachute’ journalists.

Education and awareness raising are the primary tools of global health policy to change public behaviour and tackle antimicrobial resistance. Considering the limitations of an awareness agenda, and the lack of social research to inform alternative approaches, our objective was to generate new empirical evidence on the consequences of antibiotic-related awareness raising in a low-income country context. We implemented an educational activity in two Lao villages to share general antibiotic-related messages and also to learn about people's conceptions and health behaviours. Two rounds of census survey data enabled us to assess the activity's outputs, its knowledge outcomes, and its immediate behavioural impacts in a difference-in-difference design. Our panel data covered 1130 adults over two rounds, including 58 activity participants and 208 villagers exposed indirectly via conversations in the village. We found that activity-related communication circulated among more privileged groups, which limited its indirect effects. Among participants, the educational activity influenced the awareness and understanding of "drug resistance", whereas the effects on attitudes were minor. The evidence on the behavioural impacts was sparse and mixed, but the range of possible consequences included a disproportionate uptake of antibiotics from formal healthcare providers. Our study casts doubt on the continued dominance of awareness raising as a behavioural tool to address antibiotic resistance.

This study suggests that successful commercial adventure tourism requires the construction of a “public secret”—something commonly known but not articulated—whereby tourists are able to maintain the contradictory perceptions that they are simultaneously safe and at risk. Previous research has observed that adventure tourism appears to embody a paradox in its attempt to deliver a planned, controlled version of an activity usually defined as dangerous and unpredictable. In order to explain how adventure tourism can succeed despite this paradox, researchers suggested that providers emphasize one aspect of the paradox (risk or safety) while concealing the other. By contrast, the author contends that providers attempt to sell both risk and safety simultaneously, a situation sustained by the fact that the inconsistency between these images, while openly displayed, remains veiled by public secrecy. The author illustrates this analysis through ethnographic research undertaken on whitewater rafting trips in California and Chile.

Despite sustained critique of a neo-Malthusian focus on ‘overpopulation’, the issue continues to resurface regularly within international development discourse, particularly with respect to ‘sustainable’ development in relation to growing environmental security concerns. This suggests that the issue defies purely rational evaluation, operating on a deeper psychodynamic register. In this paper we therefore analyse the population question as a ‘scapegoat’, in the psychoanalytic sense of a fantasmatic construction concealing the gap between the symbolic order of international development and its persistent failure in practice. By conjuring the age-old image of animalistic barbarian hordes breeding inexorably and therefore overflowing their Third World confines to threaten the security – and enjoyment – of wealthier nations, the overpopulation bogeyman helps to displace attention from systemic issues within the political economy of development, namely, the futility of pursuing sustainable development within the context of a neoliberal capitalism that characteristically exacerbates both economic inequality and environmental degradation.

The focus of qualitative environment-conflict research since the early 1990s on the state level of analysis has led to considerable uncertainty about the validity of hypothesized connections and under-specification of existing pathways inhuman-environmental change interactions. As a corrective, this article proposes a household-livelihood framework for qualitative environment-conflict research. This approach begins at the local level and then scales the analysis of social-political effects to higher levels. A household-livelihood framework also improves our understanding of many previously-ignored violent conflicts at the local level that have roots in human-environmental change.

Abstract Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) threatens to cause ten million deaths annually by 2050, making it a top item on the global health agenda. The current global policy response is multi-faceted, wherein behavioural dimensions like people’s medicine use are being predominantly addressed with education and communication campaigns. The social sciences literature suggests that cross-contextual translation of medical knowledge in global awareness campaigns can create misunderstandings and adverse behavioural responses. However, the consequences of AMR communication in low-income and middle-income contexts remain largely undocumented. In response to the empirical knowledge gap, this study presents the case study of educational activity in three northern Thai villages with the objective of contributing to the understanding of the consequences (and their contextual influences) when sharing antibiotic-related information in a rural middle-income setting. The activity’s messages were based on World Health Organization AMR awareness-raising material. A mixed-methods research design informed the analysis. Descriptive difference-in-difference and geographical analysis based on complete village census surveys with a 3-month interval ( n = 1096) was supplemented by qualitative data and observations from the educational activity. The underlying conceptual framework hypothesised that outcomes arise via (a) direct participation and indirect exposure (posters, conversations), subject to translational processes and physical and health system contexts; and via (b) the activity’s influence on village social networks. The outcomes demonstrated that participants aligned their antibiotic-related attitudes and behaviours with the activity’s recommendations. Aside from language barriers (which excluded non-Thai speakers), fragmented local healthcare landscapes limited villagers’ ability to act on the activity but also provided a market opportunity for informal antibiotics sales, and interactions with parallel yet misunderstood public health campaigns created rumours and resistance. Social support from community members also promoted healthy behaviours but remained unaffected by the activity. As one of the most detailed mixed-method assessments of public engagement in AMR, this study challenges the current dominance of awareness-raising campaigns to change population behaviours. We call for comprehensive mixed-method evaluations of future campaigns, mandatory two-directional knowledge exchange components, and alternative behaviour change approaches that respond to contextual constraints like precarity rather than alleged knowledge deficits.

The study of food systems is a quickly growing field. In high demand by postsecondary students, new food systems studies programs are emerging from a range of disciplines. Food systems are inherently complex and are best understood from a range of academic perspectives and practical contexts. We review current scholarship on food systems pedagogy and present approaches for developing and implementing food systems curricula. A literature review and our experience indicate that effective food systems program approaches include emphasizing interdisciplinarity and a systems approach and balancing experience, theory, and practical skills acquisition. We discuss strategies, challenges and opportunities for building food systems curricula.

ABSTRACT Many rice cultivars and hybrids have unique physical characteristics that affect milling performance. The purpose of this study was to quantify the rate of bran removal during milling for several rice cultivars and hybrids common to the southern United States, and compare the quantity of lipids remaining on the kernel surface to that located throughout the kernel. This was accomplished by analyzing two sample sets. The first comprised cultivars Cocodrie, Cypress, and Lemont, and hybrids XL7 and XL8, which were milled for 0 (brown rice), 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, and 70 sec in a laboratory mill. In the second set, cultivars Cocodrie, Cypress, and Wells, and hybrids XL7 and XL8 were milled for 0, 20, 40, and 60 sec. The surface lipid content (SLC) and color of head rice samples were measured as indications of the degree of milling (DOM). The total lipid content (TLC) of ground head rice was also measured to determine the total amount of lipids present throughout the entire kernel. Results showed that at a given milling duration, SLC and color varied across cultivars and hybrids. In particular, the SLC levels of hybrids were lower than those of cultivars, particularly for Cocodrie, for all milling durations. This research indicated that it may be necessary to mill different cultivars and hybrids for varying durations to attain comparable DOM levels. Milling to a consistent DOM level is necessary to ensure equitable head rice yield comparisons across cultivars and hybrids.

The goal of this study was to analyze the extent to which the visual coverage of the final stages (April/May 2009) of the long-lasting Sri Lankan Civil War relied on war and peace frames. Based on the revolutionary conceptual work of Norwegian scholar Johan Galtung, who viewed war and peace journalism as two competing frames in covering conflicts and wars, we examined news photographs available from Associated Press (AP), Reuters, and Getty/Agence France-Press (AFP). To date, this topic has been discussed from mostly normative viewpoints, and only little research combined the peace journalism concept with visual framing and/or the role of newswires as gatekeeper of information. We tested this concept empirically by using content analysis of editorial news photographs of the conflict in the three leading Western newswires. By and large, our results suggest that overall visual coverage of the conflict waxed and waned over time, but was primarily driven by visuals originated in the Sinhalese-dominated regions of Sri Lanka. Further, newswires are serving very different purposes and news markets: the AP–and to a lesser extent also Getty/AFP–with their focus on external events (therefore qualifying for peace journalism) and Reuters with a stronger focus on the conflict itself (thus qualifying for war journalism). Overall, the stock photo agency Getty/AFP was found to be the newswire that is most likely to provide media outlets with photographs highlighting peace frames, with the most balanced coverage between the two conflict parties and a particular emphasis on peace demonstrations worldwide, negotiations and summit meetings.

(Uploaded by Plazi from the Biodiversity Heritage Library) No abstract provided.

This article explores the role of ecotourism in the neoliberalisation of environmental education. The practice of ecotourism is informed by a particular ‘ecotourist gaze’ in terms of which the ‘education’ that providers characteristically offer is implicitly framed, embodying a culturally specific perspective in which western society is depicted as alienating and constraining and immersion in ‘wilderness’ is understood as a therapeutic escape from the reputed ills of industrial civilisation. While in the past, these educational aspects of ecotourism delivery have often contradicted the activity’s promotion as a quintessential neoliberal conservation mechanism, increasingly this education has become neoliberalised as well in its growing emphasis on the environment’s role as an instrumental provider of ‘ecosystem services’ for human benefit. In conclusion, this analysis calls for transcendence of these limitations in pursuit of a more inclusive environmental education encompassing diverse ethnic and socioeconomic dimensions of the human community.