1,720,982 research outputs found
Livelihoods and Social-Environmental Change in the Syr Darya Delta: Adaptive Strategies and Practices
Full text linkIn this dissertation, I examine how local communities in the Syr Darya River delta (Kazakhstan) have been adapting to rapid social-environmental change. While the current environmental change discourses in the study area overwhelmingly focus on the desiccation of the Aral Sea and its consequences, I focus on the Syr Darya Delta, which represents an interesting case of the rural livelihoods such as herding, fishing, reed mowing, and gardening used by locals as common-pool resources. This case is particularly interesting against the backdrop of the Aral Sea catastrophe, which is often regarded as a classic example of the tragedy of commons. I also draw the reader’s attention to the ontological aspects of the environmental change and describe iconic places, iconic species and iconic forces that shaped the irrigation infrastructure development in the Syr Darya Delta. By analyzing the rural livelihoods in the Syr Darya Delta from the commons perspective, I demonstrate some of the limitations of the commons’ institutional design principles and explain why the tragedy of the commons did not happen in the Syr Darya Delta. I further analyze these livelihoods from commoning perspective and make contributions to the commons literature by highlighting how cooperation and competition unfold concurrently and how the cooperation varies across different steps of commoning. Then, I present an overview of the various adaptation strategies used by the local communities in the Syr Darya Delta. I demonstrate that the commonization of resources served as an overarching adaptation strategy, i.e., former state-owned lands and resources have been turned into de-facto common-pool resources. I also describe other adaptive strategies such as shifting agriculture, local soil knowledge, local irrigation techniques and demonstrate how rice-growing corporations can afford a wider range of coping strategies as opposed to a small-scale commoners
Indigenous Peoples and local communities report ongoing and widespread climate change impacts on local social-ecological systems
No full textSacred sites: opportunity for improving biocultural conservation and governance in Ysyk-Köl Biosphere Reserve, Kyrgyz Republic
No full textSacred sites in Ysyk-Köl area of Kyrgyzstan represent areas of land and bodies of water which are spiritually and culturally meaningful for local people. The present study mapped about 130 sacred sites, which are conserved-through-use by local communities and represent traditional model of conservation. The entire territory of Ysyk-Köl region is a formal protected area as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Thus, sacred sites, as traditional model of community conserved area, are embedded in the formal government-run Biosphere Reserve. The study scrutinizes how these two models of conservation (sacred sites and the Biosphere Reserve) co-exist in the same territory and interact with each other. Results indicate that these two models are parallel. However, recognition of sacred sites can improve formal conservation by: a) providing a complementary culture-based set of incentives for conservation, b) fostering a biocultural approach, and c) serving as a communication hub for YKBR managers and local communities.February 201
An inclusive typology of values for navigating transformations towards a just and sustainable future
No full text
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
- …
