Negative Stance Research Articles

MH370 and MH17 airplane catastrophes


 Reporting verbs are important in news articles on controversial events or issues because of the need to present one’s position on the topic or at least indicate the attitudes of the sources cited in the articles. The The study investigated the usage of reporting verbs in MH370 and MH17 airplane catastrophe in Malaysian English online newspapers. The aspects analysed were the reporting verbs for speaker stance and writer stance. A total of 80 news articles on MH370 and MH17 airplane catastrophes taken from two online English-language Malaysian newspapers, New Straits Time and The Star, were analysed using Thomson and Ye’s (1991) framework on reporting verbs. The analysis identified 931 instances of RVs: 764 instances for speaker stance, and 167 instances for writer stance. On the speaker stance, about 90% of the articles on MH370 and MH17 were reported positively, and the various sources of information were stated clearly. Negative and neutral speaker stances were infrequent. As for writer stance, the overall results showed a balanced use of counter-factive and non-factive reporting of the writer stance (42.51% and 47.90% out of 167 instances). The two newspapers were similar in their use of verbs for reporting the writer stance in MH370 articles in that over half of the writer stances were non-factive, and about 25% were counter-factive. In their coverage on the MH17 catastrophe, The Star maintained the same pattern of balance between non-factive and counter-factive writer stances but New Straits Time leaned towards a counter-factive writer stance, suggesting more critical reporting. The study showed that the articles on airplane catastrophes leaned towards safe reporting focussed on the available details of the incident.

Socioeconomic orientation of Christianity

The subject of this research is the socioeconomic basis of the key characteristics of Christianity: proselytizing nature, refutation of violence, fasts, baptism, support of feudalism, negative stance on nomadic pastoralism, system of monasteries, use of churchyards as burials, as well as special cult symbols. The article employs the following methods: 1) material-cultural (juxtaposition of religious views with the level of technological development of a particular era); 2) geophysical (juxtaposition of religious views reflected in historical sources with natural conditions affecting economic activity and emergence of a particular ideology); 3) systemic (Christianity is viewed as an element of state policy aimed at the development of secured trade routes, unobstructed tax collection and control over population); 4) linguistic (analysis of names); 5) hermeneutical (interpretation of Christian symbols in the context of economic activity of ancient times). The conclusion is made that initially Christianity was aimed at solution of the following tasks by the government: 1) development of navigation and creation of secured trade routes (namely sea routes); 2) alleviation of social tension in coastal fortress cities via adoption of a special code of conduct and reduction of urban population through implementation of the system of monasteries; 3) creation of the system of wayside markers and fortified strongpoints for sailors in form of temples and monasteries; 4) development of agricultural structure (namely through posts) for the procurement of coastal fortress cities and organizing long-term sea and land expeditions; 5) displacement of caravan trade routes with sea routes 6)  registration of population by securing the name given at baptism.

Migrant Racialization on Twitter during a border and a pandemic crisis.

This work examines how the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped the migration debate on Twitter. Through co-hashtag network analysis, time-frequency and content analysis, it shows that the pandemic was related with positive (humanitarian) and negative (threat) stances about migration. The positive side focused on the need to protect refugees stranded at camps in Greece from COVID-19. The negative focused on the Greek-Turkish land-border crisis (Evros crisis), using COVID-19 to reinforce migrants as racialized others. These findings fit the problematization of positive and negative migrant representations in the Global north as Eurocentric. In the case of camps, refugees fit well within the victim/helpless frame, justifying humanitarianism, this time on health grounds. Regarding the border crisis, refugees also fit the Eurocentric frame of violent/male/inferior other who could spread a deadly virus. Overall, COVID-19 intertwined with migration in Twitter debates, reinforcing the racialized, Eurocentric representational field on migrants from the Global south.

دور الصحافة الالكترونية في نشر قضايا الهجرة (دراسة تحليلية لصحيفة الانتباهة الالكترونية السودانية )

This study aimed at answering the research questions on the ways of this newspaper participation in the transmission of the information which is presented in all types of newspaper writing, reviewing the issues which concern the visitors. Some 110 editing stuffs were on the immigration and Sudanese who work abroad, representing the study sample in the context of the study duration.
 The study used the historical and descriptive methodologies, selecting a sample of the study society, because it is difficult to represent all the society in the study. It also used the content analysis for the sample of the study representing types of editing which transmitted in (Al-Intibahah) electronic newspaper during the first five months of 2013.
 The important results of the analysis are: most of the writing types are the reports, most of the samples concentrated on the social field, most of them are on negative attitudes on the Sudanese immigrants and their immigration for working abroad and most of the writing types had negative stance towards the immigration and immigrants' issues.

Pseudo-cleft constructions in Swedish talk-in-interaction: Turn projection and discourse organization

In this study we present an interactional linguistic analysis of pseudoclefts in Swedish based on audio and video recordings of everyday and institutional conversations, resulting in a collection of 100 instances. There is variation in the degree to which pseudo-cleft constructions are syntactically integrated: from fully integrated biclausal constructions (cleft clause + copula verb + main clause) to non-copular variants and further to variants in which the cleft-clause is followed by an indeterminate stretch of discourse. The construction’s functional properties have to do with projecting actions and generating discourse events, e.g. showing that the initial part has an important turn-projecting function by disclosing the speaker’s stance towards the issue at hand. Pseudo-cleft constructions are recurrently employed for marking discourse shifts, e.g. from a positive to a negative stance. Prosodic organization brings unity to the overall construction of clefts and visual cues can be used to convey significant processing activity by the speaker during the production of a pseudocleft. Our data from institutional interaction shows that pseudoclefts are heavily used by the expert rather than lay participant, thus contributing to the creation of institutional roles and social order.

Multimodal practices for negative assessments as delicate matters: Incomplete syntax, facial expressions, and head movements

AbstractThis paper contributes to the discussion of fuzzy boundaries by investigating negative assessments of the recipient and non-present parties that are syntactically incomplete. Particularly, it explores how the speaker uses syntax and bodily visual conduct to accomplish the delicate action of negatively assessing others and to solicit the recipient to collaboratively complete negative assessments. Based on an examination of approximately 5 h of everyday Mandarin face-to-face conversations, the study shows that incomplete syntax, facial expressions, and head shakes constitute multimodal practices in making negative assessments of the recipient and a non-present third party. Leaving assessments syntactically incomplete and displaying negative evaluative stance through facial expressions such as lip-pursing and eyebrow furrows and head shakes show the speaker’s orientation to the negative assessments as a delicate action. The facial expressions after incomplete syntax demonstrate that participants orient to the hesitation in the delivery of a TCU/turn-in-progress not asproductionproblem, but rather aninteractionalproblem. This study shows that the boundaries of assessment turns may be blurry, and that one assessment may be collaboratively produced by two participants, which exemplifies a specific aspect of weak cesuras and fuzzy boundaries of units and actions in interaction.

The Political Islamic Movement in Eastern Kurdistan (1979-1988), the Qur'an Office and The Khabat Organization, For Example.

With the success of the Iranian People's Revolution, the political Islamic movement in eastern Kurdistan has become more and more active. At first, the Qur'an office, which was established by Ahmad Mufti Zada, was only to educate young people on the basis of Islam, but with the success of the Iranian revolution, its direction changed to national work and demand Kurdish rights against the new regime. Later, due to the regime's negative stance on the demands of the Kurdish people, which included self-mayor for Kurdistan within iran, looking at Kurds as non-Muslims in the early 1980s led to the creation of another Islamic organization in Eastern Kurdistan called the Islamic National Struggle Organization of Iranian Kurdistan– Khabat, which, along with other parties in eastern Kurdistan, has begun armed struggles against the regime to achieve the national rights of the Kurdish people in eastern Kurdistan.

Assessing Without Words: Verbally Incomplete Utterances in Complaints

This study investigates the use of verbally incomplete utterances in French-language complaints about third parties or situations. In these cases, a speaker initiates a turn with verbal means but stops talking before reaching lexico-syntactic completion. The utterance becomes recognizable as an expression of negative stance or as a precise negative assessment by virtue of the linguistic formatting of the turn-initiation, its position within the larger interactional context, and the speaker’s accompanying bodily-visual displays and vocalizations. Data consist of video-recorded coffee-break conversations among first and second language speakers of French. Using multimodal Conversation Analysis, the analysis documents recurrent linguistic formats of the verbally incomplete utterances and examines the interactional deployment of the utterances in two distinct sequential contexts: (1) in the initiation of complaints, and (2) at the end of complaint tellings or reports. In the first of these, the action of leaving a turn verbally incomplete and expressing stance with bodily-visual means allows the speaker to prepare the grounds for the complaint by foreshadowing the negative valence of the upcoming talk. In the latter case, the verbally incomplete utterance and accompanying vocal and/or embodied conduct are deployed as a summary assessment or upshot of the complaint which shows, rather than merely describes, the complaint-worthiness of the situation. In both cases, the utterances work to enhance the chances for the speaker to obtain affiliative responses from coparticipants. While prior studies on verbally incomplete utterances have suggested that such utterances may be specifically suitable for subtly dealing with delicate actions, in this study the utterances are sometimes produced as part of multimodal ‘extreme-case expressions’ that convey negative stance in a high-grade manner. The findings contribute to a better understanding of interactional uses of verbally incomplete utterances and of the multimodal nature of negative assessments. The study thereby furthers our understanding of how grammar and the body interface as resources for the accomplishment of context-specific actions and the organization of social interaction.

Analysis of biased language in peer-reviewed scientific literature on genetically modified crops

Social, political, and economic forces may inadvertently influence the stance of scientific literature. Scientists strive for neutral language, but this may be challenging for controversial topics like genetically modified (GM) crops. We classified peer-reviewed journal articles and found that 40% had a positive or negative stance towards GM crops. Proportion of positive and negative stance varied with publication date, authors’ country of origin, funding source, and type of genetic modification. Articles with a negative stance were more common at the beginning of the millennium. Authors from China had the highest positive:negative ratio (8:1), followed by authors from the USA (12:5) and the EU (5:7). Positive stance articles were six times more likely to be funded by private sources compared to those with a neutral or negative stance. Articles about glyphosate were more likely to be negative compared to articles about Bacillus thuringiensis. Linguistic features of articles with positive and negative stances were used to train a random forest classifier that predicts stance significantly better than random chance. This suggests the possibility of an automated tool to screen manuscripts for unintended biased language prior to publication.

Exposure to anti-Black Lives Matter movement and obesity of the Black population

RationaleBlack Lives Matter (BLM) is a social movement against systematic injustice and police violence toward Black people whose goal is to ensure their safety and the expression of their culture. As BLM gained momentum, counter-movements emerged, such as All Lives Matter (ALM), White Lives Matter (WLM), and Blue Lives Matter (BlueLM). Because they undermine support for Black people's safety and culture, exposure to stances against BLM can be a race-related stressor. Although the perception of racial discrimination has been associated with negative health outcomes in Black people, it is not clear whether exposure to negative stances on a race-related social issue is associated with worse health outcomes. ObjectiveWe investigated whether living in areas of the United States with a high prevalence of negative stances on BLM is associated with worse health outcomes, such as higher body mass index (BMI) and prevalence of obesity. MethodsWe scraped geo-coded tweets (N = 51,020) that contained #BLM, #ALM, #WLM, and #BlueLM from 2014 to 2016. We determined the stances of the tweets on BLM using machine learning algorithms and aggregated stances at the metropolitan or micropolitan statistical area (MMSA) levels. Participants’ BMI and obesity status were derived from the 2017 BRFSS SMART data in 76 MMSAs, as compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (N = 20,530). ResultsAfter controlling for individual- and regional-level covariates, regional measures of racism and police brutality rate, and baseline BMI in 2014 aggregated on MMSA level, Black people had a higher BMI and prevalence of obesity in areas that showed higher negative stances on BLM. Stances against BLM were positively associated with implicit racism against Black people and can be an acute race-related stressor associated with negative downstream health outcomes. ConclusionNegative societal sentiments around race-related issues may be detrimental to the health outcomes of minority populations.

Online information on face masks: analysis of websites in Italian and English returned by different search engines

ObjectiveCountries have major differences in the acceptance of face mask use for the prevention of COVID-19. This work aims at studying the information online in different countries in terms of...

Negative stance towards treatment in psychosocial assessments: The role of personalised recommendations in promoting acceptance

People presenting to the emergency department with self-harm or thoughts of suicide undergo a psychosocial assessment involving recommendations for e.g. contact with other practitioners, charity helplines or coping strategies. In these assessments, patients frequently adopt a negative stance towards potential recommendations. Analysing 35 video-recorded liaison psychiatry psychosocial assessments from an emergency department in England (2018–2019), we ask how these practitioners transform this negative stance into acceptance. We show that practitioners use three steps to anticipate and address negative stance (1) asking questions about the patient's experience/understanding that help the patient to articulate a negative stance (e.g., “what do you think about that”); (2) accepting or validating the reasons underlying the negative stance (e.g., “that's a very real fear and thought to have”); and (3) showing the patient that their reasons were incorporated in the recommendation (e.g., “it's telephone support if you're a bit more uncomfortable with face to face”). These steps personalise the recommendation based on the patient's specific experiences and understanding. When practitioners followed all three of these steps, the patient moved from a negative stance to acceptance in 84% of cases. When practitioners made a recommendation but did not follow all three steps, the patient moved from a negative stance to acceptance in only 14% of cases. It is not the case that each communication practice works on its own to promote patient acceptance, rather Steps 1 and 2 build on each other sequentially to develop and demonstrate shared understanding of the patient's negative stance. In this way, acceptance and validation play an indispensable role in addressing a patient's concerns about treatment.

Reframing opponents in news translation: a case study of the Sino-Philippine South China Sea Dispute

ABSTRACT This paper examines the reframed narratives and re-instantiated stance in news translation on the South China Sea Dispute between China and the Philippines. It integrates the attitudinal framework and reframing strategies in the investigation of 91 pairs of Chinese and English news reports which are both collected from Xinhuanet. The analytical result shows that in the Chinese version of news, the Philippines, as the opponent to China in the South China Sea, is mostly reported in a negative stance. In the English versions, the negative stance is either strengthened or softened via reframing strategies. It is argued that the possible reasons for such deviations may include different target readership, institutional protocols of the news agency and related sociocultural beliefs.

Initiating a Complaint: Change Over Time in French L2 Speakers’ Practices

ABSTRACT This study documents change over time and across proficiency levels in French second-language (L2) speakers’ practices for initiating complaints. Prior research has shown that speakers typically initiate complaints in a stepwise manner that indexes the contingent, moral, and delicate nature of the activity. Although elementary speakers in my data often launch complaint sequences in a straightforward way, they sometimes embodiedly foreshadow verbal expressions of negative stance or delay negative talk through brief positively valenced prefaces. More advanced speakers in part rely on the same initiation practices as elementary speakers. In addition, they recurrently use extensive prefatory work that accounts for and legitimizes the upcoming complaint, and they regularly initiate complaints jointly with coparticipants through a progressive escalation of negative stance expressions. I document interactional resources involved in this change and discuss the findings in terms of speakers’ development of L2 interactional competence. Data are in French with English translations.

Socio-Ecological Perceptions of Wildfire Management and Effects in Greece

Adapting to the growing frequency of catastrophic wildfires in Greece and mitigating their effects is a complex socio-ecological problem. We used an online survey to query more than 100 engaged stakeholders who can potentially influence possible legislation and fire management organizational reform, emphasizing civil protection agencies and research entities. We focused the questionnaire on the importance of different wildfire effects to understand which were considered negative or unacceptable, indifferent, or positive. For fire prevention, we examined the range of acceptance and views on fuel management and fire use activities that are limited in extent or not allowed in Greece. We also examined the beliefs regarding ignition causes and responsibility, in addition to how different policies might reduce wildfire-related problems. The results revealed an emphasis on reforming wildfire management policies to deal with the way society and agencies function and interact, and mitigate the influence of climate change in wildfire frequency and behavior. In addition, respondents had a negative stance towards allowing wildfires to burn for resource objectives and a strong belief that arsonists are behind most ignitions. They also believe the lack of a national cadaster system is a major source of wildfire-related problems. The results indicate little support for fuel treatments, but increased acceptance for the legalization of fire use during firefighting (backfires). This study summarizes current wildfire perceptions in Greece and identifies opportunities and barriers to changes in wildfire governance to improve risk management programs and guide post-fire management and mitigation.

Scrutinizing the knowledge and stigma of HIV/AIDS in the community level in Indonesia and the correlation to risk groups aversion to screening

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has continuously been considered a scourge in Indonesia. Negative societal stance might be attributed to the poor biological, psychological, and emotional knowledge of HIV. Here we aimed to demonstrate the level of knowledge, stigma, and barriers for accessing HIV services. We conducted a cross-sectional survey in December 2019 in Kemayoran District, Jakarta, Indonesia. The survey consisted of a demographic section, HIV-Knowledge Questionnaire 18, and Stigma Questionnaires. An in-depth interview was conducted with eight subjects representing high-risk HIV and healthcare professionals; in-vivo and thematic analysis were employed. Overall, 83 respondents participated, 50.6% male, and 61.7% aged 26-45 years old. Instrumental, symbolic, and civility stigma were significantly higher in 25.9%, 19.8%, and 17.3% of samples, respectively. Stigma was associated with HIV knowledge (λ: 0.887, df: 3, partial η2: 0.113), and high knowledge level decreased the odds of instrumental stigma (OR: 0.292, 95% CI 0.095-0.900, p<0.05). Fear of discrimination and limited information was identified as intrinsic factors, while media portrays HIV and extraneous screening hours as extrinsic factors. The knowledge on HIV is still low at the community level in the Indonesian capital, which correlates to higher stigma and inhibits the high-risk population from accessing HIV medical services.

Assessing Vaping Views, Usage, and Vaping-Related Education Among Medical Students: A Pilot Study.

BackgroundE-cigarette use, or vaping, is known to be associated with potentially life-threatening lung injury, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting 2,807 hospitalizations and 68 deaths in the United States due to e-cigarette or vaping-associated lung injury. Vaping is also a risk factor for and is implicated in the spreading of COVID-19. Despite the consequences of vaping, the views and training of medical students regarding vaping is unclear. This study sought to investigate the knowledge and perception of vaping amongst future health care providers.MethodsAn anonymous, online survey was administered to 259 first through fourth year medical students at Nova Southeastern University Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine via a secure website link in October 2019 and January 2020. The survey consisted of two sections. All participants answered section one, involving nine questions. This first section addressed sociodemographic characteristics, personal views on vaping, rating and impact of vaping medical education, and whether students had ever tried vaping. If students had ever vaped, they proceeded to section two of the survey including nine additional questions. Students that reported no past vaping use ended the survey and did not proceed to section two. Section two focused on evaluating vaping habits of users by questioning age of first usage, use frequency and nature, reasons for first trying and/or continuing to use, plans for quitting, personal impact of use, and current use. Data was analyzed with frequency and percentage distributions.ResultsMost respondents were of age 18-25 years (66.8%) and female (60.2%). Almost all students (96.5%) were aware of the negative health consequences of vaping. More than two thirds of students (68.7%) rated their vaping medical education as inadequate and the majority (76.1%) indicated their medical school curriculum did not impact their view on the matter. Most students (71.0%) reported a more negative stance on vaping due to recent news and media. Of the respondents, over two thirds (37.5%) vaped at least once and were labeled “vapers.” The most commonly stated reason for first trying vaping was recreational (60.8%). Half of vapers (50.5%) admitted to vaping in the past year and most vapers (90.6%) did not think their vaping impacted others. Current vaping use was reported in almost one-third of vapers (32.3%) despite knowing its dangers, and several (6.3%) did not consider vaping dangerous.ConclusionThe findings from this pilot study conducted at a single medical school indicate possible deficiencies in vaping education, at least as perceived by the respondents and demonstrated by their vaping-related actions. It is unknown if the stated vaping views and practices of these medical students would be positively impacted by better vaping education or if these practices are generalizable to other students. However, the data suggests there is a need to consider more extensive analyses of medical school curriculums with respect to vaping education and training of students in these and related areas. Recommendations to enhance medical school curriculums include vaping-focused respiratory and gastrointestinal lectures, problem-based case studies on vaping, standardized patient encounters, and a community education program taught by medical students.

Источники о социально-политических настроениях крестьянства Ишимского округа Уральской области в 1925-1927 гг. По материалам сводок окружного отдела ОГПУ

The article uses previously unstudied reports of the Ishim district OGPU department to describe social and political attitudes of various groups of peasantry in the palmy days of the New Economic Policy (1925–27). The study is to consider the influence of social rural stratification on peasants’ mindsets and the relationship between the authorities and the peasantry; to assess the political resources of the Ishim peasantry through the lens of the OGPU reports; and to show the intransigence in social interests of the rural poor and the kulaks. The authors assess political moods of peasant population as a whole and those of particular social groups: poor, middle peasants, and kulaks. Political moods of the peasantry differentiated with respect to the following criteria: attitude to the Soviet government and various groups and strata, attitude to agricultural tax, attitude to religion, and church, and also according to the degree of political consciousness. On the basis of this analysis, we put forward an idea of multidirectional, heterogeneous participation of peasant population in the political life of the second half of the 1920s and of its significant social differentiation. In general, in the rural areas, the Soviet government was unequivocally supported by the poor, who were to some degree influenced by the kulaks. The middle peasants were characterized by their changing attitude; they symptomatically juxtaposed Soviet government and communists. The rich peasants took an extremely negative position to the Soviet government and tried to exert pressure on the local authorities (i.e. village soviets). However, discontent with the New Economic Policy encompassed all strata of the peasantry. Persistent confrontation between peasants fighting each other in the Ishim anti-communist peasant uprising of 1921 did not weaken for quite a long time. In conclusion, it is noted that protests, social deviations, and negative stance on the New Economic Policy gradually intensified in the political behavior of the Ishim district peasantry. The OGPU reports are a representative source that permits to reconstruct the social and political attitudes of the Ishim region peasantry.

Mapping the field of turbulent changes around the issue of migration in Poland

The issue of migration had become highly politicized in Poland already before the 2015 elections. The neoconservative Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) party made it one of the key topics in the electoral campaign both for the parliamentary and for the presidential elections, both of which the party won. Poland has switched from a country with the highest acceptance rate of refugees in the EU to the one with the lowest rate within about a year. The narrative about masses of refugees in Poland and at its borders threatening Polish culture, civilization and identity started to gather momentum and has provoked numerous intended and unintended consequences, political and social. On the one hand such statements and politics have sparked an increase in hate speech and incidents, and violent actions. On the other, as a reaction, there is an observable awakening of the civil society in Poland through more intensified actions of various groups and organizations. Both are outcomes of the situation in which the government and the ruling party take a strong and negative stance on the issue of migrants and refugees. At the same time, anti-racist activism has been instrumentalized as a tool for anti-government struggles, involving new actors into the struggle. The new alliances forged after 2015 are more than interesting and will be described below, based on the empirical research conducted for a comparative research project on anti-racist contention in the Baltic Sea region. I will show particularly the nature of cooperation between grassroots groups (often radical) and the more moderate NGOs, activists (of both stripes) and civil servants as well as politicians; and here point to the specific role of municipalities and the city-level.

De Natura: The Church Fathers on Creation's Fallenness

De Natura:The Church Fathers on Creation's Fallenness Matthew T. Warnez B.H. Introduction "Who gave the mosquito its stinger for sucking blood? How narrow is the tube by which it sucks! Who has arranged this? Who has made this?"1 These modern-seeming questions were in fact those of Augustine's fifth-century congregation. Augustine plied his usual rhetorical vigor to dismiss the "the problem of natural evil"—as we call it today—and yet his hearers' doubts have persisted down to our own times. Indeed, pace Augustine, it would seem the problem of natural evil has become only more vexing to Christians in the post-Darwinian era. If the animal kingdom was made through a cruel, evolutionary process, and if the wrath of God fails to justify (at least in modern minds) the woes of—say—pandemics, then, should we not suppose that lower creation is fallen? But if it is, how did it happen? Or, if it is not, why does it so often seem fallen?2 Many conservative Christians today, when pressed on such questions, will suppose that lower creation was somehow soiled by the Fall of man. In addition to ostensibly reifying the literal sense of Genesis 3:17–19 (or Romans 8:19–22), this "negative" view of lower creation carries the advantage of a winsome theodicy. For, if all creation was vitiated by Adam's sin, [End Page 933] then God is not to be blamed for natural disasters, mass extinctions, or animal suffering—though presently "thorns infest the ground," the whole world was originally free from pain and death.3 In pastoral settings of all denominations, this tends to be the "received view," not usually requiring explication nor apology. Attractive as this theodicy may be, however, it flies in the face of an evolutionary reckoning of natural history. According to modern biology, life on earth predated man's existence by some four billion years. The fossil record, in addition to revealing that prehistoric creatures regularly died, also suggests that almost every species that ever existed is now extinct. Lest the Fall of man be pushed back into some preembodied epoch, animal death would not seem to be a consequence of the Fall at all. Indeed, some evolutionary theists would go further, holding that man's Fall had no direct effects on nature. According to this "positive" view, both before the Fall and after, animals persisted in their natural behaviors: killing, dying, and gradually evolving. Thus, only the former view offers a happy theodicy, and only the latter harmonizes with modern science. But what is the Catholic view? Although the fallen version is sometimes presumed in modern Catholic theology,4 the magisterium has never authoritatively addressed the question. Thus, and since the meaning of the Bible is often contested on this point, it becomes important to establish the opinions of the Church Fathers.5 Unfortunately, recent decades have seen the publication of only a few, partial surveys of patristic eco-theology with respect to the Fall,6 most of which have been all-too-obviously prejudiced, whether by creationist,7 [End Page 934] evolutionary,8 or conservationist9 ideals. Admittedly, an incomplete and prejudiced survey is one of the few ways to make sense of the data: the Fathers had a surprising amount to say on this question, and their opinions, which varied considerably, are scattered haphazardly throughout their writings. To make matters worse, in the patristic age, the subject rarely received a sustained treatment, and even more rarely did the Fathers comment on each other's views. While I have attempted to set my own biases aside (let the reader be the judge), I can hardly boast, in light of such difficulties, to have produced an exhaustive study of the Fathers. Nevertheless, I do believe this essay constitutes the most comprehensive such study to date, and I do believe my conclusions, though not exceptionless, are adequately representative. In the course of my analysis there emerged two predominant opinions, opinions it seemed right to title by their most influential exponents: Irenaeus and Augustine. Irenaeus took the negative stance (i.e., that Adam's Fall had certain immediate and negative effect upon...