5,912 research outputs found

    Command and Persuade

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    Why, when we have been largely socialized into good behavior, are there more laws that govern our behavior than ever before? Levels of violent crime have been in a steady decline for centuries—for millennia, even. Over the past five hundred years, homicide rates have decreased a hundred-fold. We live in a time that is more orderly and peaceful than ever before in human history. Why, then, does fear of crime dominate modern politics? Why, when we have been largely socialized into good behavior, are there more laws that govern our behavior than ever before? In Command and Persuade, Peter Baldwin examines the evolution of the state's role in crime and punishment over three thousand years. Baldwin explains that the involvement of the state in law enforcement and crime prevention is relatively recent. In ancient Greece, those struck by lightning were assumed to have been punished by Zeus. In the Hebrew Bible, God was judge, jury, and prosecutor when Cain killed Abel. As the state's power as lawgiver grew, more laws governed behavior than ever before; the sum total of prohibited behavior has grown continuously. At the same time, as family, community, and church exerted their influences, we have become better behaved and more law-abiding. Even as the state stands as the socializer of last resort, it also defines through law the terrain on which we are schooled into acceptable behavior. This title is also available in an Open Access edition

    Paternalism to Partnership

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    A biographical sketch of each head of Indian affairs between 1786 and 2021, including each commissioner’s political philosophy

    Ecology and Applied Environmental Science

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    Ecology and Applied Environmental Science addresses the impact of contemporary environmental problems by using the main principles of scientific ecology. It offers a brief yet comprehensive explanation of ecosystems based on energy, populations, and cycles of chemical elements. The book presents a variety of scientific ecological issues and uses these to examine a range of environmental problems while considering potential engineering, scientific, and managerial solutions. It takes an engineering approach and avoids excessive biological detail, while introducing ecology with a systemic approach. The book examines categories of organisms as well as the physical and chemical processes that affect them. It refers to the dynamics of populations and analysis of their major mutual influences, elaborates on the roles of primary production, limiting factors, energy flow, and circulation of chemical substances in the ecosystems, and presents the basic functions of aquatic ecosystems. The author considers important issues related to environmental degradation of forests, aquatic habitats, coastal zones, other natural landscapes, and urban areas, includes a survey of problems related to waste and toxic and radioactive substances, and presents the greenhouse effect and impacts from climate change. He discusses environmental management prospects and the potential for technological control of pollution from liquid, solid, and gaseous waste. He also highlights existing tools for environmental management, ecological and social aspects of biodiversity and landscape protection, and the contrast between development and environment in combination with ideas about sustainability. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

    Performing Sustainability in West Africa

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    This book discusses the role of cultural practices and policy for sustainable development in West Africa across different artistic disciplines, including performance, video, theatre, community arts and cultural heritage. Based on ethnographic field research in local communities, the book presents findings on current debates of cultural sustainability in Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Benin. It provides a unique perspective connecting cultural studies, conflict studies and practical peacebuilding approaches through the arts. The first part pays particular attention to aspects of social cohesion and the circumstances of internally displaced persons e. g. caused by the Boko Haram insurgency in Northeast Nigeria. The second part focuses on cultural policy issues and challenges in the context of sustainable development, investigating participatory approaches and bottom-up processes, the role of governments and civil society, as well as performing arts organizations and universities in policy making and implementation processes. Performing Sustainability in West Africa presents research results and new methods on the role of artistic and cultural practices in conflict situations as well as current debates in cultural policy for researchers, academics, NGOs and students in cultural studies, sustainable development studies and African studies

    An Age of Crisis

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    Originally published in 1959. This book examines the French Enlightenment by analyzing critical thought in eighteenth-centruy France. It examines the philosophes' views on evil, free will and determinism, and human nature. This is an interesting group to look at, according to Crocker, because French Enlightenment thinkers straddled two vastly different time periods

    The Reindeer Botanist

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    This well-researched book is the first biography of one of Canada's most remarkable botanists. Alf Erling Porsild (1901-1977) grew up on the Arctic Station in West Greenland and later served as curator of botany at the National Museum of Canada. He collected thousands of specimens, greatly enlarging the National Herbarium and making it a superb research centre. For nearly twenty years, Porsild studied reindeer activities in Alaska and the Northwest Territories as part of the Reindeer Project designed to encourage grazing animal husbandry among aboriginal peoples. He published extensively, and his meticulous research and observations have particular relevance today with the growing concern over global warming in the Arctic

    Getting their acts together: A coordinated systems approach to extended cognition

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    A cognitive system is a set of processes responsible for intelligent behaviour. This thesis is an attempt to answer the question: how can cognitive systems be demarcated; that is, what criterion can be used to decide where to draw the boundary of the system? This question is important because it is one way of couching the hypothesis of extended cognition – is it possible for cognitive systems to transcend the boundary of the brain or body of an organism? Such a criterion can be supplied by what is called in the literature a ‘mark of the cognitive’. The main task of this thesis is to develop a general mark of the cognitive. The starting point is that a system responsible for intelligent behaviour is a coordinated coalition of processes. This account proposes a set of functional conditions for coordination. These conditions can then be used as a sufficient condition for membership of a cognitive system. In certain circumstances, they assert that a given process plays a coordination role in the system and is therefore part of the system. The controversy in the extended cognition debate surrounds positive claims of systemhood concerning ‘external’ processes so a sufficient condition will help settle some of these debates. I argue that a Coordinated Systems Approach like this will help to move the extended cognition debate forward from its current impasse. Moreover, the application of the approach to social systems and stygmergic systems - systems where current processes are coordinated partly by the trace of previous action – promises new directions for research

    Cooking the wild: the role of the Lundayeh of the Ulu Padas, (Sabah, Malaysia) in managing forest foods and shaping the landscape

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    This thesis provides an account of the Lundayeh subsistence system as found in the villages of Long Pasia and Long Mio, situated in the Ulu Padas, Sabah. The research focuses on Lundayeh food and diet, describing the diversity of resources used and the importance of forest foods. Comparison with studies from elsewhere in Borneo suggests that there are many similarities between Lundayeh practices and those of other highland peoples. These data are used to critically examine the concepts of 'wild' and 'wilderness', considering whether these concepts are meaningful, either analytically or for the Lundayeh. Investigation of the way in which the Lundayeh manipulate and manage their resources suggests that they have had a profound influence on their environment. Consequently, the Ulu Padas cannot be described as a wilderness, nor its resources as wild. The extent to which the Lundayeh themselves construct the categories of 'wild' and 'cultivated' foods is investigated through examining how these resources are owned, and their different roles in the diet. These data suggest that the Lundayeh recognise that there is no simple dichotomy of 'wild' and 'cultivated', but rather, that there is a gradation between these two categories. There is also evidence to suggest that the Lundayeh do not consider any resources as wild, in the sense of being uninfluenced by people. The environmental perceptions of the Lundayeh are also investigated, and how these have been shaped by their particular way of life, history, beliefs and knowledge systems. It is apparent that for the Lundayeh, the Ulu Padas is a cultural landscape. However, this is changing, as a result of recent social and environmental changes. This thesis concludes by examining the impact of changing perceptions on how the Lundayeh are managing their environment, and on their attitudes towards conservation
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