Protecting Endangered Cultures from Harms of Globalization: A New Product Certification Approach Using Business Incentives
A recent article by this author borrowed a strategy used by environmentalists to promote rights of species— that of the "Red Book," used to protect biodiversity—and outlined how applied anthropologists could combine with rights advocates to promote systematic monitoring and legal protections for endangered cultures, to highlight the endangerment of and to protect cultural diversity (Lempert 2010). That was one of a series of potential approaches to cultural protections suggested by this author (Lempert 1997; 2008; 2009; 2012; Lempert and Nguyen 2008) and by others to try to use governance, law, and "rights" as a means of enforcing existing international and domestic laws and obligations. Most such strategies, however, are major initiatives requiring investment of resources and risk-taking by individual anthropologists and our profession. Accountability and law enforcement are also confrontational.
A Sustainable (Culture Protecting) Tourism Indicator for Cultural and Environmental Heritage Tourism Initiatives
This article restores the international community’s goals for cultural sustainability and cultural protections in the context of tourism where it has been replaced by a concept of “sustainable tourism” that promotes exploitation of cultural resources but does little to protect and promote cultures and their environments. The article offers an indicator for screening government initiatives in cultural and environmental heritage tourism to assure that they meet the standards that are part of a global consensus in international laws and declarations. It offers a test of New Zealand Aid’s Tourism Project in Laos as an example of how the indicator can be used to expose failures in this field.
Novel method for the determination of the methoxyl content in lignin by headspace gas chromatography.
The paper reports on a headspace gas chromatographic (HS-GC) method for the determination of methoxyl in lignin. The method involves the quantitive cleavage of methoxyl with hydroiodic acid (HI) to form methyl iodide in a closed headspace sample vial at 130 °C for 30 min. After HI has been added, the sample is neutralized by injecting a sodium hydroxide solution; the methyl iodide in the vial was determined by HS-GC using a flame ionization detector. The results showed that the method has an excellent measurement precision (RSD < 0.69%) and accuracy (RSD < 3.5%) for the quantification of methoxyl content in lignin. The present method is simple and accurate and can be used for the efficient determination of methoxy1 content in lignin and related materials.