Fire and restoration of the largest urban forest of the world in Rio de Janeiro City,Brazil

National Park of Tijuca in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) is about 3,300 ha and considered the largest urban forest in the world. Its floristic composition is typical of Atlantic Rain Forest. The reserve is being altered because of fire occurrences and urban expansion. This study identified locations and causes of forest fires, and makes management recommendations to restore damaged areas. From 1991 to 2000, forest firefighters recorded an average of 75-fire occurrences/year. Identified causes included hot air balloons (24%), intentional (24%), rubbish burning (21%) and religious practices (17%). Primary fuels included invasive grasses and ferns. Although hot air balloons destroyed larger areas of forest in each occurrence, a greater number of fires started in the invasive vegetation along roads that bisect the forest. In response to recurrent forests, invasive vegetation has spread gradually into the forest increasing forest degradation. To decrease fire damage, sites with high fire frequencies and density of invasive vegetation were planted with less flammable species. Results indicate that fire frequency decreased and density of invasive vegetation declined. This approach appears to prevent fire incidence, reduce the need for fire fighting, and preserve existing biodiversity.     

Luxembourg's Foreign Policy: Does Small Size Help or Hinder?

As a very small state, Luxembourg would not appear to qualify as an influential foreign policy actor either in Europe or the world. Yet the country's international influence has long belied its reputation as a small state. This article reviews the literature on small-state foreign policy and finds that it offers numerous contradictory conclusions. As a case study it then addresses Luxembourg in the 1990s, with particular attention to two themes: its active participation in the European Union (EU) and its policies directed at maintaining economic prosperity. The paper goes on to explain Luxembourgish foreign policy behaviour through three levels of analysis and assesses to what extent smallness is a benefit or a hindrance to Luxembourg's success in meeting its international goals.     

Challenges to Connecting Sociology and Service Learning

Service-learning programs are not free from challenges brought about by lack of financial support, lack of widespread commitment from professors, community agencies, and recipients of service, and lack of knowledge and insight in students directly involved in such programs. While service-learning initiatives and programs serve positive functions for organizations and individuals, rhetorical accolades for service learning can distort or omit the realities of program implementation and sustained delivery. This paper specifically explores the following challenges connected to service-learning programs: (1) pedagogical difficulties; (2) student limitations; (3) time constraints; and (4) community cooperation.     

Lives in limbo: Temporary Protected Status and immigrant identities

The United States formulates much of its immigration and refugee policy to match economic and political circumstances. We interpret these policy shifts as a set of graduated positions on immigration and refugee flows that attempts to discipline the lives of newcomers and, in so doing, shapes immigrant identities. In this article, we analyse the interplay between the US government and Salvadoran asylum applicants negotiating procedures that grant only temporary relief from deportation via the policy of Temporary Protected Status (TPS). We find that each policy shift results in the strategic renegotiation of asylum applicants’ identities so as to achieve the best opportunity for a successful outcome. Based on Foucault’s ideas of governmentality and Ong’s concept of flexible citizenship, we argue that what appears more superficially as a patchwork strategy of immigration laws and asylum practices may be theorized more deeply as a set of flexible responses by the state that turn on identity construction at different scales, and that aim to mediate transnational relations.     

Dairy Farm Survival in a Metropolitan Area: Dutchess County,New York, 1984–19901

Abstract The effect of nonfarm development on dairy farm survival in New York's highly developed lower Hudson Valley is analyzed. The major hypothesis is that significant losses of dairy farms during this period are the result of urban development pressures. Contrary to this hypothesis, however, the bivariate and multivariate analyses of data from a mail survey of all commercial dairy operators in Dutchess County as of 1984 and industry survivors, exiters, and new entrants through 1990 demonstrate that nonfarm development has a negligible effect on dairy farm survival; rather, survival is significantly affected by age of operator and by family disruption. Thus, demographic and family process factors are found to be more powerful determinants of dairy farm survival in this particular metropolitan context.     

Tolerating Force: A Contextual Analysis of the Meaning of Tolerance

This study employs college student survey data to examine the specific social conditions that influence tolerance of the use of force against children. The findings reveal that a certain ambivalence exists regarding parental force to control the behavior of children. Although the respondents are tolerant of parental force used to counteract disrespectful provocations by children, they are less tolerant of force used to counteract age-related misbehaviors. Implications of these findings are discussed in light of current and future social and family policy.