Consumer spaces as political spaces: A critical review of social,environmental, and psychogeographical research

The purpose of this review is to critique the social and environmental psychology literature on spaces and places with a focus on consumer culture and neoliberalism. By drawing on social theory and the Continental philosophical literature, the review argues that an alternative approach to knowledge production is required. To this end, recommendations are provided for what a psychogeographical approach in social and environmental psychology could look like. It argues that such work could be of benefit to academic and local communities by exposing the social costs and consequences associated with consumer culture and neoliberalism.     

"伦理经营"诠释

伦理经营观念是企业经营哲学历史发展的逻辑结论,也是企业伦理学家们对市场经济条件下企业经营管理活动的伦理学总结。在我国,企业行为失范、坚持科学发展观和构建社会主义和谐社会、参与经济全球化进程、生态环境的恶化态势等因素决定了企业必须坚持伦理经营价值观。伦理经营既是一种守法经营,也是一种合德经营。经营法规、人性化管理、诚信交易、绿色营销、积极负责等,是伦理经营价值观体系的构成要素。     

环境伦理学中的"生态化"人生观

从其实践要求和理论品性来看,一种完整的环境伦理学理论必然包含着一种关于人生观的理解。本文主要探讨罗尔斯顿环境伦理理论和深生态学关于人生观的主张和见解,从而指出环境伦理学理论包含着一种“生态化”人生观。相对于现代社会盛行的人生观来说,“生态化”人生观是基于人生之生命层面的,尊重自然的,后物质主义的人生观。它作为一种新的人生观理论具有重要现实意义。     

From life state to ecological consciousness: on Wang Yangming’s “natural principles of order within the realm of liang zhi”

Wang Yangming argues that the life state of a virtuous person is “forming one body with Heaven, Earth and the myriad things.” For instance, in watching a child fall into a well, he cannot help feeling alarmed and commiserate; In observing the pitiful cries and frightened appearance of animals, he cannot help feeling “unable to bear” their suffering; In seeing plants destroyed or tiles shattered, he cannot help but feel pity and regret and so forth. At the same time, he also stresses that there is a natural order of values with the help of which a human being deals with the myriad things, namely the natural principles of order within the realm of liang zhi. From a practical perspective, Yangming integrated these two aspects into a spontaneously psychological self-consciousness and an intuition of judgment and choice. Under its direction and instruction, human beings cannot only generally care for the myriad things, but also make reasonable use of them. Therefore, the significant reference to “the natural principles of order within the realm of liang zhi” involves the harmony between nature and human beings from life state to ecological consciousness. __________ Translated from Tranjin Shehui Kexue 天津社会科学 (Tianjin Social Sciences), 2004 (6) by Wu Min, Proofread by Xu Xiangdong & Wu Fei     

Problems in the neighbourhood: Formulating noise complaints across dispute resolution services

When people are in dispute with their neighbours, there are multiple routes to resolution, and different services have a range of remits to support it. This article explores how noise complaints are reported to dispute resolution mediation and local council environmental services in the United Kingdom. A collection of 315 recorded telephone calls were transcribed and analysed using discursive psychology, underpinned by conversation analytic methods. Analysis focused on how the same kinds of noise complaint were formulated for the remit and provision of the service called. In mediation calls, callers directly attributed the source of the noise to the agent of its production (e.g., “it's about the neighbour”). However, reference to “the neighbour” was typically omitted (at least initially) in calls to environmental health services (e.g., “I need to speak to someone about disturbance”). This comparative analysis of different settings reveals the significance of service remit for the design of complaints and the relevance of attributing cause in making a case for aid. Comparing two settings provides a propitious opportunity to demonstrate that noise is not a physically objective phenomenon or neutral category but institutionally formulated social conduct.     

The organization of words and environmental sounds in the second year: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence

The majority of research examining early auditory‐semantic processing and organization is based on studies of meaningful relations between words and referents. However, a thorough investigation into the fundamental relation between acoustic signals and meaning requires an understanding of how meaning is associated with both lexical and non‐lexical sounds. Indeed, it is unknown how meaningful auditory information that is not lexical (e.g., environmental sounds) is processed and organized in the young brain. To capture the structure of semantic organization for words and environmental sounds, we record event‐related potentials as 20‐month‐olds view images of common nouns (e.g., dog) while hearing words or environmental sounds that match the picture (e.g., “dog” or barking), that are within‐category violations (e.g., “cat” or meowing), or that are between‐category violations (e.g., “pen” or scribbling). Results show both words and environmental sounds exhibit larger negative amplitudes to between‐category violations relative to matches. Unlike words, which show a greater negative response early and consistently to within‐category violations, such an effect for environmental sounds occurs late in semantic processing. Thus, as in adults, the young brain represents semantic relations between words and between environmental sounds, though it more readily differentiates semantically similar words compared to environmental sounds.     

Aggression and risk‐taking as adaptive implementations of fast life history strategy

Within the evolutionary life history (LH) framework, aggression and risk‐taking are adaptive implementations of a fast LH strategy to adapt to environmental unsafety and unpredictability. Based on a longitudinal sample of 198 Chinese adolescents living in rural areas, half of whom were separated from their parents, this study tested LH hypotheses about aggression and risk‐taking in relation to safety constraints in the childhood living environments. The results showed that proxies of environmental unpredictability, including parental separation, were positively associated with aggression and risk‐taking and negatively associated with slow LH strategy, which in turn was negatively associated with aggression and risk‐taking. Children separated from their parents scored lower on slow LH strategies and higher on aggression and risk‐taking. These findings support the evolutionary assumption that human development responds to safety cues through behavioral implementations of LH strategies.     

A review of environmental enrichment as treatment for problem behavior maintained by automatic reinforcement

We reviewed studies that used environmental enrichment as treatment for problem behavior maintained by automatic reinforcement. A search of behavior analytic journals produced 71 publications with a total of 265 applications of environmental enrichment used alone or in conjunction with alternative behavior manipulations (e.g., prompting, reinforcement) and problem behavior manipulations (e.g., blocking, restraint). Environmental enrichment, as a sole intervention, was efficacious in 41% of the sample. Alternative behavior manipulations, problem behavior manipulations, and a combination of both improved the overall efficacy of environmental enrichment. We discuss factors that may influence the efficacy of environmental enrichment, current trends in research on this topic, and implications for both practitioners and researchers.     

Age-related changes in task-switching components: the role of task uncertainty

The present study examined age differences in executive functioning, using an externally cued task-switching paradigm. Two components of task switching were assessed: the ability to maintain and select among task sets (general switch costs) and the ability to switch between task sets (specific switch costs). In contrast to previous findings, we found large age-related differences in specific switch costs, especially when the number of potentially relevant task sets is increased from two to four. Age-related differences in general switch costs were absent when external task cues subserved executive processing in task switching. Generally, the findings suggest that age-related impairments in task-switching components vary as a function of task uncertainty, such as the presence of environmental prompts to behavior.     

绿色生活方式的结构与测量

基于前人研究,结合对241份访谈问卷进行内容分析,构建绿色生活方式由知、情、意、行四维度组成的理论假设,并依照该理论初步编制绿色生活方式量表。采用调查法回收有效问卷1051份,结果显示:量表的 Cronbach α系数为0.919,分半信度系数为0.876,0.868; 量表与各维度均存在显著的中高等相关,各维度间存在显著的中低等相关; 探索性因素分析的结果与理论构想基本一致,验证性因素分析结果表明模型拟合度良好; 此外,量表能较好区分环境态度与环保行为有不一致倾向的个体。因此,本研究制定的绿色生活方式量表具有较好的信效度,并可为区分“言行一致”或“言行不一”的个体提供一定参考。