As an ethicist and professor of environmental studies, I pay close attention to Earth Day. I have read or heard an abundance of commentaries on how people mistreat our planet. One after another, they rehearse the same statistics, recite the same politics, and offer the same short-term solutions.

Breaking the repetition, however, is the wildly popular film, Avatar, which went on sale to the general public in honor of Earth Day. Since its release in 2009, Avatar has struck a cord with the general public and the environmental community. Students and colleagues alike continue to excitedly discuss its meaning and messages.

So I wonder: what might Avatar teach us about how to celebrate Earth Day next year?

Avatar tells the story of a moral awakening by a former marine, Jake Sully, who is a mercenary for an inter-stellar corporation. He is sent to the world of Pandora to protect a mining operation that threatens the way of life of an indigenous population of humanoids (the Na’vi), as well as the natural world for whom the Na’vi have profound respect.

What Jake and his companions discover is that the Na’vi do not see their environment as a set of resources for them to own and exploit. Rather they see themselves as part of a larger community of life, a moral community where other creatures and the planet Eywa (the Na’vi name for Pandora) have intrinsic value. Value, that is, that exists irrespective of whether the animals or the planet are useful for either humans or Na’vi.

The Na’vi also believe human beings are ignorant of their place in this moral community. This message comes through loud and clear when Jake is upbraided by his Na’vi teacher and eventual mate, Neytiri. Telling him that he and his people ‘should not be here’, she notes that humans are akin to irresponsible children who do no fully ‘see’ (understand). Despite their advanced technology, humans have not yet learned how to respect the natural history, cultural knowledge, and moral standing of the Na’vi themselves, Pandora’s animals, or Pandora itself.

Avatar does take aim at colonialism, racism and militarism as they metaphorically exist on Pandora, as well as literally on Earth. Commentators have praised or condemned the film for these reasons. This has been particularly evident amongst the political right, where claims of paganism, anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism abound.

What has not been discussed is Avatar’s critique of speciesism, or human prejudice against non-human beings.

Avatar is not just a metaphor for how we treat other people on this earth. Nor is it simply an allegory for wide-ranging ecological destruction here and now. It is a cautionary tale about the harm done by our instrumental worldviews of animals and nature. Avatar is pushing the boundary of moral concern, demanding that we consider the well being of creatures and communities that are not human. It offers us a vision of another people, another place, and another way of life with such a profound sense of moral connectedness, that we cannot help but compare it to the situation on our own planet, and find it wanting.

What then does Avatar offer to our understanding of Earth Day?

Earth Day has become a sedate affair, dominated by the posturing of politicians and the decorative art of school children. More distressingly, it has become a self-absorbed event, where we measure humanity’s declining prospects by the steady degradation of nature (e.g., global warming).

If Earth Day is going to fulfill its promise, we need to turn this situation around. Avatar reminds us that we must reconnect with the moral passion that animates environmentalism as one of the great social movements of our time. It teaches us that we need to use this moral commitment to build bridges between those advocating for animal protection, human rights and environmental justice.

We need a day of education and grass-roots politics in service of the Earth itself and all her creatures, not just its most powerful inhabitant. Most of all, we need to stop thinking and talking about sustainability as if it were only for human beings. The well being of the entire community of life is a better base line for sustainable ways of living.

In Avatar, Jake came to understand that the interconnectedness of life is not simply a scientific fact, but a moral value that ought to guide our behavior to others, human and non-human alike. Perhaps in Earth Days to come, we can take this lesson to heart.

Cheers

I recently had a wonderful visit at Lafayette College.

Lafayette is a highly regarded institution located in Easton, PA. It has a twin-fold emphasis on the liberal arts, as well as engineering and the applied sciences. This creative mix of the arts and sciences is sorely needed in a society like ours that risks loosing sight of larger values amongst technical details. While technology is never a ‘neutral tool’ as some would like to think, our choices to use technologies for good or ill are the more important issue. Bringing the value-relevance of the liberal arts into creative dialogue with the applied sciences seems like a great idea to me.

I was visitng as a keynote speaker for Earth Week. Unlike other speaking engagements, this was not a one-off presentation, but an extended opportunity to engage with the campus community about ethics and sustainability. So alongside my presentation, I had the pleasure of meeting with a wide variety of the college’s faculty and students.

My talk was on ‘Avatars of Sustainability’. I interpreted the movie Avatar as a cultural text, the meanings of which have something important to say about our approach to ethics and sustainability. It was fun to do, and the discussion session afterwards was quite lively. I was peppered with insightful questions about the movie itself, and its implications for the troubled relationship between people, animals and nature. These questions touched on capitalism, militarism, colonialism, patriarchy, race, anthropocentrism, speciesism, power, animal domestication, practical versus analytic ethics, ethics in environmental policy, and the ethical norms of sustainability.

The next day I met with LEAP or Lafayette Environmental Awareness and Protection. Organized by a core group of environmentally minded students, LEAP is particularly active in the local food movement and the introduction of sustainable practice at Lafayette. Following that I was a guest in Humans and Other Animals in Contemporary Culture, a course instructed by Carrie Rohman of the English department. Students in this class had a wide range of ethics-related thoughts on Avatar, offering many distinctive insights on the movie. Following this, I met with faculty for a wide-ranging and productive discussion about the state of environmental studies programs and curricula.

So a big thank you to all the faculty and students who made my visit such an enjoyable one.

Cheers!

Paul is a widely noted scholar of both religion and animals, as well as law and animals. He is the Barker Lecturer at Harvard Law School, and I highly recommend him to people interested in these subjects.

In addition, check out his latest book, A Communion of Subjects, coauthored with Kimberly Patton, and you’ll see why this is going to be such a great course.

You can contact Paul about the course at pwaldau@gmail.com

Cheers!

~

Religion and Animals

Harvard Summer Term, 2010

Religion S-1013 : Religion and Animals
Harvard Summer School: 32394
Summer 2010

Class times: Tuesdays, Thursdays, 6:30-9:30 pm.

Course tuition: noncredit, undergraduate, and graduate credit $2,580.

Paul F. Waldau, DPhil, Barker Lecturer, Harvard Law School.

Students trace the history and shape of this emerging academic field and its relation to other academic disciplines. Students also examine social, public policy, conceptual, environmental, ethical, and philosophical implications of the field. Class sessions are discussion-based, and students undertake both group work and a number of individual writing projects.

The course syllabus is available at the website for the 2010 Summer Term. Go to http://www.summer.harvard.edu/), click on “Search” in the upper right corner, and then enter either “animals” or “religion” and you’ll easily find the course.

Registration is now open, and will close May 17.

The majors and concentrations share a core set of courses. The core includes an introduction to environmental studies, environmental science, environmental planning, and a senior seminar.

The majors are thereafter divided into a set of tracks. In environmental science, one can focus on the environmental dimensions of biology, chemistry and geoscience via the tracks. In the environmental policy major, we have political, economic, and society & culture tracks. These tracks encourage both a familiarity with environmental issues in general, as well as a depth of knowledge in the theory, method and subject matter of a particular track.

Those taking a concentration in environmental studies select from a set of elective courses to complement the core courses.

You can find out more about the Center for Environmental Studies at Williams College, including information about its majors and concentrations, at the Center’s website, http://ces.williams.edu/.

Cheers!

(a) focus on ethical issues pertinent to actual animals (as opposed to animals as only metaphors, tropes, or philosophical concepts); i.e. work with a certain normative value;

(b) adopt a broad critical orientation to animal studies, including (but not limited to) work that investigates and challenges the complex dynamics of structural, institutional, and discursive power formations that organize life conditions, relations, and experiences of animals, humans, and the environment alike; work that explores diverse forms and sites of human/animal resistance; work that contributes to current global debates by contextualizing critical animal issues within, for instance, processes of globalization, climate change, and biotechnology; work that intervenes in the animal economy of the production, science, service, experience, and culture industries; as well as work that critically analyzes ideologies, practices and effects of the current animal welfare movement;

(c) bridge boundaries between academic/activist knowledge, between theory/practice, as well as between existing disciplines. Based on this commitment to interdisciplinarity, all work published must be in language that is as clear and accessible to as wide an audience as possible;

(d) contribute to creative, bold, innovative, and boundary shifting knowledge development in critical animal studies.

If we can be of any further help or assistance in discussing projects please do not hesitate to contact either of us via email. Further information and submission guidelines are found on the book series website: http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/?page_id=299

Sincerely yours,

Dr. Helena Pedersen
Senior Co-Editor, Submissions and Review Process
Malmö University
helena.pedersen@mah.se

Vasile Stãnescu
Senior Co-Editor, Promotions and Outreach
Stanford University
vts@stanford.edu

ASI is one of the few policy think-tanks associated with animal studies. Amongst other activities, the institute publishes the Animals and Society journal, the Human-Animal Studies book series, offers training programs in animal related policy issues, and commissions policy white papers.

ASI also sponsors Human-Animal Studies Fellowship. This interdisciplinary program enables seven fellows to pursue research in residence at a partner college or university, supporting recipients’ individual research through mentorship, guest lectures, and scholarly exchange, as well as contributing to the intellectual life of the host institution. Creating and sustaining fellowships like this is crucial to building a network of scholarship and policy expertise that can speak to the shared well-being of people, animals and nature.

This year, the fellowship is being held at Clark University in Worcester, MA. Host faculty are Jacque (Jody) Emel, Professor of the Graduate School of Geography at Clark and Susan McHugh, Professor of English at University of New England.

I’m pleased to say that I will be participating as one of this year’s fellows, working on proposal for a practical ethics for people, animals and nature. I am both honoured and excited by this opportunity, and look forward to sharing my experience with you.

Cheers!

Isn’t it better to honor Ms. Brancheau’s death by carefully reconsidering our relationships with killer whales, rather than resuming the spectacular Believe show only two days after her drowning? Is it enough that before the show began, a slideshow tribute to Dawn played on the watery stage’s massive screens, and the trainers wearing their orca-styled wetsuits refrained, for now, from swimming with or petting the orcas as part of the killer whale show’s choreography?

SeaWorld’s website still sells Believe as a show that “accentuates the close relationship SeaWorld trainers have with the killer whales,” and a “journey in which anyone believes they can connect with these magnificent mammals.” I imagine the bubbly violence that some customers witnessed a few weeks ago did not highlight the sort of connection SeaWorld wanted to display.

I don’t mean to be flippant. And I’m not suggesting for a moment that the trainers do not have a close relationship with the orcas in their care—or that we, as humans, cannot or do not connect with dolphins and whales—I believe we can, we do, and we should! But the question is how ought we to connect with them, what kind of relationship is best for their well-being and ours, and how can we best honor dolphins and whales as the magnificent individuals we so admire?

To me, SeaWorld’s Believe show is exciting, beautiful, and wildly entertaining; it is also—like SeaWorld itself—an outmoded, arrogant, insensitive story of captivity and dominance. The music, lyrics, choreography, architecture and landscaping are lavish decorations that distract us from the facts: It is not appropriate or wise to keep dolphins and whales for our pleasure. It deprives them of their physical, psychological and social needs and desires. We have witnessed the pain, distress and tragedy that captivity produces—for them and for us.

In light of the recent catastrophe at SeaWorld, let’s more than just pause before resuming business as usual. Instead, let’s recognize this as the major event it was, and just… stop.

It is a huge, thrill-ride of a movie. As importantly, it is interlaced with threads of environmentalism, colonialism, capitalism, militarism, spiritual crisis and personal redemption.

I’ve been asked to give an Earth Week Keynote address at Lafayette College in April. I think I’ll discuss Avatar, and its implications for sustainability, ethics and environmental studies. More on this subject after the talk.

Cheers!

One of WCMA’s more beautiful and though provoking installations is Mocha Dick, a sculpture by Tristin Lowe. Here is how the museum describes it.

Over fifty feet long and ten feet high, artist Tristin Lowe’s sculpture of a white sperm whale sprawls across the museum’s largest gallery. Mocha Dick is a life-sized rendition of the infamous leviathan that once harassed ships near Mocha Island in the South Pacific Ocean.

The exhibition is open 13 March – 08 August 2010. I’ll be sharing comments on ‘Life Boat Ethics’ during an interdisciplinary gallery panel, The Whiteness of the Whale, to be held on Thursday 08 April 2010. Please come join us for this event. Admission is free.

For more information on the WCMA, visit www.wcma.org.

Cheers!

Unfortunately, the interpretive approach is frequently ignored, misunderstood, or given short shrift in traditional schools of public policy. So too, many policy courses in animal studies, environmental studies, and the like are unaware of or insufficiently acquainted with interpretive approaches. This is doubly unfortunate. Interpretive and ‘analytic’ (e.g. positivist, quantitative, institutionalist, economist) approaches need not oppose one another, and can be usefully combined. And those making policy, whether in the public, private or non-profit sectors, are denied the benefits of both approaches triangulating on our best understanding of policy problems and their solutions.

The policy arena of wolf recovery is a case in point. Long regarded as a matter for the natural science, wolf recovery is as much or more a matter of cultural norms. With this in mind, I recently published an article entitled Discourse and Wolves: Science, Society and Ethics*. It intentionally tries to clarify some of the terms and methods of interpretive policy approaches by using the concept of discourse. I’ve included the methodology section in this post, and hope you will find it of some use in your own work. You can find the entire article in the journal Society and Animals.

It is ironic as well that the article also illustrates the troubles sometimes faced by those practicing interpretive policy studies. The manuscript for this article was originally invited as a book chapter for a book on wolves and society. It fell victim, however, to the empiricist presuppositions and personal politics of some of the book’s editors. But all is well that ends well. I’m very pleased the article found a perfect home in Society and Animals.

Cheers!

P.S. If you find this approach intriguing, I recommend Dvora Yanow’s Interpretive Policy Analysis (Sage, 1999) as a wonderful and insightful introduction.

* Lynn, William S. 2010. Discourse and Wolves: Science, Society and Ethics. Society & Animals 18 (1): 75-92.

Image: Tracy Brooks, 2003, Reflection.

~

Methodological Caveat

As you read this article, you will note it does not conform to the usual conventions of the scientific literature. One might expect this, as I do not pretend to be a scientist in the usual sense of the term. But there is more to it than that. The standard conventions of scientific articles – a statement of the research question justified by a literature review of findings to date, a description of the methods and measures used to test a hypothesis, and a discussion of the results followed by their significance and possible avenues for future exploration – are entirely appropriate to research questions amenable to quantitative methods. These conventions were developed in and for the natural sciences, work well within those domains, and overall there is no reason to diminish them (Chalmers 1999; Lindberg 1992; Lynn 2004).

When it comes to explaining human beings and their societies, there was a time when the human sciences sought to ape the natural sciences in theory, method and publishing conventions. This was a dismal failure, and while the struggle to shift gears continues, the positivist turn is long dead. The reason is that human beings do not conform to models of a determinism and/or predictivism that are the hallmark of the physical sciences. The sentience and sapience of people – their awareness and self-awareness – makes their thoughts and actions contingent and creative, transcending the boundary conditions for which the research practices and writing conventions of the natural sciences were devised (Bernstein 1991; Rorty 1979). Yes, there are still people who defend a ‘naturalistic model’ of the human sciences. Yet honestly, it is embarrassing to see an old-school positivist scholar chopped up by their peers because they have not kept up with the history and philosophy of science literature over the last fifty years. E. O. Wilson’s and his acolytes of consilience best represent this yearning for the old ways (Westley and Miller 2003; Wilson 1998). We can do much better than this now.

What is needed in such cases is a methodology adapted to the ‘human sciences’, something capable of causal explanation (the hallmark of science) without the pretense of determinism or predictivism [1]. Various social theories and qualitative methodologies have arisen to fill this need (Denzin and Lincoln 2000; Hesse-Biber and Leavy 2005; Schwandt 2007). So too have new conventions for publications, specifically around the idea of interpretation and narrative (Fischer and Forester 1996; Roe 1994; Yanow 1999). So for those with an interest in methodological affairs, what follows is an interpretation of several discourses that inform how we think about and act towards wolves. Intentionally broad in scale and scope, it looks for the resonance between our ideas, behaviour and social institutions, or to put the matter in social theoretical language, the interplay of human agency and social structure. The point is not to predict or determinatively explain what people and organizations do. That is not possible with human and some other beings. Rather, the purpose is to reveal the discursive dynamic that constitute, at least in part, our individual and collective stance towards wolves in the world [2].

Discourse

I approach discourse as a hermeneuticist. Hermeneutics is the study of understanding, one of the main perspectives in social theory [3]. The basic idea is that our personal and social lives can only be fully understood when we account for the meaning embedded in our actions and social relations, such as is found in our presuppositions and worldviews. To explain the human world, we therefore have to interpret what people mean when they say or do something, and what significance their words and actions have for the rest of the world.

Engaging in this kind of interpretation might seem trivial to some, as if picking out someone at random on the street and asking them about wolves is going to tell us the truth about wolf biology or ecology. But that would be missing the point. Hermeneuticists are interested in our individual and collective interpretations of wolves. These interpretations are highly significant, if, let us suppose, politically motivated wildlife professionals foster an approach to environmental policy that emphasizes agricultural production, ranching and sport hunting at the expense of predators, ecosystem function and biodiversity. So one cannot understand (as in describe, explain, evaluate or justify) why someone or some group acts as they do without first interpreting what they think and how it informs their actions. It is for this reason that hermeneutics is a keystone tradition of scholarship with respect to the theory and methodology of the human sciences (Bruns 1992; Gadamer 1993; Mueller-Vollmer 1989; Wachterhauser 1994).

To the hermeneuticist, discourse refers to the interconnections between ways of thinking and acting. It is not only a point-of-view that helps direct our actions in the world, it is also the meaning(s) embedded in our actions and social institutions. This approach extends the idea of discourse beyond the expression of an idea or perspective, whether in speech, writing or artistic creation. It focuses on the role of language in the formation of presuppositions, worldviews and ways of life. In this extended version, discourse traces the linguistic connections between several components — thought, action and social institutions. The argument from a discursive perspective is that language interweaves these components in such a manner that they are reciprocally constituted and/or mutually informing. That is to say, there is an inextricable linkage between how individual and collective agents think, speak, act and interact.

I use the term resonance (or resonances) to refer to the linkages between the components of discourse, as well as between different discourses themselves. I say resonance because these linkages are not uniform or static, but plural and shifting. They do not constitute a system of discreet inputs and outputs amenable to modeling and prediction. Rather they are a shifting configuration of meaning and social interaction that must be apprehended for their causal influences.

This contingency between meaning and social interaction arises from the way in which discourse connects intangible and tangible phenomena [4]. There is an ecology of intangible ideas, intentions, worldviews and culture, with more tangible actions, social institutions, and their outcomes (e.g. environmental and social policy). This ecology defies reductionism, and is better understood through a process of interpretation. Discourse is a powerful conceptual tool in the process of social and moral interpretation. It helps us identify and theorize a shifting field of resonances, and thereby understand the context, content and consequences of a discourse. With this in mind, we can better understand why and how an idea, social practice or institution exists, operates and perpetuates itself (Kelly 1990) [5].

Discourse may simultaneously exist at several levels. At one level are ideas, whether expressed in terms of reasons or emotions. At another level are actions. Here, reason and emotion become the motivating factors for acting in the world. At still another level are social institutions such as government agencies, economic and politically based interest groups, or non-profit advocacy organization. These institutions are also part of our discourses, patterns of thinking and acting that, over time, take on concrete and durable form (Ball 1988; Barnes and Duncan 1992; Wolf 2003b). When Stone expressed care for the well-being of abandoned wolf pups, her expression was at the discursive level of ideas. When she took to the field to find and save the pups from starvation, her behaviour was at the action level of discourse. When she went back to work at a NGO that is part of our social system, she was involved at the institutional level of discourse.

If we think of a discourse like a text, such as an essay or a policy statement, then we can ‘read’ these texts for their meaning(s). Like a written or spoken narrative, the meaning of a discourse can be interpreted for its good or ill intentions, content, implications and consequences (Ricoeur 1977; Ricoeur 1991; Ricoeur 1996). Thus when the state of Alaska justifies the aerial gunning of wolves through policy statements of dubious scientific value, we have a discourse we can read like a text and from which we can extract its meaning. So too, when gunners take to the air to kill wolves, we have an equally meaningful action on which to base our interpretations and from which to discern the values and worldviews that inform those actions. When the Alaska Board of Game continues to authorize lethal control measures against wolves, we see a social institution whose members, policies and practices are partaking of a broader anti-wolf discourse.

The interpretations of discourse are never perfect or unequivocal. There is always more to be learned, and multiple meanings are the norm. Nor are the intentions or consequences behind a statement or act always obvious or explicit. They can be concealed, poorly understood or unexpected (Hirsch 1967; Hirschman 1987). Because of this and other contingencies, hermeneuticists are humble about the power of any one interpretation and encourage dialogue to generate a broadly shared horizon of understanding. Moreover, they believe that reason and evidence, along with good will and a skeptical eye, can distinguish better from worse interpretations. In this way, we make progress in finding the truth. Finally, truth is not relative or absolute. In alignment with the best understanding of science, truth is always proximate. While veracity is the goal, verisimilitude is the reality. For hermeneuticists, understanding is always partial and fallible, and it is through dialogue with others that we reach a deeper and better understanding of the presuppositions and worldviews of ourselves and others [6].

Notes

1. The terms human science and natural science are commonly used in social theory, qualitative inquiry and the philosophy of science. The former refers to what others call the behavioural and social sciences, while the later refers to the physical, biological and life sciences. In addition to serving as a way to categorize different forms of scientific knowledge, it also implies a more historically and philosophically reflective posture over the theory, methods and role of science itself (see Ricoeur 1981).

2. Astute readers may recognize that a similar shift is occurring in the field of cognitive ethology. There is a recognition that many kinds of non-human animals think, feel, plan, play, act altruistically and selfishly, have a sense of guilt and wild justice, and transmit cultural traditions. The growth of this theoretical perspective has methodological implications, and represents a turning away from positivist models that frequently misunderstand animals. While using a different language, cognitive ethology is developing its own interpretive theory and qualitative methods. In this sense it is kin to hermeneutic traditions in the human sciences (for examples of such work, see Allen and Bekoff 2007; Bekoff et al. 2002; Bekoff 2005).

3. Hermeneutics is named after Hermes, the Greek god who handled communication between Olympus and the Ecumene — the habitable world of humanity, which for the Greeks was centred on the Mediterranean. Like the coyote, however, Hermes is a trickster, taking pleasure in parsing meaning that leads to misunderstanding. The background idea here is that language is not something we simply use to subjectively describe our feelings or objectively describe the world. Rather language is constitutive of how we experience and conceptualize the world around us.

4. For more on the ‘qualities’ and ‘phenomena’ that distinguish the human and natural sciences, as well as the implications this has for causal explanation, qualitative inquiry and moral reasoning, see (Lynn 2004).

5. When I speak of discourse, I often shift between the singular and plural. This is to denote the scale and specificity of my comments. Thus I may speak of discourse in general, discourses in particular, or a particular discourse in the singular.

6. There are other theories about discourse that emphasize the ideological nature of ‘totalizing’ discourse (e.g. structuralism), the partiality of all discourse (e.g. poststructuralism) and the distorting tendencies of all discourse (e.g. critical theory). The structuralists and poststructuralists tend to see people as subjects of discourse, as in subservient to the discourse(s) that constitute their worldview. Hermeneuticists and critical theorists think otherwise, believing people have agency, that is, they can be self-determining, and are not the pawns of larger social forces. Exercising this agency may not be easy (or possible) for everyone, but it is in the nature of human beings to be agents and interpreters of their own individual and collective lives (for examples of this literature, see Darier 1999; Gare 1995; Habermas 1993; Habermas 1998; Wolf 2003a).

References

Allen, Colin, and Marc Bekoff. 2007. Animal Minds, Cognitive Ethology and Ethics. The Journal of Ethics 11: 299-317.

Ball, Terence. 1988. Transforming Political Discourse: Political Theory and Critical Conceptual History. New York: Basil Blackwell.

Barnes, Trevor J, and James S Duncan, eds. 1992. Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text and Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape. New York: Routledge.

Bekoff, Marc. 2005. Animal Passions and Beastly Virtues: Reflections on Redecorating Nature. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Bekoff, Mark, Colin Allen, and Gordon Burghardt, eds. 2002. The Cognitive Animal: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives on Animal Cognition. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Bernstein, Richard J. 1991. Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics and Praxis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Bruns, Gerald L. 1992. Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Chalmers, Alan. 1999. What is This Thing Called Science? An Assessment of the Nature and Status of Science and its Methods. Third ed. London: Open University Press.

Darier, Eric. 1999. Discourses of the Environment. New York: Blackwell.

Denzin, Norman K, and Yvonna S Lincoln, eds. 2000. Handbook of Qualitative Research. Second ed. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage.

Fischer, Frank, and John Forester. 1996. The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning. Durham: Duke University Press.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1993. Truth and Method. Second, Revised ed. New York: Continuum.

Gare, Arran E. 1995. Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis. New York: Routledge.

Habermas, Jurgen. 1993. Justification and Application: Remarks On Discourse Ethics. Edited by Ciaran Cronin. Cambridge: MIT Press.

———. 1998. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Hesse-Biber, Sharlene Nagy, and Patricia Leavy. 2005. The Practice of Qualitative Research: A Primer. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Hirsch, Edward D. 1967. Validity In Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Hirschman, Albert O. 1987. The Search for Paradigms as a Hindrance to Understanding. In Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look, eds. P. Rabinow, and William M Sullivan, 177-194. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kelly, Michael, ed. 1990. Hermeneutics and Critical Theory in Ethics and Politics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Lindberg, David C. 1992. The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lynn, William S. 2004. The Quality of Ethics: Moral Causation in the Interdisciplinary Science of Geography. In Geographies and Moralities: International Perspectives on Justice, Development and Place, eds. Roger Lee, and David M Smith, 231-244. London: Routledge.

Mueller-Vollmer, K. 1989. The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present. New York: Continuum.

Ricoeur, Paul. 1977. The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text. In Understanding Social Inquiry, eds. F. Dallmayr, and T A McCarthy, 316-344. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

———. 1981. Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

———. 1991. From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics. Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press.
———. 1996. The Hermeneutics of Action. Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Roe, Emory. 1994. Narrative Policy Analysis: Theory and Practice. Durham: Duke University Press.

Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Schwandt, Thomas A. 2007. Dictionary of Qualitative Inquiry. Third ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Wachterhauser, Brice R, ed. 1994. Hermeneutics and Truth. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Westley, Frances, and Philip Miller, eds. 2003. Experiments in Consilience: Integrating Social and Scientific Responses to Save Endangered Species. Washington D.C.: Island Press.

Wilson, Edward O. 1998. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Wolf, Cary. 2003a. Animal Rites: American Culture, The Discourse of Species, and Posthuman Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wolf, Cary, ed. 2003b. Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Yanow, Dvora. 1999. Conducting Interpretive Policy Analysis. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

I began Practical Ethics with two basic goals in mind. The first was to bring ethical and interpretive tools to bear on policy issues affecting people, animals and nature. The second was to provide a common venue for other commentators to speak to these same issues.

I think the first goal has been met. Practical Ethics is viewed by tens of thousands of people each year, and I routinely receive requests to reprint some of its essays. This is immensely gratifying, and I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have spent time reading and viewing the site.

That said, my writing over the last year has been sparse, and I apologize for that. I’ve spent time on course development and consulting projects associated with my move to Williams College, and had little energy left over. I’ll try and do better this year!

With respect to establishing a common venue for the commentary of others, this goal has fallen flat. I think the reasons are three-fold. Asking busy people to write a blog post every several weeks turns out to be more difficult than they or I first thought. Then there are those who love blogging, and quickly scamper off to start a blog of their own. Practical Ethics has been the spark for several excellent ventures, most impressively Lisa Brown’s Animal Inventory, and perhaps inspirationally, Fabien Tepper’s superb Sentient Cincinnati. The third is that people’s interests and modes of expression change. A case in point is Karin Lauria’s move from writing theoethical blogs to creating extraordinary works of digital art on her karinlauria.com.

All this is completely understandable, legitimate and praiseworthy, even while it requires Practical Ethics to adapt.

So I’m planning on two substantive changes this year.

The first is a shift of technological platform. I’ll be moving Practical Ethics from my own server to the servers of WordPress.com. Because I have designed the website, blog and gallery to integrate seamlessly, this shift will entail a rewriting of some code. You’ll be able to access Practical Ethics at the same address, and the shift will take place early in the summer.

The second is scaling back the second intention of the Blog itself. I will still be posting guest commentary, and happily so. Even so, I plan to refocus the blog on my own reflections and point-of-view. I don’t mean to sound self-absorbed here, but group blogs have a overhead of both personnel and infrastructure that I cannot provide. To this end, I’ll be revising the commentator biographies to posts that recommend the work of these authors.

In the end, my hope is that a streamlined process, as well as coherence of content, will make Practical Ethics of even greater value to its readers.

Cheers!

Recently I read about a disturbing account of a young woman being attacked and killed by coyotes. Taylor Mitchell, a 19 years old Canadian folksinger, was reportedly killed in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, Nova Scotia.

Whether or not coyotes did kill this woman, her death is a tragedy, and my condolences go out to her family, friends and fans.

At the same time, I’ve heard a great deal of hysterical talk about the dangers of coyotes since this incident. I simply want to urge people to take a deep breath, wait until we find out what happened, and treat coyotes with the respect and distance they deserve.

Cheers

Cheers!

~

The October 18, 2009 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education featured several articles about the growing field of animal studies that you may have missed.

Jennifer Howard’s “Creature Consciousness” addressed how animal studies tests the boundaries between human and animal and between academic and advocate:

http://chronicle.com/article/Creature-Consciousness/48804/

Howard also penned an essay “Presses, Journals, and Meetings Buzz with Animal Studies”:

http://chronicle.com/article/Presses-Journals-and/48805/

Eric Banks’ “Animals Reconsidered” discusses the Reaktion Books “Animal” Series:

http://chronicle.com/article/Animals-Reconsidered/48803/

Other articles in the Chronicle Review included Jessica Pierce and Marc Bekoff’s “Moral in Tooth and Claw,” which surveys the research into animal morality, and Jeffrey J. Williams’ essay and interview entitled “Donna Haraway’s Creatures.”

http://chronicle.com/article/Moral-in-ToothClaw/48800/

http://chronicle.com/article/A-Theory-of-Critters-/48802/

Please note that while I have attached links to all of these, some Chronicle content is only available on-line to subscribers, so you may not be able to access all of the essays. The only one I was unable to read was the one on animal studies in presses, journals, and meetings. Enjoy!

Brett Mizelle, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of History
Director, American Studies Program
California State University, Long Beach

Editor, H-Animal

http://www.h-net.org/~animal/

Cheers, Bill

~

Humanimalia: A Journal of Human/Animal Interface Studies (http://www.depauw.edu/humanimalia ) is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal published by DePauw University and edited by Ralph Acampora, Lynda Birke, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Joan Gordon, Tora Holmberg, Susan McHugh, and Sherryl Vint.

Humanimalia has three aims: to explore and advance the vast range of scholarship on human/animal relations, to encourage exchange among scholarship working from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, and to promote dialogue between the academic community and those working closely with animals in non-academic fields.

So it is especially pleasing that Duke University is sponsoring postdocs focused on the interdisciplinary connections between feminist studies and animal studies. For details, see below.

Cheers, Bill

~

The Duke University Program in Women’s Studies invites applications for two postdoctoral fellows in Interdisciplinary Feminist Studies with a research focus in Human Animal Studies and the Question of Species. We seek candidates with interdisciplinary experience in Women’s Studies. We welcome empirical, textual, and theoretical specialization from a diverse array of academic fields, political and cultural contexts, and historical periods. Postdoctoral fellows will participate in a faculty-graduate seminar on these themes and are expected to be in residence for the academic year. Fellows will teach one course related to their scholarship. The fellowship includes a stipend, health insurance, and office space. Applicants should have the PhD in hand by May 2010.

Applications (including all letters of recommendations) must be received by November 17, 2009. Send C.V., 5-page project proposal, writing sample (25 pages), 1-page course proposal (undergraduate), and 3 letters of recommendation to:

Ranjana Khanna, Director, Women’s Studies, Box 90760, 210 East Duke Building, Durham NC, 27708. Our program information is available at www.duke.edu/womstud. Duke University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.

I cannot tell you what is right for your particular circumstance. I will, however, share with you my personal experience.

I was forced to switch from Mac to Windows when I took my first job in the academy. And over the last ten years, I navigated the minefield of Windows software and hardware with some success, as well as much frustration. I have also watched my students struggle with similar issues.

A couple of years ago I began writing about my disappointments with Windows software and hardware. I grew tired of crashes, hangs, bad design and endless clicks. The recent comments of Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s Chief Executive, that people buying the Vista OS can downgrade to XP ‘for free’ underscores my point.

So I recently made a switch back to Apple and bought a MacBook Pro with OS X Leopard. I’m extremely pleased I did. I chose a 15″ screen, a 1/2 terabyte time capsule. I supplemented this with a widescreen monitor, as well as a wireless keyboard and mouse. I also had 4 GB of memory installed.

The current iteration of OS X is vastly superior to XP — from the GUI, to the program architecture, to the interoperability with the web. Indeed, I am a bit astonished at the difference. I have not used Vista, but what I hear and see from my students (and Ballmer) does not reassure me. Indeed even Microsofts’ flagship software — Office — works better on a Mac.

If you are or will be a university student or professor, you may be thinking about switching from Windows to Apple. If you do, here are a few resources that may be of help along the way.

Apple’s overview on moving from Windows to OS X. Great place to start.
www.apple.com/getamac/movetomac

Even better, Apple’s Switch 101
www.apple.com/support/switch101

Little Machine’s O2M (Outlook to Mac) software. Before you give it a whirl, make sure you set your dates and times to American standard. World time and Canadian date formats gum up the works.
www.littlemachines.com

Once you’ve accomplished the basics, ThinkMac has a switching guide that takes you to the next step.
ThinkMac.net

For a list of the best open source Mac software, try:
OpenSourceMac.org.

For a complementary list of the best Mac software (open source or not), try:
BestMacSoftware.org.

For a list of portable applications you can use on a usb key with your mac, try:
FreewareOSX.com.

Version Tracker and MacUpdates will help you find other applications, plugins, scripts, etc.
VersionTracker.com
MacUpdate.com

And if you like to keep up with Apple innovations and gossip, look to Apple Insider.

Finally, if you prefer a paper guide, try David Pogue’s Switching to Mac (2008).

If you will be studying in a windows environment, you can install Parallels desktop or use Apple’s BootCamp to run XP and windows programs. Since OS X is built on an open source core, many open source programs made for Unix or Linux will also work on the Apple through the use of the X11 emulator that comes with your Apple. Both Parallels and X11 are easy to use.

If it is of help to you, here’s a taste of what I’m running on my MacBookPro today. I’ve tried to build on a bundle of native Apple software, supplemented with other open source and proprietary software.

OS X Leopard
Coda (Dreamweaver alternative)
Cyberduck (ftp client)
Firefox and Safari (browsers & IE alternatives)
Address Book, iCal and Mail (Outlook alternative)
Google Earth
Inkscape (photoshop alternative)
iPhoto (Picassa alternative)
iTunes (of courese)
KeePassX
Kompozer (Dreamweaver alternative)
MarsEdit (blog editor)
NeoOffice (Microsoft Office alternative)
iWork (Microsoft Office alternative)
Sente (Endnote alternative)
Skype and iChat
SyncDifferent (usb syncronization)
UnArchiver (WinZip alternative)
VLC (Windows Media Player alternative)
Xee (image browser)

I hope my experience is of some help to you, and good luck with your computer purchase

cheers, Bill

Begin your hunt by scheduling an appointment with your institution’s career service centre. These centres are called by many names. They will have a set of resources for those of you new to curriculum vitae and resume building, networking, career counseling, and so on.

Second, sign-up for job search engines that are applicable to you. These engines deliver job ads via email. Set your default to receive a digest of job adds each day or week. For example, www.idealist.org is a well-known job and networking website with a progressive and environmental cast. If you are looking for this sort of work, then checking Idealist daily is a wise move.

Third, bookmark the Employment Opportunities web pages for organizations you would like to work for. Check these pages weekly. For example, if you wanted to work for the Mass. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA), you would consistently check their Job Opportunities page at www.mspca.org/site/PageServer?pagename=aboutus_Job_Opportunities.

Fourth, if you have not already done so, seek out paid, stipend or volunteer internships. The right internship offers not only experience, but excellent networking possibilities as well. Non-profits and government agencies are particularly prone to using internships to vet candidates for jobs that are not yet advertised. See for example the Defenders of Wildlife web page with information on internships, www.defenders.org/about/interns.html.

Fifth, a job-search is full-time work. Don’t put yourself between a rock and a hard place by plunging into a full-time job search before you get your ducks in a row. Prioritize finishing your degree, and then organize your life for a full-time search. As soon as your degree requirements are completed, then plunge into the job search with vigour!

Cheers, Bill

A liberal arts or graduate degree is not a linear career path. In the professional degree path, you go to the appropriate professional school — e.g. law school, medical school, veterinary school. If all goes well, you become a lawyer or a doctor and so on. Such a linear path is common in the applied professions.

Liberal arts and graduate degrees are academic not professional credentials. The emphasis is on scholarship, not on practice. And so these degrees do not have the same kind of career path. You have to look around for opportunities that fit your interests and qualifications, and then you market yourself to potential employers. If this seems troubling, remember that while not as straightforward, you do have a wider range of opportunities. It is a trade-off, and to make it work for you, you simply need a bit of time and persistence.

Below are a few resources to help you take the next step. These suggestions are not conclusive. They supplement the internship, scholarship, fellowship, job and graduate opportunities found at various career development websites.

Before you begin, make sure you have an updated resume. Many of the websites listed below offer excellent advice on resumes, job letters, and recommendations. Be sure to take advantage of these resources. As you work on the resume, try to situate yourself so as to step into the next most beneficial job for your career ladder. For example, if you wish to be the executive director of a major non-profit organization,you have some experience and knowledge to garner on your way. A series of increasingly responsible jobs in research, development, outreach, and campaigns will be helpful to meeting your goal. So too is continuing education in budgeting, fund-raising, human resource management, and other areas that improve or supplement your growing experience.

If you are planning on going on for a PhD, please have a look at my advice for applying to graduate school elsewhere on this blog. The Chronicle of Higher Education, www.chronicle.com is a particularly important online resource. You might want to troll through the career development websites of other institutions, especially those in places where you would like to live (e.g. NYU or Columbia in New York City, or BU in Boston). These often have place specific resources that you would not find elsewhere.

If you are looking to fund a fellowship or postdoc, you may want to consult the grants and fellowships in Environmental Protection and Animal Welfare from the Foundation Center. The above book and database are similar to the Environmental Grantmaking Foundations book and CD, produced by www.environmentalgrants.com. One example you will find there is Planet Dog, www.planetdog.com/pdp.asp, a regional foundation that gives out small grants.

One set of opportunities often overlooked are ‘development’ offices. These are essentially fund-raising efforts by a non-profit organizations. This work takes many forms, from grant-writing to endowment
building. Another is working as a grants officer at a foundation, or a grants manager at a research or service institute. The best development and foundation people have expertise through training or experience in
the area for which they raise money. They also have strong writing and people skills, and enjoy facilitating the work of others. The salaries and benefits in this arena are better than other non-profit or academic
positions. An important resource for development specialists is the Foundation Center, www.fdncenter.org, a training centre and web portal for all forms of nonprofit funding.

If you are looking for a job in the public or private sectors, give yourself a bit of time to land in the right position. The average job search takes from 12 to 18 months. What the experts mean by this is that it takes time to find a good job relevant to your experience and expertise. And while you might be working a transition job during that period of time, that does not mean you are dead-in-the-water. You should be exploring, networking and learning. If you do land in a transition job (and who amongst us hasn’t), I suggest you keep looking into the private, public and non-profit sectors simultaneously. This is much easier online because job banks have email notifications of new and current openings. It is a bit of work to manage the volume of information at first, but once you hone it down, it really does work.

General Search Engines
Career Builder, www.careerbuilder.com
Career Journal, www.careerjournal.com/index
Executive Searches, www.execsearches.com
Jobstar, www.jobstar.org
Monster, www.monster.com
New York Times, www.nytimes.com
Wall Street Journal, www.wsj.com

Academic Search Engines
Academic Careers, www.academiccareers.com
Chronicle of Higher Education, www.chronical.com/jobs
Higher Education Jobs, www.higheredjobs.com
MonsterTrak, www.monstertrak.monster.com

Nonprofit Search Engines
Foundation Center, PND Jobs Corner, fdncenter.org/pnd/jobs
Chronicle of Philanthropy, www.philanthropy.com/jobs.dir/jobsmain.htm
Idealist, www.idealist.org
Independent Sector Joblink, www.independentsector.org/members/joblink.html

Animal and Environmental Protection
Animal Sheltering, www.AnimalSheltering.org
Environmental Jobs and Careers, www.ecoemploy.com
Environmental Careers Organization, 2004, The Eco Guide to Careers That Make a Difference: Environmental Work for a Sustainable World, Washington, DC: Island Press. (www.islandpress.org)
Humane Movement, www.humanesocietyu.org/careers_with_animals
World Animal Net, www.worldanimal.net

Also, directly check employment listings with businesses, colleges and universities, foundations, government agencies, lobby organizations, non-profits. Jobs often appear on their websites before (or even if) they reach the major search engines. Here are a few examples.

Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International, www.aaalac.org
Association of Zoos and Aquariums, www.aza.org
Audubon, www.massaudubon.org
American Veterinary Medical Association, www.avma.org
Center for Respect of Life and the Environment, www.crle.org
Charity Guide, www.cfd.wa.gov/CharityGuide/cat1.htm
Consortium for Conservation Medicine, www.conservationmedicine.org
Defenders of Wildlife, www.defenders.org
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), www.dhs.gov
Earth Charter Initiative, www.earthcharterusa.org
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), www.fbi.gov
Foundation for Biomedical Research, www.fbresearch.org
Humane Society of the United States, www.hsus.org
International Fund for Animal Welfare, www.ifaw.org
League of Conservation Voters, www.lcv.org
National Association of Biomedical Research, www.nabr.org
National Resources Defense Council, www.nrdc.org
National Wildlife Federation, www.nwf.org
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, www.peta.org
Public Interest Research Groups, www.masspirg.org
Scientists Center for Animal Welfare, www.scaw.com
Society for Conservation Biology, www.conbio.org
Sierra Club, www.sierraclub.org
Sportsman and Animals Owners Voting Alliance, www.saova.org
Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, www.aspca.org
Wolf Conservation Center, www.nywolf.org

Good fortune with your hunt, and I hope I have been of some help to you.

Cheers!

Many of the readers of this blog are spending the summer writing their research project, thesis or dissertation.

One way of implementing her advice is to form a writing support group. Here are a few suggestions that I’ve accumulated over time.

1. Meet every two or three weeks. Weekly is too often, once a month is too long.

2. Take turns providing a writing sample for the group to read and critique. The sample must not be too long, and should be distributed well ahead of your meeting time.

3. Feedback on the clarity and content of your writing is an obvious benefit. Less appreciated is how reading and critiquing the work of another sparks new ideas about your own interpretation and expression.

4. Distinguish between questions of expression (e.g. how to say something) and conception (e.g. theory, method, data sources).

5. Get an experienced writer to attend some of your meetings. This can be a professor, editor, senior grad student, etc. The trick is getting the right person with the right experience for the topic under consideration.

6. Someone (or two) must take responsibility for planning and organizing the meetings. Great ideas and meetings can fizzle out for lack of organization and preparation.

7. Meet in a venue that facilitates your dialogue and has a minimum of disruptions.

I hope these suggestions are of some help, and good luck in writing up your research!

cheers, Bill

The first step is to become familiar with various graduate programs and their application process. Basically this involves selecting your top ten list and completing the application materials. The application materials usually consist of all or part of the list below.

* Undergraduate transcripts
* Graduate transcripts if you have completed a post-baccalaureate degree
* Standardized test scores (e.g. GRE, TOEFL)
* Letters of recommendation
* Personal statement

Note that some schools have additional requirements, such as an interview. Others require you submit your application online.

The next step is visiting the institutions you are interested in attending. Meeting faculty will give you a better idea of what the place is about, as well as give them a chance to see you as a person — not an anonymous applicant.

The third step is to strategize your applications carefully. In the process, follow Bill’s Rules to help you produce the best application.

1. Admissions committees are looking for a high grade point average (GPAs). When it helps you look good, distinguish between your overall, major, and junior/senior GPA. For example, you may have a 3.3 overall GPA, but a 4.0 in your last year and a 3.9 in your major. Note this fact on the application form, as well as in your personal statement.

2. Standardized tests like the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) or the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) are common in the US. If you are planning on going to school in the States, there is virtually no avoiding them. So make them work for and not against you. For standardized tests like the GRE, give yourself 3 to 6 months to prepare. Take a pre-test course with a professional testing service, and practice, practice, practice. The test taking skill you learn in these courses can raise your score dramatically, and they won‚t hurt when you start taking tests in graduate school! Your success in the TOEFL examination will depend on your experience in using English as a language for professional (not personal) communication.

3. If you already know your GRE scores, use your personal statement to emphasize those results that are of most interest to your graduate program. And always remember to note the percentile as well as the raw score. The tests vary from year to year, and the raw scores are meaningless without the percentile scores. Why? A percentile score shows how well you did in comparison to others who took the same test. People with similar percentile scores across several years may have widely varying raw scores.

4. Request recommendations from people in a position to assess your professional skills, e.g. professors or employers. They should be willing to give your application unqualified support, as ‘recommendation creep‚ has made anything but a golden letter problematic. To help them write the best recommendation, provide a copy of your transcript (break down the GPA for them too), your GRE scores (raw and percentile), your draft personal statement, and a brief description of the graduate program.

5. Your personal statement should be sterling–crisply written and rigourously thought. It should address your background, motivations for applying, and post-graduate career goals.

6. Showcase your accomplishments — authored and/or peer-reviewed publications, significant life experience, post-graduate certifications, special training. While online applications and standardized forms may be efficient for bureaucrats, they are a poor means of demonstrating the full range and quality of your prior knowledge and skills. Make sure you address this information in your personal statement, as well as send samples of your work directly to the admissions office for inclusion in your file. If you feel a tad shy about promoting yourself, get over it!

7. Briefly explain life transitions in your application letter. If you were a slacker as an undergraduate, yet are now a serious scholar, you need to let your readers know. Briefly. Only a sentence or two should flag a major shift in your life. That said; make certain the other information you submit supports this claim (e.g. a comparison of GPA and GRE scores).

8. Make contact with a faculty member who might champion your application. Admissions committees see a host of applications. While GPA and GRE scores may seem cut and dry, the reality is that they are not determinative, and are weighted alongside other applicant information. At the end of the day, those applicants that faculty are excited about working with have the best chance of admission.

9. Many graduate programs require prerequisite coursework. Some require you finish these prerequisites before they even consider your application. Others will make your acceptance contingent on satisfactorily completion of the prerequisites before starting classes. And still others allow you to complete prerequisites sometime during your graduate education. If you do not complete your work on time, you may lose your place in the incoming class. Please do not hesitate to ask the graduate admissions office if your prior work meets the requirements. If you suspect their judgment is wrong, do not hesitate to ask them to look at your transcript again with the help of the department you are applying to. You should send them a syllabus of the course for this review. Nor should you hesitate to petition that they waive a prerequisite for good reason, e.g. equivalent work elsewhere.

10. Don’t give up. If you do not get into graduate school the first time around, try again. Before you do so, it is best to find out why you were not accepted in the first place. Was it something about your GPA? Then take post-bachelor’s coursework to prove your mettle. Was it a poor recommendation? Then find another recommender. Was it nit-picky grammatical errors that brought out the demon in the graduate admissions officer? Then get it corrected. I have had many students who were turned down the first time around, and went on to become some of the best graduate students of their program.

I hope these rules of thumb help you in your application.

Cheers

It is the beginning of the Spring term, about the time I am frequently asked to provide recommendations for academic fellowships, scholarships, or graduate school applications. Because these recommendations are important, I take writing them seriously. So I have a few rules and requirements that you should keep in mind before requesting that I do so.

1. Your first step is to contact me by email to see if I would be interested in writing you a recommendation. You must contact me at least two weeks before the deadline for which a recommendation is due.

2. Assuming I do, your next step is to provide me with a complete package of information regarding your application. You must do this before I write the recommendation.

This package should includes a pdf of your unofficial transcript, a pdf of your letter of application, and any other material you believe I should know about. Send this package to me as a set of attachments to one email.

Please do not send me a link to a website where you believe the information is found. Instead, extract and organize all the relevant information and place it in the body of your email. Such information includes the fellowship or scholarship title you are applying for, contact information, and description of the opportunity.

3. Note that I always write anonymous recommendations. This ensures the recommendation is taken seriously. You must therefore provide me with the name, title, affiliation and address of the person(s) I am writing to. Include this information in the email you send with your attachments.

4. All recommendations are sent via email, not post. Please make sure you include the correct destination email.

5. The kind of recommendation you receive will reflect your performance in my classes, your overall success in college, and my impressions of you. If you are a poor student who is hostile to learning and lacks initiative, or an average student that is indifferent to theoretical and methodological inquiry, then I’m not the best person to ask. I mean no personal disrespect, but I strive to write excellent recommendations, and I want these to carry the appropriate weight for those that deserve high praise.

Finally, please note that I do not provide written recommendations for non-academic internships or job applications. It is the job of prospective employers to vet their own applications. I am happy, however, to provide verbal recommendations. So with my prior permission, you are welcome to pass on my contact information to potential employers.

Cheers!

When Angelo realized he was about to become homeless, he was determined not to let his cat Simon suffer the same fate. Angelo was heartbroken to imagine being separated from his best friend, but in an unexpected turn of events, and with the help of the Boston-based organization Phinney’s Friends, Angelo has worked out an unusual arrangement — one that enables him to focus on his own needs, while ensuring the very best care for his cat.

To find out more about Phinney’s Friends, or to make a donation, email Carmine Dicenso at: cdicenso@mspca.org

For additional episodes and more information, visit the Animal Inventory TV website.

This past November the journal Nature unveiled its special edition entitled Darwin 200 (November 20, 2008, issue 256) in celebration of Darwin’s 200th birthday.  In this issue Miller et al. reported on successful reconstruction of most of the genome sequence of the extinct woolly mammoth (2008, 256, 387-390). The Miller et al finding is being heralded by some as a potential solution to the problem of extinction – resurrecting long-gone groups of animals like the mammoth, the dinosaurs, or the myriad of others, like orangutans, who are sliding precipitously down the extinction slope. In the same issue, science writer Henry Nicholls considered the scientific complexities of cloning a mammoth in his commentary “Let’s make a mammoth”, asking whether the dream of doing so is now within reach (2008,256, 310-314) and pondering wistfully that “By 2059, who knows what may be returned rebooted to walk the earth?” (2008, 314). And, calling the Miller et al. achievement a “breathtaking” measure of progress, evolutionary anthropologist Michael Hofreiter presaged that the next genome to be sequenced will be that of our close relatives, neanderthals (2008, 256, 330 – 331).

The viewpoints expressed by these authors support the notion that scientific know-how will allow us to skirt the issue of vanishing species under the false confidence that we can bring them back into the world when we deem it worthwhile to do so. This peculiar form of ”conservation” manifests itself in cloning efforts like the one above but also in efforts to collect, preserve and store DNA and viable cells from animals in danger of extinction such as The Frozen Ark Project by the University of Nottingham, Natural History Museum, Zoological Society of London.  Moreover, zoos and aquaria have squarely situated themselves in the middle of this effort by branding themselves as bastions of protection and preservation for the animals they hold captive.  Through their captive breeding programs they claim to be in the business of safe-keeping those species who are bound for extinction in the natural setting.

How realistic are these efforts? More importantly, what do they tell us about our regard for members of other species and, ultimately, their success?  Turning to the practical matter, all life forms, and especially animals, are complex organisms that thrive in a highly intricate dynamic milieu with each other and the planet’s ecosystems. Although DNA preserves the genetic template of any given species it does not preserve the way these genetic instructions unfold in the physical, social and psychological context to yield the whole animal in all of his or her essence. Moreover, it is the disappearance of natural habitats that is the major cause of most of these extinctions. These realities make it highly unlikely that individuals will be able to be restored in their original form in their natural environment to lead natural lives.  Even if some semblance of extinct life forms could be made to survive, there will be no place for them to go. Although this issue is given lip-service, it is taken in stride by cloning enthusiasts.

Beyond these critical pragmatic and scientific issues, I argue that these efforts are representative of a mindset that has contributed greatly to the extinction trend in the first place. I also argue that these kinds of efforts tell us something about the stunning disregard we have for the other animals we share the planet with. This dangerous viewpoint is part of a cultural ill I call “recreational conservation”, societal beliefs and practices that superficially resemble genuine conservation efforts but, instead, reflect and promote a demeaning commoditization of other animals for the purposes of our entertainment and edification.  Zoos, marine parks, captive breeding programs, frozen DNA banks, and extinct species cloning programs all promote themselves as modern-day Noah’s Arks.  But the danger is that these human-created contexts of cement and steel, test tubes, and incubators are all sending the message that natural habitats are irrelevant. And if the animals’ natural context is implicitly presented as unimportant, then these institutions are actually contradicting the message they claim to affirm.  Moreover, these types of efforts palliate people’s anxieties about a disappearing natural world, instead of forcing us to confront the imminent dangers to animals.  In this way they create a false sense of security about the survival and welfare of other animals. Hence the notion that species can be reconstituted or “rebooted” sometime in the future.  Zoos and marine parks, especially, often explicitly convey to the visitor that by patronizing their facility they are contributing to conservation. Visitors, in turn, are not only entertained but exit the zoo with a sense of self-satisfaction that they have “done their part”.  The opportunity loss for real conservation efforts is obvious. Instead of doing the real work of conservation, “recreational conservation” entertains under the guise of education and leads us to look forward to the day when we can be “conservationists” once again by gawking at even more exotic commodities such as the woolly mammoth, tyrannosaurus rex, the saber-toothed tiger, and neanderthals. Recreational conservation ensures failure because it is a continuation of the same mindset that brought other animals to this precipice in the first place. What is needed is the hard work of real conservation – shifting to a non-anthropocentric view that takes seriously the inherent value of the other animals on this planet.

As I read about these touted efforts to bring back extinct species I envision a dystopic future that repeats the ignorance and abuses of the past. In 1902 the Bronx zoo featured an abducted pygmy man, Ota Benga, in the primate display. Mr. Benga eventually committed suicide. In addition to all the other animals trying to eek out a life in confinement, this is a particularly tragic reminder of the sordid past of our institutions of captivity. Now we are closing in on the cusp of further perversions of entertainment – “rebooted” displaced beings, e.g., mammoths and Neanderthals, to keep us mired in the diversionary past and ensuring a future wiped bare by entitlement and disregard. But all is not lost.  Tickets will be half-price on holidays and children under two are admitted free.

It comes from Dvora Yanow, a scholar of interpretive policy analysis — the application of hermeneutics and interpretive methodology to the interpretation of organizational and public policy.

Professor Yanow entitles it Auntie Dvora’s Miscellaneous Notes on Paper- and Ariticle- Writing from Any Methodological Perspective.

It is quite excellent and I highly recommend it!

Cheers!

To be sure, course catalogues and programme requirements give one a guide of what is available. Yet scheduling wasn’t the problem. It was deciding how to integrated my courses into a coherent body of knowledge. Having an interdisciplinary sensibility made this harder. There is so much that is useful to know, and so many professors I wanted to learn from.

In higher education, a student should get three things — theory, method and topics. Which is to say a conceptual map of knowledge, methods by which to generate new knowledge, and an introduction to the wealth of knowledge that is already out there. When you look at your own course of study, try to make sure you are getting all three kinds of knowledge. More importantly, make sure you are learning the kind of knowledge most appropriate to whatever it is you are studying.

For example, imagine that you are interested in how people’s religious values informs their personal decisions about animal or environmental protection. With this as your research interest, you might want to take courses in ethics and the environment, animal and ecological theology, religion and society, as well as qualitative research. These will give you the background to properly frame and carry out your research questions.

In keeping with interdisciplinarity, you can find appropriate coursework located in many departments, majors and programs. Take ethics for example. Most people think of ethics as associated only with philosophy, as in ‘moral philosophy’. This is not the case, however, and there are as many worthy ethics courses outside philosophy, in disciplines ranging from medicine and law, to anthropology, geography and political science.

Overall, be attentive to your full range of options. Search course catalogues carefully and creatively, and you are certain to find a wealth of interesting coursework.

Cheers!