The global incidence of dengue has increase 30-fold over the past 50 years in the western or Asian Pacific, this region is also a contemporary epicenter for resource extraction and ecological destabilization. Dengue is addition to yellow fever, chikungunya and most recently zika virus, are transmitted by the mosquito vector Aedes aegypti- a domesticated mosquito adept at breeding in artificial household containers and within homes. The history of the domestication and global distribution of Aedes aegypti is intrinsically linked to European expansion into and among tropical worlds. Contemporary population genetics research suggest the westward expansion of the mosquito vector beginning with trans-Atlantic Slave Trade moving to the Americas and then making a jump across the Pacific, which I argue occurred first within the Philippines and then spread eastward through the greater Indian Ocean. I argue that Spanish and American colonization facilitated the biological invasion of Ae. aegypti and dengue in the Philippines and created the conditions for contemporary epidemics. The discourse within the dominant voices of public health, CDC and WHO, omit this history as well as down play the significance of land use and deforestation while focusing predominantly upon dengue’s prevention and control. This omission is an act of erasure and a means of furthering western imperialism through paternalistic interventions. Mosquito-borne disease epidemics are unintended consequences of past human action and if public health discourse continues to frame epidemics as random and unfortunate events, we risk missing key patterns and continuing to perpetuate the circumstances of disease and adaptation.

[pt] Esta Dissertação se ocupa de uma reflexão acerca das atividades agrícolas, desenvolvidas em uma área remanescente da Mata Atlântica, em tempos pretéritos. Através de levantamentos etnobotânicos, realizados através de entrevistas com 17 moradores do bairro de Vargem Grande, mensuramos a forma como o conhecimento advindo deste legado cultural encontra-se disperso entre os atuais agricultores e seus familiares. Analisamos o repertório de plantas cultivadas com finalidades medicinais e utilitárias através de levantamentos etnobotânicos. Este bairro está situado no Maciço da Pedra Branca, que abriga o Parque Estadual da Pedra Branca (PEPB). A criação do PEPB, através da lei estadual nº.2377, de 28 de junho de 1974, impôs progressivamente novas formas de uso e delimitação do espaço que entraram em choque com as práticas tradicionalmente estabelecidas por moradores. Visando o resgate e uma sistematização destes saberes, conhecimentos tradicionais que representam o legado humano na composição da paisagem, explicitaremos as formas como a população local identifica, utiliza e valoriza os recursos botânicos da área de estudo. As coletas botânicas se deram nos quintais dos moradores e/ou nos espaços de cultivo, de acordo com as informações dos participantes. Foram identificadas 221 espécies, 172 gêneros e 71 famílias botânicas das quais Lamiaceae e Asteraceae foram as que mais se sobressaíram e número de espécies. As categorias que se sobressaíram em número de espécies foram as medicinais (122); alimentares (71); ornamentais (34) em comparação com as condimentares (16), rituais (15), uso animal (5), usadas para construção (4) e cosméticas (1). A categoria medicinal foi analisada mais detalhadamente: nove espécies apresentaram valores de CUPc maior que 50% indicando uma alta concordância de uso principal destas. O grande número de espécies alimentares (cultivadas ou não localmente) bem como de medicinais reflete um resultado coerente com o a realidade do grupo social estudado: um grupo inserido em ambiente florestal relativamente distante de grandes centros comerciais / [en] This dissertation deals with a reflection on the agricultural activities carried out in a remnant of the Atlantic, in past times, and by considerations about the ethnobotanical surveys conducted through interviews with 17 residents of the neighborhood Vargem Grande, inferences about how knowledge gained from this cultural legacy is scattered among existing farmers and their families. We analyzed the repertoire of cultivated plants with medicinal purposes and utilitarian through ethnobotanical surveys. This neighborhood is located in the Pedra Branca, which houses the State Park of Pedra Branca (PEPB). The creation of PEPB by state law No .2377, dated 28 June 1974, gradually imposed new forms of use and definition of space that clashed with practices traditionally defined by residents. Seeking redemption and a systematization of this knowledge, traditional knowledge that represent the human legacy in the composition of the landscape, exploring the ways in which the local population identifies, uses and values the botanical resources of the study area. The botanical collections were found in the backyards of residents and / or areas of cultivation, according to information from participants. We identified 221 species, 172 genera and 71 botanical families including Asteraceae and Lamiaceae were the ones that stand out and number of species. The categories that stood out in number of species were medicinal (122), food (71), ornamental (34) compared with the condiments (16), ritual (15), animal use (5), used for construction (4 ) and cosmetic (1). The medical category was analyzed in more detail: nine species showed CUPc values greater than 50% indicating a high agreement of primary use of these. The large number of food species (locally grown or not) as well as medicinal reflects a result consistent with the the reality of the social group studied: one group entered in the forest environment relatively far from major shopping centers and large number of members performing proper agricultural practices said.

abstract: For more than 100 years, the Unite States National Park Service (NPS) has been guided by a mandate to preserve parks and their resources for the enjoyment of present and future generations. But all parks are subject to conditions that may frustrate preservation efforts. Climate change is melting the glaciers. Rising seas are sweeping away protected shorelines. Development projects, accompanied by air, water, light, and noise pollution, edge closer to parks and fragment habitats. The number of visitors and vested interests are swelling and diversifying. Resources for preservation, such as funds and staff, seem to be continuously shrinking, at least relative to demand. Still, the NPS remains committed to the preservation of our natural and cultural heritage. Yet the practice of that promise is evolving, slowly and iteratively, but detectably. Through explorations of legal and scholarly literature, as well as interviews across the government, non-profit, and academic sectors, I’ve tracked the evolution of preservation in parks. How is preservation shifting to address socio-ecological change? How has preservation evolved before? How should the NPS preserve parks moving forward? The practice of preservation has come to rely on science, including partnerships with academic researchers, as well as inventory and monitoring programs. That shift has in part been guided by goals that have also become more informed by science, like ecological integrity. While some interviewees see science as a solution to the NPS’s challenges, others wonder how applying science can get “gnarly,” due to uncertainty, lack of clear policies, and the diversity of parks and resources. “Gnarly” questions stem in part from the complexity of the NPS as a socio-ecological system, as well as from disputed, normative concepts that underpin the broader philosophy of preservation, including naturalness. What’s natural in the context of pervasive anthropogenic change? Further, I describe how parks hold deep, sometimes conflicting, cultural and symbolic significance for their local and historical communities and for our nation. Understanding and considering those values is part of the gnarly task park managers face in their mission to preserve parks. I explain why this type of conceptual and values-based uncertainty cannot be reduced through science. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Biology 2019

<p>  </p> <p>This dissertation explores how Black and white, men and women in ex-Confederate states physically recreated or created their environment after four long years of war. Through rebuilding and building homes, businesses, churches, jails, and infrastructure, southerners remade their landscape in a way that reflected their aspirations and fears for life in the postwar South, and in ways that reflected expectations about new alliances and relationships. For instance, white southerners used their kinship networks as well as state governments to rebuild jails, courthouses, and grand churches to reconsolidate their elite, Old South status. This process of rebuilding has received little attention from historians, and the existing literature has instead emphasized the social, political, and economic narratives of the Reconstruction Era. While that scholarship is essential to understand the contentious and fraught nature of the period, the unexplored story of rebuilding adds to these histories by recovering the motivations of the laborers and financiers who rebuilt the South after the Civil War. In addition, this project illuminates how Black and white southerners tried to exert control and influence over their space and place in the postwar world, and in doing so, reveals that the work of rebuilding mattered just as much to southerners as did the political reunification and Reconstruction of the Union. More broadly, it posits the process of rebuilding as a moment of transition for both the South and the nation, as it bridged the gap between the Old and New South, wartime and peacetime, and the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras.  </p>

During the first half of the 20th century, lake lowering was a common practice for agricultural drainage in Sweden. Although this phenomenon led to drastic changes in the Swedish landscape, it has been remarkably understudied. Furthermore, previous research on lake lowering, and on the adjacent subject of hydropower, has mostly taken a social constructivist approach. In contrast, the aim of this study was to generate a posthumanist, symmetric account of a lake lowering project, where the non-human actants involved in the network were seen to act. This in order to better understand the driving forces and power relations emerging in a large technical project. The study took the form of an actor-network analysis of the lowering of Lake Tämnaren in the south-east of Sweden. The analysis consists of a chronological account of the project between the years 1923-1967. During the years predating 1950, investigations into both material and social matters were carried out by two engineers who became spokespersons of the many collectives of actants affected by the lake lowering. In the years between 1950-1953 when the project was carried out, the spokespersons’ accounts of reality were challenged, with varying results. After the works had been completed, the question of maintaining a suitable water level in the lake remained controversial and concerned managing the newly built dam. In brief, the conclusions of the study highlight the role of material agency in transporting and changing power between actants in a network. Forms of material agency were for example: the lake flooding, the hardness of soil, or the floodgates of a dam remaining open.

Union General Ambrose E. Burnside launched his invasion of East Tennessee in the summer of 1863. The corps he used consisted of half-infantry and half-mounted units to utilize their speed to overcome mountain obstacles. The successful campaign and the capture of the agriculturally rich region of East Tennessee and its vital East Tennessee & Virginia Railroad deprived the Confederacy of resources, ultimately contributing to Confederate defeat. The American Civil War saw commanders plunge into the mountains of Appalachia and encounter a terrain and a people with which many were unacquainted. This dissertation argues that their tactics and strategies for dealing with the mountainous terrain and its people stemmed from their past education about mountain warfare. Confederate and Union commanders of the American Civil War came from military and non-military backgrounds, but each encountered literature that described the region and, in the case of books on military philosophy, how to conduct a war within mountainous terrain. Cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point read the works of Baron de Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz, who used their respective experiences in the Napoleonic Wars to illustrate proper tactics. Those works and other military theorists greatly influenced young cadets who became Civil War commanders. They used their studies of European commanders to guide them through tactics and strategies best suited for mountain warfare. Union commanders utilized mobile fighting units to overcome the natural obstacles of the environment and strike at a significantly rich agricultural region to the Confederacy, which aided in its defeat.

No description available.

This thesis explores the embodied experiences of the rural population in nineteenth-century France. The prevailing historiography has treated rural bodily culture as a cultural survival swept away by ‘modernisation’ in the nineteenth century. By turning to the lives and words of rural labourers and artisans from the Landes de Gascogne, the thesis questions this account, instead showing ways that popular cultures of the body were flexible traditions, adapted by individuals to meet new needs. It does so through a close focus on the stories, songs, and other oral traditions collected by Félix Arnaudin (1844-1921) in the Grande-Lande between around 1870 and 1914. The thesis focuses on the lives of a few of Arnaudin’s 759 folklore informants, showing both how their bodily experiences were changing during this period, and how songs and stories were creative interventions, designed to shape bodily possibilities from below. The thesis draws attention to the surprising shape of rural experiences of the body, which focused on body parts such as the legs and skin for reasons specific to everyday life, while largely ignoring issues that historians might have assumed would be important, such as religion. It argues that the ordinary men and women who performed stories and sang songs were active agents in constructing their own bodies in response to material conditions of physical illness and disability, as well as a changing environment, changing class relations, or changing sexual norms in the Grande-Lande. The thesis presents an emotional and experiential view of rural bodies with a sensitivity to the different experiences of men and women, young and old, poorer and richer, but emphasizes that the body must be seen in the round, as a unifying concern that links together issues of social class, environmental change, sexual relations, work, disability, and religion.

The settlement history of the Vredefort Dome can be described as a process of cultural development. The Vaal River hydrosphere, which was for many years a prestigious settlement site, initially attracted large scale game and later livestock farmers. The drifts were a central part of a network of early strategic communication routes and outspans. From 1838, pioneer settlement, farm occupation and agricultural development followed, and the area eventually entered an agriculture-mining era. Gold-mining stimulated the regional economy and also played a significant role in the development of towns in the area. The Vaal River did not play a significant role from a mining perspective, but featured more prominently in the development of villages and, in a sense, served as a political boundary. The location of the water source often determined where people settled permanently. It also decided the position of the house and yard. From the outset, riparian dwellers attempted to manipulate the flow of the river by creating dams and utilising water for irrigation and domestic purposes. Drought conditions also left historical traces; water management projects upstream transformed the Vaal River into a steadily flowing stream, which led to the economic and cultural segregation of north and south. Man's fear associated with drought (too little water), floods (too much water), meteorology (the necessity of water), and the role of the supernatural (divining water) and superstition (the water snake stories) were expressed in the interaction between people and this water environment. A wide variety of people with distinct cultures lived alongside each other in the area. Western and African cultural goods, as well as customs and beliefs, were mutually adopted by these different cultural groups as a result of this contact. The way land has been used in the Dome area has evolved over the years. The culling of game made way for the permanent establishment of the livestocktravelling farmer. Hereafter prolonged drought conditions destroyed pastures and, consequently, large areas of land were ploughed for agricultural use. Agriculture, which is more labour intensive and needs more water for irrigation, was replaced by game farming, which is less labour intensive and requires less water This world heritage site has drawn global interest and ecotourism has attracted visitors to the Vaal River area. The riparian dwellers, however, remain victims of up-stream industrial and sewage pollution; in future, they are likely to fall prey to acid mine water pollution, with disastrous consequences. / PhD (History), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2013

No description available.