scholarly journals Community Empowerment Through Grassroots Action: A Story of Building Personal and Local Resilience with the Transition Towns Model

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
Nils I Palsson ◽  
Virajita Singh

Nils Palsson and Virajita Singh have partnered in telling Nils’ story of his personal and professional journey with the Transition Town movement – its thought leaders, philosophy, practices, and relationship to the partnership/domination paradigm shift. Through his participation in the grassroots Transition Town movement, Nils found, cultivated, and ultimately shared with others a sense of local empowerment. In his rural home in California’s Lake County, Nils found community, following great personal transformation in his life with the passing of his father. He learned about Transition Towns, permaculture, and other concepts dealing with local resilience, grassroots empowerment, and regenerative and holistic systems and lifestyles. He and others employed the Transition model, as described in Rob Hopkins’ Transition Handbook in transitioning Lake County. In 2015 he became Communications Director of Transition US. In this position, Nils has come to see that the world of Transition is much larger than he had imagined, with citizen-leaders and change agents in Transition Towns working toward environmental justice for all.

Author(s):  
Deborah McGregor

This article aims to introduce a distinct conception of Indigenous environmental justice (IEJ) based on Indigenous legal orders, knowledge systems, and conceptions of justice. This is not to suggest in any way that the existing environmental justice (EJ) scholarship is flawed; in fact, the scholarship and activism around EJ have been central in diagnosing and drawing attention to injustices that occur on a systematic basis everywhere in the world. This article argues instead that such discussions can be expanded by acknowledging that concepts of environmental justice, including distinct legal orders informed by Indigenous knowledge systems, already existed on Turtle Island for thousands of years prior to the arrival of Europeans. It also suggests that environmental justice framed within Indigenous worldviews, ontologies, and epistemologies may make significant contributions to broader EJ scholarship, particularly in relation to extending justice to other beings and entities in Creation. This approach acknowledges ongoing colonialism and emphasizes the need to decolonize in order to advance innovative approaches to IEJ. 


Immuno ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-66
Author(s):  
Niraj Kumar Jha ◽  
Madhan Jeyaraman ◽  
Mahesh Rachamalla ◽  
Shreesh Ojha ◽  
Kamal Dua ◽  
...  

An outbreak of “Pneumonia of Unknown Etiology” occurred in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019. Later, the agent factor was identified and coined as SARS-CoV-2, and the disease was named coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In a shorter period, this newly emergent infection brought the world to a standstill. On 11 March 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 as a pandemic. Researchers across the globe have joined their hands to investigate SARS-CoV-2 in terms of pathogenicity, transmissibility, and deduce therapeutics to subjugate this infection. The researchers and scholars practicing different arts of medicine are on an extensive quest to come up with safer ways to curb the pathological implications of this viral infection. A huge number of clinical trials are underway from the branch of allopathy and naturopathy. Besides, a paradigm shift on cellular therapy and nano-medicine protocols has to be optimized for better clinical and functional outcomes of COVID-19-affected individuals. This article unveils a comprehensive review of the pathogenesis mode of spread, and various treatment modalities to combat COVID-19 disease.


2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 75-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Yusoff

Lodged in an impasse between questions of environmental justice and modes of capitalisation in the green economy, indeterminacy is a vulnerable and porous relation. Pollution activates a potentiality in the organism to be otherwise, to generate certain kinds of tumours, mini-deaths or mutations. Toxicity has an intermediary status that launches a mobility of effects that is often fragmented through sense organs, affirming forms of non-identity in biopolitical relations. Organisms are receptive to such bodily reconfigurations precisely because they are open to the material communication of the world. In contrast to the “hidden labour” of indeterminacy in capitalist modes of capture, this article crafts an analytics of indeterminacy as an interjection in the politics of environments. Through dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico and military bees, two economies of indeterminacy are discussed. Drawing on Georges Bataille’s notion of political economy, I argue that what is required is an economy of radical inequivalence; an excessive engagement with the possibilities of indetermining forces to make fleeting marks.


Author(s):  
Nancy Langston

In 2011, a company named Gogebic Taconite (GTAC) formed in order to develop the largest open-pit mine in the world—just upstream of the Bad River Band’s reservation on Lake Superior. Owned by Cline Resources Development (a company largely focused on coal), GTAC announced that, even without experience in iron mining, it would mine and process Wisconsin’s taconite ore body to take advantage of Asia’s building and steel commodities boom. The mine would have been sited just upstream of the reservation boundary, and the waters flowing out of the mine site would have contaminated water, fish, and Indigenous communities living downstream. After a multi-year battle, the tribe managed to stop the mine.


Author(s):  
Margaret Lock

This chapter turns to the global concern about aging societies, and the so-called epidemic of aging. It argues that a public health approach to aging and Alzheimer's will have a much greater effect in reducing the incidence of Alzheimer disease (AD) worldwide than will the technologically oriented molecular approach currently being heralded as a paradigm shift. Should such an approach be effective, and there is little evidence to date to be optimistic that this will be the case, the extent of investment in advanced medical facilities and highly trained expertise required to put it in place is not realistic beyond wealthy segments of the world, especially given the global economy of the present and the increasing gaps between rich and poor.


Author(s):  
Carol A. Kochhar-Bryant

It is becoming almost cliché to assert that doctoral scholars should integrate theory and practice and address critical problems of practice. Less charted territory, however, moves beyond integration of theory and practice to the cultivation of scholars' as committed people who possess a compass of values and vision as they act as catalysts for change in the world of practice. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the kind of cultivation needed to effect the transformation required for doctoral scholars to move beyond translation of theory to practice to the next step of catalyzing change. This chapter explores the intersection of core constructs or strands for creating scholars as change agents – identity, commitment and civic agency. These elements are examined from a theoretical framework, and in context of a case example of a doctoral program that bridges the academy and the community.


2016 ◽  
pp. 189-202
Author(s):  
Carol A. Kochhar-Bryant

It is becoming almost cliché to assert that doctoral scholars should integrate theory and practice and address critical problems of practice. Less charted territory, however, moves beyond integration of theory and practice to the cultivation of scholars' as committed people who possess a compass of values and vision as they act as catalysts for change in the world of practice. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the kind of cultivation needed to effect the transformation required for doctoral scholars to move beyond translation of theory to practice to the next step of catalyzing change. This chapter explores the intersection of core constructs or strands for creating scholars as change agents – identity, commitment and civic agency. These elements are examined from a theoretical framework, and in context of a case example of a doctoral program that bridges the academy and the community.


2011 ◽  
pp. 217-235
Author(s):  
Helen Thompson

This chapter examines community empowerment, economic and business development, and equity of service as the issue of success and decline in regional and rural communities is explored with a particular focus on community informatics initiatives (CI). In Australia, there has been a vision for online services to be used to open up regional communities to the rest of the world. Government support has been seen as enhancing the competence levels of local communities so they become strong enough to deal equitably in an increasingly open marketplace. But how effective have regional portals and other online initiatives been? This chapter explores whether economic and social benefits are generated via establishing and sustaining regional CI initiatives. Theory relevant to online communities is introduced to provide a context for the presentation of two case studies. The dissemination of the critical learning from these cases can inform others about the diverse factors which impact on the effectiveness and long-term sustainability of regional CI initiatives.


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