TAYLOR PARKER
  • Home
  • CV
  • Opp's
  • Journal
Contact:

Just a little conservation journal...

I generally focus on conservation issues effecting biodiversity, land use/abuse, research, and job opportunities that I have come across. Most of the opportunities come from the Opps page and you can click on the button below to take you there.
Opps

3 Things I Learned in Grad School This Week ~ Feb 12 2017

2/12/2017

0 Comments

 
I learned a little about Gentrification, Group Socialization Theory, and Social Rejection Theory this week. And here is a sea turtle that is as surprised about all this as I am.
Picture
Artists and Enviros as First Wave of Gentrification
This is not my field and not what I am knowledgeable about but sitting in the Grad Lab I had a quick conversation with a colleague studying Gentrification. Actually, these quick side conversations about fields not my own are becoming my favorite part of grad school; I’ve had conversations about the physics of the Northern Lights, material engineering, and industrial concrete randomly that have opened me up to worlds I would not have considered. I digress: he knocked my socks off explaining that artists and enviro folks are often times the first wave of gentrification for various reasons. For urban planning and developing multiple beneficial uses I can only imagine how challenging this must be. On one hand you are trying to create a better and more liveable place for more people and on the other, an integration of socioeconomic dimensions (accommodating and co-creating opportunities for poor people) and oftentimes a cultural history. Again, I know nothing about this but I found some interesting articles about it:
  • http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/01/the_gentrification_myth_it_s_rare_and_not_as_bad_for_the_poor_as_people.html
  • https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/30/art-blame-gentrification-peckham
  • http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-self-help-graphics-20160718-snap-story.html
  • http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/hot-property/la-fi-hp-neighborhood-spotlight-echo-park-20160611-snap-story.html​
 
Group Socialization Theory
From the book The Nurture Assumption by Harris, this theory disrupts the nature vs nurture dichotomy as false to start with. The dichotomy is necessary but insufficient. Harris shows that children become socialized and their personality gets modified during development mostly by their peers. Children get their ideas of how to behave by identifying with a group and taking on its attitudes, behaviors, speech, and styles of dress and adornment; most of them do this automatically and willingly. The relationship with the parents and the genes they inherent are important and help establish baselines and what’s possible but the integration and growth within peer group has a significantly larger influence upon the child’s development. She also distinguishes two important skills: skills at friendship and the ability to navigate a group. Almost everyone will develop friendships but that rarely has lasting developmental impacts. However, the capacity to integrate within a group has demonstrably larger impact upon a person’s growth through childhood and adolescence into adulthood. I need to play with this idea a lot more before I share more because I think it is relevant to me personally and the work I do…I think…
 
Social Rejection Theory
To justify the time spent on long runs and lifting weights I listen to audiobooks. I love it. A lot of the time this is how I get my fiction fix. Lately I’ve been on The Great Courses kick and learning about classical music and ancient philosophy. For some weird reason, Audible took those subjects and recommended I listen to: Social – Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect by Matthew Lieberman. I don’t get it but whatever. Coincidentally, we just read an article in my Human Behavior class about how Social Cognition Theory, which this book is based on, has lacked empirical evidence in the real world. I don’t know whether that’s true or not but the ideas are pretty fascinating. The most interesting to me is the Social Rejection Theory part of it. Basically, it says that when researchers have done studies with people fMRI and put them in situations where they are socially rejected, the same parts of the brain light up as when you feel pain. Leiberman’s wife, Eisenberger, is the lead researcher on this (I love science power couples) and posits that feeling social pain is the same as physical pain neurochemically. I’d quote the book but it’s hard to stop running every five minutes to take notes while listening to it. Anyway, you can’t point to the pain as if you were hit in the arm but your brain feels the pain when a group dismisses you. Super crazy. The implications of this are nuts. One of the ways I’m thinking is what motivates and what prevents people from conservation or what they call Pro-Environmental Behavior. If you, say, decide to do xeric landscaping in a community with green lawns, you become the outsider. Depending on your baseline for handling rejection and how receptive your neighborhood is you may feel pain for being different. Or, say you are vegetarian in the US South where BBQ is one of the food groups…These are small scale examples but I’m curious to see how these impact larger issue things like policy support, conspicuous consumerism, or influencing expenditures on sustainability.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014

    Categories

    All
    3 Things
    4 Ways Of Knowing
    Adaptation
    Adobe
    Affordance
    ANOVA
    Ashi Waza
    Ausubel
    Baldwinisms
    Barrett
    Beginning Of Infinity
    Bekoff
    Biodiversity
    Blue Carbon
    Box Plots
    Breakthrough
    Cave Bears
    Cheetah
    Coert Visser
    Cognitive Reappraisal
    Commons
    Competence
    Comprehension
    Conservation Jobs
    Conservation News
    Construal Theory
    Consumerology
    Convolve
    Critical Periods
    Csikszentmihalyi
    Culture-pattern Model
    Delphi Method
    Dennett
    Design
    Dont Think Of An Elephant
    Doughnut Economics
    Drive-discharge Model
    Dr. Mark Johnson
    Dweck
    Earth Day
    Ecosystem Theory
    Eisenberg
    Endangered Species
    Environmentalism
    Environmental Psychology
    Environmental Wins
    Extinction Countdown
    Flagship Species
    Flourish
    Fluorescent Minerals
    Framing
    Gatekeepers
    Gentrification
    Group Socialization Theory
    Growth Mindset
    Heteroscedasticity
    Hitchens
    How Emotions Are Made
    Idiographic
    Indicator Species
    Instrumental Case Study
    Intrinsic Case Study
    Jaguar
    Judo
    Kellert's Typology
    Keystone Species
    Lakoff
    Lightroom
    Lion
    List
    Listed
    Listening
    Marcia's Identity Theory
    Maslow
    Neotony
    Neurochemicals
    Newsletter
    Nomothetic
    Nordhaus
    Ocelot
    Opps
    Peter Maas
    Photo Elicitation
    Photography
    Place Bonding
    Planetary Boundaries
    Poetic Naturalism
    Poetic Trasncription
    Positive Disintegration
    Positive Psychology
    Poverty
    Pragmatism
    Prefigurative Politics
    Premiere
    Prepared Learning
    Priority Species
    Pro-environmental Behavior
    Progress Focused Approach
    Qualitative
    Raworth
    Resilience
    Restorative Environments
    Rewild
    Roman
    Sebastio Salgado
    Self Determination Theory
    Self-Organizing Theory
    Self-sabotage
    Seligman
    Seoi Nage
    Serious Leisure
    Shellenberger
    Simulacra
    Social Capital
    Social Scientist
    Species And People
    Statistics
    Supervenience
    System Thinking
    Telomeres
    Thought Exercise
    Translational Science
    Umbrella Species
    Umwelt
    Validity
    Veridical
    Vernacular Conservation
    Wicked Problems
    Wildlife
    Wolf
    Wolfs Tooth

    RSS Feed

Enjoy the site!
  • Home
  • CV
  • Opp's
  • Journal