A Block Geography 12 - Today we look at the ethics associated with resource use focusing on the four ethical views on resource use (economic/exploitation; preservationist; balanced-multiple use; and ecological or sustainable).
We'll talk about over-consumption and unsustainable resource use practices using the example of water consumption and the Aral Sea. From National Geographic:
Actually a freshwater lake, the Aral Sea once had a surface area of 26,000 square miles (67,300 square kilometers). It had long been ringed with prosperous towns and supported a lucrative muskrat pelt industry and thriving fishery, providing 40,000 jobs and supplying the Soviet Union with a sixth of its fish catch...The Aral Sea was fed by two of Central Asia's mightiest rivers, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya. But in the 1960s, Soviet engineers decided to make the vast steppes bloom. They built an enormous irrigation network, including 20,000 miles of canals, 45 dams, and more than 80 reservoirs, all to irrigate sprawling fields of cotton and wheat in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. In the decades that followed, the Aral Sea was reduced to a handful of small lakes, with a combined volume that was one-tenth the original lake's size and that had much higher salinity, due to all the evaporation. As a result of the drying over the past decades, millions of fish died, coastlines receded miles from towns, and those few people who remained were plagued by dust storms that contained the toxic residue of industrial agriculture and weapons testing in the area.
For the Aral Sea please check out the following:
Aral Sea Foundation
National Geographic News Aral Sea
NASA World of Change Aral Sea
The Aral Sea Crisis at Columbia University
We'll end the class finishing the Human Footprint DVD that we began yesterday with a seemingly simple question...."How Much do You Consume?"
I need you to continue tracking your family's water consumption for the week and you can use the water footprint calculator at the H20 Conserve website. For more on water as a resource please check out:
Ministry of Environment: Water for British Columbia
United Nations: Water Topics
Encyclopedia of Earth: Water
D Block Crime, Media & Society 12 - Today we'll look at gender connected to moral panics and crime waves. In Gender, Youth, Crime and Justice Loraine Gelsthorpe and Gilly Sharpe claim that
"recurring moral panics regarding girls’ behaviour, seem to have shifted their focus in recent years – from girls’ sexuality and ‘status’ offending, to their apparently increasing violence and alcohol use – and dwell on the resultant punitive turn towards girls and young women".
This turn towards vilifying young female crime can also be seen in crime media. Today we'll look at the Madonna-Whore complex in crime media which is most clearly covered through the topic of rape (think Law & Order: SVU). This complex refers to a dualism in Western patriarchal discourse, which seeks to explain the behavior of women and the desires of men. On one hand, women are rewarded for being the sexual play objects of men (i.e., whores), and on the other hand, women are given clear messages that true grace only derives from marital chastity (i.e., Madonna). We'll see how women are portrayed as victims and as perpetrators in crime media and see if the Madonna-Whore complex applies.
To do this we'll watch "Deadly Women" which deals with Diane Downs and then after we'll look at the DVD "Mothers Who Kill" which deals with Susan Smith, Andrea Yates and Marylin Lemack. After that we'll try to make sense of the women we've taken a look at.
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