A Case Study of OregonWaterStories.com: Exploring Agency with Water Justice, Activist Applied Linguistics, and a Community Partner

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Melissa Haeffner ◽  
Janet Cowal
Keyword(s):  
Learning Experience ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Local Environment ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Community Partner ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Water Justice

Today’s students arrive to college with increased environmental awareness but often without the skills necessary to sort, interpret, and critically think about global environmental change or their relationship to it. To address the barrier of perceived student powerlessness in global environmental problems, we designed a transdisciplinary project for students to begin to take ownership of their learning experience, gain competencies in basic social science research methods, and explore agency with a community partner. In this case study, we narrate one exercise in which students created a public product of collated newspaper articles related to contemporary water issues in Oregon. The project involved the creation of an online database that resulted in a learning tool for future courses, a base for transdisciplinary research, and a deliverable for the public. The exercise proved valuable in demonstrating how students can engage with concepts of activist applied linguistics to evaluate positionalities of news sources while situating themselves as active and engaged members in their local environment. Homework assignments throughout the course revealed that students (1) gradually reported more positive and action-oriented views of their role in the environment and (2) developed greater competency in weighing the quality of media sources around environmental issues. We conclude with guided learning questions for faculty interested in implementing a similar exercise as well as suggested student discussion questions.

scholarly journals work all the time- He just waits for the animals to come back” Social impacts of climate changes: A Greenlandic case study

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roanne Van Voorst
Keyword(s):  
Climate Changes ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Research Issues ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
To Come ◽  
And Gender

Understanding human adaptation to climate changes is one of the most important research issues within the area of global environmental change, accounting for the fact that people worldwide are currently adapting to their changing environment (Adger and Kelly 2000: 253; Smit et al. 2008). The Greenlandic case study as presented in this paper is mainly based on a literature analysis and ethnographic data obtained during the Greenlandic winter of 2008, with emphasis on the latter. Participant observation and interviews were combined with a discursive analysis of climate change-related policies. The empirical findings as presented in this paper suggest that an exclusive and gender-neutral focus of policy makers on economic aspects of adaptation to climate changes may increase socio-economic inequality as well as male domestic violence over women. Social research can help to identify such chains of reactions resulting from climate changes and related policies, by focusing on individual adaptation strategies of male and female actors in vulnerable societies.

scholarly journals Big data and Belmont: On the ethics and research implications of consumer-based datasets

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 205395172110481
Author(s):  
Remy Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Big Data ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Research Participant ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Business Practices ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Marketing Risk ◽  
Brokerage Firms

Consumer-based datasets are the products of data brokerage firms that agglomerate millions of personal records on the adult US population. This big data commodity is purchased by both companies and individual clients for purposes such as marketing, risk prevention, and identity searches. The sheer magnitude and population coverage of available consumer-based datasets and the opacity of the business practices that create these datasets pose emergent ethical challenges within the computational social sciences that have begun to incorporate consumer-based datasets into empirical research. To directly engage with the core ethical debates around the use of consumer-based datasets within social science research, I first consider two case study applications of consumer-based dataset-based scholarship. I then focus on three primary ethical dilemmas within consumer-based datasets regarding human subject research, participant privacy, and informed consent in conversation with the principles of the seminal Belmont Report.

Sino-Western rivalry in the COVID-19 “vaccine wars”–A race to the bottom?

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilson Kia Onn Wong
Keyword(s):  
Vaccine Development ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Equitable Access ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Depressed Regions

PurposeThis paper analyses the escalating Sino-Western race to develop a safe, efficacious and durable vaccine (i.e. “Goldilocks COVID-19 vaccine”). It argues that such efforts would be considerably more effective if there is greater international cooperation instead of the corrosive rivalry driven by misplaced nationalism.Design/methodology/approachThis study deploys a case-study approach, supported by literature on existing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine development efforts.FindingsDespite the seeming success of recent COVID-19 vaccines, their actual efficacy is far from certain. Moreover, access to these vaccines would not be equitable internationally. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that their unique properties make storage and distribution prohibitively expensive, and international mechanisms to provide distribution to economically depressed regions are non-existent. Given the significant difficulties, it would be incumbent upon the great powers (i.e. China and America) to work together not only in vaccine development but also in the establishment of a distribution platform to ensure equitable access worldwide.Originality/valueThis study is one of the few social science research papers on COVID-19 vaccine development and its implications for society at large.

Low Power: Small Enterprises in Shanghai, 1949–67

1978 ◽  
Vol 73 ◽  
pp. 45-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn T. White
Keyword(s):  
Small Firms ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Small Enterprises ◽  
International Studies ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
The Social ◽  
Government Authority

Small firms in Chinese cities, which before 1949 were private, have in the communist era gradually come under more government authority. The stages of this slow process can be treated as a case study in the political socialization of small units. They tell a tale of tensions between different levels of economic power, high, medium and low. Research into the kinds of power that promoted this step-by-step centralization, and also into those that resisted it, may suggest a more comprehensive approach to power in China generally.* The author expresses great thanks to the Joint Committee on Contemporary China of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies for support related to this article. The Center of International Studies and the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, supplied some clerical help, and the Foreign Area Fellowship Program supported the author's first researches on Shanghai. Very useful comments were received from James Nickum, Gordon Bennett, Bruce Reynolds, Thomas Rawski, Carl Riskin, Dick Wilson, and an anonymous reader for The China Quarterly. All opinions here are the author's solely.

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