Drivers of rural exodus from Amazonian headwaters

Rural–urban migration can have both positive and negative environmental consequences for tropical forests. Rural residents exert pressure on the environment through farming, fishing, and forest extraction, yet conversely, protecting rural livelihoods is often the motivation for conserving large areas of threatened forest. This research examines rural settlement within the Brazilian Amazon to shed light on the drivers of on-going rural exodus and its environmental implications. Specifically, we examine the relative importance of public service provision and natural resources in determining settlement patterns along, and rural–urban migration from, eight rivers in road-less regions of the Brazilian Amazon. Data include biophysical, social, and economic variables that were assessed in 184 riverine settlements along rural–urban gradients up to 740 km from the nearest urban center. Settlements were smaller upstream, and lacked key services such as schools and healthcare. We found that clustering of rural populations close to urban centers reflects the high costs of living in remote areas, despite abundant natural resources which previously justified migration to headwaters. Impeded dry-season navigability and transport costs restricted the flow of goods and services to and from remote areas, and transaction costs of trade exchange were higher upstream. A lack of school access was the main motivation for rural–urban migration and the abandonment of remote riverine settlements. A key policy implication is that while education services could provide a powerful tool to stabilize and support rural populations, delivery is challenging in remote areas and may also encourage further rural–urban migration in the longer term. Furthermore, river-dwellers in remote areas rarely visited remote urban centers, presumably because these journeys are too costly. We examine the implications of our findings for anti-poverty subsidies and payment for ecosystem services and conclude that transport costs required to receive payment could encourage further depopulation of remote areas.     

Hate at school: victimization and disorder associated with school avoidance

Abstract

Previous research indicates that victimization at school and school disorder are associated with school avoidance. The appearance of hateful words and symbols at schools and verbal hateful attacks at schools are prompting additional concerns about students’ perceived safety. The current study provides evidence that observing and being victimized by hate at school are additional contributors to school avoidance that is enacted over concerns of being attacked at school. This includes avoidance of the school itself as well as specific places at the school such as the school entrance, school cafeteria, and parking lots. Data analyzed from the 2013 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey provide this evidence. The findings point to recommendations for identifying and reducing hate in schools while maintaining efforts to reduce bullying and provide a positive school climate.     

Charismatic,ideological, & pragmatic (CIP) model of leadership: A critical review and agenda for future research

Criticisms of the dominant leadership perspectives in the literature are increasing and, as such, a growing number of scholars are calling for more complex and conceptually sound theories of leadership. With a multi-faceted perspective on effective leadership, detailed conceptual underpinnings, and increasing body of empirical support, the Charismatic, Ideological, and Pragmatic (CIP) model of leadership has the potential to address many of these concerns and substantively contribute to our understanding of effective leadership. Despite such advantages, however, wide scale proliferation of the model remains elusive. As such, this effort provides the first comprehensive review of the CIP model to analyze its potential to expand our understanding of leadership in science and practice. In doing so this review frames and organizes the existing CIP literature, identifies key strengths of the model, addresses key limitations of the model, and outlines future research opportunities that would benefit from adopting a CIP perspective.     

Differences in Internalizing Symptoms Anticipate Adolescent Friendship Dissolution

This study examined the degree to which internalizing symptoms predict adolescent friendship instability. A total of 397 adolescents identified 499 same‐sex reciprocated friendships that originated in the seventh grade (M = 13.18 years). Discrete‐time survival analyses were conducted with Grade 7 peer, teacher, and self‐reports of internalizing symptoms as predictors of friendship dissolution across Grades 8–12. Differences between friends in depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and (for boys only) submissiveness predicted subsequent friendship dissolution. Individual levels of these variables did not predict friendship dissolution, even at extreme or clinical levels. The findings suggest that friendship instability arising from internalizing problems stems from dissimilarity between friends rather than the presence of psychopathological symptoms on the part of one friend.     

The evolution of Rare Pride: Using evaluation to drive adaptive management in a biodiversity conservation organization

Rare Pride is a social marketing program that stimulates human behavior change in order to promote biodiversity conservation in critically threatened regions in developing countries. A series of formal evaluation studies, networking strategies, and evaluative inquiries have driven a 20-year process of adaptive management that has resulted in extensive programmatic changes within Pride. This paper describes the types of evaluation that Rare used to drive adaptive management and the changes it caused in Pride's theory-of-change and programmatic structure. We argue that (a) qualitative data gathered from partners and staff through structured interviews is most effective at identifying problems with current programs and procedures, (b) networking with other organizations is the most effective strategy for learning of new management strategies, and (c) quantitative data gathered through surveys is effective at measuring program impact and quality. Adaptive management has allowed Rare to increase its Pride program from implementing about two campaigns per year in 2001 to more than 40 per year in 2009 while improving program quality and maintaining program impact.     

Precarious in Piraeus: on the making of labour insecurity in a port concession

ABSTRACT

Examining the territorial and logistical factors surrounding the leasing of the Greek port of Piraeus to a subsidiary of the Chinese state-owned enterprise COSCO, this paper responds to calls to investigate variations in experiences of precarity. The article is based on research conducted in 2014 when the container processing area at Piraeus was divided between two terminals: the first run by the Piraeus Port Authority (OLP) and the second run by COSCO’s subsidiary Piraeus Container Terminals (PCT). By contrasting the threatened unionized labour regime at OLP with the highly precarious labour conditions at PCT, the paper asks how the operative dimensions of capital condition precarity’s intensification and spread. In this light, precarity emerges not simply as a form of labour insecurity or an unevenly shared condition of human vulnerability but as a relational nexus that links questions of political economy to matters of subjectivity, space, power, and governance.     

Options traders exhibit subadditive decision weights

Professional options traders priced risky prospects as well as uncertain prospects whose outcomes depended on future values of various stocks. The prices of the risky prospects coincided with their expected value, but the prices of the uncertain prospects violated expected utility theory. An event had greater impact on prices when it turned an impossibility into a possibility or a possibility into a certainty than when it merely made a possibility more or less likely, as predicted by prospect theory. This phenomenon is attributed to the subadditivity of judged probabilities.     

Narrative and its potential contribution to disability studies

This article seeks to expand our understanding of narrative and the analysis of stories researchers invite and collect in the domain of disability studies. What narrative inquiry is and various reasons why researchers might opt to choose to turn to narratives are highlighted. Painting with broad strokes, narrative analysis is then considered before a typology of different ways in which stories can be analysed is offered. Illuminated by the typology are two contrasting standpoints on narrative analysis (storyteller and story analyst) and three specific methods (structural, performative, and autoethnographic creative analytic practices) that each standpoint might use to analyse the whats and hows of stories. The article closes by suggesting that researchers might consider using a variety of analyses in order to assist us to understand the complexities of the social world in diverse ways.     

Carbon metabolism: Global capitalism,climate change,and the biospheric rift

There is widespread agreement in the natural sciences that observed increases in average global temperatures over the past century are due in large part to the anthropogenic (human generated) emission of greenhouse gases, primarily stemming from fossil fuel combustion and land use changes (e.g., deforestation). Many social processes have been identified for their contribution to climate change. However, few theoretical approaches have been used to study systematically the relations of the social with the biosphere. Our goal is to illustrate how the theory of metabolic rift provides a powerful approach for understanding human influence on the carbon cycle and global climate change. We extend the discussions of metabolism (the relationship of exchange between nature and humans) and metabolic rift to the biosphere in general and to the carbon cycle in particular. We situate our discussion of the metabolic rift in the historical context of an expanding, global capitalist system that largely influences the organization of human interactions with the environment. The general properties of a metabolic rift between nature and society include the disruption or interruption of natural processes and cycles, the accumulation of waste, and environmental degradation. Due to capitalism's inherent expansionary tendencies, technological development serves to escalate commodity production, which necessitates the burning of fossil fuels to power the machinery of production. As this process unfolded historically, it served to flood carbon sinks and generate an accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Technological “improvements” have actually increased the amount of resources used, since expansion in production typically outstrips gains in efficiency – a situation known as the Jevons paradox. The theory of the metabolic rift reveals how capital contributes to the systematic degradation of the biosphere.