As the main literature of socio-economic history, local gazetteers display the dynamic process of local socio-economic structuring and reflect local conflicts among various interest groups. Focusing on local gazetteers in Wanzai County of Jiangxi Province from the Qing to the Republic, this essay shows how local literati played an active role in constructing their local community. These gazetteers reflected the complicated power relations, especially the conflict between the natives and immigrants, and they themselves became the important part of (...) the process of local power reproduction and culture construction. (shrink)

The issue of wages has been ignored in previous studies of economic history in late imperial China. Focusing on Huating County and Lou County, this article explores the wages in agricultural, industrial, commercial, and service occupations of this area in the 1820s. The findings, though primary, are helpful to our understanding of incomes in early-nineteenth-century China.

A young girl cuddles a cow in the dairy barn. An earnest boy carefully guides a horse twice his height into the judging ring. Ar ow of dancers awaits the moment their choreographed performance begins.

A renowned scholar charts the sprawling landscape of Door County, Wisconsin, explores the county's agricultural heritage and the difference between the Green Bay and Lake Michigan sides of the peninsula, and examines the cultural aspects of the region.

Cheshire 1630-1660 County Government and Society during the `English Revolution'.

This article highlights local government responses to the opioid crisis in Northern Kentucky through a series of interviews with county-level officials. The author's discussions with civic leaders reflect the challenges faced by local communities and the new approaches implemented to stem the epidemic.

In Laudato si’, Pope Francis says that the way to begin solving environmental problems is by “learning to see and appreciate beauty”. Environmental ethicists have long known that beauty motivates people to protect nature. What form that takes depends upon how one defines beauty. In A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold shares not only his famous land ethic, but also a land aesthetic. This paper will show that Laudato si’ and A Sand County Almanac present similar aesthetics emphasizing (...) receptivity to objective natural beauty. First, I will consider Pope Francis’s uses of beauty. I then look to how environmental ethicists have evaluated beauty to determine what makes an environmental aesthetic robust rather than superficial. Finally, I examine how A Sand County Almanac both demonstrates receptivity and forms the reader to be receptive. I contend that reading A Sand County Almanac represents one way to practice Pope Francis’s instructions. (shrink)

Local food systems are growing, and little is known about how the constellation of farms and markets change over time. We trace the evolution of two local food systems over six years, including a dataset of over 2690 market connections between 1520 locations. Longitudinal social network analysis reveals how the architecture, actor network centrality, magnitude, and spatiality of these supply chains shifted during the 2012–2018 time period. Our findings demonstrate that, despite growth in the number of farmers’ markets, grocery stores, (...) farms and restaurants in both counties, each local food system also experienced high turnover rates. Over 80% of the market connections changed during the study period. Farms, farmers’ markets, and grocery stores showed a 40–50% ‘survival’ rate, indicating their role in sustaining local food systems over longer time periods. Other actors, such as restaurants, had a much higher turnover rate within the network. Both food systems became more close-knit and consolidated as the center of gravity for both local food systems pulled away from urban areas toward rural farmland. Evidence of both growth and decay within local food systems provides a new understanding of the social networks behind local food markets. (shrink)

Traditional theories of autonomy argue for rational agents who are free to make decisions about the moral law and justice. Adopting these theories entails that children lack of autonomy; they are not fully developed rational agents, and, because of that, they are unable to engage in the complex cognitive capacities required by autonomy, such as critical self-reflection or substantive independence. Amy Mullin who, as part of a new area of philosophy called Philosophy of Childhood, argues for granting children minimal or (...) local autonomy. She argues that children's attachments to those they love can be a source of autonomy in a minimal sense. She claims that it is in the relationship with those the child loves that the child is able to find meaningful activities and is able to care for someone or something. I argue that Jeff Lemire’s Essex County Vol. 1 Tales from the Farm, is a depiction of childhood that illustrates Mullin’s ideas. However, I will argue that through the use of images as a form of language, Lemire offers an insight that is unique to the medium of the graphic novel. Lemire as an artist negotiates the optical physical surfaces and uses these surfaces as a language to bridge the gap between the child and the adult and help us understand the mind of children as autonomous agents. This is an important contribution since it will allow us to understand how children can demonstrate autonomy in some of the ways in which they conduct their lives and how this may be reason enough to grant them a voice when decisions that would affect their lives are made on their behalf, such as custody cases or end of life decisions. (shrink)

In March, 2004, the rural northern California county of Mendocino voted to ban the propagation of all genetically modified organisms (GMOs). This county was the first, and only, U.S. region to adopt such a ban despite widespread activism against biotechnology. Using a civic agriculture perspective, this article explores how local actors in this small county were able to take on the agri-biotechnology industry. I argue that by localizing the issue, the citizens of Mendocino County were able (...) to ignite a highly effective, decentralized and grassroots social movement against which powerful, and well-funded, pro-biotechnology entities were unable to compete. The social problem of biotechnology was embedded in issues of mass concern to Mendocino County residents, such as democracy, equity, distribution of power, and corporate control over local life. The campaign was an arena for “local problem-solving activities organized around food and agriculture” (Lyson 2004, p. 103). However, though localizing this issue was key for generating a successful ban against the propagation of GMOs at the county level, the local orientation of the No to GMOs movement created a barrier for scaling-up and transferring this success to the wider anti-biotechnology movement. (shrink)

This paper draws from critical data studies and related fields to investigate police officer-involved homicide data for Los Angeles County. We frame police officer-involved homicide data as a rhetorical tool that can reify certain assumptions about the world and extend regimes of power. We highlight the possibility that this type of sensitive civic data can be investigated and employed within local communities through creative practice. Community involvement with data can create a countervailing force to powerful dominant narratives and supplement (...) activist projects that hold local officials accountable for their actions. Our analysis examines four Los Angeles County police officer-involved homicide data sets. First, we provide accounts of the semantics, granularity, scale and transparency of this local data. Then, we describe a “counter data action,” an event that invited members of the community to identify the limits and challenges present in police officer-involved homicide data and to propose new methods for deriving meaning from these indicators and statistics. (shrink)

Much philosophical attention has been devoted to “The Land Ethic,” especially by Anglo-American philosophers, but little has been paid to A Sand County Almanac as a whole. Read through the lens of continental philosophy, A Sand County Almanac promulgates an evolutionary-ecological world view and effects a personal self- and a species-specific Self-transformation in its audience. It’s author, Aldo Leopold, realizes these aims through descriptive reflection that has something in common with phenomenology-although Leopold was by no stretch of the (...) imagination a phenomenologist. Consideration of human-animal intersubjectivity, thematized in A Sand County Almanac, brings to light the moral problem of hunting and killing animal subjects. Leopold does not confront that problem, but it is confronted and resolved by Jose Ortega y Gassett, Henry Beston, and Paul Shepard in terms of an appropriate human relationship with wild-animal Others. Comparison with the genuinely Other-based Leopold-Ortega-Beston-Shepard wild-animal ethic shows the purportedly Other-based humanand possibly animal ethic of Emmanuel Levinas actually to be Same-based after all. (shrink)

Over the past decade, the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) has increased solvability of violent crimes by linking evidence DNA profiles to known offenders. At present, an in-depth analysis of the United States National DNA Data Bank effort has not assessed the success of this national public safety endeavor. Critics of this effort often focus on laboratory and police investigators unable to provide timely investigative support as a root cause(s) of CODIS' failure to increase public safety. By studying a group (...) of nearly 200 DNA cold hits obtained in SFPD criminal investigations from 2001–2006, three key performance metrics (Significance of Cold Hits, Case Progression & Judicial Resolution, and Potential Reduction of Future Criminal Activity) provide a proper context in which to define the impact of CODIS at the City and County level. Further, the analysis of a recidivist group of cold hit offenders and their past interaction with law enforcement established five noteworthy criminal case resolution trends; these trends signify challenges to CODIS in achieving meaningful case resolutions. CODIS' effectiveness and critical activities to support case resolutions are the responsibility of all criminal justice partners in order to achieve long-lasting public safety within the United States. (shrink)

A survey of women in two highly developed rural counties of China, Sichuan and Jiangsu Provinces, was carried out in late 1991, to gain information about demographic and economic change between 1980 and 1990. Three separate surveys were conducted: the first a questionnaire administered to married women aged 30–39, eliciting information about childbearing and contraception, as well as the social and economic background of the respondents; the second, focus group interviews emphasizing the motivation for childbearing. Official information about the selected (...) villages, townships and counties was also collected. (shrink)

This remarkable collection of period photographs details day-to-day life and changing times in the Deep South. Draffus Lamar Hightower, 1899-1993, spent most of his life in Barbour County, Alabama. For many years he was the owner of a Chevrolet dealership, but he had another occupation as well. From his youth, he was fascinated with photography, and for fifty years he experimented with the craft both technically and artistically. Hightower, while participating fully in the 20th century, was also acutely aware (...) of the passing of the heritage of the last one. From the early 1920s to the late 1960s, he made thousands of negatives of people, events, landscapes, objects, and buildings in Barbour County. His photographs are reminiscent of the documentary work of Walker Evans, Berenice Abbott, and other great 20th-century American photographers. Hightower created an incredibly complete and vivid record of the life of a rural Alabama county during a period of profound change-documenting everything from birthday parties and political rallies to farm scenes and the demolition of historic buildings so that future generations would not forget the world of their forebears. In 1990, Michael Thomason, historian and photographic archivist, began the long process of reviewing Hightower's collection of photographs, interviewing family and friends, and salvaging and printing the negatives, which by that time had begun to deteriorate. Thomason restored and printed 195 photographs and prepared accompanying essays that not only reveal the technical details of Hightower's labor of love but also tell the story of the human and economic changes in Barbour County during this period. (shrink)

The coal industry exercises a pervasive influence upon mining communities in Appalachia even though it makes minimal contributions to employment. Miners rarely participate in movements that fight against coal companies for better working conditions. One explanation for this paradox is the depletion of social capital. In this article, I first use the existing body of literature to build a theoretical framework for discussing bonding social capital. Second, I analyze how the United Mine Workers of America in Harlan County, Kentucky (...) at the beginning of the twentieth century worked to generate social capital. The results show that these coalfield residents demonstrated a high degree of social capital in terms of a strong shared sense of reliability and a dedication to collective activities and intimate networks. The union during that period engaged in strategies that were instrumental in creating this high level of social capital: holding regular meetings, organizing collective actions, promoting collective identity, and electing charismatic leaders. (shrink)

Conflicts have arisen between communities and operators of confined animal feeding as farms have become bigger in order to maintain their competitiveness. These conflicts have been difficult to resolve because measuring and allocating the benefits and costs of livestock production is difficult. This papers demonstrates a policy tool for promoting compromise whereby the community gets reduced negative impacts from livestock while at the same time continues to benefit from livestock jobs, taxes, and related economic activity. Public economic benefits and public (...) economic costs of confined animal feeding operations are estimated for every farm and affected house in Craven County, North Carolina. The results show public economic benefits of $5.7 million and public economic costs of $2.2 million, but that the ratio of benefits to costs for individual farm-house pairs varies in important ways across the 26 hog farms in Craven County. (shrink)

Conflicts have arisen between communities and operators of confined animal feeding as farms have become bigger in order to maintain their competitiveness. These conflicts have been difficult to resolve because measuring and allocating the benefits and costs of livestock production is difficult. This papers demonstrates a policy tool for promoting compromise whereby the community gets reduced negative impacts from livestock while at the same time continues to benefit from livestock jobs, taxes, and related economic activity. Public economic benefits and public (...) economic costs of confined animal feeding operations are estimated for every farm and affected house in Craven County, North Carolina. The results show public economic benefits of $5.7 million and public economic costs of $2.2 million, but that the ratio of benefits to costs for individual farm-house pairs varies in important ways across the 26 hog farms in Craven County. (shrink)

Santa Barbara County exhibits some of the highest rates of food insecurity in California, as well as in the United States. Through ethnographic research of three low-income, predominantly Latino communities in Santa Barbara County, this study examined the degree to which households had been experiencing heightened levels of food insecurity since the economic recession and ensuing coping strategies, including gender-specific repercussions and coping strategies. Methods included administering a survey with 150 households and conducting observation and unstructured interviews at (...) various local food-centered venues. Results indicated that households from the three communities were experiencing heightened levels of food insecurity and that all three communities were employing diversification of procurement, adjustments to a reduced or limited food budget, reliance on food assistance, and revitalization of the home as a site of domestic food production and preparation as coping strategies. The results also suggested that women suffered disproportionately higher psychological and physical costs associated with compounding crises. In conclusion, the experiences narrated by low-income households reflect a form of citizenship that appears compromised by a host of variables perceived to exist outside the realm of local control. Shifting toward an operational framework of food sovereignty may allow these communities to become more resilient in the face of future political, environmental, social, and economic stressors. (shrink)

Although philosophers often focus on the essays of Leopold's Sand County Almanac, especially "The Land Ethic," there is also a normative argument present in the stories that comprise most of the book. In fact the shack stories may be more persuasive, with a subtlety and complexity not available in his prose piece. This paper develops a narrative ethics methodology gleaned from rhetoric theory, and current interest in narrative ethics among literary theorists, in order to discern the normative underpinnings of (...) the stories in Part 1. The narrative ethics approach sidesteps the need to ground the land ethic in ethical theory—which has been a reconstructive and problematic task for the philosophical interpreters of Leopold—and suggests, instead, that it emerges in Leopold's very effort to narrate his, professional, personal, and practical experience with nature. The involves examining the stories in terms of their emotional, logical and performative aspects. The result is an analysis that shows not only how these stories express normative claims, but also justify them. One conclusion of the analyses is that, in the narratives, there is less emphasis on the problematic notion of an over-arching "community" than in the prose pieces, and more emphasis on the metaphor of other living things as "fellow travelers" in the "odyssey of evolution." Second, the narratives take on an ironic attitude toward the ecological order, less discernable in the prose essays. The order itself may not be ethically admirable, but should be preserved since it makes possible any ethical relations within it. Thus, the narrative reading suggests some temperance to the usual holistic interpretation of his land ethic and its concomitant criticisms especially the charge of ecofacism. We should not take the land ethic imperative at its face value, in the sense that the good of the order itself is an intrinsic good. In the narratives, individuals are shown not merely to be means to the ecological whole, but the focus of sympathy and concern, in a manner that demands their good should also be an object of moral consideration. (shrink)

The new millennium will be ushered in by the biotech century. The earlier we prepare the better. In the short term, we will be affected in these main areas: medical treatment; industrial, agricultural, and forest use; and food. First, let us take a brief look at some problems with the use of genetic engineering in agriculture and in our food. Then I would like to make some simple suggestions about steps we can take to assess the situation here in Mendocino (...) County. (shrink)

The infusion of environmental topics in science courses has long been considered an especially appropriate method of implementing the STS approach to science teaching. While this claim has been supported by anecdotal accounts and case studies, there are few relevant quantitative studies. To begin filling this void, a survey of science teachers in secondary schools in Dade County, Florida, was conducted to investigate the extent and effectiveness of the infusion of environmental topics in the science curriculum. The results of (...) this study indicate that the responding science teachers are very likely to incorporate environmental topics in their science classes. They do this regardless of their length of tenure, and most have engaged in the practice from the beginning of their careers. Finally, while the experience of a teacher in using environmental topics has some positive effect in increasing student interest, the success of this method depends much more strongly on the frequency of its use. Those teachers routinely using environmental topics as a vehicle for teaching science are most successful with it. (shrink)

Photography began almost 150 years ago with the nearly simultaneous invention of two types of photographic processes, the daguerreotype and the Talbotype or calotype. On January 7, 1839, Louis Daguerre announced his discovery of a way to reproduce images on coated copper plate. Shortly thereafter, on January 31, William Talbot explained how shadows of objects could be chemically recorded on salted paper sensitized with silver nitrate. With the advent of photography, the people, architecture, and natural beauty of Chester County, (...) Pennsylvania, made worthy subject matter for many professional and amateur photographers. Photographers in Chester County, many of whom were also skilled artisans and craftsmen, were fortunate in that they lived near Philadelphia, a center of photographic activity. The first photographers in the county were itinerant tradesmen who traveled from place to place, taking photographs, portraits mainly, for a fee. Later, as photography developed and became more widely known, many photographers opened their own studios. Reflected Light: A Century of Photography in Chester County offers an overview of the development of the photographic medium and traces the progress of photography by examining the work of ten Chester County photographers. In the text by Pamela Powell and in striking photographs of the county and its people, the story of photography in its earliest years is deftly told. (shrink)

Abstract:Private land is vitally important to land conservation efforts, but access to private landowners is a challenge for researchers. This paper studies the preferences and concerns of such landowners on the rural-urban fringe of Stafford County, Virginia. Participatory research and interviews with 53 private landowners show that conservation is deeply embedded within key social, moral, cultural, and political contexts, including a divide between long-term and newer residents. Successful conservation requires such social knowledge. It is argued that landowner skepticism about (...) local government points towards joint strategies between local government and partner groups. Land conservation should be framed as an affirmation of—not limitation on—property rights since urban fringe landowners are likely to see such rights as under attack. Conservation also presents an opportunity for community building in rapidly urbanizing areas. (shrink)

In October 1940, the government of the Shaanxi-Ganjiang-Ningxia Border Region used Yan’an County as the center for trying out the Latinxua Sin Wenz Movement for winter schools. It went through three stages: experimentation, promotion, and reformation. Faced with insurmountable difficulties, the Education Department quietly terminated the project in 1943. The foremost reason why the Communist Party promoted this project was to remove the obstacle posed by Chinese characters for eliminating illiteracy. Despite problems such as ignorance of the officials, uncultured (...) teachers, resistance from intellectuals, subjective and unrealistic beliefs, the Latinxua Sin Wenz Movement in border regions of China could not be ignored since it brought out the tension between popular culture and nationalism. (shrink)

: In October 1940, the government of the Shaanxi-Ganjiang-Ningxia Border Region used Yan’an County as the center for trying out the Latinxua Sin Wenz Movement for winter schools. It went through three stages: experimentation, promotion, and reformation. Faced with insurmountable difficulties, the Education Department quietly terminated the project in 1943. The foremost reason why the Communist Party promoted this project was to remove the obstacle posed by Chinese characters for eliminating illiteracy. Despite problems such as ignorance of the officials, (...) uncultured teachers, resistance from intellectuals, subjective and unrealistic beliefs, the Latinxua Sin Wenz Movement in border regions of China could not be ignored since it brought out the tension between popular culture and nationalism. (shrink)

Little is known about how farms and markets are connected. Identifying critical gaps and central hubs in food systems is of importance in addressing a variety of concerns, such as navigating rapid shifts in marketing practices as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic and related food shortages. The constellation of growers and markets can also reinforce opportunities to shift growing and eating policies and practices with attention to addressing racial and income inequities in food system ownership and access. With this research, (...) we compare network methods for measuring centrality and sociospatial orientations in food systems using two of America’s most high-producing agricultural counties. Though the counties are adjacent, we demonstrate that their community food systems have little overlap in contributing farms and markets. Our findings show that the community food system for Yolo County is tightly interwoven with Bay Area restaurants and farmers’ markets. The adjacent county, Sacramento, branded itself as America’s Farm-to-Fork capital in 2012 and possesses network hubs focused more on grocery stores and restaurants. In both counties, the most central actors differ and have been involved with the community food system for decades. Such findings have implications beyond the case studies, and we conclude with considerations for how our methods could be standardized in the national agricultural census. (shrink)

Criminalistics laboratories routinely provide cold hits in police investigations by comparing DNA profiles from crime scenes to offenders residing in the Combined DNA Index System. Forensic DNA analysis is often glamorized in popular culture, where the perpetrators are identified and crimes solved within a single television episode. In reality forensic DNA hits can identify perpetrators of violent offenses, link multiple crimes committed by the same individual, or exclude suspects and exonerate the falsely accused. Unlike the media portrayals, downstream activities after (...) a DNA identification or cold hit are often more complex. While the Federal Bureau of Investigation cites a national Data Bank of more than 7.2 million DNA profiles and 94,000 identifications nationwide, an in-depth analysis of public safety improvements made with CODIS is currently unavailable to forensic practitioners and public policy analysts. A review of case resolutions for 198 DNA database hits in San Francisco created performance metrics to provide a concrete measure of the effectiveness of DNA databasing efforts at the city and county level. (shrink)

The transplanted firm is an important force to promote the network evolution and cluster transformation and upgrading of the undertaking firm. From the micro-analytic perspective of firm network, this paper puts forward a theoretical framework with “relationship-network-evolution” as the main line. Taking the refrigeration industry cluster in Minquan County of China as a case study and keeping the firm networks of economic relation, technical cooperation, and social communication firm network in 2009, 2013, and 2017 as the research objects, this (...) paper analyzes the structure and evolution characteristics of regional firm network system, proposes the degree and effect of the local embeddedness of transplanted firms, and discusses their differences between international and interregional transplanted firms. The results revealed that: the local embeddedness of transplanted firms significantly promotes the development of refrigeration industry network. The network power of large-scale transplanted firms in the cluster is increasing day by day, and the network presents a multi-core trend. The local embeddedness of some transplanted firms is not high, and the overall connectivity of the network is not strong. Network intermediary nodes have strong heterogeneity, and the intermediary role of some large transplanted firms in the network needs to be improved. The three network systems have similar structural characteristics, and social capital plays an important role in the local embeddedness of transplanted firms and the development of regional firm network. Compared with international transplanted firms, interregional transplanted firms are more adaptable in terms of local embeddedness. The research results provide a reference for the construction of similar industrial clusters in China and other developing countries. (shrink)