Bovine tuberculosis is seriously damaging the UK dairy and beef industry. Many farmers believe culling badgers must be part of the solution, but in 2013 a record 300,000 people signed a Downing Street petition asking the government to stop planned culls of badgers in Somerset and Gloucestershire, fuelling media controversy and signalling the beginning of a social conflict that was acted out in studios, streets, fields and village halls across England. The four-year trial culls, which began that year, aimed to establish that culling was a viable way of tackling the disease, but the widely divergent experiences and values of policy-makers, farming, conservation and animal welfare supporters means that decades of science on the disease in badgers and the effects of culling has not helped resolve the dispute. Reporting on original, UK research council-funded social science, this book takes on the challenge of understanding the contrasting views involved. Listening carefully to what the different protagonists have to say, the book unpicks the way science is interpreted to sustain differing conclusions, and considers how social science thinking could contribute. The book develops a critical perspective on the increasingly important literature influenced by new materialism, the social science response to the Science Wars, and explores the extent to which a social movement around opposition to the culls is emerging. In approachable prose, this access-all-areas account describes the struggle to develop understanding through the messy process of research and the difficulties of scientific analysis and philosophical thought. As such, it provides a valuable resource for both research practitioners and teachers within the social sciences, as well as an accessible way for biological scientists, conservationists and farmers to reflect on the issues around the management of disease in livestock and wildlife.

In this creative exploration of climate change and the big questions confronting our high-energy civilization, Adam Briggle connects the history of philosophy with current events to shed light on the Anthropocene (the age of humanity). Briggle offers a framework to help us understand the many perspectives and policies on climate change. He does so through the idea that energy is a paradox: changing sameness. From this perennial philosophical mystery, he argues that a high-energy civilization is bound to create more and more paradoxes. These paradoxes run like fissures through our orthodox picture of energy as the capacity to do work and control fate. Climate change is the accumulation of these fissures and the question is whether we can sustain technoscientific control and economic growth. It may be that our world is about change radically, imploring us to start thinking heterodox thoughts.

This open access book provides the first critical history of the controversy over whether to cull wild badgers to control the spread of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in British cattle. This question has plagued several professional generations of politicians, policymakers, experts and campaigners since the early 1970s. Questions of what is known, who knows, who cares, who to trust and what to do about this complex problem have been the source of scientific, policy, and increasingly vociferous public debate ever since. This book integrates contemporary history, science and technology studies, human-animal relations, and policy research to conduct a cross-cutting analysis. It explores the worldviews of those involved with animal health, disease ecology and badger protection between the 1970s and 1990s, before reintegrating them to investigate the recent public polarisation of the controversy. Finally it asks how we might move beyond the current impasse.

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Shelly Laurenston follows the explosive success of Hot and Badgered with the second installment in her sizzingly outrageous series, this time featuring a heroine who is half tiger, half honey badger shifter, and fully living her truth. Petite, kind, brilliant, and young, Stevie is nothing like the usual women bodyguard Shen Li is interested in. Even more surprising, the youngest of the lethal, ball-busting, and beautiful MacKilligan sisters is terrified of bears. But she’s not terrified of pandas. She loves pandas. Which means that whether Shen wants her to or not, she simply won’t stop cuddling him. He isn’t some stuffed Giant Panda, ya know! He is a Giant Panda shifter. He deserves respect and personal space. Something that little hybrid is completely ignoring. But Stevie has a way of finding trouble. Like going undercover to take down a scientist experimenting on other shifters. For what, Shen doesn’t want to know, but they’d better find out. And fast. Stevie might be the least violent of the honey badger sisters, but she’s the most dangerous to Shen’s peace of mind. Because she has absolutely no idea how much trouble they’re in . . . or just how damn adorable she is. Praise for Shelly Laurenston “Hot and humorous.” —USAToday.com on Hot and Badgered “Laurenston delights…Zany, sarcastic humor…Familiar, well-developed characters and full immersion into the universe make this a must-read for a new and returning readers alike.” —Publishers Weekly on In a Badger Way “In a Badger Way is pure, unadulterated fun. It’s ten pounds of bursting-at-the-seams excitement in a five pound bag…No one does it like Shelly Laurenston when it comes to unique, unparalleled heroines and the heroes who can’t help but love them. Even when they’re honey badgers.” —Bookpage on In a Badger Way

Using memorable caricatures to highlight the effects of your behaviour as a leader, this book offers a powerful model for effective leadership Are you a Badger or a Doormat? provides you with clear instructions and simple self-coaching processes which will propel you along the path to leadership success. It uses memorable caricatures to show extreme leadership styles, teaching you what behaviour to avoid and what to do more of, in an accessible and amusing way. Throughout the book Rosie Miller, a top international executive coach, and 20 highly experienced leaders offer advice on the mindsets, habits and working practices that will make you a successful leader. This book gives you the practical and direct guidance you need to upgrade your thinking and your behaviour to become an energetic, focused and visionary leader. The focus is on the five skills common to all the most effective leaders: making the best use of your time communicating effectively delegating and people development motivating a diverse workforce creating change Each chapter is broken down into the following clearly sign-posted sections: Highlightscontaining the key ideas in brief to enable you to scan quickly the content a description of a common leadership Dilemma using cartoon caricatures to illustrate two extreme types of leadership behaviour and illustrate the unintended consequences of these extremes in practice a Diagnostic for those who want to assess where they tend to fit between the two ends of the continuum Balancing Wiselyintroduces the leadership mind-set that is more effective and the attributes of a leader who successfully manages this dilemma The “How To” section gives detailed practical thinking, models and tools to let you be more effective at managing this dilemma “In Action”is a case study illustrating one leader putting these tools and techniques into action A Summary of the key points in the chapter A list of powerful Self-Coaching questions designed to help you apply the thinking to your own leadership context and build your own effective leadership mindset.

Incorporating HC 725, session 2006-07 not previously published

In Volume 1, Mole (from The Wind In The Willows) found himself in 1990s Britain, where he experienced a series of astonishing exchanges with the modern counterparts of Kenneth Grahame's familiar characters. In this volume we follow Mole's further adventures as he searches for the England he remembers - including the encounter with global capitalism which precedes the touching denouement of his story. An environmental and political satire.

Peggy Prilaman Marxen grew up near the town of Meteor in northwestern Wisconsin’s Sawyer County, isolated by geography yet surrounded by close-knit extended family. Multiple generations of her family witnessed changes to rural Wisconsin that altered the fabric of their lives and the lives of all in their community, including the introduction of new farming techniques, school consolidation, and revolutions in transportation and technology. They supplemented their subsistence herd of dairy cows by hunting, fishing, and selling timber and maple syrup. For many years, her home, like those of her neighbors, lacked indoor plumbing, electricity, and a telephone. As a young child, Peggy attended a one-room schoolhouse and walked, biked, or sledded the three miles to school and back, no matter the weather.

This reader brings together material from ecological thought, environmental policy, environmental philosophy, social and political thought, historical sociology and cultural studies. The extracts tell the story of the way the natural environment has been understood in the modern world and how this has recently been questioned as contemporary societies are seen as characterised by uncertainty and complexity. The literature guides the reader through the conventiaonal grounds for thinking about rights and obligations in relation to future generations, non-human animals and the biotic commununities, bringing each into question. This then leads into a critical examination of social and political theories and their capacity for drawing on ecological thought. Each of the seven sections of readings is introduced by the editor who locates the set of readings within the specific themes and issues at the heart of each section. This broad-reaching and thought-provoking set of readings stresses the diversity of response to environmental problems both within and between anthropocentric and ecocentric approaches and will encourage the reader to examine how they are manifested in the areas of environmental ethics, policy analysis and social and political theory.