Last year I got invited to speak at the Marshall Cavendish's primary school enrichment books launch cum talks for teachers. During that time, I met some of the editors of MC and mentioned that I might be interested to write on geography.
Today I got an email from a senior editor for a humanities magazine for upper secondary school students. Asking if I would like to write an article on Singapore's ecological footprint or perhaps even a regular feature on sustainability.
What an exciting opportunity. Hope to meet the editor this week to discuss further details.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Post Masters Plan
I suddenly realized that after my Masters, I could essentially go anywhere in the world so why not volunteer overseas?
So I just applied to:
WWF Youth Volunteers
United Nations Volunteers - rejected
More jobs available here http://www.idealist.org
Action against hunger
World Resource Institute
Food & Water Watch
Environment Defense Fund
Center for Food Safety
Environmental Working Group
WWF Jobs
FAO Jobs
UNEP Jobs
Alternatively, how about a paid internship with SIIA?
Or I could be crazy and go for a business / market analyst position in the private sector. What do I really want anyways? And what is wrong with trying something totally different to challenge myself?
So I just applied to:
WWF Youth Volunteers
United Nations Volunteers - rejected
More jobs available here http://www.idealist.org
Action against hunger
World Resource Institute
Food & Water Watch
Environment Defense Fund
Center for Food Safety
Environmental Working Group
WWF Jobs
FAO Jobs
UNEP Jobs
Alternatively, how about a paid internship with SIIA?
Or I could be crazy and go for a business / market analyst position in the private sector. What do I really want anyways? And what is wrong with trying something totally different to challenge myself?
Plan for 2009
As of date, this is more or less what is happening:
January - driving exam and field work. Must start on the local field work please! Also looking at coming up with HT publication ASAP. Need to get in touch with potential PhD profs too! Literature review for thesis please.
February - GRE exam; applying for jobs; maybe going to Surin; writing up paper for AAG competition. One chapter in thesis. Finish up vegetable article for SAGE Pub.
March - AAG conference - a whole month in USA; visiting universities on the east coast; writing thesis?
April - writing thesis full speed ahead! Going for job interviews?
May - more writing thesis! Submit first draft!
June - Field Studies 2009?
July - Sister in Singapore - editing and revision of thesis; submit thesis!
August - graduate and preferably start job already! Otherwise go Hokkaido for graduation trip with parents hopefully. But if I so decide to go McGill, I'll be moving to canada? haha some how that is about 40% chance of happening.
January - driving exam and field work. Must start on the local field work please! Also looking at coming up with HT publication ASAP. Need to get in touch with potential PhD profs too! Literature review for thesis please.
February - GRE exam; applying for jobs; maybe going to Surin; writing up paper for AAG competition. One chapter in thesis. Finish up vegetable article for SAGE Pub.
March - AAG conference - a whole month in USA; visiting universities on the east coast; writing thesis?
April - writing thesis full speed ahead! Going for job interviews?
May - more writing thesis! Submit first draft!
June - Field Studies 2009?
July - Sister in Singapore - editing and revision of thesis; submit thesis!
August - graduate and preferably start job already! Otherwise go Hokkaido for graduation trip with parents hopefully. But if I so decide to go McGill, I'll be moving to canada? haha some how that is about 40% chance of happening.
'Eat local' movement takes root
By MICHELLE LOCKE Associated Press
Posted: 12/26/2008
SAN FRANCISCO—Here's something you might not know about being a locavore, the new-fangled term for the old-school tradition of eating food grown close to home: Coffee is almost always negotiable.
Here's another: The people practicing this new-old (and currently quite hot) trend may surprise you. Suburban moms? Check. Artisanal-cheese sniffing foodies? Double check. And how about denizens of the decidely un-hippie halls of Wal-Mart?
"It's really amazing how it's just exploded," says Jennifer Maiser, a San Francisco database consultant who was part of a small group credited with coining "locavore," as part of an "eat local" challenge they mounted three years ago.
Since then, wildly fluctuating transportation costs, food scares and global warming concerns, have lent a mainstream patina to eating local. Wal-Mart, the nation's largest grocer has pledged to source $400 million worth of fruits and vegetables from in-state farmers this year.
Some numbers:
— There were 4,685 farmers' markets as of August, according to the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, up nearly 7 percent from two years ago and nearly 3,000 more than 1994, the first year of tracking.
— Locally grown produce was listed as the No. 2 item on a "What's Hot" list by more than 1,200 members of the American Culinary Federation in an October 2007 Internet survey by the National Restaurant Association. (No. 1 was bite-sized desserts, but that's another story.)
— The Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement in which members get food delivered from nearby farms has grown to include more than 1,300 farms since its inception in 1985, according to the Robyn Van En Center at Pennsylvania's Wilson College.
Who's eating all this local food?
All kinds of people, from trowel-wielding back-to-the-landers to the tech titans of Google, Inc.'s headquarters in Mountain View, where Cafe 150 serves food from within a 150-mile radius.
And then there's bluesman Elvin Bishop, accidental locavore.
Best known for the '70s hit "Fooled Around and Fell in Love," that sent many a couple swaying into the night, Bishop is often to be found these days working in his well-cared for garden in rural Marin County, north of San Francisco.
Bishop started out eating local as an Oklahoma farm boy, but turned to a road diet of fast food and bad food when he started traveling with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in the '60s.
A decade of that moved him to buy a place with some arable land—his first tasks were pulling apart an old redwood deck then on the property to frame a greenhouse and digging up the raggedy lawn to plant vegetables.
He's still busy with music, recently releasing a new CD "The Blues Rolls On," a funky collection that features some well-known names, including old friend B.B. King.
But that hasn't stopped him from stocking a deep cupboard in his kitchen with gleaming jars of preserves. (He tried to take a jar of his strawberry jam to King, but couldn't get it through airport security.)
Bishop isn't an official member of the locavore movement, "I'm not too much of an 'ism' type of guy," he notes. What he likes is knowing where his food came from, and that it's going to be tasty.
Taste and freshness are the driving forces for a lot of people interested in buying local foods, says Laurie Demeritt, who studies American eating patterns for The Hartman Group, a research firm in Bellevue, Wash.
National surveys of consumers showed that "local" has a world of different meanings, but there is a unifying theme of wanting to connect with the product—how was it grown, were pesticides used, how were animals treated.
"What we're finding is that the desire to know more about where your products come from is critically important across the United States," Demeritt says.
With the movement still young, researchers are looking for more data to see whether local foods live up to their promise of being safer, healthier and better for the environment, says Rich Pirog, associate director of Iowa State University's Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture.
There is some anecdotal information—for instance, farmer's markets are more likely to be selling unusual varieties like heirloom tomatoes, which maintains genetic diversity, he says. And common sense indicates eating locally means less processed food, and an easier task of tracing where your food comes from.
Living locavore can be tough—imagine life without bananas.
Some followers are hard-core, drinking tea made of local herbs, for instance; while others are more relaxed.
Flexibility is key for Tammy Donroe, a Boston freelance writer and mother of two, who tries to incorporate local food into her family's diet all year.
In October, she went a little deeper for an "eat local" challenge month, which worked fine until farmers' markets closed down and the options were squash, squash or squash.
They survived (with a slight redefinition of "local" pizza) and continue to put as much local food as possible on the table.
"You feel better when you know your money is going to people that you know are trying to make a living honestly and are trying to do the best thing for the environment," Donroe says. "Food that's grown locally tastes better and fresher. I just like the idea of that for my kids."
———
On the Net:
http://www.localharvest.org
http://www.eatlocalchallenge.com/
http://www.elvinbishopmusic.com/
http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/
Posted: 12/26/2008
SAN FRANCISCO—Here's something you might not know about being a locavore, the new-fangled term for the old-school tradition of eating food grown close to home: Coffee is almost always negotiable.
Here's another: The people practicing this new-old (and currently quite hot) trend may surprise you. Suburban moms? Check. Artisanal-cheese sniffing foodies? Double check. And how about denizens of the decidely un-hippie halls of Wal-Mart?
"It's really amazing how it's just exploded," says Jennifer Maiser, a San Francisco database consultant who was part of a small group credited with coining "locavore," as part of an "eat local" challenge they mounted three years ago.
Since then, wildly fluctuating transportation costs, food scares and global warming concerns, have lent a mainstream patina to eating local. Wal-Mart, the nation's largest grocer has pledged to source $400 million worth of fruits and vegetables from in-state farmers this year.
Some numbers:
— There were 4,685 farmers' markets as of August, according to the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, up nearly 7 percent from two years ago and nearly 3,000 more than 1994, the first year of tracking.
— Locally grown produce was listed as the No. 2 item on a "What's Hot" list by more than 1,200 members of the American Culinary Federation in an October 2007 Internet survey by the National Restaurant Association. (No. 1 was bite-sized desserts, but that's another story.)
— The Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement in which members get food delivered from nearby farms has grown to include more than 1,300 farms since its inception in 1985, according to the Robyn Van En Center at Pennsylvania's Wilson College.
Who's eating all this local food?
All kinds of people, from trowel-wielding back-to-the-landers to the tech titans of Google, Inc.'s headquarters in Mountain View, where Cafe 150 serves food from within a 150-mile radius.
And then there's bluesman Elvin Bishop, accidental locavore.
Best known for the '70s hit "Fooled Around and Fell in Love," that sent many a couple swaying into the night, Bishop is often to be found these days working in his well-cared for garden in rural Marin County, north of San Francisco.
Bishop started out eating local as an Oklahoma farm boy, but turned to a road diet of fast food and bad food when he started traveling with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in the '60s.
A decade of that moved him to buy a place with some arable land—his first tasks were pulling apart an old redwood deck then on the property to frame a greenhouse and digging up the raggedy lawn to plant vegetables.
He's still busy with music, recently releasing a new CD "The Blues Rolls On," a funky collection that features some well-known names, including old friend B.B. King.
But that hasn't stopped him from stocking a deep cupboard in his kitchen with gleaming jars of preserves. (He tried to take a jar of his strawberry jam to King, but couldn't get it through airport security.)
Bishop isn't an official member of the locavore movement, "I'm not too much of an 'ism' type of guy," he notes. What he likes is knowing where his food came from, and that it's going to be tasty.
Taste and freshness are the driving forces for a lot of people interested in buying local foods, says Laurie Demeritt, who studies American eating patterns for The Hartman Group, a research firm in Bellevue, Wash.
National surveys of consumers showed that "local" has a world of different meanings, but there is a unifying theme of wanting to connect with the product—how was it grown, were pesticides used, how were animals treated.
"What we're finding is that the desire to know more about where your products come from is critically important across the United States," Demeritt says.
With the movement still young, researchers are looking for more data to see whether local foods live up to their promise of being safer, healthier and better for the environment, says Rich Pirog, associate director of Iowa State University's Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture.
There is some anecdotal information—for instance, farmer's markets are more likely to be selling unusual varieties like heirloom tomatoes, which maintains genetic diversity, he says. And common sense indicates eating locally means less processed food, and an easier task of tracing where your food comes from.
Living locavore can be tough—imagine life without bananas.
Some followers are hard-core, drinking tea made of local herbs, for instance; while others are more relaxed.
Flexibility is key for Tammy Donroe, a Boston freelance writer and mother of two, who tries to incorporate local food into her family's diet all year.
In October, she went a little deeper for an "eat local" challenge month, which worked fine until farmers' markets closed down and the options were squash, squash or squash.
They survived (with a slight redefinition of "local" pizza) and continue to put as much local food as possible on the table.
"You feel better when you know your money is going to people that you know are trying to make a living honestly and are trying to do the best thing for the environment," Donroe says. "Food that's grown locally tastes better and fresher. I just like the idea of that for my kids."
———
On the Net:
http://www.localharvest.org
http://www.eatlocalchallenge.com/
http://www.elvinbishopmusic.com/
http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/
Monday, December 29, 2008
Food needs 'fundamental rethink'
27 Dec 2008
By Mark Kinver
Science and environment reporter, BBC News
A sustainable global food system in the 21st Century needs to be built on a series of "new fundamentals", according to a leading food expert.
Tim Lang warned that the current system, designed in the 1940s, was showing "structural failures", such as "astronomic" environmental costs.
The new approach needed to address key fundamentals like biodiversity, energy, water and urbanisation, he added.
Professor Lang is a member of the UK government's newly formed Food Council.
"Essentially, what we are dealing with at the moment is a food system that was laid down in the 1940s," he told BBC News.
"It followed on from the dust bowl in the US, the collapse of food production in Europe and starvation in Asia.
"At the time, there was clear evidence showing that there was a mismatch between producers and the need of consumers."
Professor Lang, from City University, London, added that during the post-war period, food scientists and policymakers also thought increasing production would reduce the cost of food, while improving people's diets and public health.
"But by the 1970s, evidence was beginning to emerge that the public health outcomes were not quite as expected," he explained.
"Secondly, there were a whole new set of problems associated with the environment."
Thirty years on and the world was now facing an even more complex situation, he added.
"The level of growth in food production per capita is dropping off, even dropping, and we have got huge problems ahead with an explosion in human population."
Fussy eaters
Professor Lang lists a series of "new fundamentals", which he outlined during a speech he made as the president-elect of charity Garden Organic, which will shape future food production, including:
* Oil and energy: "We have an entirely oil-based food economy, and yet oil is running out. The impact of that on agriculture is one of the drivers of the volatility in the world food commodity markets."
* Water scarcity: "One of the key things that I have been pushing is to get the UK government to start auditing food by water," Professor Lang said, adding that 50% of the UK's vegetables are imported, many from water-stressed nations.
* Biodiversity: "Biodiversity must not just be protected, it must be replaced and enhanced; but that is going to require a very different way growing food and using the land."
* Urbanisation: "Probably the most important thing within the social sphere. More people now live in towns than in the countryside. In which case, where do they get their food?"
Professor Lang said that in order to feed a projected nine billion people by 2050, policymakers and scientists face a fundamental challenge: how can food systems work with the planet and biodiversity, rather than raiding and pillaging it?
The UK's Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, recently set up a Council of Food Policy Advisers in order to address the growing concern of food security and rising prices.
Mr Benn, speaking at the council's launch, warned: "Global food production will need to double just to meet demand.
"We have the knowledge and the technology to do this, as things stand, but the perfect storm of climate change, environmental degradation and water and oil scarcity, threatens our ability to succeed."
Professor Lang, who is a member of the council, offered a suggestion: "We are going to have to get biodiversity into gardens and fields, and then eat it.
"We have to do this rather than saying that biodiversity is what is on the edge of the field or just outside my garden."
Michelin-starred chef and long-time food campaigner Raymond Blanc agrees with Professor Lang, adding that there is a need for people, especially in the UK, to reconnect with their food.
He is heading a campaign called Dig for Your Dinner, which he hopes will help people reconnect with their food and how, where and when it is grown.
"Food culture is a whole series of steps," he told BBC News.
"Whatever amount of space you have in your backyard, it is possible to create a fantastic little garden that will allow you to reconnect with the real value of gardening, which is knowing how to grow food.
"And once you know how to grow food, it would be very nice to be able to cook it. If you are growing food, then it only makes sense that you know how to cook it as well.
"And cooking food will introduce you to the basic knowledge of nutrition. So you can see how this can slowly reintroduce food back into our culture."
Waste not...
Mr Blanc warned that food prices were likely to continue to rise in the future, which was likely to prompt more people to start growing their own food.
He was also hopeful that the food sector would become less wasteful.
"We all know that waste is everywhere; it is immoral what is happening in the world of food.
"In Europe, 30% of the food grown did not appear on the shelves of the retailers because it was a funny shape or odd colour.
"At least the amendment to European rules means that we can now have some odd-shaped carrots on our shelves. This is fantastic news, but why was it not done before?"
He suggested that the problem was down to people choosing food based on sight alone, not smell and touch.
"The way that seeds are selected is about immunity to any known disease; they have also got to grow big and fast, and have a fantastic shelf life.
"Never mind taste, texture or nutrition, it is all about how it looks.
"The British consumer today has got to understand that when they make a choice, let's say an apple - either Chinese, French or English one - they are making a political choice, a socio-economic choice, as well as an environmental one.
"They are making a statement about what sort of society and farming they are supporting."
Growing appetite
The latest estimates from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) show that another 40 million people have been pushed into hunger in 2008 as a result of higher food prices.
This brings the overall number of undernourished people in the world to 963 million, compared to 923 million in 2007.
The FAO warned that the ongoing financial and economic crisis could tip even more people into hunger and poverty.
"World food prices have dropped since early 2008, but lower prices have not ended the food crisis in many poor countries," said FAO assistant director-general Hafez Ghanem at the launch of the agency's State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008 report.
"The structural problems of hunger, like the lack of access to land, credit and employment, combined with high food prices remain a dire reality," he added.
Professor Lang outlined the challenges facing the global food supply system: "The 21st Century is going to have to produce a new diet for people, more sustainably, and in a way that feeds more people more equitably using less land."
By Mark Kinver
Science and environment reporter, BBC News
A sustainable global food system in the 21st Century needs to be built on a series of "new fundamentals", according to a leading food expert.
Tim Lang warned that the current system, designed in the 1940s, was showing "structural failures", such as "astronomic" environmental costs.
The new approach needed to address key fundamentals like biodiversity, energy, water and urbanisation, he added.
Professor Lang is a member of the UK government's newly formed Food Council.
"Essentially, what we are dealing with at the moment is a food system that was laid down in the 1940s," he told BBC News.
"It followed on from the dust bowl in the US, the collapse of food production in Europe and starvation in Asia.
"At the time, there was clear evidence showing that there was a mismatch between producers and the need of consumers."
Professor Lang, from City University, London, added that during the post-war period, food scientists and policymakers also thought increasing production would reduce the cost of food, while improving people's diets and public health.
"But by the 1970s, evidence was beginning to emerge that the public health outcomes were not quite as expected," he explained.
"Secondly, there were a whole new set of problems associated with the environment."
Thirty years on and the world was now facing an even more complex situation, he added.
"The level of growth in food production per capita is dropping off, even dropping, and we have got huge problems ahead with an explosion in human population."
Fussy eaters
Professor Lang lists a series of "new fundamentals", which he outlined during a speech he made as the president-elect of charity Garden Organic, which will shape future food production, including:
* Oil and energy: "We have an entirely oil-based food economy, and yet oil is running out. The impact of that on agriculture is one of the drivers of the volatility in the world food commodity markets."
* Water scarcity: "One of the key things that I have been pushing is to get the UK government to start auditing food by water," Professor Lang said, adding that 50% of the UK's vegetables are imported, many from water-stressed nations.
* Biodiversity: "Biodiversity must not just be protected, it must be replaced and enhanced; but that is going to require a very different way growing food and using the land."
* Urbanisation: "Probably the most important thing within the social sphere. More people now live in towns than in the countryside. In which case, where do they get their food?"
Professor Lang said that in order to feed a projected nine billion people by 2050, policymakers and scientists face a fundamental challenge: how can food systems work with the planet and biodiversity, rather than raiding and pillaging it?
The UK's Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, recently set up a Council of Food Policy Advisers in order to address the growing concern of food security and rising prices.
Mr Benn, speaking at the council's launch, warned: "Global food production will need to double just to meet demand.
"We have the knowledge and the technology to do this, as things stand, but the perfect storm of climate change, environmental degradation and water and oil scarcity, threatens our ability to succeed."
Professor Lang, who is a member of the council, offered a suggestion: "We are going to have to get biodiversity into gardens and fields, and then eat it.
"We have to do this rather than saying that biodiversity is what is on the edge of the field or just outside my garden."
Michelin-starred chef and long-time food campaigner Raymond Blanc agrees with Professor Lang, adding that there is a need for people, especially in the UK, to reconnect with their food.
He is heading a campaign called Dig for Your Dinner, which he hopes will help people reconnect with their food and how, where and when it is grown.
"Food culture is a whole series of steps," he told BBC News.
"Whatever amount of space you have in your backyard, it is possible to create a fantastic little garden that will allow you to reconnect with the real value of gardening, which is knowing how to grow food.
"And once you know how to grow food, it would be very nice to be able to cook it. If you are growing food, then it only makes sense that you know how to cook it as well.
"And cooking food will introduce you to the basic knowledge of nutrition. So you can see how this can slowly reintroduce food back into our culture."
Waste not...
Mr Blanc warned that food prices were likely to continue to rise in the future, which was likely to prompt more people to start growing their own food.
He was also hopeful that the food sector would become less wasteful.
"We all know that waste is everywhere; it is immoral what is happening in the world of food.
"In Europe, 30% of the food grown did not appear on the shelves of the retailers because it was a funny shape or odd colour.
"At least the amendment to European rules means that we can now have some odd-shaped carrots on our shelves. This is fantastic news, but why was it not done before?"
He suggested that the problem was down to people choosing food based on sight alone, not smell and touch.
"The way that seeds are selected is about immunity to any known disease; they have also got to grow big and fast, and have a fantastic shelf life.
"Never mind taste, texture or nutrition, it is all about how it looks.
"The British consumer today has got to understand that when they make a choice, let's say an apple - either Chinese, French or English one - they are making a political choice, a socio-economic choice, as well as an environmental one.
"They are making a statement about what sort of society and farming they are supporting."
Growing appetite
The latest estimates from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) show that another 40 million people have been pushed into hunger in 2008 as a result of higher food prices.
This brings the overall number of undernourished people in the world to 963 million, compared to 923 million in 2007.
The FAO warned that the ongoing financial and economic crisis could tip even more people into hunger and poverty.
"World food prices have dropped since early 2008, but lower prices have not ended the food crisis in many poor countries," said FAO assistant director-general Hafez Ghanem at the launch of the agency's State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008 report.
"The structural problems of hunger, like the lack of access to land, credit and employment, combined with high food prices remain a dire reality," he added.
Professor Lang outlined the challenges facing the global food supply system: "The 21st Century is going to have to produce a new diet for people, more sustainably, and in a way that feeds more people more equitably using less land."
Monday, December 22, 2008
Food for All 2008 Report
The local food activist group, Food for All, has released a 12-page report on "Critical Food Issues in Singapore" [pdf].
The pdf version is now available for download and distribution.
The report covers issues on local hunger, local agriculture, food security, food safety, nutrition, overseas food program and other food related environmental issues. They even cover issues like eating disorders. Quite a myriad of issues.
Understandably most of the members of the groups are students and the report may not be comprehensive or exhaustive, but it's a start. In fact, I am quite weary about the representation of issues in the report since one of the section on local agriculture was actually done as a report for the GE2221 Nature and Society class. Hey, who knows, maybe it's an A grade project! But honestly I am in no position to comment since I've only skimmed through the report and the author has after all done more research than I have. I have barely started on my Singapore end of my research. Woe!
Interestingly, in the recent vol 8 of the Food for All weekly email digest, called The Edible Revolution, one of my blog post was mentioned. Ah well, if you're reading this directed from that email, thanks for the visit. Feel free to share your thoughts and do pardon my rambling. This blog serves to record my overwhelming mental diarrhea regarding my research. It includes field notes and reflections. I do not intend to be very clear about some of the things I write since I have to protect my sources. I also do not write properly since they are not clearly thought out either. They are meant to provoke my thoughts when I read through them again while writing my thesis. Hopefully as I start writing, I will put up some well organized thoughts and writings on this blog.
If you're interested in more thematic writings, and (not much) less rambling, do visit my "real" blog. lol After all, this is like the subsidiary company while the parent company holds up the intellectual facade.
The pdf version is now available for download and distribution.
The report covers issues on local hunger, local agriculture, food security, food safety, nutrition, overseas food program and other food related environmental issues. They even cover issues like eating disorders. Quite a myriad of issues.
Understandably most of the members of the groups are students and the report may not be comprehensive or exhaustive, but it's a start. In fact, I am quite weary about the representation of issues in the report since one of the section on local agriculture was actually done as a report for the GE2221 Nature and Society class. Hey, who knows, maybe it's an A grade project! But honestly I am in no position to comment since I've only skimmed through the report and the author has after all done more research than I have. I have barely started on my Singapore end of my research. Woe!
Interestingly, in the recent vol 8 of the Food for All weekly email digest, called The Edible Revolution, one of my blog post was mentioned. Ah well, if you're reading this directed from that email, thanks for the visit. Feel free to share your thoughts and do pardon my rambling. This blog serves to record my overwhelming mental diarrhea regarding my research. It includes field notes and reflections. I do not intend to be very clear about some of the things I write since I have to protect my sources. I also do not write properly since they are not clearly thought out either. They are meant to provoke my thoughts when I read through them again while writing my thesis. Hopefully as I start writing, I will put up some well organized thoughts and writings on this blog.
If you're interested in more thematic writings, and (not much) less rambling, do visit my "real" blog. lol After all, this is like the subsidiary company while the parent company holds up the intellectual facade.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Community Currency research
My research interest has always been focused on looking at improving systems, conservation, consumption and tying people, environment and action together. I've said that I wanted to look at conservation and consumption on a large scale thing for my PhD but there has been so many derivatives of that that I have not been able to pin point down to a specific. I could look at how ideologies of conservation differ and how that translates. I can look at alternative modes of consumption and that will some what carry on from my current research.
Recently the McGill professor interest me because of looking at global scale of deriving alternative paradigms of economy that takes into account the environment which really excites me.
Now I come across the Journal of Community Currency Research which is hosted at University of East Anglia which examines alternative currencies. This is also exciting for me. I'll probably read through the journal to find an interesting prof.
On the other hand, it's reminded me that Kathy Gibson of Australia National University is also working on something similar. But I've always resisted going to australia to study. Is this my downfall?
So my question is, why are these professors situated in Geography? Woe me! So what are the people in environmental studies doing? Seems like the social ecology bunch are all anthropologist so they are going to be doing very micro level studies? I really need to do a lot more research about this.
I'm feeling like every step forward is potentially a butterfly effect. I want to stay through to the theme of research that I've been doing and not be pulled down to a particular topic like food or agriculture. I'm quite sure I want to work on SYSTEMS strategies and evaluations. Must remind myself of that.
Recently the McGill professor interest me because of looking at global scale of deriving alternative paradigms of economy that takes into account the environment which really excites me.
Now I come across the Journal of Community Currency Research which is hosted at University of East Anglia which examines alternative currencies. This is also exciting for me. I'll probably read through the journal to find an interesting prof.
On the other hand, it's reminded me that Kathy Gibson of Australia National University is also working on something similar. But I've always resisted going to australia to study. Is this my downfall?
So my question is, why are these professors situated in Geography? Woe me! So what are the people in environmental studies doing? Seems like the social ecology bunch are all anthropologist so they are going to be doing very micro level studies? I really need to do a lot more research about this.
I'm feeling like every step forward is potentially a butterfly effect. I want to stay through to the theme of research that I've been doing and not be pulled down to a particular topic like food or agriculture. I'm quite sure I want to work on SYSTEMS strategies and evaluations. Must remind myself of that.
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