Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Week Seven: Environmental Economics

Environmental economics focuses on the effects that various environmental issues and policies have on the local, national and international economy. Although the study of environmental economics encompasses all of the effects that can occur due to a variety of environmental issues and policies, the United States' National Bureau of Economic Research's Environmental Economics program is specifically concerned with the costs and benefits of policies geared towards air pollution, air quality, toxic substances, solid waste and global warming. Environmental economics in general, however, is focused more on the idea of market failure, which is what occurs when the market fails to apportion resources efficiently, or, as stated by Nick Hanley, Jason Shogren and Ben White, authors of Environmental Economics: In Theory and Practice: "A market failure occurs when the market does not allocate scarce resources to generate the greatest social welfare." In my opinion, environmental economics is one of, if not the most, important factors in the environmental mess we've gotten ourselves into. Because big businesses are so close interwoven with all levels of the government, those who own and are a part of those big businesses are the ones who are going to have to be argued with and swayed if any large-scale environmental policies and procedures are going to be inacted. I think that the best way to go about approaching these big businesses and through them, the government, about potential solutions to environmental problems, would be by gathering evidence through the application of environmental economics. Environmental economics is so perfect because not only is it concerned about environmental issues and policies, which is what we ought to care the most about, it is also concerned about the effects of environmental issues and policies, which is what a majority of us, unfortunately but nevertheless, care more about.

Environmental Economics Articles:
  • The Limited Potential of Ecotourism to Contribute to Wildlife Conservation
    Jack Coburn Isaacs
    Wildlife Society Bulletin
    Vol. 28, No. 1 (Spring, 2000), pp. 61-69
    Published by: Allen Press
    Stable URL:     http://www.jstor.org/stable/4617284

    Jack Coburn Isaacs, the author of The Limited Potential of Ecotourism to Contribute to Wildlife Conservation, argues about a topic that I've always been in support of, but am now re-thinking about because of his article. As is obvious by the the title, that topic is ecotourism. I personally have always liked this solution to protect the environment because, very simply, the environment is beautiful. Not only does it deserve to be preserved, but it deserves to be preserved in places that I or any other tourist would be able to enjoy it fully. Before reading this article, I both enjoyed this solution and thought it was one of the best out there. Isaacs, however, argues that the benefits ecotourism can provide are limited because conservations and preserves are not considered long-term solutions. What came as a surprise to me was that ecotourism often, actually, leads to further environmental degradation because it gives off the impression that the environment is actually doing incredibly well and doesn't need to be protected, backfiring completely. Isaacs ties his argument in with economics by stating that because the main purpose of ecotourism (promoting the protection of the environment) fails, the entire ecotourism market is prone to market failure.

Additional Information:
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Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Week Five: Environmental Psychology

What Is Environmental Psychology?
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Environmental psychology is essentially the core of the disciplinary major, environmental studies: it is the field dedicated to the analysis of the interplay between human beings and their surrounding environments, including natural, social, and learning environments. Factors that can influence the reactions associated with various environments include everything and anything from the color of the walls and pieces of furniture; to how hot or cold the area is; to how much sunlight is let in. Each aspect, no matter how miniscule, plays an important role in how comfortable a person is in his or her living, learning, and working spaces. Accordingly, environmental psychology is most often applied by professional designers, such as architects and urban planners, who are attempting to create an environment that is both effective and inviting for those who exist within it. For example, city officials have recently begun to commission pieces of large-scale street art to be placed throughout the busiest areas so that all citizens can enjoy them; couples wishing to sell or improve upon their homes hire an interior designer to aid in "maximizing the potential" of each room. The tiniest details can greatly influence one’s reaction to surrounding environments; environmental psychology studies and alters these details to provide the best, most effective, and most comfortable outcomes.
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Related Articles:

☼ - Tonello, G. "Seasonal affective disorder: Lighting research and Environmental psychology." Lighting Research & Technology 40.2 (2008): 103-110. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 11 Oct. 2011.

Article Summary: This article examines the effects of indoor lighting on people diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder, a depression that reoccurs with the change of seasons. Its author, G. Tonello, suggests that professional designers, such as architects and engineers, ought to focus on the effects that natural light, throughout ALL seasons, has on a building's occupants, and take those effects into consideration when installing lighting systems.

☼ - Stewart, Alan E. "Individual Psychology and Environmental Psychology." Journal of Individual Psychology 63.1 (2007): 67-85. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 11 Oct. 2011.

☼ - DAVID MELLOR, et al. "Environmental mastery and depression in older adults in residential care." Ageing & Society 31.5 (2011): 870-884. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 11 Oct. 2011.

Additional Information:

☼ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_psychology
Wikipedia's article on environmental psychology.

☼ - http://environmentpsychology.com/
An entire website dedicated to the ways in which an ordinary person can improve his or her living space.

☼ - http://www.psychology4all.com/EnvironmentalPsychology.htm
Psychology4all's in-depth description of environmental psychology, including its various concepts and influences. 

☼ - http://sensingarchitecture.com/1456/environmental-psychology-what-every-architect-should-ask-themselves/
An interesting article on how important a role environmental psychology plays in the field of architecture.

The IAAP's (International Association of Applied Psychology's) list of published, academic journals about environmental psychology.
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Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Week Four: Semiotics

The shortest, simplest definition of semiotics is the study of signs. It does not, however, cover only the conventional meanings of the word, what one would normally think of upon hearing or reading "sign": road signs, neon signs that advertise businesses, restaurants, and places of entertainment, the signs of everyday life. Semiotics also studies the signs represented by and through drawings, paintings, photographs, words, sounds, and body language, even flavors, acts and objects, all of which vary in meaning between countries and cultures. Semiotics, closely related to and at times considered to be a subgroup of the field of linguistics, can be further broken down into three branches: semantics (the relationship between signs and the people, objects or ideas which the signs refer to), syntactics (the relationship between signs in formal structures, such as language or mathematics), and pragmatics (the relationship between signs and the effects that they have on the people who use them). Obviously, semiotics covers a lot of ground, including ground shared between it and linguistics, mathematics, cultural diversities, and countless other fields of study.

Articles:
Additional Information:
  • http://semioticon.com/

    An open semiotics resource center that provides definitions, articles, journals, reference tools, connections to semioticians, and much more.
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Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Week Three: Actor-Network Theory

Although the concept was a bit hard to understand at first, after reading a few different descriptions on the subject, I've been able to come up with this conclusion: the actor-network theory, often abbreviated ANT, explains the relationships between actors (human and nonhuman) and other actors, between actors and ideas, and between ideas and other ideas, all of which create an ever-shifting network of actors and ideas. The actions occuring within the network, however, must be continuously repeated, or else the network will fall apart. I found a helpful example of ANT in its Wikipedia article: teachers and children (human actors) interact with one another as well as with various technologies, such as tables, chairs, and computers (nonhuman actors), all the while exchanging ideas, thereby creating a network; if the teachers do not come to school each morning, or the computers cease to work, the network will disintegrate. Actor-network theory is not, however, about the network itself, nor does it explain why a network forms between certain actors and ideas. Rather, it explains how a network begins, how it maintains itself, and how it falls apart. Norwegian Professor Ole Hanseth provides another helpful example of ANT: when driving a car, a person is influenced by a number of things, including the condition of the car, traffic regulations, and his or her previous experience driving said car, thus creating a network consisting of both human and nonhuman actors, various ideas, and the relationships that exist between each of these factors. This network was set into motion the moment the person stepped into the car, the actors, ideas and relationships falling into place immediately afterward. The network will temporarily disintegrate once the person turns off his or her car and walks away, only to begin once again the next time he or she decides to drive, perhaps adding more components to the network (driving lessons, a police ticket, a passenger) upon doing so. To sum this concept up, I would like to quote Hanseth: "You do not go about doing your business in a total vacuum but rather under the influence of a wide range of surrounding factors." Actor-network theory, therefore, explains how the "wide range of surrounding factors" comes together as a network, how that network persists, and how that network falls apart.

Articles on Actor-Network Theory:
Additional Information:
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Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Week Two: Motivation Theories

Dictionary.com defines the word motivation as "the act or an instance of motivating, or providing with a reason to act in a certain way." This definition applies to the theories as well as to the word itself. Motivation theories (including the instinct, incentive, and humanistic motivation theories) generally imply that, using the right incentives or under the correct conditions, a person/group of people can be compelled to do something or to act in a specific way; the key is to know what factors drive a person/group of people into action. Motivation theories are often studied closely by various managers, teachers, and leaders due to the fact that those who are in charge of groups of people need to understand what will drive those groups, whether they're employees, students, or citizens, to work, think and act. These theories have also attracted the interest of psychologists, including the famous Abraham Maslow, who conceptualized the hierarchy of needs in his 1943 research paper, "A Theory of Human Motivation." Maslow's hierarchy implies that human beings are compelled to meet their most basic needs (such as sleep, food, and water) before they are able to tackle more complex needs (such as safety and security).

Motivation theories will have a definite impact on not only the beginning our semester-long project, but on its continuance as well. Those of us involved in the initial stages of the project will need to discover what motivates other people (which actually tends to be incredibly hard) to care about and help protect the environment, thus garnering general interest in what we're attempting to do. To spark these desires, we're going to have to decide on the right ways to connect to the interests of different sets of people, whether they're businessmen-and-women, fellow students, or faculty members, because each set of people, as well as each individual person, is going to have his/her own opinion about the environment that we may have to sway.


Articles Related to Motivational Theory:

Additional Information:
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Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Week One: Personality Research

Personality research is exactly what it sounds like: the study of an individual's personality. The "research" aspect can include anything from creating an intricate, detailed outline of someone's psychological make-up to discovering what generally makes each person the same as the rest of the population (or, in certain cases, different). The question that plays an enormous role in every branch of personality research, however, is why. Why does this specific personality factor appear in so many people? Or, Why does it statistically appear in those who descend from a certain lineage? Each personality-related question answered is another step towards giving more precise explanations, and therefore better help, to those who need or want the aid, such as advertisement companies that wish to create the most effective television commercials possible, or the woman who wonders whether her tendency to pace under stress is somehow ingrained in her personality. Although its connections may not seem apparent at first, personality research can, and does, play a major role in environmental studies. For example, the right amount and type of research can explain to some extent why Republicans are less likely to support certain environmental proposals than Democrats, perhaps by having members of both parties complete a survey of carefully chosen questions that delve deeper into each member's personality than he or she realizes. Another example could be proposing the future location of a wind farm based on the outcome of a certain area's personality questionnaires. The uses that personality research could provide for the continued development of environmental studies are endless.

Articles about Personality Research:

Additional Information:
http://www.personalityresearch.org/
http://www.personality-arp.org/index.htm
http://www.true-colors-test.com/truecolorstory.html
http://psychology.about.com/od/personalitydevelopment/a/bigfive.htm
http://www.yourpersonality.net/
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Monday, September 12, 2011

Environmental Studies: Social Perspectives

From pollution and climate change to the loss of biodiversity, environmental issues have to be looked at through many different lenses: social, political, economic, ethical, scientific. Environmental Studies: Social Perspectives is a class which draws its coursework from several different departments in the sciences and social science, and is designed to help students understand the many complex environmental problems we face as a nation and global community.
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