Ecological Sense Research Articles

Synthetic bodies: protocols for intra-acting

Our bodies are porous entities that interconnect with and depend on the broader collectivity of human and nonhuman life that exists within a shared environment. Using the figuration of synthetic bodies, this exposition aims to examine the relationships in which we are enmeshed as our bodies absorb and excrete chemicals. With a focus on involuntary exposure to industrially manufactured chemicals (as opposed to exposure to naturally occurring chemicals or voluntary experimentation with chemicals of all types), this exposition invites readers to learn about the chemicals to which we are exposed and by which we are affected. With the ubiquity of chemicals in the environment, who are we becoming? How do chemicals affect us and how do we interact with them? How can we live well with chemicals in spite of their potential to harm? Adopting a decolonial feminist, posthumanist, and new materialist approach and embracing queer ecological sensibilities, this exposition develops protocols for embodied and materially embedded research practices that trace the effects of exposure to chemicals in everyday life. In so doing, it aims to demonstrate how we might build resilience through encounters with toxicity, contamination, and impurity. <style> /* rules to make button only show up in META */ .download-accessible { display:none; } .meta-right-col .download-accessible { display: inline-block; padding: 9px; margin-bottom:25px; border: 1px solid black; background-color:white; } </style> <a class="download-accessible" href="download-media?work=3155507&file=3155516" title="This accessible PDF is a derivative of the original which it is meant to support and not replace.">Download Accessible PDF</a>

Bridging Ecologies through Contemplative Technologies: Existential Relevance of Huatou 話頭 and the Huayan sanmei men 華嚴三昧門 for Oxytocin and Environmentally Sustainable Behavior

Contemplative technologies in the form of Buddhist practices that challenge the sense of self and thereby enhance the experience of interrelationality are viable strategies for addressing existential concerns such as the environmental crisis. Much of the existing research on Buddhism and ecology neglects to measure environmentally sustainable behavior or engage with empirical research. Likewise, experiments measuring the effects of contemplative practice on oxytocin, a neuropeptide hormone often implicated in interrelational contexts, are scarce. This study explores the existential relevance of Chan and Huayan practices for oxytocin and environmentally sustainable behavior. Using empirical methods, it reports on an experimental fieldwork study among international participants in a one-month retreat at a Buddhist monastery in Taiwan. Salivary oxytocin, recycling, and food waste were measured, while phenomenological reports of experiences during contemplative practice were also obtained. Results of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay indicate a marginal increase in oxytocin following Chan practice of the huatou “Who recites the Buddha’s name?” which targets the sense of self, consistent with phenomenological reports reflecting an interrelational, ecological sense of self through huatou. Results also indicate increased recycling and decreased food waste by mass as a function of time on retreat. While the precise mechanisms explaining why participants exhibited more environmentally sustainable behaviors are currently unclear, the discussion proposes an empirically testable framework for bridging ecologies that links emotion, sense of self, and behavior. Contemplative practices may contribute to changes in oxytocin and environmentally sustainable behavior through activation of existential, aesthetic emotions such as doubt and awe, thereby inducing changes in the practitioner’s sense of self, which they may then experience as interrelated with broader ecologies, a possibility awaiting further research. The huatou fieldwork and proposed follow-up study on the Huayan sanmei men thus shed light on the relevance of contemplative technologies from Chinese Buddhism for bridging ecologies in the existentially relational sense.

Artificial intelligence in Departments of Communication: A course proposal

When communication and mass media faculty returned from a kind of exile that COVID-19 had inflicted on them, they were hit almost immediately with the phenomenon of artificial intelligence (AI). The fall semester of 2023 seemed to usher in a new means by which students would complete assignments that left faculty scratching their heads. They faced a new form of information retrieval that students (as well as faculty) were using that, at once, yielded more substantive prose while at the same time posed new questions about authorship, trust, reliability, bias and even personhood. The discipline of communication and media studies bears a particular responsibility to contemplate the massive change underway with the use of AI. Most of us in the field have dedicated our careers to considering the human-media-culture interface. Media ecologists, in particular, routinely explore how media shape culture, conscience and communication. Yet many of us have not known what to make of the phenomenon suddenly surging in academics and in all sectors of society. This article seeks to offer a framework, cultivated out of media ecological sensibilities, for critically examining implications of AI in the realm of communication. Specifically, we have designed a graduate course that takes up the major lines of inquiry into how AI challenges conventions and urges new paradigms in our discipline. Our article offers a course proposal that communication faculty can adopt to their curriculum. It consists of a sample course syllabus, recommended textbooks and YouTube videos, sample assignments, a review of major AI themes in scholarly and trade journals, a suggested media ecology tool for critical application (the Tetrad), and an extensive bibliography. The overall objective of our course proposal is to guide reflection on the implications of AI in various communication contexts and environments.

Photosynthetıc Energy Nanogenerators

Photosynthetıc Energy Nanogenerators

From Visual Art to Visual Waste: Awareness in the Application of Art's Effectiveness and Function

The purpose of this writing is to examine the results of works of art that are closely related to humans, now starting to emerge unrest like a tangled thread, visual art is present and detached from its main function, namely conveying the aspirations and communication of the creator. The analysis in this paper uses ecological art as a surgical blade, where art does not only exist because of the process of creation into works of art objects, but exists because of the wisdom of creative awareness that cannot be separated from a humanist and ecological sense. This writing is expected to be one of the encouragements for us to always inspire wisely every phenomenon and event that exists, whether it is directly related to us or not. This paper describes the various impacts of problems caused by visual waste, where visual waste does not only affect every living thing that breathes. Visual waste is starting to become a serious problem because of its increasingly naughty and wild existence.

Nature Games: Traditional Indigenous Games and Environmental Stewardship in Oceania

Traditional games are often situated in counter distinction to modern sport forms and are not well understood in Western society or scholarship. However, from these games, we have the opportunity to learn much about local play and physical culture. This article focuses on traditional Indigenous games in Oceania and how they can be used as a lens for the development of environmental stewardship or ecological sensibilities. The aims of this study are twofold: (1) to lay a foundation for future research in this area and (2) to situate traditional games within the broader sport ecology conversation. By deconstructing the embodied nature of traditional games and overviewing the histories of environmentalism in Oceania, a more grounded claim can be made for the relevance of traditional games within sport and leisure studies scholarship, including sport history, sport sociology, sport anthropology, and sport ecology. The nature games of Oceania yield diverse insights into Indigenous epistemologies, ecological sensibilities, and how outdoor play can be understood as a form of climate action.

My Numerous Detours – Toward Private Law as Society’s Constitution

Abstract The author responds in two ways to the contributions in this special issue dealing with aspects of his scholarly work. In his first, more general response, he traces the influences that various institutions and individuals exerted on him and were reflected in his work on private law theory. In retrospect, he understands both his many years abroad and his involvement with extra-legal disciplines, especially systems theory and sociology of law, as a search for the identity of private law in foreign legal systems as well as in foreign disciplines. At the end of this search stands the concept of societal constitutionalism. The author understands private law as society’s constitution, more precisely: as the legal constitution of the self-governance of a variety of social systems. In a second, more specific response, the author deals with some of the questions raised in the various contributions to the special issue. From the perspective of both sociology of law and legal doctrine, the author addresses problems of society’s constitution that arise, on the one hand, outside the borders of the nation-state in transnational political processes and, on the other hand, outside the institutionalized political sector, in the "private" sectors of world society. They revolve around the theoretical and practical potential of societal constitutionalism: how, in non-state institutions, the new power centers of society, particularly in the emerging socio-digital institutions, private law can set the normative conditions for fundamental rights, the rule of law, democratic participation, and, increasingly today, ecological sensibility.

Ecological health assessment of Tibetan alpine grasslands in Gannan using remote sensed ecological indicators

ABSTRACT Ecosystem health assessments are crucial to protect the ecological environment and ensure the sustainable ecological functions of alpine ecoregions. At present, few studies evaluating the ecosystem health of the Gannan alpine grassland, China, an ecologically fragile area, based on a remote sensing theoretical framework exist. As such, this study assessed the ecosystem health of the Gannan alpine grassland based on the Remote Sensing-based Ecological Index (RSEI) and provided a comparative analysis of the RSEI and Gross Primary Productivity (GPP), extending the study of their spatiotemporal patterns and influencing factors. The results suggested that RSEI and GPP showed strong comparability in an ecological sense, with the RSEI better reflecting changes in ecosystem health of the Gannan alpine grassland than the GPP. Overall, the health of the Gannan alpine grassland ecosystem was good (RSEI of 0.61–0.76) and a slow, fluctuating upward trend was seen from 2000 (RSEI = 0.66) to 2020 (RSEI = 0.72). Notably, the RSEI was high in the south and low in the north of the region. Over the past 21 years, 43.92% of the ecologically healthy grassland in the southwest of Gannan has been degrading, while the poor ecological health of 39.04% of the grasslands in the southeast and northeast improved. The model test results show that RSEI could reasonably evaluate the ecosystem health of Gannan alpine grassland. Our assessment results provide important scientific data and information on health monitoring and targeted ecological restoration efforts in the Gannan region.

Becoming Ecological: The Contribution of Collaborative a/r/tography to Generalist Primary Teachers’ Agency in Arts Education

Internationally, it is widely acknowledged that many generalist primary teachers (GPTs) enter the teaching profession with a paucity of arts practice and pedagogic skills. Many perceive a lack of confidence, competence, and community to change this, particularly in regional and isolated teaching contexts. As a means to address this, this article considers the value of engaging in collaborative a/r/tography as a means of developing more creative ecological approaches to teacher professional development and learning. A multimodal storied assemblage of four primary teachers’ experience of engaging in collaborative a/r/tography is explored, and through diffractive analysis, the authors surface the intra-acting affective agents that enable metho-pedagogic learning possibilities. Specific ways in which collaborative a/r/tography works to foster GPTs’ curricula and metho-pedagogic sensibilities, as well as a sense of creative ecology, are addressed. Speculation as to the ways in which collaborative a/r/tography fosters GPTs “becoming ecological” in relational practices and processes of curriculum enactment and pedagogical engagement is offered thereby contributing to understandings of the generative capacity of a/r/tography as a framework for developing teacher agency and change.

A Morphing Quadrotor-Blimp with Balloon Failure Resilience for Mobile Ecological Sensing

A Morphing Quadrotor-Blimp with Balloon Failure Resilience for Mobile Ecological Sensing

Research on the Current Situation and Problems of Ecological Civilization Education for Contemporary College Students—An Empirical Analysis Based on Structural Equation Modeling

With the globalization of industry, the ecological crisis has become more serious. The sustainable development of the environment is being challenged. College students bear the important responsibility of future social development and environmental construction; therefore, it is imperative to promote the ecological civilization education of college students. This study expects to use structural equation modeling to analyze the current situation of college students’ ecological civilization education and its problems, to study the internal mechanism of college students’ ecological civilization education influencing factors, and to provide a path for cultivating college students’ ecological civilization literacy. In this study, a conceptual model of the current status of college students’ ecological civilization education was constructed by using structural equations after a questionnaire survey of 136 college students randomly sampled from six colleges and universities, so as to empirically analyze the current status of contemporary college students’ ecological civilization education. The results of the study show that social impact and school education are positively related to students’ ecological sense of civilization; social impact is positively related to educational affinity; and educational affinity is positively related to school education. Based on the conclusions of the study, the practical paths of enriching teaching content, strengthening teachers’ ability, formulating policies and regulations, and building an online environment are proposed to enhance the level of college students’ ecological civilization education and cultivate their ecological sense of civilization, thus promoting environmental sustainability.

Without Nature

This essay examines two late landscape paintings by Peter Paul Rubens that are characterized by an intense engagement with the wetland in which his property Het Steen was located. On the one hand, the large Rainbow landscape from the Wallace Collection in London offers the chance to inquire about the relevance for Rubens’s landscapes of the Stoic imperative of a ‘life in accord with Nature’. On the other hand, the approximately contemporary Flat landscape with clouds from the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham, which powerfully evokes the fragility of landscape painting’s bond with an understanding of Nature as an abstract quantity, makes it possible to illuminate the ecological sensibility with which Rubens approaches terrestrial interconnections even beyond prevailing orders of Nature and their implicit hierarchies. In sum, this paper proposes to sound out fresh perspectives that early modern art history can contribute to recent ecocritical discourses.

Wordsworth, Ecocriticism, and Natural Education

ABSTRACT This essay argues that Wordsworth reinvents the Enlightenment’s concept of natural education in ways that resonate with theories of ecology in a time of global warming. In book 5 of The Prelude, Wordsworth launches a scathing satire against the modern educator, whose scheme of natural education resembles rationalist interpretations of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Wordsworth questions the naturalism of Enlightenment educational theory, arguing that modern education is rooted in a desire to control the course of both nature and human development. He reimagines natural education as a process that entails unpredictable and irreversible change. For Wordsworth, natural education is not a highway that leads directly towards a better future but is instead a broken and winding passage from one stage of life to another. Ecocritical scholars have embraced Wordsworth’s attack on rationalistic, anthropocentric conceptions of nature, but his ecological sensibility continues to be defined in relation to an outdated vision of pastoral renewal. This essay maintains that the sense of discontinuity that characterizes Wordsworth’s lyric narration of natural education approaches much more closely to twenty-first-century experiences of ecological chaos, estrangement, and loss.

Situating commercial determinants of health in their historical context: a qualitative study of sugar-sweetened beverages in Jamaica

BackgroundNon-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the leading cause of mortality across the Caribbean and similar regions. Structural determinants include a marked increase in the dependency on food imports, and the proliferation of processed foods, including sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs). We focused on Jamaica as a case study and the health challenge of SSBs, and situated contemporary actions, experiences and policies within their historical context to investigate underlying drivers of commercial determinants of health and attempts to counter them. We asked: how can a historical perspective of the drivers of high level SSB consumption in Jamaica contribute to an enhanced understanding of the context of public health policies aimed at reducing their intake?MethodsAn ethnographic approach with remote data collection included online semi-structured interviews and workshops with 22 local experts and practitioners of health, agriculture and nutrition in Jamaica and attending relevant regional public webinars on SSBs and NCD action in the Caribbean. Our analysis was situated within a review of historical studies of Caribbean food economies with focus on the twentieth century. Jamaican and UK-based researchers collected and ethnographically analysed the data, and discussed findings with the wider transdisciplinary team.ResultsWe emphasise three key areas in which historical events have shaped contextual factors of SSB consumption. Trade privileged sugar as a cash crop over food production during Jamaica’s long colonial history, and trade deregulation since the 1980s through structural adjustment opened markets to transnational companies. These changes increased Jamaican receptiveness to the mass advertisement and marketing of these companies, whilst long-standing power imbalances hampered taxation and regulation in contemporary public health actions. Civil society efforts were important for promoting structural changes to curb overconsumption of SSBs and decentring such entrenched power relations.ConclusionThe contemporary challenge of SSBs in Jamaica is a poignant case study of commercial determinants of health and the important context of global market-driven economies and the involvement of private sector interests in public health policies and governance. Historically contextualising these determinants is paramount to making sense of the sugar ecology in Jamaica today and can help elucidate entrenched power dynamics and their key actors.

A Biocentric Reading of Farley Mowat’s A Whale for the Killing

Biocentrism is a highly multidimensional phenomenon whose scope extends beyond aesthetics, anthropology, ecology, ethnography, linguistics, politics, philosophy, psychology, semiology, and sociology. It began with philosophy and deep ecology but quickly expanded to become eco-centric as well as anthropocentric and linguistic. “Biocentrism is a life-centered outlook that rejects the view that humanity alone matters in ethics and accepts the moral standing of (at least) all living creatures” (Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy 97). While Arne Nases intended his version of biocentrism to be a sort of ‘radical egalitarianism’, John Rodman’s viewpoint of biocentricity is ‘ecological sensibility, and Paul Taylor argues ‘respect for Nature’ is one of the prevailing forms of biocentrism. This study proposes a biocentric interpretation of Mowat’s A Whale for the Killing, which depicts life and death in an inconceivable catastrophe involving a voiceless giant species.

Evaluations of pro-environmental behaviors by 7-month-old infants

Environmental morality is the foundation of a sustainable future, yet its ontogenetic origin remains unknown. In the present study, we asked whether 7-month-olds have a sense of ‘environmental morality’. Infants’ evaluations of two pro-environmental actions were assessed in both visual and reaching preferential tasks. In Experiment 1, the overt behavior of protecting (i.e., collecting artificial objects spread on a lawn) was compared with the action of harming the environment (i.e., by disregarding the objects). In Experiment 2, the covert behavior of protecting the environment (i.e., maintaining artificial objects inside a container) was compared with the action of harming the environment (i.e., littering the artificial objects on a lawn). The results showed infants’ reaching preference for the agent who performed overt pro-environmental actions (Experiment 1), and no preference for the agent who performed covert pro-environmental actions (Experiment 2). These findings reveal a rudimentary ecological sense and suggest that infants require different abilities to evaluate overt impact-oriented and covert intend-oriented pro-environmental behaviors.

From Sensibility to Sublimity: Worshipping Land Community in Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth

This paper explores and analyses the kind of ecological sublimity the protagonist goes through despite poverty and significant modern development in China in Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth (1931) from an eco-critical perspective. Wang Lung, the protagonist, experienced wonderful transformations in China during his lifetime. The colonization, arrival of Christian missionaries, urbanization and construction of a railroad signal modernity in China. However, Lung feels ecological sublimity despite the ups and downs brought about by the series of transformations in China. The paper draws on ideas from the eco-critical insights anticipated by Aldo Leopold and E. O. Wilson. As a qualitative applied research, the focus lies on Leopold's concept of “land community” and Wilson’s idea of “biophilia”. Ecological sensibility is the only way to feel the earth’s community’s bliss even during modern development. The reverence for land community unbelievably renders the vibration of ecological sublimity. It provides spiritual freedom to people of all classes, religions and nationalities from around the world. In this sense, the land community offers sublime happiness in the world if we stop coveting its domain.

Effects of pipeline and well‐pad reclamation on topsoil properties: A meta‐analysis

AbstractThe development of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking has led to an increase in oil and natural gas extraction. Development of infrastructure to extract and transport these resources is expected to increase over the next few decades, resulting in extensive land disturbance. Although reclamation aims to sufficiently return disturbed lands to their pre‐disturbance use in an ecological sense, reclaimed rights‐of‐ways (ROW) commonly produce reduced crop yields. The objective of this study was to use meta‐analysis to determine soil disturbance trends across studies found in the peer‐reviewed literature. Papers that reported soil property data on disturbed ROWs and adjacent undisturbed sites were retrieved by searching the Web of Science database. Papers were separated by climate regions, resulting in analyses being conducted for studies in semiarid and humid climate regions. Results indicate that soil bulk density, soil organic matter, and pH are significantly increased on reclaimed ROWs. Soil metrics not incorporated in meta‐analysis due to insufficient observations or the possible presence of publication biases like a desire to publish significant results and poor study design (cation exchange capacity, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, total nitrogen, electrical conductivity, sodium, sodium adsorption ratio, and texture) are assessed and discussed. Best management practices gleaned from studies incorporated into meta‐analysis are discussed to provide strategies to limit soil property disturbances.

Cognitive Ecologies of Presence(S) in Three Different Dance Forms

Abstract Presence is a central yet controversial topic in the study of performing arts and theatrical traditions, where the notion of ‘stage presence’ is generally understood as the performer’s ability to enchant the audience’s attention. How do dancers relate to the idea of presence in performance, and how do they understand, enact, and perform presence in their artistic work and practices? In this article I offer an investigation into presence’s variations in three different dance practices and choreographic contexts: the case of the Ballet National de Marseille during the staging of Emio Greco’s piece Passione; Contact Improvisation in the case of independent groups of contacters in Italy and Australia; and Body Weather, a radical movement ideology developed by Japanese choreographer Min Tanaka in the context of the company Tess de Quincey and Co. in Sydney. To illustrate how presence in dance practices emerges in relation to a complex and dynamic environment, I propose a cognitive ecological approach to the notion of ‘stage presence’, which considers both the co-presence of audiences and performers and the socio-cultural context of the performance event. By exploring how dancers articulate their lived experiences of presence in relation to their different dance contexts and traditions, I suggest framing phenomena of presence in an embodied ecological sense.

Fractional vegetation cover ratio estimated from radiative transfer modeling outperforms spectral indices to assess fire severity in several Mediterranean plant communities

The obtention of wall-to-wall fire severity estimates through reliable remote sensing-based techniques that align with management needs is a critical factor in post-fire decision-making processes. In this paper, we novelty proposed a multi-date change detection framework based on the variation in fractional vegetation cover (FCOVER), with enough ecological sense and physical basis to be generalizable across different plant communities and burned landscapes with varying environmental conditions. This framework meets the definition of fire severity operationally used in the field as a biophysical indicator when fire effects on the understory and overstory layers are linked. The FCOVER was retrieved from Sentinel-2 surface reflectance scenes by inverting PROSAIL-D radiative transfer model (RTM) simulations using the random forest regression algorithm. FCOVER retrievals were validated in the field using burned and unburned control plots. We computed the FCOVERr metric as the ratio of post-fire to pre-fire FCOVER. We tested the relationship of the FCOVERr and the most common bi-temporal spectral indices in the literature, i.e. the differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR), the Relative dNBR (RdNBR) and the Relativized Burn Ratio (RBR), with the Composite Burn Index (CBI) measured in field plots for validation purposes in two case-study wildfires in the western Mediterranean Basin. We also calculated the transferability of FCOVERr and the spectral indices between different plant communities within each site, as well as between sites. The predictive errors of pre and post-fire FCOVER retrievals were found to be low (RMSE ≈ 10%) for the two study sites. Overall, the FCOVERr metric provided more accurate CBI estimations (R2 = 0.87 ± 0.04) than spectral indices (R2 = 0.71 ± 0.13). The CBI was linearly related with the FCOVERr metric for both sites, whereas the type of relationship with spectral indices was not consistent, which translated into better transferability performance of the FCOVERr metric (nRMSE = 14.27% ± 3.75%) than that of the spectral indices (nRMSE = 21.97% ± 8.09%), not only between different Mediterranean plant communities within sites, but also between the two sites. Spectral indices underestimated moderate to high fire severity to a greater extent than FCOVERr in the CBI field plots, and misclassified fire severity in several areas with patchiness fire effects identified in the field. The FCOVERr product proposed in this study may be a sound choice for the operational identification of priority areas for post-fire management.