Situating the Study of Rural China’s Environmental Health Activism

Author(s):  
Anna Lora-Wainwright

Chapter 1 situates the book vis-à-vis relevant literature on social movements, environmentalism, environmental health and these areas as they relate to China. In the first part, it suggests that environmentalism may take very diverse forms and it is powerfully shaped by its cultural, social, political and economic contexts. These contexts in turn affect the ways in which locals value environment, health and development and the extent to which they may be uncertain about pollution’s health effects. In light of this, the chapter presents “resigned activism” as a conceptual tool for bridging analyses of activism and resignation, and for showing how they merge across a wide range of villagers’ attitudes and everyday practices. In the second part, it outlines some of China’s environmental challenges and burgeoning environmentalism. It argues in favour of looking beyond the obvious environmental agents (NGOs) and strategies, towards less visible environmental subjectivities.

Author(s):  
Helen Callaghan

Chapter 1 introduces the puzzle and research agenda, reviews relevant literature, summarizes the argument, and reflects on the methodology used. Since the early 1980s, governments worldwide have taken a wide range of policy measures to strengthen and expand competition. The financial crisis that erupted in 2008 has not led to a major reversal. This prolonged phase of market liberalization runs counter to influential scholarly predictions that the role of markets would decline. Most doomsayers of marketization ignored mid-range political sources of capitalist dynamism, including endogenous policy feedback. Others focused too narrowly on the political representatives of market contestants, and on the collective action problems that afflict challengers more than incumbents. Process tracing techniques, mechanism-oriented research, and a stronger focus on the rejoicing profiteers can contribute to establishing whether and why market-restraining rules are more prone to undermining their own political support bases than market-enabling rules are.


This thoroughly updated seventh edition is a comprehensive, clearly written, and practical textbook that includes information on both occupational health and environmental health, providing the necessary foundation for recognizing and preventing work-related and environmentally induced diseases and injuries. National and international experts share their knowledge and practical experience in addressing a wide range of issues and evolving challenges in their fields. A multidisciplinary approach makes this an ideal textbook for students and practitioners in public health, occupational and environmental medicine, occupational health nursing, epidemiology, toxicology, occupational and environmental hygiene, safety, ergonomics, environmental sciences, and other fields. Comprehensive coverage provides a clear understanding of occupational and environmental health and its relationships to public health, environmental sciences, and government policy. Practical case studies demonstrate how to apply the basic principles of occupational and environmental health to real-world challenges. Numerous tables, graphs, and photographs reinforce key concepts. Annotated Further Reading sections at the end of chapters provide avenues for obtaining further infomation. This new edition of the book is thoroughly updated and also contains new chapters on climate change, children’s environmental health, liver disorders, kidney disorders, and a global perspective on occupational health and safety.


Author(s):  
Andrea Harris

This chapter explores the international and interdisciplinary backdrop of Lincoln Kirstein’s efforts to form an American ballet in the early 1930s. The political, economic, and cultural conditions of the Depression reinvigorated the search for an “American” culture. In this context, new openings for a modernist theory of ballet were created as intellectuals and artists from a wide range of disciplines endeavored to define the role of the arts in protecting against the dangerous effects of mass culture. Chapter 1 sheds new light on well-known critical debates in dance history between Kirstein and John Martin over whether ballet, with its European roots, could truly become “American” in contrast to modern dance. Was American dance going to be conceived in nationalist or transnationalist terms? That was the deeper conflict that underlay the ballet vs. modern dance debates of the early 1930s.


Author(s):  
David B. Resnik

This chapter provides an overview of the ethics of environmental health, and it introduces five chapters in the related section of The Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics. A wide range of ethical issues arises in managing the relationship between human health and the environment, including regulation of toxic substances, air and water pollution, waste management, agriculture, the built environment, occupational health, energy production and use, environmental justice, population control, and climate change. The values at stake in environmental health ethics include those usually mentioned in ethical debates in biomedicine and public health, such as autonomy, social utility, and justice, as well as values that address environmental concerns, such as animal welfare, stewardship of biological resources, and sustainability. Environmental health ethics, therefore, stands at the crossroads of several disciplines, including public health ethics, environmental ethics, biomedical ethics, and business ethics.


2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 1062-1076 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Nicolaides ◽  
Richard Trafford ◽  
Russell Craig

Purpose This paper reviews an array of psycholinguistic techniques that auditors can deploy to explore written and oral language for signs of deception. The review is drawn upon to propose some elements of a forward research agenda. Design/methodology/approach Relevant literature across several disciplines is identified through keyword searches of major bibliographic databases. Findings The techniques highlighted have considerable potential for use by auditors to identify audit contexts which merit closer audit investigation. However, the techniques need further contextual empirical investigation in audit contexts. Seven specific propositions are presented for empirical testing. Originality/value This paper assembles literature on deceptive communication from a wide range of disciplines and relates it to the audit context. Auditors’ attention is directed to potential linguistic signals of fraud risk, and opportunities for future research are suggested. The paper is consciousness-raising, has pedagogic purpose and suggests critical elements for a future research agenda.


2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 171-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vojtěch Máca ◽  
Jan Melichar ◽  
Milan Ščasný ◽  
Markéta Braun Kohlová

Abstract Background: Monetized environmental health impact assessments help to better evaluate the environmental burden of a wide range of economic activities. Apart from the limitations and uncertainties in physical and biological science used in such assessments, assumptions taken from economic valuation may also substantially influence subsequent policy-making considerations. Aim: This study attempts to demonstrate the impact of normative policy assumptions on quantified external costs using a case study of recently discussed variants of future coal mining and use of extracted coal in electricity and heat generation in the Czech Republic. Methods: A bottom-up impact-pathway approach is used for quantification of external costs. Several policy perspectives are elaborated for aggregating impacts that differ in geographic coverage and in how valuation of quantified impacts is adjusted in a particular perspective. Results: We find that the fraction of monetized external impacts taken into policy-making considerations may vary according to choice of decision perspective up to a factor of 10. Conclusion: At present there are virtually no hard rules for defining geographical boundaries or adjusting values for a summation of monetized environmental impacts. We, however, stress that any rigorous external cost assessment should, for instance in a separate calculation, take account of impacts occurring beyond country borders.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-98
Author(s):  
Nikolay V. Novikov ◽  
Svetlana V. Samchenko ◽  
Galina E. Okolnikova

Due to the active development of industries using nuclear technology, the creation of highly effective and cost-effective building materials for protection against hazardous ionizing radiation is of increasing interest. Widespread in the field of radiation-protective building materials are barite-containing concrete. The purpose of this article is to establish the prospects of their use in nuclear facilities, as well as to find ways to improve their technical and operational characteristics. For this an analysis of relevant literature and scientific research in the field of radiation-protective materials and, in particular, barite-containing concrete was carried out. The advantages of barite-containing concrete are high radiation-protective properties, environmental friendliness, high density, as well as economic indicators. The disadvantages are high susceptibility to shrinkage deformation and poor resistance to cyclic temperature effects. The addition of barite to the concrete composition allows to increase the coefficient of linear absorption of -rays of the material; also, with the proper selection of the composition, such material may have strength characteristics equal to or superior to the characteristics of concrete with standard compositions. Barite-containing materials have a wide range of applications and can be used both for the production of heavy concrete in the construction of load-bearing structures and in the creation of radiation-protective coatings for walls and floors.


Author(s):  
Hye K. Pae

Abstract This chapter reviews the cultural aspects of the East and the West. A wide range of differences between the East and the West is discussed in terms of the extrinsic and intrinsic differences. The extrinsic differences comprise architecture, the mode of clothing, everyday practices, and language and script, while the intrinsic differences consist of culture and value systems, attention and perception (holistic vs. analytic), problem solving (relation vs. categorization), and rhetorical structure (linear vs. roundabout). The locus of these differences is identified with respect to philosophical foundations and the characteristics of Eastern and Western cultures. The prevalent interpretations of the differences between the East and the West center on Diamond’s (1999) guns, germs, and steel, Nisbett’s (2003) geography of thought, and Logan’s (2004) alphabet effects. However, these interpretations cannot explain differences in ideologies, religious practices, and societal values among Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans. Therefore, script relativity becomes a new interpretation of the engine behind the differences among the three East-Asian nations and between the East and the West.


2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 100
Author(s):  
Eduardo Stotz ◽  
Frederico Perez

Movimentos sociais são formas de ação coletiva mais ou menos permanentes, pautadas por distintos projetos, orientações e significados, empenhados na luta pela igualdade, liberdade e democratização das relações sociais. No campo da Saúde Ambiental, é destacado o papel desses movimentos na construção de uma agenda política, cuja expressão máxima se traduz na organização da I Conferência Nacional de Saúde Ambiental, em dezembro de 2009, na cidade de Brasília. O presente manuscrito apresenta algumas contribuições para a discussão sobre as relações entre os movimentos sociais e a construção de uma agenda política para o campo da Saúde Ambiental, a partir de uma análise crítica da atuação dos principais grupos envolvidos com o campo no estado do Rio de Janeiro. Através da análise de documentos (relatórios finais, cartas de princípios, documentos síntese, etc.) produzidos em fóruns onde a atuação desses movimentos teve destaque, foi possível observar que a atuação desses movimentos sociais pautou e deu a tônica dos conflitos socioambientais no estado do Rio de Janeiro colocando, de um lado, o Poder Público e as políticas desenvolvimentistas e, de outro, a sociedade e a preocupação com a preservação de recursos naturais e da qualidade do ambiente. Seja no campo, onde se torna cada vez mais urgente a busca por outro tipo de desenvolvimento econômico, ou nas cidades, onde o crescimento desordenado, delimitado por forças motrizes de ordem estritamente econômica, gera diferentes tipos de pressão que alteram o estado do ambiente e colocam um contingente populacional cada vez maior em situação de vulnerabilidade socioambiental, a pauta dos movimentos sociais em torno das questões socioambientais é extensa, e exige uma atenção especial por parte do Poder Público.


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