One world, one health? Social science engagements with the one health agenda.

Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Editoria

Differentiated circuits: The ecologies of knowing and securing life

Copyright © 2013 a Pion publicationThe question of how to make life secure in a world of zoonotic disease threats is often answered in terms of an ever-tighter regulation of wild, domestic and human life, as a means to control disease. Conversely, in both theoretical and practical engagements with the business of making life safe, there is recognition of the circulatory and excessive qualities of life, its ability to overflow grids of intelligibility, and a requirement for knowledge practices to be responsive to a mutable world. In this paper we use empirical work on the field and laboratory practices involved in knowing life, specifically within the UK’s avian influenza wild bird survey, in order to argue strongly for a form of biosecurity that does not seek to integrate life or the practices that make it intelligible into grids and closed circuits. Extending work by Latour, we argue that the truth-value of life science stems not solely from the circulation of references along a single chain of reference, but also from the productive alliance of knowledge forms and practices that are loosely brought together in this process. By demonstrating the range of practices, materials and movements involved in making life knowable we claim that it is the spatial configurations of knowledge practices, organisms and materials, their ongoing differentiation and not their integration, that makes safe life a possibility.ESR

Invasive species management will benefit from social impact assessment

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this record.Invasive species management aims to prevent or mitigate the impacts of introduced species but management interventions can themselves generate social impacts that must be understood and addressed. Established approaches for addressing the social implications of invasive species management can be limited in effectiveness and democratic legitimacy. More deliberative, participatory approaches are emerging that allow integration of a broader range of socio-political considerations. Nevertheless, there is a need to ensure that these are rigorous applications of social science. Social impact assessment offers a structured process of identifying, evaluating and addressing social costs and benefits. We highlight its potential value for enabling meaningful public participation in planning and as a key component of integrated assessments of management options. Policy implications. As invasive species management grows in scope and scale, social impact assessment provides a rigorous process for recognising and responding to social concerns. It could therefore produce more democratic, less conflict-prone and more effective interventions

Teaching the Teachers: Developing a Teaching Improvement Program for Academic Librarians

"This case study will examine the programs and workshops of the University Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as it attempts to orient approximately 100 librarians to their instructional roles and to meet the continuing education needs of the University Library’s instructional staff, which includes librarians as well as support staff and a contingent of approximately 60 graduate assistants enrolled in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science working in preprofessional public services positions."Ope

Conflict in invasive species management

This is the final version of the article. Available from Ecological Society of America via the DOI in this record.As invasive species management becomes more ambitious in scope and scale, projects are increasingly challenged by disputes and conflicts among people, which can produce undesirable environmental and social outcomes. Here, we examine when and how conflicts have arisen from invasive species management, and consider why some management approaches may be more prone to conflict than others. Insufficient appreciation of sociopolitical context, non-existent or perfunctory public and community engagement, and unidirectional communications can all foster “destructive” conflict. We propose that approaches to conflict in invasive species management might be transformed by anticipating disagreements, attending more carefully to the social-ecological contexts of management, adopting more inclusive engagement mechanisms, and fostering more open, responsive communication. Conflicts may be unavoidable, but they can be anticipated and need not be destructive.SLC was supported by a scholarship from the University of Exeter

Nonhuman citizens on trial: The ecological politics of a beaver reintroduction

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SAGE Publications via the DOI in this recordWildlife reintroductions can unsettle social and ecological norms, and are often controversial. In this paper, we examine the recent (re)introduction of Eurasian beavers to England, to analyse responses to an unauthorised release of a formerly resident species. Although the statutory response to the introduction was to attempt to reassert ecological and political order by recapturing the beavers, this action was strongly opposed by a diverse collective, united and made powerful by a common goal: to protect England’s ‘new’ nonhuman residents. We show how this clash of state resolve and public dissent produced an uneasy compromise in the form of a formal, licensed ‘beaver reintroduction trial’, in which the new beaver residents have been allowed to remain, but under surveillance. We propose that although the trial is unorthodox and risky, there is an opportunity for it to be treated as a ‘wild experiment’ through which a more open-ended, experimental approach to co-inhabiting with wildlife might be attempted.The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: SLC was supported by a scholarship from the University of Exeter

The parakeet protectors: Understanding opposition to introduced species management

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this recordThe surveillance and control of introduced and invasive species has become an increasingly important component of environmental management. However, initiatives targeting 'charismatic' wildlife can be controversial. Opposition to management, and the subsequent emergence of social conflict, present significant challenges for would-be managers. Understanding the substance and development of these disputes is therefore vital for improving the legitimacy and effectiveness of wildlife management. It also provides important insights into human-wildlife relations and the 'social dimensions' of wildlife management. Here, we examine how the attempted eradication of small populations of introduced monk parakeets (Myiopsitta monachus) from England has been challenged and delayed by opposition from interested and affected communities. We consider how and why the UK Government's eradication initiative was opposed, focusing on three key themes: disagreements about justifying management, the development of affective attachments between people and parakeets, and the influence of distrustful and antagonistic relationships between proponents and opponents of management. We draw connections between our UK case and previous management disputes, primarily in the USA, and suggest that the resistance encountered in the UK might readily have been foreseen. We conclude by considering how management of this and other introduced species could be made less conflict-prone, and potentially more effective, by reconfiguring management approaches to be more anticipatory, flexible, sensitive, and inclusive.The authors are grateful to all participants of this study for their time and contributions, to ParrotNet (COST Action ES1304) for sponsoring discussions that contributed to the development of this manuscript, to Jamie Lorimer for valuable feedback, and to Stephen Pruett-Jones and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments and suggestions. SLC was funded by a scholarship from the University of Exeter

A very public cull – The anatomy of an online issue public

This is the final version. Available from Elsevier via the DOI in this recordGeographers and other social scientists have for some time been interested in how scientific and environmental controversies emerge and become public or collective issues. Social media are now key platforms through which these issues are publically raised and through which groups or publics can organise themselves. As media that generate data and traces of networking activity, these platforms also provide an opportunity for scholars to study the character and constitution of those groupings. In this paper we lay out a method for studying these ‘issue publics’: emergent groupings involved in publicising an issue. We focus on the controversy surrounding the state-sanctioned cull of wild badgers in England as a contested means of disease management in cattle. We analyse two overlapping groupings to demonstrate how online issue publics function in a variety of ways – from the ‘echo chambers’ of online sharing of information, to the marshalling of agreements on strategies for action, to more dialogic patterns of debate. We demonstrate the ways in which digital media platforms are themselves performative in the formation of issue publics and that, while this creates issues, we should not retreat into debates around the ‘proper object’ of research but rather engage with the productive complications of mapping social media data into knowledge (Whatmore, 2009). In turn, we argue that online issue publics are not homogeneous and that the lines of heterogeneity are neither simple or to be expected and merit study as a means to understand the suite of processes and novel contexts involved in the emergence of a public.This project was funded by ESRC ‘Transforming Social Science’ Fund – ESRC-ES/L003112/1

The Teaching Philosophy Framework: Learning, Leading, and Growing

A teaching philosophy statement is a powerful framework for exploring one\u27s beliefs about student learning, classroom leadership, assessment, teaching and learning styles, and programmatic development. Unfortunately, developing a teaching philosophy statement can be a daunting task. Librarians may find though that having a statement is necessary (e.g., promotion dossier) and/or desirable (e.g., personal reflection). The workshop will offer a structured and scaffolded approach to drafting a philosophy statement and identifying evidence from one\u27s teaching practice as the framework for a teaching portfolio. Participants will have the beginning of a draft personal statement at the conclusion of the workshop

Lepton Flavor Violation at the LHC

Recent results from Super Kamiokande suggest $\nu_\mu-\nu_\tau$ mixing and hence lepton flavor violation. In supersymmetric models, this flavor violation may have implications for the pattern of slepton masses and mixings. Possible signals for this mixing in the decays of sleptons produced at the LHC are discussed. The sensitivity expected is compared to that of rare decays such as $\tau\to \mu\gamma$.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure