The Struggle over Functional Foods: Justice and the Social Meaning of Functional Foods

The social and scientific debate overfunctional foods has two focal points: one isthe issue of the reliability andtrustworthiness of the claims connected withfunctional foods. You don't have to be asuspicious person to be skeptical vis-à-visthe rather exorbitant claims of most functionalfoods. They promise prevention against allkinds of illnesses and enhancement ofachievements like memory and vision, withouthaving been tested adequately. The second issueis the issue of the socio-cultural dimension offunctional foods and their so calleddetrimental effect on the social and normativemeanings of food, with possibly the effect thatfood in general will be treated like amedicine, with radical individualizing effects.Finally, individuals would only be allowed toeat what their gene-profile prescribes them. Inthis paper, it is argued that food is anon-neutral public good that contributesinherently to the identity of vulnerableindividuals. It should be treated in anon-neutral, but impartial way. Therefore,politics need to intervene in food markets froma justice and ethical point of view with twoaims in mind. The first aim (as an implicationof justice considerations) should be toestablish safety conditions, and to identifyand monitor food safety standards in anobjective and impartial way. Preventive medicalclaims of foods should be allowed on the basisof appropriate and objective testing methods.The second aim (as an implication of ethicalconsiderations) should be to shape conditionsfor a cohabitation of various food styles,including that of functional foods. Moreover,the cultural and symbolic meaning of food in apluralistic society requires that the differentfood styles find some modus of living andinteracting together. As long as functionalfoods comply with safety standards and respectother food styles, they should be allowed onthe market, just like any other food product.     

Pollution,place, and premature death: evidence from a mid-sized city

ABSTRACT

Neighborhood life expectancy varies by as much as 10 years across the City of Louisville. In 2013, the Greater Louisville Project funded by local government, businesses, and foundations, argued these differences had little to do with environmental factors. The Greater Louisville Project (2013) study argued that these neighborhood differences could be attributed 40% to socio-economic factors (with a major emphasis on education), 10% to physical environment, 30% to health behaviors, and 20% to access to medical care. To test these claims, we construct our own model of neighborhood variation in years of potential life lost (YPLL) by adding two variables testing environmental degradation. We operationalise two separate measures of environmental contamination: proximity to EPA designated brownfield sites and proximity to chemical factories in an industrial park in the neighborhood known as “Rubbertown”. We conduct several regression analyses, which show a relationship between proximity to environmental contaminants and an increase in neighborhood YPLL. Our beta weights challenge the claims made by the Greater Louisville Project, which minimize the impact nearness to environmental contaminants has on reductions in life expectancy in Louisville neighborhoods.     

Organizational learning during policy implementation: lessons from U.S. forest planning

ABSTRACT

Learning is critical for land management agencies implementing new policies in the face of rapid social and ecological change. We investigated learning in the U.S. Forest Service as it implemented new planning regulations. Our research objectives were to: (1) identify collective learning processes and outcomes during this time, and (2) understand factors within the organization supporting or impeding learning. Based on participant observation and 25 interviews with planning personnel, we found evidence of collective learning on individual national forests and across the organization. Several factors helped the agency act as a ‘learning organization,’ including internal networks and tools for information sharing, and meetings for staff to exchange lessons learned. Learning was compromised by limited time and capacity, and lack of internal clarity about balancing the desire for innovation with the need to ensure legal compliance and meet deadlines. This work contributes to the empirical foundations of collective learning theory, allowing us to identify learning processes and outcomes at multiple levels in a public organization, and identifying topics for future research. Based on our exploration of organizational learning, we offer suggestions for how to effectively support learning during times of new policy implementation.     

Organizational embeddedness,turnover intentions,and voluntary turnover: The moderating effects of employee demographic characteristics and value orientations

To explain why some employees who experience high embeddedness contemplate leaving their organizations and others do not, we examined the moderating effects of employee demographic characteristics (age and gender) and value orientations (individualism and risk aversion) between organizational embeddedness and turnover intentions. Turnover intentions were further expected to increase voluntary turnover. Data were collected from 643 full‐time employees at three points in time over a 12‐month time period in a wide range of organizations in Japan, a relatively low turnover context with little prior embeddedness research. Findings show that gender and risk aversion moderate the relationship between organizational embeddedness and turnover intentions, which in turn predict voluntary turnover. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The politics of employment liability

Employment liability is an important check and balance against employee harm at work. In practice, however, an inadvertent consequence of employment liability is a potential shift in power from organizations to employees that affects subsequent managerial decision making. In this Incubator, we discuss behavioral and attitudinal ramifications of employment liability at work. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

New York City Environmental Justice Alliance Waterfront Justice Project

This paper reviews key challenges and opportunities addressed by the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance's (NYC-EJA) Waterfront Justice Project, a citywide campaign to promote climate resilience and sustainability in urban industrial waterfront communities of New York City. NYC-EJA is a non-profit membership-driven network linking grassroots organisations from low-income neighbourhoods and communities of colour in their struggle for environmental justice. The Waterfront Justice Project is documenting community vulnerability in the context of climate change impacts, sources of industrial pollution, and demographic and socio-economic trends. This campaign is enabling community-based organisations, environmental justice communities, city planners, local and state government agencies, local business-owners, and other stakeholders to work in partnership to achieve community resilience while advocating for local jobs and promoting best practices in pollution prevention. New York City's waterfront policies ease the siting and clustering of public infrastructure, water pollution control plants, waste transfer stations, energy facilities, and heavy manufacturing uses in six areas designated as Significant Maritime and Industrial Areas (SMIAs). The SMIAs are located in environmental justice communities, largely low-income communities and communities of colour, in the South Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. New York City's local waterfront land use and zoning policies create cumulative risk exposure not only to residents and workers in the host waterfront communities, but also, in the event of storm surge or sea-level rise, to neighbouring, upland communities.     

A data-driven narratives skeleton pattern recognition from accident reports dataset for human-and-organizational-factors analysis

Accidents in the process industry involve several interacting factors, including human and organizational factors (HOFs). A long-standing obstacle to HOFs analysis is lack of data. Accident reports are an essential data source to learn from the past and contain HOFs-related data, but they are usually unstructured text in a not standardized format. Some studies have explored the extraction of information automatically from accident reports based on Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. However, they were not dedicated to HOFs. Risk communication is considered an essential pillar in safety and risk science. This research develops a HOFs-focused risk communication framework based on the NLP techniques that can support risk assessment and mitigation. The proposed approach automatically extracts the target groups oriented “Who, When, Where, Why” (4Ws) information from accident reports.This framework was applied to explore the eMARS database. The results show that the “4Ws” skeleton of narratives has appreciated performance in pattern recognition and holistic information analysis. The graphical representation interfaces are designed to display the features of HOFs-related accidents, which can better be communicated to the sharp-end operators and decision-makers.     

Environmental Equity and the Role of Public Policy: Experiences in the Rijnmond Region

This Φ Ψ study of environmental equity uses secondary quantitative data to analyze socioeconomic disparities in environmental conditions in the Rijnmond region of the Netherlands. The disparities of selected environmental indicators—exposure to traffic noise (road, rail, and air), NO₂, external safety risks, and the availability of public green space—are analyzed both separately and in combination. Not only exposures to environmental burdens (“bads”) were investigated, but also access to environmental benefits (“goods”). Additionally, we held interviews and reviewed documents to grasp the mechanisms underlying the environmental equity situation, with an emphasis on the role of public policy. Environmental equity is not a priority in public policy for the greater Rotterdam region known as the Rijnmond region, yet environmental standards have been established to provide a minimum environmental quality to all local residents. In general, environmental quality has improved in this region, and the accumulation of negative environmental outcomes (“bads”) has been limited. However, environmental standards for road traffic noise and NO₂ are being exceeded, probably because of the pressure on space and the traffic intensity. We found an association of environmental “bads” with income for rail traffic noise and availability of public green space. In the absence of regulation, positive environmental outcomes (“goods”) are mainly left up to market forces. Consequently, higher-income groups generally have more access to environmental “goods” than lower-income groups.     

Tribal communities,the forests,the fisher folk and the river: whither water justice?

Excessive exploitation of and skewed access to dwindling water resources raise serious water justice concerns. Environmental justice movements and related literature have raised critical questions regarding the unequal distribution of the costs and benefits of a development paradigm that is founded on excessive exploitation and appropriation of natural resources. This paper explores the growing relevance of a water justice framework that addresses both the social and ecological aspects of water use and appropriation, with reference to a four-decade long water conflict over the Chaliyar River in Kerala, South India. It highlights how ecosystem degradation and denial of justice go hand in hand. The paper argues that the framing and articulation of the conflict in a partisan manner led to the glossing over of certain critical features, thus preventing a full view of water injustices. It also failed to inform subsequent policies and practices in this regard.