From the vantage point of northern Illinois, this article considers how the availability of organic, heirloom, and other specialty foods through a wider variety of grocery stores and online venues is affecting local food systems. Farmers concerned about these new forms of competition develop coping strategies to woo customers, but many of these strategies demand new skill sets and drain farmers’ time and resources away from the fields. How sustainable are local food systems when small‐scale farmers must be not only skilled producers, but marketing gurus, gregarious spokespeople, and public educators as well? More contextually grounded qualitative and mixed‐methods research is needed to help local food advocates and farmers understand and ease this entrepreneurial treadmill. [local food systems, direct market agriculture, small‐scale farmers, competition, United States]

Through ethnographic and historical analysis of the Negev region of Israel, this article examines competitive planting as a common tool in land conflicts. In a context of disputed land ownership, some Bedouin Arab residents plant crops in defiance of government policy. Government enforcers of land-use regulations destroy many of these crops and engage in counterinsurgent tree-planting. I suggest that planting is such a potent tactic because it draws on "environmental idioms" of agricultural labor, the rootedness of trees, and a fundamental Jewish-Arab opposition that have been central to the development of both Israeli and Palestinian nationalisms. For Bedouin Arabs, whose relationship to both nationalisms has long been contested, the multivalent symbolism of planting makes it a particularly promising tactic for asserting land claims. Further, I contend that these plantings demonstrate both the power of environmental idioms to structure land claims along ethnic lines and the creative potential of participants to challenge dominant environmental discourses by adding new connotations.

Cellular transdifferentiation changes mature cells from one phenotype into another by altering their gene expression patterns. Manipulating expression of transcription factors, proteins that bind to DNA promoter regions, regulates the levels of key developmental genes. Viral delivery of transcription factors can efficiently reprogram somatic cells, but this method possesses undesirable side effects, including mutations leading to oncogenesis. Using protein transduction domains (PTDs) fused to transcription factors to deliver exogenous transcription factors serves as an alternative strategy that avoids the issues associated with DNA integration into the host genome. However, lysosomal degradation and inefficient nuclear localization pose significant barriers when performing PTD-mediated reprogramming. Here, we investigate a novel PTD by placing a secretion signal sequence next to a cleavage inhibition sequence at the end of the target transcription factor–achaete scute homolog 1 (ASCL1), a powerful regulator of neurogenesis, resulting in superior stability and nuclear localization. A fusion protein consisting of the amino acid sequence of ASCL1 transcription factor with this novel PTD added can transdifferentiate cerebral cortex astrocytes into neurons. Additionally, we show that the synergistic action of certain small molecules improves the efficiency of the transdifferentiation process. This study serves as the first step toward developing a clinically relevant in vivo transdifferentiation strategy for converting astrocytes into neurons.

Why, with local food’s rising popularity, do small-scale farmers report declining sales? This study used a mix of survey and interview methods to examine the priorities and buying habits of food shoppers in one midsized, lower-income metro­politan area of the U.S. Midwest. The study focuses on individual consumers’ decision-making because it aims to be useful, in particular, to small-scale farmers and advocates of their participation in local and regional food systems. Among shoppers’ stated priorities, the survey found broad support for local food and relatively low competition be­tween price and local origin as purchasing priori­ties. However, findings also show an attitude-behavior gap, with only a limited increase in ten­dency among self-defined “local” shoppers to purchase from locally oriented venues. As explana­tion for this attitude-behavior gap, survey and interview data point to differential definitions of “local food” and situational barriers (primarily inconvenience and lack of variety) preventing shoppers from buying local food. One factor off­setting these barriers was past experience growing one’s own food. Study findings are used to identify particular avenues for intervention by farmers, eaters, and other food systems builders to broaden access to local food through adjustments to mar­keting strategies, better alignment of wholesale outlets’ practices with the priorities of farmers and eaters, and improved public education about the food system.

This article draws lessons about environmental justice from a case study in the Jordan River Valley of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Building on notions of justice as recognition, the article argues that inclusive environmental justice agendas require the recognition of multiply marginalized groups and the fundamentally different understandings of environmental hazards and benefits they may have, and it proposes the use of intersectional analysis to do so. The village of al-Auja faces severe water-related challenges: a closed Israeli military zone blocking access to the Jordan River, which has also shrunk and grown polluted in recent decades; water wells with declining capacity and increasing salinity and a lack of permits to rehabilitate them; and the drying of a once-perennial spring. Residents, local government officials, and Palestinian staff members of a transborder nongovernmental organization agreed in identifying Israeli occupation as a key cause of water stress and articulated justice-based protests. However, while some emphasized the lack of Palestinian sovereignty over natural resources, others concentrated on the obstruction of villagers’ agricultural livelihoods and household hardships. The article demonstrates that different life experiences, particularly along lines of rural/urban residence, career, and gender, shaped divergent definitions among Palestinians of environmental benefits and harms, and thus different priorities for environmental justice work. It suggests that attending to complex, intersecting lines of social experience in the early stage of environmental campaigns, when defining problems and forming goals for improvement, can lead to more representative reparation plans, institution building, and activist agendas.

As activists frame campaigns, their region's broader cultural and political context intercedes. In Israel and Palestine attempts to work across national lines and undertake activism that links ecological, economic, and social issues have long been stymied. This article examines how the fraught historical and contemporary relationships of Israelis and Palestinians with land bestow both flexibility and limitations on their framing of campaigns. In particular, it ethnographically analyzes the framing of two projects—the building of an “eco-mosque” and a Jordan River restoration effort—to examine how activists grapple with frame flexibility and its limits. It finds that an Israeli tendency to deterritorialize environmental issues and curb environmental campaigns that are “too political” conflicts with Palestinian criticism of apolitical frames because they euphemize violence and domination. These cases demonstrate how local connotations can make or break environmental campaigns. The eco-adage, “Think global, act local” is not enough. One must think local, too.

This article interprets the meanings and motivations of refusal to pay water bills within a context of fragmented sovereignty. Residents of a village in the occupied Palestinian West Bank call for solutions to water shortages and failed infrastructure, but do so amidst capricious power, where would‐be sovereigns evade accountability. Lacking avenues for direct engagement with authorities, residents speak in generalized ethical terms of their legitimate water claims, and they resort to bill refusal. Setting villagers’ bill refusals within the broader set of interactions between would‐be sovereigns and subjects, this article contributes to anthropological scholarship on refusal by demonstrating how it can be a way of not only dismantling state power, but also summoning a responsible sovereign. Furthermore, it highlights how common dilemmas faced by refusers – dismissal and co‐optation – can be exacerbated by the same evasive accountability against which they protest.

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