Cyberseminars
The purpose of cyberseminars is to provide a forum for scientists from the social and natural sciences to debate and discuss cutting edge population-environment research topics.
How to participate in (or leave) a cyberseminar
Vegard Skirbekk (Columbia Aging Center and Norwegian Institute of Public Health) | |
Raya Muttarak (IIASA) | |
Richard Wilk (Department of Anthropology, Indiana University) | |
Tom Dietz (Department of Sociology, Michigan State University), Rachael Shwom (Department of Human Ecology, Rutgers University) |
This cyberseminar featured a webinar hosted by Future Earth. The webminar summarized the background paper, and introduced the themes being addressed by the other expert panelists.
This Population-Environment Research Network (PERN) cyberseminar focuses on culture, belief systems, values, and the environment. The world is facing dramatic demographic shifts, and these are associated with different cultural values and belief systems that have implications for the environment. Industrialized countries face rapid aging while developing countries have large children and youth populations. These different patterns, and the cultural values and beliefs associated with them, have implications for population dynamics and how societies relate to the environment and how they are impacted by environmental changes and hazards. This relatively little studied area of the population-environment nexus is ripe for new discoveries.
Culture, belief systems and values are central to environmental decision making and behavior and to how people perceive and respond to risks and crises. Census, survey, focus group and other demographic data collection methods are central to understanding belief systems as they relate to the demographic makeup of society, including racial and ethnic groups, age and sex distribution, education attainment, and geographic factors. The cyberseminar will address a number of topics, including: (1) cultural attitudes and values as they relate to perceptions of the environment; (2) culture, belief systems, values and environmentally significant consumption patterns; (3) religious beliefs and their implications for age structure and population growth; (4) how religious and other beliefs vary by population composition; and (5) vulnerability and perceptions of risk as they relate to different demographic groups.
This cyberseminar is co-organized with the Columbia Aging Center.
How to participate in (or leave) a cyberseminar:
PERN Cyberseminars are conducted using a standard email discussion list. There are two main ways to join (or leave) the PERN Cyberseminars discussion list: Via the web-based interface, or Via email commands sent to the listserv software.
1) Via the Web Interface: The web address for PERN Cyberseminars (PERNSEMINARS) list is http://listserver.ciesin.columbia.edu/. The first step is to create an account on the listserv server. To do this you select the "Get a password" link on the main listserv page, under the "Options" on the right side of the page.
2) Via E-mail: You can send commands to subscribe and unsubscribe to the listserv@ciesin.columbia.edu. If you would like to participate in a cyberseminar please send an email message with the body text "SUBscribe PERNSEMINARS". You may leave the list at any time by sending a "SIGNOFF PERNSEMINARS" command.
Once you are subscribed, you may wish to change subscription settings so that you receive a daily digest of postings (all postings attached to one email message) instead of individual postings. To do this you can either use the web interface to change your settings or send a message to the LISTSERV email address (in #2 above) with the text “SET PERNSEMINARS DIGEST”
Contributions sent to this list are automatically archived. You can get a list of the available archive files by sending an "INDEX PERNSEMINARS" command. You may also visit http://listserver.ciesin.columbia.edu/pernseminars.html.
Further commands that can be sent to the LISTSERV email address can be found in this LISTSERV Subcriber's Manual (4.6MB PDF).
All who are interested in cyberseminar topics are invited to participate and subscription is free. Please adhere to the following standards of conduct when participating.
To ensure that the cyberseminar is successful and that we have a lively intellectual discussion, we would like to ask all the participants to be mindful of a few standards of conduct similar to those you might find in a face-to-face meeting. Please remember :
- Respectful disagreement is fine; impoliteness is not accepted.
- Opinions are welcome; advocacy is not - this is an intellectual debate, please refrain from using this forum for any advocacy purposes.
- Respect other's email space: do not repeat something you have already said and limit yourself to a reasonable number of postings.
With these standards in mind, we look forward to your active participation in the seminar.
If you experience technical difficulties, please contact the coordinators.