Rethinking Social Justice Issues Within an Eco-Justice Conceptual and Moral Framework

As the social justice issues of class, race, and gender have been the dominant concern of many educational studies faculty over the last decades, it is now time to ask whether the recent evidence of global warming, changes in the chemistry of the world’s oceans, and the increasing shortage of potable water should lead to developing a new strategy for ameliorating these longstanding sources of injustice and poverty. Given the amount of time devoted to discussing class, race, and gender issues, as well as the number of books that focus on these issues, little has actually been achieved in effecting the systemic changes required for marginalized social groups to participate on more equal terms in the public arenas of politics, economics, and educational opportunities. Corporations in the United States continue to shape governmental policies that deepen the economic plight of marginalized groups who live at the bottom of the wage scale, while raising the cost of drugs and medical care beyond what they can afford. Overall, the democratic process itself has become degraded by corporate and other special interests to the point where millions of people continue to be mired in poverty and hopelessness

Case management models and the care programme approach: how to make the CPA effective and credible.

The care programme approach (CPA), a form of case management, is a key mental health policy in England. Yet after over 10 years, it remains poorly and unevenly implemented with few benefits for service users, carers or mental health staff. This paper reviews the wider literature on case management and identifies and considers the principal models that might have informed the development of the CPA. After discussing the evidence for each of the clinical, strengths, intensive and assertive case management models, the paper identifies the key components that appear to be central to effective case management across these models. These components are then considered in relation to the CPA. It is argued that the CPA has been undermined by a failure to incorporate and build on certain important features of the major models of case management. The paper concludes by suggesting the key developments required to make the CPA more effective and to underpin the policy with a unifying philosophy while endorsing it with much needed credibility among both clinicians and service users

Far-UV Emission from Elliptical Galaxies at z=0.55

The restframe UV-to-optical flux ratio, characterizing the ``UV upturn'' phenomenon, is potentially the most sensitive tracer of age in elliptical galaxies; models predict that it may change by orders of magnitude over the course of a few Gyr. In order to trace the evolution of the UV upturn as a function of redshift, we have used the far-UV camera on the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph to image the galaxy cluster CL0016+16 at z=0.55. Our 25''x25'' field includes four bright elliptical galaxies, spectroscopically confirmed to be passively evolving cluster members. The weak UV emission from the galaxies in our image demonstrates that the UV upturn is weaker at a lookback time 5.6 Gyr earlier than our own, as compared to measurements of the UV upturn in cluster E and S0 galaxies at z=0 and z=0.375. These images are the first with sufficient depth to demonstrate the fading of the UV upturn expected at moderate redshifts. We discuss these observations and the implications for the formation history of galaxies.Comment: 4 pages, Latex. 2 figures. Uses corrected version of emulateapj.sty and apjfonts.sty (included). Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Late Light Curves of Normal Type Ia Supernovae

We present late-epoch optical photometry (BVRI) of seven normal/super-luminous Type Ia supernovae: SN 2000E, SN 2000ce, SN 2000cx, SN 2001C, SN 2001V, SN 2001bg, SN 2001dp. The photometry of these objects was obtained using a template subtraction method to eliminate galaxy light contamination during aperture photometry. We show the optical light curves of these supernovae out to epochs of up to ~640 days after the explosion of the supernova. We show a linear decline in these data during the epoch of 200-500 days after explosion with the decline rate in the B,V,& R bands equal to about 1.4 mag/100 days, but the decline rate of the I-band is much shallower at 0.94 mag/100 days.Comment: 33 pages, 11 figures, Accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journa

The Environmental Ethic Implicit in Three Theories of Evolution

This paper examines the environmental ethic that is implicit in three different interpretations of evolution that are intended for the general public and that attempt to explain the past and future developments of the world’s cultures. The three interpretations include: (1) the computer-futurist thinkers who claim that we are entering the post-biological phase of evolution and that the diversity of cultural knowledge systems is being replaced by a global intelligence; (2) the genocentric interpretation of evolution articulated by E. O. Wilson, which also represents evolution as a linear process leading to the extinction of non-scientifically based cultures; and (3) the Brian Swimme/Thomas Berry interpretation (The Universe Story) that adapts the mainstream account of evolution to account for religious themes—but is still based on western cultural assumptions about the linear nature of progress and the need to abandon the mythopoetic narratives of other cultures in favour of the theory of evolution. The paper also considers how the three interpretations reinforce the “survival of the fittest” ethic that underlies the current efforts to globalize the western technology/consumer-dependent lifestyle

Response to Professor Mueller’s Critique’

I find it difficult to respond to Professor Mueller’s critique of the article I wrote on how an eco-justice perspective leads to reframing how educational reformers think about social justice issues. The first third of his critique presents the reader with a summary of his knowledge of the local bird population and the work he is doing with his students. Near the end of this overview of his personal interests, he introduces what seems to be his first criticism with the statement that Bowers “perpetuates an unrecognized vulnerability for the rapid greening of American youth….” The nature of this vulnerability and how I contribute to it is never explained. It is simply presented as a fact. As he frames his critique as having some relationship to my earlier article on social and ecological justice, the reader might expect him to explain how my earlier arguments contribute to this vulnerability