Marginalization and Resilience from Within and Without Appalachia: Views on Place and Disruption in Eastern Kentucky and Washington, D.C.

The people who reside amidst Appalachia\u27s misty mountains experience geographical and place-based marginalization in a way that is unique in the American context, and that indeed has long helped define the very notion of geographical outsider-dom. Yet Appalachians are not alone in experiencing this kind of place-based marginalization, even if it is a more primary source of marginalization here than in other places, where place-based marginalization often intersects more visibly with marginalization on the basis of race, religion, etc. But what might we learn from putting voices from Appalachia’s misty and marginalized mountains in a kind of conversation with voices from other marginalized American contexts, perhaps even those that seem to differ dramatically from Appalachia? In this paper I explore the overlappings and continuities in the words of residents of rural eastern Kentucky and urban Washington, D.C., both of whom experience place-based marginalization, among other kinds of marginalization, and whose regions and neighborhoods are currently undergoing dramatic economic shifts. What do residents in both of these places have to say about how place matters to them, when place itself is a source both of marginalization but also of resilience and cultural sustainability? And how is this colored by the threats to their place, livelihood, and well-being that are currently taking place in their communities in the form of coal industry shifts and gentrification, respectively? This paper explores these questions and the profound commitments to place that knit together the words of people in these two very different places

Calvin Klein: Semiotic Phenomenology

This study examined print advertising as a visual communication method by focusing on five of Calvin Klein\u27s jeans advertisements and the themes that are expressed to determine what realities or social meanings Calvin Klein\u27s jeans advertisements constructed and/or reflected. To uncover the themes within Klein\u27s advertisements, the following three-methods were applied: Content Analysis, Informal Focus Group and Semiotic Phenomenology. Together the three-methods, based upon data collected from fourteen males and females aged 13-18, 19-21, 22-24 and 28 years old or above, identified fifteen underlying themes containing stereotypes, potentially dangerous realities and evidence showing our desensitization to controversy and shocking images through print advertising. The results showed that Klein\u27s advertisements both constructed and reflected reality, drawing a fine line between what is actually constructed and what is reflected. Sexual terminology was used 85% of the time to describe the ads and nothing was the second most used response to describe how the ads made the respondents feel. The females\u27 responses were more emotionally charged and focused on the sex and violence in the ad, where the males expressed negativity towards the unisex or bi-sexual ads and nothing to describe how the remaining ads made them feel. Results suggested that people today are more desensitized to shocking or provocative visual images portrayed in advertising, even though advertising is selling more than just the product. The results indicated that advertising fuels false images of love, sexuality, romance, success, body image, success and normalcy, prompting consumers to ask, what else is this ad selling

Cost-reflective pricing: empirical insights into irrigators’ preferences for water tariffs

© 2017 The Authors. The Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society Inc. Using prices to improve the efficiency with which water resources are allocated is now widely accepted in principle if somewhat difficult to achieve in practice. Whilst there are some technical difficulties associated with full-cost recovery in irrigation, the lack of political will to tackle reform remains a significant impediment. This article reports the results of an empirical investigation into farmers’ preferences for changes to water prices and tariff structures. We conclude that some of the preferences of farmers are conducive to price reform. We also find evidence that public subsidy of infrastructure in irrigation is not always aligned with the preferences of farmers

Towards a gendered political economy of water and tourism

In many holiday destinations, the tourism industry exerts an enormous strain on water supplies. This generates a range of social problems, not least because local inhabitants often have to compete with the tourism sector over the access, allocation and use of water for their personal and domestic needs. Nevertheless, there has been very little academic research on the link between tourism and the impact of water scarcity on destination populations in developing countries. While there is a wealth of literature on gender and tourism development, such research has tended to focus on employment relations and tourism policy and planning, neglecting ecological issues such as water. Drawing on original ethnographic research conducted in Tamarindo, Costa Rica, in 2013, this paper makes a preliminary attempt to address this gap in the literature by developing a gendered political economy approach to water in tourism development. Three key themes are identified from this research: the salience of intersectional inequalities of gender, class and nationality, in particular the different experiences of Nicaraguan women, Costa Rican women and women from the Global North; how the role of social reproduction is vital to understanding gender and water in Tamarindo due to enduring assumptions about women’s perceived responsibility for water; and the gendered dimensions of conflicts over water. Such conflicts are highly gendered and contribute to reshaping of power relations in this international tourism destination. In the conclusions, we argue that our findings demonstrate the need to pay attention to both intersectionality and social reproduction, as well as to identify a future research agenda for developing a gendered political economy approach to tourism and water

Maintaining a social license to operate for wastewater-based monitoring: The case of managing infectious disease and the COVID-19 pandemic

Wastewater monitoring as a public health tool is well-established and the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic has seen its widespread uptake. Given the significant potential of wastewater monitoring as a public health surveillance and decision support tool, it is important to understand what measures are required to allow the long-term benefits of wastewater monitoring to be fully realized, including how to establish and/or maintain public support. The potential for positive SARS-CoV-2 detections to trigger enforced, community-wide public health interventions (e.g., lockdowns and other impacts on civil liberties) further emphasises the need to better understand the role of public engagement in successful wastewater-based monitoring programs. This paper systematically reviews the processes of building and maintaining the social license to operate wastewater monitoring. We specifically explore the relationship between different stakeholder communities and highlight the information and actions that are required to establish a social license to operate and then prevent its loss. The paper adds to the literature on social license to operate by extending its application to new domains and offers a dynamic model of social license to help guide the agenda for researcher and practitioner communities

The Fifth Stage in Water Management: Policy Lessons for Water Governance

Effective management of water resources is a critical policy issue globally. Using a framework developed by Turton, and a common set of characteristics describing key stages of water demand, we examine the effectiveness of isolated technical (e.g. irrigation upgrades) and allocative (e.g. buyback) efficiency for reducing water demand to sustainable levels. We base our analysis on Australia's water reform context which offers an advanced example of applying these levers to achieve allocative and technical efficiency. The study is motivated by appreciation of the benefits from increased policy flexibility and adaptability in response to: potential transformations toward inflexible production systems; uncertainty associated with impacts of climate change on future water reliability; and the need for increased possible future equity between uses/users (productive/consumptive, environmental, cultural). Our results highlight risk issues that rarely feature in current policy assurance reviews or performance assessments, and enables a clearer representation of uncertainty in future policy choices in many global settings with respect to water demand reduction.A. Loch, D. Adamson, N.P. Dumbrel

Water quality is a poor predictor of recreational hotspots in England

Maintaining and improving water quality is key to the protection and restoration of aquatic ecosystems, which provide important benefits to society. In Europe, the Water Framework Directive (WFD) defines water quality based on a set of biological, hydro-morphological and chemical targets, and aims to reach good quality conditions in all river bodies by the year 2027. While recently it has been argued that achieving these goals will deliver and enhance ecosystem services, in particular recreational services, there is little empirical evidence demonstrating so. Here we test the hypothesis that good water quality is associated with increased utilization of recreational services, combining four surveys covering walking, boating, fishing and swimming visits, together with water quality data for all water bodies in eight River Basin Districts (RBDs) in England. We compared the percentage of visits in areas of good water quality to a set of null models accounting for population density, income, age distribution, travel distance, public access, and substitutability. We expect such association to be positive, at least for fishing (which relies on fish stocks) and swimming (with direct contact to water). We also test if these services have stronger association with water quality relative to boating and walking alongside rivers, canals or lakeshores. In only two of eight RBDs (Northumbria and Anglian) were both criteria met (positive association, strongest for fishing and swimming) when comparing to at least one of the null models. This conclusion is robust to variations in dataset size. Our study suggests that achieving the WFD water quality goals may not enhance recreational ecosystem services, and calls for further empirical research on the connection between water quality and ecosystem services

“Tourism, water, and gender”—An international review of an unexplored nexus

This international literature review of the tourism–water nexus identifies a gender gap. Tourism development can affect water supply both quantitatively and qualitatively. Many regions will face considerable problems of water availability and quality, affecting their tourism sector and increasing competition with local residents, and other industries especially agriculture. This international review of literature explores the tourism–water nexus, comparing and contrasting literature published in English, Chinese, and Spanish. Securing access to safe water for continued tourism development is a common theme and the vast majority of work has focused on hotels including water pricing, water-saving practices and innovative management methods. In all continents, struggles are apparent, and the unsustainability of tourism is having impacts on water quantity and quality. This article identifies significant gaps in the literature including climate change, the energy-water nexus, and the links with the Sustainable Development Goals. Furthermore, studies from a gendered perspective are minimal and the potential for areas of further gendered studies within the tourism–water nexus are highlighted including intersectionality, water insecurity and sanitation, tourism and gender based violence, and additional unpaid care work