Poverty, Housing, and Market Processes

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68441/2/10.1177_107808747200800108.pd

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The Political Culture of Poaching: A case study from Northern Greece

Poaching has deep social and cultural roots and its meanings are multi-layered. This article explores the meanings attached to the practice of illegal hunting and fishing around Lake Kerkini in northern Greece. Here poaching must be considered in the context of a disordered ecosystem, where the dominance of locally maligned fish and bird species results from economic and environmental policy designed to benefit distant farmers. We conclude that poaching cannot be understood only as an individual action, but as one where collective and personal identities are defended in the face of seemingly irrevocable economic and social decline. The discussion shows that poachers identify different kinds of poaching. Some of the most apparent forms of poaching, done by local inhabitants, may be less damaging than other commercially oriented forms, including by outsiders. Poaching is motivated through a complex mix of factors. Our data lead us to discuss two manifestations of poaching (a) poaching as a form of collective resistance; and (b) poaching as a violation of culturally valued types of human-nature interaction. Some people who admit undertaking what they perceive as least detrimental forms of poaching are antagonistic towards what they construe to be truly harmful forms. Such people appear willing to act and to support actions against types of poaching they agree to be threatening. This is a message with potential importance for environmental management strategy

Central City Revitalization: A Predictive Model

The object of this paper is to increase the understanding of the gentrification process by developing a set of representative indices that could be used to assess the likelihood of gentrification occurring in a central city neighborhood. Using Boston, Massachusetts as a representative city, economic, housing, social and amenity variables were collected from the 1970 U.S. Census. A sample of blocks that did and did not revitalize after 1970 was chosen. As the gentrification outcome was known with certainty, a logistic regression model was estimated. The estimated model quite accurately classified the neighborhoods into their respective grouping, resulting in a block-level statistical model of housing revitalization. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

Pollination and other ecosystem services produced by mobile organisms: a conceptual framework for the effects of land-use change

Many ecosystem services are delivered by organisms that depend on habitats that are segregated spatially or temporally from the location where services are provided. Management of mobile organisms contributing to ecosystem services requires consideration not only of the local scale where services are delivered, but also the distribution of resources at the landscape scale, and the foraging ranges and dispersal movements of the mobile agents. We develop a conceptual model for exploring how one such mobile-agent-based ecosystem service (MABES), pollination, is affected by land-use change, and then generalize the model to other MABES. The model includes interactions and feedbacks among policies affecting land use, market forces and the biology of the organisms involved. Animal-mediated pollination contributes to the production of goods of value to humans such as crops; it also bolsters reproduction of wild plants on which other services or service-providing organisms depend. About one-third of crop production depends on animal pollinators, while 60-90% of plant species require an animal pollinator. The sensitivity of mobile organisms to ecological factors that operate across spatial scales makes the services provided by a given community of mobile agents highly contextual. Services vary, depending on the spatial and temporal distribution of resources surrounding the site, and on biotic interactions occurring locally, such as competition among pollinators for resources, and among plants for pollinators. The value of the resulting goods or services may feed back via market-based forces to influence land-use policies, which in turn influence land management practices that alter local habitat conditions and landscape structure. Developing conceptual models for MABES aids in identifying knowledge gaps, determining research priorities, and targeting interventions that can be applied in an adaptive management context