Living change: Adaptive housing responses to climate change in the town camps of Alice Springs

Executive summary This project focused upon adaptive housing responses to climate change in the town camps of Alice Springs. It particularly examined household practices of staying cool and keeping warm in the context of increasing extremes of temperatures and climate. In a departure from several other studies that concentrated on actively changing the behaviour of household residents or assessing occupant satisfaction with how houses performed, in this project the concern was on identifying the various elements of social practices. These elements include housing hardware (the physical house and appliances), management regimes, skills and knowledge, rules and common understandings. Instead of starting with human behaviour as the driver of responses to hot and cold conditions, the project takes a starting point where the practices of keeping cool and warm are the central focus. Thus, instead of asking the question “How can we change the cooling behaviour of householders”, we ask “What shapes the practices of keeping cool?” Of course, people will have a variety of things that they do when it is hot (in this report these are referred to as ‘practice variants’ of the practice of ‘keeping cool’), and the practices change over time. Changes to any of the four elements mentioned above may modify how a practice is performed, and hence changed. Moreover practices are often connected to others (or ‘bundled’), so changes in a particular practice may cascade into multiple changes across other practices. This has implications for household (and community) resilience and vulnerability to changed circumstances. The research found that town camp residents involved in the study deal with heat and cold in a diverse variety of ways. Diversity is widely regarded as a sign of adaptive capacity. Town camp residents retain variants of previous practice and embrace new practice variants, which have emerged since refurbishment and provision of new housing over the couple of years prior to the study. Town camp residents have many experiences of dealing with extreme weather events, and are (at least) bilingual, bi-cultural, and have strong cultural identities in Indigenous practice while participating in ‘mainstream’ economic and social life in Alice Springs and throughout Australia. As such, the town campers are well placed to adapt to changing circumstances, including changing climate conditions. However, that capacity is jeopardised by poverty and both chronic and periodic overcrowding, which remains an entrenched problem and cause of community stress, so adaptive practices need to be actively monitored and nurtured. The emerging tenancy management regime is partially supporting tenant initiated sustainable living practices and there is a need for further work in this regard, as indicated in the recommendations emerging from this research. The full list of recommendations is detailed in section 7. The research highlighted the need to extend the focus of housing providers beyond the delivery and preservation of houses, and to extend community education programs beyond a focus on behaviours around protecting houses and using appliances efficiently. Programs should recognise what shapes how people do things in and around the home. The house is only one element that informs practices and effective adaptation to changed conditions requires accounting for all elements. The research also underlines the importance for housing providers to know and understand how town camp residents use power and water in their daily lives. Electricity is an essential, yet scarce and costly commodity within the camps. Changes to the physical makeup of the houses and the appliances that they contain must be considered in the context of total household energy use. The same principle applies to water usage. It is important that the promotion of efficient energy and water use (using less of a scarce resource) does not compromise existing healthy practices unintentionally, or stifle new ones from emerging. The report also recommends that specific responsibility for climate adaptation planning and resourcing should be assigned and plans and actions instituted to equip town campers with ongoing climate adaptive capacity. Please cite this report as:Horne, R, Martel, A, Arcari, P, Foster, D, McCormack, A 2013 Living change: adaptive housing responses to climate change in the town camps of Alice Springs, National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, Gold Coast, pp. 60. This project focused upon adaptive housing responses to climate change in the town camps of Alice Springs. It particularly examined household practices of staying cool and keeping warm in the context of increasing extremes of temperatures and climate. In a departure from several other studies that concentrated on actively changing the behaviour of household residents or assessing occupant satisfaction with how houses performed, in this project the concern was on identifying the various elements of social practices. These elements include housing hardware (the physical house and appliances), management regimes, skills and knowledge, rules and common understandings. Instead of starting with human behaviour as the driver of responses to hot and cold conditions, the project takes a starting point where the practices of keeping cool and warm are the central focus. Thus, instead of asking the question “How can we change the cooling behaviour of householders”, we ask “What shapes the practices of keeping cool?” Of course, people will have a variety of things that they do when it is hot (in this report these are referred to as ‘practice variants’ of the practice of ‘keeping cool’), and the practices change over time. Changes to any of the four elements mentioned above may modify how a practice is performed, and hence changed. Moreover practices are often connected to others (or ‘bundled’), so changes in a particular practice may cascade into multiple changes across other practices. This has implications for household (and community) resilience and vulnerability to changed circumstances. The research found that town camp residents involved in the study deal with heat and cold in a diverse variety of ways. Diversity is widely regarded as a sign of adaptive capacity. Town camp residents retain variants of previous practice and embrace new practice variants, which have emerged since refurbishment and provision of new housing over the couple of years prior to the study. Town camp residents have many experiences of dealing with extreme weather events, and are (at least) bilingual, bi-cultural, and have strong cultural identities in Indigenous practice while participating in ‘mainstream’ economic and social life in Alice Springs and throughout Australia. As such, the town campers are well placed to adapt to changing circumstances, including changing climate conditions. However, that capacity is jeopardised by poverty and both chronic and periodic overcrowding, which remains an entrenched problem and cause of community stress, so adaptive practices need to be actively monitored and nurtured. The emerging tenancy management regime is partially supporting tenant initiated sustainable living practices and there is a need for further work in this regard, as indicated in the recommendations emerging from this research. The full list of recommendations is detailed in section 7. The research highlighted the need to extend the focus of housing providers beyond the delivery and preservation of houses, and to extend community education programs beyond a focus on behaviours around protecting houses and using appliances efficiently. Programs should recognise what shapes how people do things in and around the home. The house is only one element that informs practices and effective adaptation to changed conditions requires accounting for all elements. The research also underlines the importance for housing providers to know and understand how town camp residents use power and water in their daily lives. Electricity is an essential, yet scarce and costly commodity within the camps. Changes to the physical makeup of the houses and the appliances that they contain must be considered in the context of total household energy use. The same principle applies to water usage. It is important that the promotion of efficient energy and water use (using less of a scarce resource) does not compromise existing healthy practices unintentionally, or stifle new ones from emerging. The report also recommends that specific responsibility for climate adaptation planning and resourcing should be assigned and plans and actions instituted to equip town campers with ongoing climate adaptive capacity

(Animal) Oppression: Responding to Questions of Efficacy and (Il)Legitimacy in Animal Advocacy with a New Collective Action/Master Frame

Across the animal activist/academic community, there is an ongoing dissatisfaction with the movement’s achievements to date, or lack thereof – a sense that it has not achieved as much as expected, hoped for, and needed. While there have undoubtedly been positive changes, overall these efforts constitute a Sisyphean task given that nonhuman animals are entering the Animal-Industrial Complex (A-IC) in increasing numbers and faster than others are saved. Lack of unity, common goals, and related questions of (il)legitimacy are among some of the issues identified with ‘the movement’. In response, this paper proposes a new frame for animal advocacy that can offer a legitimising context for critical animal perspectives and bring a sense of unity to the movement’s fragmented and often inconsistent goals. First, questions of movement efficacy are examined with reference to a review of the websites of 21 advocacy organisations. Efficacy is then associated with (il)legitimacy, and (il)legitimacy with framing. An exploration of how frames are currently deployed in animal advocacy is then used to support the rationale for the proposed frame of ‘(animal) oppression’. Finally, this frame’s key features are clarified with suggestions for its deployment. Critically, this new frame describes the problem to be addressed, where existing frames focus primarily on solutions and motivations. Approaching animal advocacy through oppression evokes and explains the interwoven mechanisms of the entire injustice complex, of which the A-IC is one part, opening the way to challenge not only speciesism but all institutions of discrimination

Identità collettive, identità etniche, identità religiose. Elementi per una trattazione nella prospettiva della longue durée (tra antichità e medioevo)

Forgiate all’interno di molteplici e variegate forze di interazione sociale, le collettività emergono in una notevole varietà di configurazioni. Esse possono formarsi per differenti ragioni, e possono essere costituite da persone la cui aderenza a un determinato gruppo varia a seconda di molteplici fattori. Una tale contestualità inscindibilmente connessa al “raggruppamento” sociale rende quello di “identità collettiva” un difficile oggetto di studio oltre che un ambito estremamente problematico da definire in prospettiva storica. Questa raccolta di saggi intende offrire un quadro su simili questioni. Partendo da un seminario svoltosi a Napoli (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, 11 Febbraio 2014), organizzato nell’ambito delle attività del progetto FIRB “La percezione dello spazio e del tempo nella trasmissione di identità collettive. Polarizzazioni e/o coabitazioni religiose nel mondo antico (I-VI secolo d.C.)”, gli articoli inclusi in questa sezione monografica analizzano i rispettivi e specifici ambiti di indagine secondo una più generale componente chiave: l’identità collettiva come percezione di similarità e differenze, dunque, più in generale, l’identità collettiva come processo sociale. Questo modo più ampio di descrivere l’identità gruppale serve come base per l’esame delle formazioni identitarie, anche “religiose”, soprattutto nella prospettiva della longue durée così come declinata negli ultimi anni

Disconnection & Demonisation: COVID-19 shows why we need to stop commodifying all animals

For many thousands of people worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic is providing painful proof of the inadequacies and failings of a profit-based capitalist world economy. Blame for the emergence of the virus is being directed at the wildlife trade and wet markets located especially in China and Southeast Asia. This reflects a disconnect from the broader relations and practices that contribute to increased human-wildlife interactions and increased risks of viral transmission, and contributes to the demonization of practices deemed ‘other’. To avoid future, perhaps worse, risks to global health, the common foundations and interdependencies between animal uses need to be recognised. This in turn requires challenging the systemic exploitation of all animals commodified under the animal industrial complex - as food, entertainment, fashion, research, and companionship. This paper focuses on these two points: 1. The commodification of animals under current capitalism, and 2. The connections between animal uses. It aims to underscore the importance of an integrated understanding of all our practices as being both with and in nature, not apart from it, and encourage a holistic, as opposed to fragmented, approach to ending the exploitation of all animals. Safe, sustainable, and equitable societies will only be achieved through an integrated worldview that organizes nature based on the inherent value of life and not its expendability

The Covid pandemic, ‘pivotal’ moments, and persistent anthropocentrism: Interrogating the (il)legitimacy of critical animal perspectives

Situated alongside, and intertwined with, climate change and the relentless destruction of ‘wild’ nature, the global Covid-19 pandemic should have instigated serious reflection on our profligate use and careless treatment of other animals. Widespread references to ‘pivotal moments’ and the need for a reset in human relations with ‘nature’ appeared promising. However, important questions surrounding the pandemic’s origins and its wider context continue to be ignored and, as a result, this moment has proved anything but pivotal for animals. To explore this disconnect, this paper undertakes an analysis of dominant Covid discourses across key knowledge sites comprising mainstream media, major organizations, academia, and including prominent animal advocacy organizations. Drawing on the core tenets of Critical Animal Studies, the concept of critical animal perspectives is advanced as a way to assess these discourses and explore the illegitimacy of alternative ways of thinking about animals. Broadly, it is found that dominant Covid discourses fail to engage with the mechanisms by which human uses of nature and other animals are justified – specifically binary thinking, the normalization and naturalization of hierarchical categories of use, and the commodification of their lives and bodies – or to specify the nature and scope of practices that need to change. These key sites of knowledge, and also prominent advocacy organizations, thus reflect the illegitimacy of critical animal perspectives while also contributing to their ongoing delegitimation. Exacerbating this situation is the illegitimacy of the animal advocacy movement itself, which is attributed in part to movement factionalism and a diversity of poorly articulated aims. Mainstreaming and normalizing critical perspectives on animals has never been more necessary. Extended beyond academia, critical animal perspectives offer a potentially productive and practical way of approaching this endeavour so that future moments may be truly pivotal for humans and nonhumans alike

Nanocellulose Fragmentation Mechanisms and Inversion of Chirality from the Single Particle to the Cholesteric Phase

Understanding how nanostructure and nanomechanics influence physical material properties on the micro- and macroscale is an essential goal in soft condensed matter research. Mechanisms governing fragmentation and chirality inversion of filamentous colloids are of specific interest because of their critical role in load-bearing and self-organizing functionalities of soft nanomaterials. Here we provide a fundamental insight into the self-organization across several length scales of nanocellulose, an important bio-colloid system with wide-ranging applications as structural, insulating and functional material. Through a combined microscopic and statistical analysis of nanocellulose fibrils at the single particle level, we show how mechanically and chemically induced fragmentation proceed in this system. Moreover, by studying the bottom-up self-assembly of fragmented carboxylated cellulose nanofibrils into cholesteric liquid crystals, we show via direct microscopic observations, that the chirality is inverted from right-handed at the nanofibril level to left-handed at the level of the liquid crystal phase. These results improve our fundamental understanding of nanocellulose and provide an important rationale for their application in colloidal systems, liquid crystals and nanomaterials