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Full-Text Articles in Social Justice

Hetch Hetchy Redux: An Effort To Turn Back The Environmental Clock, Nancy Unger Oct 2012

Hetch Hetchy Redux: An Effort To Turn Back The Environmental Clock, Nancy Unger

History

If San Francisco voters pass Measure F on November 6, the city will conduct an $8 million study on the feasibility, costs, and benefits of draining the 300-foot deep reservoir created by the O’Shaughnessy Dam in 1923. The measure’s proponents see it as a first step in restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley, sister valley to Yosemite, to its natural state. That the measure is even on the ballot is a significant indication of the shift in attitudes towards the ongoing conflict between nature preservation and traditional notions of progress.


Introduction: Sex, Sexuality, And Gender As Useful Categories In Environmental History, Nancy Unger Oct 2012

Introduction: Sex, Sexuality, And Gender As Useful Categories In Environmental History, Nancy Unger

History

This book is an effort to explain these kinds of extreme gendered divisions and to offer an enriched understanding of the powerful interplay between environment and sex, sexuality, and gender. The synergy produced by that interplay has been significant throughout American history, but it cannot be adequately understood and appreciated as long as those fields are discussed as discrete entities. The fields of gender and environment are growing, but scholars have seldom joined them together in analysis or heeded historian Carolyn Merchant's call that a gendered perspective be added to conceptual frameworks in environmental history.5 They have not offered a …


Simulating Real Lives: Promoting Global Empathy And Interest In Learning Through Simulation Games, Christine Bachen, Pedro F. Hernández-Ramos, Chad Raphael Aug 2012

Simulating Real Lives: Promoting Global Empathy And Interest In Learning Through Simulation Games, Christine Bachen, Pedro F. Hernández-Ramos, Chad Raphael

Communication

In response to an increasingly interdependent world, educators are demonstrating a growing interest in educating for global citizenship. Many definitions of the “good global citizen” value empathy as an especially important disposition for understanding others across national borders and cultural divides. Yet it may be difficult for people to achieve empathy with others who are perceived as psychologically and geographically distant. Can computerized simulation games help foster global empathy and interest in global civic learning? This quasiexperimental classroom study of 301 Northern California high school students in three schools examined the effects of playing REAL LIVES, a simulation game that …


"I Enter Into Its Burning": Yvonne Vera's Beautiful Cauldron Of Violence, John C. Hawley May 2012

"I Enter Into Its Burning": Yvonne Vera's Beautiful Cauldron Of Violence, John C. Hawley

English

Commentators inevitably remark upon Yvonne Vera's prose and upon its startling application to the violent episodes she recounts. Some find it inappropriate, self-conscious, more suited to poetry than to prose. Others (and sometimes the same folks) describe it as by far her strongest suit, wherein descriptive powers overtake narration and plot becomes inevitably amorphous - but lovely. In this essay I wish to analyze why this conflicted response would not have concerned the author and why, in fact, she would have sought to discomfort the reader while bringing pleasure. Many writers before Vera have struggled over the applicability of art …


The Social Dimensions Of Sustainability And Change In Diversified Farming Systems, Christopher M. Bacon, Christy Getz, Sibella Kraus, Maywa Montenegro, Kaelin Holland Jan 2012

The Social Dimensions Of Sustainability And Change In Diversified Farming Systems, Christopher M. Bacon, Christy Getz, Sibella Kraus, Maywa Montenegro, Kaelin Holland

Environmental Studies and Sciences

Agricultural systems are embedded in wider social-ecological processes that must be considered in any complete discussion of sustainable agriculture. Just as climatic profiles will influence the future viability of crops, institutions, i.e., governance agreements, rural household and community norms, local associations, markets, and agricultural ministries, to name but a few, create the conditions that foster sustainable food systems. Because discussions of agricultural sustainability often overlook the full range of social dimensions, we propose a dual focus on a broad set of criteria, i.e., human health, labor, democratic participation, resiliency, biological and cultural diversity, equity, and ethics, to assess social outcomes, …


Wisconsin's League Against Nuclear Dangers: The Power Of Informed Citizenship, Nancy Unger Jan 2012

Wisconsin's League Against Nuclear Dangers: The Power Of Informed Citizenship, Nancy Unger

History

Wisconsin's League Against Nuclear Dangers (LAND), a loose organization active in the 1970s and 1980s, was predominantly made up of white middle-aged and middle-class homemakers with minimal formal education in the sciences. The story of LAND is a powerful lesson in what people can accomplish when they take their rights as citizens seriously and commit themselves to learning a complex subject in depth in order to be knowledgeable and persuasive.