This is worth mentioning. There is an upcoming conference on the ethics of consumption. Eursafe 2013: “The Ethics of Consumption: The Citizen, The Market, and The Law.” This is for the 11th Congress of the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics, Uppsala, Sweden, September 11-14, 2013! There is currently an open call for abstract submissions, with a due date of January 1st 2013.
Check out the details on the International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE) website.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Yes, I've been in hiding, but for good reason...
Yes, I have been hiding out for some time now. For the past year I have been writing exclusively on the dissertation. And guess what, it is nearly complete! After all this time, I finally have something of substantial quality and relevance to the issues facing the future sustainability of our food systems.
Over the course of the process I have had my share of hiccups and redirects, but with focus and perseverance, I have put together a series of solid research articles. These articles represent the basis of the dissertation; each article is unique, but related, and each one addresses issues related to sustainable consumption, sustainability discourse, and equity in our agri-food systems.
Anyway, all ideas for future work. In the meantime, I will post some of the research, probably around the end of September. And now that this project is finally coming to an end, I will have more time to start using this blog as a means to "think out loud" again. Plus, I will have time to get this little webcrawler software project ready for public use!
Over the course of the process I have had my share of hiccups and redirects, but with focus and perseverance, I have put together a series of solid research articles. These articles represent the basis of the dissertation; each article is unique, but related, and each one addresses issues related to sustainable consumption, sustainability discourse, and equity in our agri-food systems.
One article in particular looks at people's 'affective connection' with nature as defined in Mayer et al. (2004), and their Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS). Following Aldo Leopold's concept of the 'Land Ethic,' the CNS aims to measure the degree to which people feel a sense of connectedness to nature as part of their broader community. Leopold suggested that this connection was essential to changing human relationships with the land, away from a form of destructive dominance over nature, and towards one of respectful cooperation with nature.
Using a much abbreviated version of the CNS - 4 items versus 14 items - I looked at the association between peoples sense of nature connectedness and behavior vis-a-vie, ethical consumption. The study looked specifically at sustainable food provisioning in the form of attitudes and behaviors around local food purchasing. Even with the smaller sized scale, the 4 items retained from Mayer et al. original CNS proved to be an important indicator of both interest in ethical consumption and actual behavior through local food provisioning.
This is very exciting as it further verifies the CNS, while also giving additional evidence to the importance of Leopold's 'Land Ethic' perspective. Of course, more research is needed, and it would be particularly necessary to employ the entire scale in a study of actual behavior. However, the little bit of evidence that this study provides is important. It also has sparked additional thinking about what influences a person's connection to nature. Perhaps the answer is being worked on the University of Virginia, through an exploration of a concept called, The Nature Pyramid. It is argued that humans require a range of interactions with their natural environment. The Pyramid defines various forms of interactions in terms of scale.
I wonder which forms will prove to have the most impact, if any, on cultivating a person's connection to nature... I wonder if, and how the structure and character of human-built environments will influence this connectedness. Perhaps Christopher Alexander's concept of 'degrees of life' in a place will prove useful in future inquiry.
Anyway, all ideas for future work. In the meantime, I will post some of the research, probably around the end of September. And now that this project is finally coming to an end, I will have more time to start using this blog as a means to "think out loud" again. Plus, I will have time to get this little webcrawler software project ready for public use!
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Status Update - Revealing my secret research project - On the Experience of Living More Sustainabily
- On the Experience of Living in a More Sustainable Manner -
Well, life over the past 6 months has seemed like a whirlwind, not unlike the 6 months before it.
As I come to my senses, and the mental fog clears, I find myself feeling as if my family and I have been abused - sucked dry. In part, the past year or so has been the result of our own choices, and partly the results of external forces outside our immediate control. And no, I have yet to complete the dissertation, and up until the last 4 weeks everything has been pretty much on hold. However, with a little reprieve and some time for personal reflection, I realize how much hardship can teach each one of us.
For one, I think Maslow was correct in his assessment of human fulfillment. In my case, when one's life is reduced primarily to dealing with the basic necessity of survival, higher level pursuits tend to suffer. The capacity for reflection is not necessarily diminished, but the depth of importance or relevance to one's immediate survival needs seems ancillary.
It is almost embarrassing to publicly admit this, but I know what it means to feel hunger. I know the fear (uncertaintity ) and shame (poor choices) that comes with the threat of homelessness. I know the sense of uncertaintity that comes with poverty, as well as the loss of "freedom" that comes with poverty. Instead of having the ability of choosing between a series of positive pursuits, the experience of poverty is one where the opportunities one has are severely limited in terms of the number of options one has available, as well as the quality of those options. Often times my wife and I would find ourselves having to choose between phones, power and food. Most days, we could only choose one.
Unfortunately, I am already familiar with the experience of being a young father, and a husband struggling to take care of a new family. At the age of 19, I woke to a foreign reality - Somehow I navigated through teenage homelessness, and all of the things that come with being 16, and living life on the streets. Somehow I was employed, working just above minimum wage, and a roof over my head. Still I was a high school drop out who barely completed the 9th grade, and who was suffering from a deficit of purpose and vision - suffering from a deep existential angst. However, with the reality of fatherhood and the level of responsibility that being a parent entailed, compelled - demanded a cosmic shift. I committed to finding a purpose, that ideal vision - where I could live in line with my passions and beliefs. The trick was finding out what that meant...
Fast forward 13 years, and I find that those earlier years seem like a faded dream of another person, living another life. But whether one is a homeless teen, a nervous parent to be, or a respected scholar - a convergence of events can land anyone in peril, and at any moment the feeling of powerlessness in the storm of life can overwhelm and debilitate.
On the other hand, not all is "negative" and it often seems that through the hardships we encounter in life, are the times when we are challenged and . For one, as someone who pays lip service to the ideals of "voluntary simplicity," it wasn't until I was confronted with "forced simplicity" that I learned how to watch my habitual patterns towards consumption, accumulation and the never-ending pursuit of comfort. Thinking for a moment about the "Fulfillment Curve" articulated in the book, "Your Money or Your Life," I can't help but see the parallels with my own life experience. We sought out a degree of comfort to offset the overwhelming discomfort through coffee, food, alcohol, etc. But the more we sought out these small comforts the more we perpetuated the problems of scaricity, and ultimately the problem of choice. The time, energy and worry that went into balancing the immediate needs, and immediate wants became a greater stresser than the relief we derived from fulfilling those wants. Like a drug addict, I was habituated to the satisficing of my desire for comfort, even when both my apparent obsession and compulsion had become key factors in my mental and material poverty.
Overall, I learned that although I possess the skills and experiences to start and run an organic, sustainable farm - write software, do research, run a non-profit, etc., etc. - my obsession with those more immediate comforts made it impossible to forgo these things -- despite our dreams, and our cause. After all, one of the very basis for the move was my own desire to extend beyond my "objective" research work on sustainable living and agriculture, and delve into the phenomenological dimension of what it means to live in greater ecological balance.
Sure you can read books, and study the science but to immerse oneself in the practice and process reveals a type of knowledge that is hidden through more positivist approaches to developing knowledge and insight. While one might seem to be discursive in nature, the other would seem more heuristic, and born out of immediate experience. I just never anticipated this little detour, and yet it was the act of purposeful struggle that highlighted the material, social and psychological barriers that invariably shape the character and extent of our abilities to live more balanced, or at least more coherently with our ideals.
Unlike a survey, or an in-person interview - the active engagement in attempting to create coherence between one's ideals and one's actions, a disciplined and methodical inquiry into the nature, or experience of sustainability reveals a different dimension. The process of reflection in the wake of all that has transpired highlights to me, one of the missing elements in my research. What has been missing is the personal story - the personal struggles, failures and successes.
While I have spent a great deal of time working on developing a web crawler to support my social network and discourse analysis, I realized that one critical element was missing. For me, it is not enough to merely study a particular phenomenon. In a sense, one must enter into it in order to more fully comprehend the nuanced nature of the phenomenon. This embrace and engagement is in a sense a response to the more starchy, antiseptic research endevours that speaks to a highly academic audience. While this is important in the context of research and policy, our intellectual engagement must delve beyond the specific research question and dig deeper. We must begin to consider more fully what it means to be a human living in modernity and simultaneously seeking to follow a post-modern - ecologically oriented worldview.
So far, the revelation of living (or attempting to) illuminates the contradictions of choice that emerge - contradictions that are made apparent through the limitations of time and space - contradictions that appear in light of scarcity. As I move forward in this line of inquiry, I hope to give more context to the growth in local food systems, and especially the growing movement of people seeking opportunities to grow their own food and reassert more control over their food supply. Yet, just as this project aims to reveal the opportunities and intelligence of human communities (and individuals), it is meant to show the limits that confront us. By seeing both, it is possible to create more intelligent solutions and opportunities for making it easier for people to begin living more consciously, more voluntarily, and ultimately more sustainably...
Well, life over the past 6 months has seemed like a whirlwind, not unlike the 6 months before it.
As I come to my senses, and the mental fog clears, I find myself feeling as if my family and I have been abused - sucked dry. In part, the past year or so has been the result of our own choices, and partly the results of external forces outside our immediate control. And no, I have yet to complete the dissertation, and up until the last 4 weeks everything has been pretty much on hold. However, with a little reprieve and some time for personal reflection, I realize how much hardship can teach each one of us.
For one, I think Maslow was correct in his assessment of human fulfillment. In my case, when one's life is reduced primarily to dealing with the basic necessity of survival, higher level pursuits tend to suffer. The capacity for reflection is not necessarily diminished, but the depth of importance or relevance to one's immediate survival needs seems ancillary.
It is almost embarrassing to publicly admit this, but I know what it means to feel hunger. I know the fear (uncertaintity ) and shame (poor choices) that comes with the threat of homelessness. I know the sense of uncertaintity that comes with poverty, as well as the loss of "freedom" that comes with poverty. Instead of having the ability of choosing between a series of positive pursuits, the experience of poverty is one where the opportunities one has are severely limited in terms of the number of options one has available, as well as the quality of those options. Often times my wife and I would find ourselves having to choose between phones, power and food. Most days, we could only choose one.
(Side note: the connection between choice and the "experience" of poverty seem to resonate with Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum's conceptions of justice - where the capabilities one is afforded correspond to the freedom to act, the freedom to enjoy life)
Unfortunately, I am already familiar with the experience of being a young father, and a husband struggling to take care of a new family. At the age of 19, I woke to a foreign reality - Somehow I navigated through teenage homelessness, and all of the things that come with being 16, and living life on the streets. Somehow I was employed, working just above minimum wage, and a roof over my head. Still I was a high school drop out who barely completed the 9th grade, and who was suffering from a deficit of purpose and vision - suffering from a deep existential angst. However, with the reality of fatherhood and the level of responsibility that being a parent entailed, compelled - demanded a cosmic shift. I committed to finding a purpose, that ideal vision - where I could live in line with my passions and beliefs. The trick was finding out what that meant...
Fast forward 13 years, and I find that those earlier years seem like a faded dream of another person, living another life. But whether one is a homeless teen, a nervous parent to be, or a respected scholar - a convergence of events can land anyone in peril, and at any moment the feeling of powerlessness in the storm of life can overwhelm and debilitate.
On the other hand, not all is "negative" and it often seems that through the hardships we encounter in life, are the times when we are challenged and . For one, as someone who pays lip service to the ideals of "voluntary simplicity," it wasn't until I was confronted with "forced simplicity" that I learned how to watch my habitual patterns towards consumption, accumulation and the never-ending pursuit of comfort. Thinking for a moment about the "Fulfillment Curve" articulated in the book, "Your Money or Your Life," I can't help but see the parallels with my own life experience. We sought out a degree of comfort to offset the overwhelming discomfort through coffee, food, alcohol, etc. But the more we sought out these small comforts the more we perpetuated the problems of scaricity, and ultimately the problem of choice. The time, energy and worry that went into balancing the immediate needs, and immediate wants became a greater stresser than the relief we derived from fulfilling those wants. Like a drug addict, I was habituated to the satisficing of my desire for comfort, even when both my apparent obsession and compulsion had become key factors in my mental and material poverty.
Overall, I learned that although I possess the skills and experiences to start and run an organic, sustainable farm - write software, do research, run a non-profit, etc., etc. - my obsession with those more immediate comforts made it impossible to forgo these things -- despite our dreams, and our cause. After all, one of the very basis for the move was my own desire to extend beyond my "objective" research work on sustainable living and agriculture, and delve into the phenomenological dimension of what it means to live in greater ecological balance.
Sure you can read books, and study the science but to immerse oneself in the practice and process reveals a type of knowledge that is hidden through more positivist approaches to developing knowledge and insight. While one might seem to be discursive in nature, the other would seem more heuristic, and born out of immediate experience. I just never anticipated this little detour, and yet it was the act of purposeful struggle that highlighted the material, social and psychological barriers that invariably shape the character and extent of our abilities to live more balanced, or at least more coherently with our ideals.
Unlike a survey, or an in-person interview - the active engagement in attempting to create coherence between one's ideals and one's actions, a disciplined and methodical inquiry into the nature, or experience of sustainability reveals a different dimension. The process of reflection in the wake of all that has transpired highlights to me, one of the missing elements in my research. What has been missing is the personal story - the personal struggles, failures and successes.
While I have spent a great deal of time working on developing a web crawler to support my social network and discourse analysis, I realized that one critical element was missing. For me, it is not enough to merely study a particular phenomenon. In a sense, one must enter into it in order to more fully comprehend the nuanced nature of the phenomenon. This embrace and engagement is in a sense a response to the more starchy, antiseptic research endevours that speaks to a highly academic audience. While this is important in the context of research and policy, our intellectual engagement must delve beyond the specific research question and dig deeper. We must begin to consider more fully what it means to be a human living in modernity and simultaneously seeking to follow a post-modern - ecologically oriented worldview.
So far, the revelation of living (or attempting to) illuminates the contradictions of choice that emerge - contradictions that are made apparent through the limitations of time and space - contradictions that appear in light of scarcity. As I move forward in this line of inquiry, I hope to give more context to the growth in local food systems, and especially the growing movement of people seeking opportunities to grow their own food and reassert more control over their food supply. Yet, just as this project aims to reveal the opportunities and intelligence of human communities (and individuals), it is meant to show the limits that confront us. By seeing both, it is possible to create more intelligent solutions and opportunities for making it easier for people to begin living more consciously, more voluntarily, and ultimately more sustainably...
(More to Come)
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Update on the Webbot/CA/SNA Software... (CyberMapper)
Ok, so I came up with a name for the webbot project - "CyberMapper." Not sure if this is already in use, or whether it will stick, but for ease I had to come up with something. So there it is, and the CyberMapper project is getting closer to a beta release. For now, it is being restricted to academic use only, there are already plenty of solutions that cater to
To recap from previous posts, this is an application being developed to assist my research efforts here at WSU. CyberMapper is a web application written in PHP, and backed by a MySQL DB. It currently runs locally on my computer, and lacks a suitable UI, so all command line. But, I'm planning to get it running live, and with a slick UI (maybe pseudo-slick).
OK, so what does CyberMapper do? -
In addition to what the software does, I'm also trying to develop a text analysis tool to then process the parsed content of the sites. Of course, there are software tools already available, but this simple tool could be useful in choosing the data collection to upload in a package like Atlas.ti. Of course the data collected from each of the crawls can be exported to an Excel workbook, and in my case, I'm using Stata 10.
But, will I meet my own July 15th deadline? Probably not, we are in the middle of moving, and other work responsibilities are calling. But I'm close to begin sharing this project with others, yeah!
To recap from previous posts, this is an application being developed to assist my research efforts here at WSU. CyberMapper is a web application written in PHP, and backed by a MySQL DB. It currently runs locally on my computer, and lacks a suitable UI, so all command line. But, I'm planning to get it running live, and with a slick UI (maybe pseudo-slick).
OK, so what does CyberMapper do? -
The application is designed to retrieve a Google, or Google Blog search query-set (News to be added soon). The software then extracts the links, descriptions and site-title information. This is uploaded into a db. The initial search provides up to 1000 urls that serve to seed a more in-depth web crawl. CyberMapper then initiates the crawl collecting all text/images/multimedia data contained within the site, parses and extracts all outbound links, and saves to the db.
The user can define the search depth to conduct, meaning I can run a "search and save" crawl that goes one step away from the seed site or more. For example, if you set the distance of the search to 4, the search will collect pages 4 links away from the seed site. The user can also define the number of seed sites (provided via the google search results) to use when conducting a crawl. I suggest keeping these numbers small because this could be disastrous unless you are capable of handling terabytes of data.
In addition to what the software does, I'm also trying to develop a text analysis tool to then process the parsed content of the sites. Of course, there are software tools already available, but this simple tool could be useful in choosing the data collection to upload in a package like Atlas.ti. Of course the data collected from each of the crawls can be exported to an Excel workbook, and in my case, I'm using Stata 10.
But, will I meet my own July 15th deadline? Probably not, we are in the middle of moving, and other work responsibilities are calling. But I'm close to begin sharing this project with others, yeah!
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Great Tutorial - PHP and cURL
Since I'm making heavy use of PHP and cURL, I thought I'd share a great tutorial, "PHP and cURL Functions Tutorial," for those interested in working with these technologies to implement their own scraping/crawling web service.
As you should know, PHP is a multi-purpose web scripting language. It is relatively simple to use, fast and uniquely designed to work with the web!
cURL is a set of libraries that enables a user to access web resources remotely, meaning you never have to go to a web page to get the page contents, or fill out a form. In theory, you could process all your online banking requests via PHP and cURL without ever having to manually login and navigate the bank's website.
Basically, with these two technologies, coupled with Google Search, you can do a whole lot of very cool, very good (or very bad) things on the web. These technologies are especially useful for data-mining through the web.
As you should know, PHP is a multi-purpose web scripting language. It is relatively simple to use, fast and uniquely designed to work with the web!
cURL is a set of libraries that enables a user to access web resources remotely, meaning you never have to go to a web page to get the page contents, or fill out a form. In theory, you could process all your online banking requests via PHP and cURL without ever having to manually login and navigate the bank's website.
Basically, with these two technologies, coupled with Google Search, you can do a whole lot of very cool, very good (or very bad) things on the web. These technologies are especially useful for data-mining through the web.
Continuing along with the food discourse in cyberspace project
It has been super hectic these past couple of months. In fact, it has been so stressful I have had little time to perfect my code. Or finish up my drafts for the dissertation for that matter! And this is due like last week!
Fortunately, the code works though, but only partially. I still need to enable the "crawl" function, at least provide a better implementation. Plus, I want to provide an interface to make usability a lot easier. With those two things on the current wish list, I went a head and began an implementation of the project using the CodeIgniter framework for PHP. It is very slick, easy to use and if you have experience with the Model-View-Controller approach to software development then you will be up in no-time writing cool software.
I'm planning to have this newest iteration completed by July 15th. I'm making a public commitment! I'm not promising I'm going to release the project for download just yet, I need to analyze the data and finish writing my paper first, but I will post some returned results from the software.
Fortunately, things are starting to settle down, well the end is in sight! So, I anticipate being able to actually finish this in the time I have allotted.
But first I have a move to tackle! I just got a job with the Washington Sustainable Food and Farming Network, acting as their web developer and online operations manager. I guess I'll be acting kind of like a Swiss Army Knife, not only will I be managing the web operations, I will also be doing some policy work for supporting local food economies in Washington State. The other plus is that its part-time, which means I'll have time for other endeavors, like finishing the dissertation!
Fortunately, the code works though, but only partially. I still need to enable the "crawl" function, at least provide a better implementation. Plus, I want to provide an interface to make usability a lot easier. With those two things on the current wish list, I went a head and began an implementation of the project using the CodeIgniter framework for PHP. It is very slick, easy to use and if you have experience with the Model-View-Controller approach to software development then you will be up in no-time writing cool software.
I'm planning to have this newest iteration completed by July 15th. I'm making a public commitment! I'm not promising I'm going to release the project for download just yet, I need to analyze the data and finish writing my paper first, but I will post some returned results from the software.
Fortunately, things are starting to settle down, well the end is in sight! So, I anticipate being able to actually finish this in the time I have allotted.
But first I have a move to tackle! I just got a job with the Washington Sustainable Food and Farming Network, acting as their web developer and online operations manager. I guess I'll be acting kind of like a Swiss Army Knife, not only will I be managing the web operations, I will also be doing some policy work for supporting local food economies in Washington State. The other plus is that its part-time, which means I'll have time for other endeavors, like finishing the dissertation!
A Learning Experience -
I haven't talked about this at all on this blog, but a little known fact is that back in January I moved my family out of Pullman to Ebey Island right outside of Everett. We found a place with 35 acres, a house, barn and water rights. The plan: to start a small organic market garden and catering service. I even started a brand new blog to document this process and hopefully provide a resource for other wanna-be farmers/foodies. We paid a lot of money up front for the land, seed, and equipment. About 3 weeks before planting, the landlord shows his true colors. It would appear that giving him a large sum of money up front was a bad thing because he seemed to expect that on a regular basis.
Now, I'm not going to go into every detail, I think everyone I know has heard the story a dozen times. But basically he freaks out that we aren't paying him months in advance. His attitude and actions scared me into second guessing whether we wanted to establish this business here. I mean once you plant, you are vested unless you want to loose everything. It's not like I can dig up a 2 acre vegetable garden and move it!
Despite the anger and resentment over his behavior, I learned a valuable lesson in all this (maybe more than one). The first thing is:
So, with all that said, we are moving on to another community, probably to move into an apartment till we can start over. The dream isn't dead, and no asshole is going to kill it for me. Because what I lack in intelligence, I make up through perseverance!
Now, I'm not going to go into every detail, I think everyone I know has heard the story a dozen times. But basically he freaks out that we aren't paying him months in advance. His attitude and actions scared me into second guessing whether we wanted to establish this business here. I mean once you plant, you are vested unless you want to loose everything. It's not like I can dig up a 2 acre vegetable garden and move it!
Despite the anger and resentment over his behavior, I learned a valuable lesson in all this (maybe more than one). The first thing is:
- Follow your gut! While the economics might point you in one direction, that should be tempered with an honest assessment of the person you are doing business with.
- The second lesson is: Do not agree to a month-to-month situation! It might work for some, but legally the landlord can give you 20 days notice, without cause, to vacate the premises. Another reason I got scared...
- The third lesson: I will have to be more persist-ant than ever in order to make this dream a reality.
- The fourth lesson: Never let anyone walk all over you, or think they can. To be more specific, don't be so trusting and don't be so accommodating, unless it is reciprocated.
So, with all that said, we are moving on to another community, probably to move into an apartment till we can start over. The dream isn't dead, and no asshole is going to kill it for me. Because what I lack in intelligence, I make up through perseverance!
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