Digital Commons Network^™

African American Environmental Ethics: Black Intellectual Perspectives 1850-1965, Vanessa Fabien

Doctoral Dissertations

The historical scholarship in environmental history centers around the narratives of elite white men. Therefore, scholars such as William Cronon, Dorceta Taylor, Noël Sturgeon, and Carolyn Merchant are calling for research that uncovers the political and moral stances of people of color on nature, land ownership, and environmental pollution. This dissertation addresses this call by engaging William H. Sewell Jr.’s cross-disciplinary approach between history and the social sciences to introduce a nuanced historical analysis that interrogates the channels via which African Americans’ environmental ethic sculpted the development of North American environmental history and activism. This dissertation contends that African Americans …

A Framework And Analytical Approach To Evaluate Alternative Vehicle Miles Traveled (Vmt) Fee Systems, Elizabeth V. Ebacher

Doctoral Dissertations

Since the fuel tax is a dwindling source of revenue, states need to find alternative funding sources. A vehicle miles traveled (VMT) fee has received serious consideration from a number of states and the federal government. What is missing from the VMT fee consideration is a framework for developing VMT fee systems and an analytical approach with which to study how well a proposed system conforms to the policies promulgated in the framework. This research strives to fill that void. The framework developed presents five areas of importance in VMT fee systems: 1. Revenue sufficiency; 2. Revenue stability; 3. Environmental …

Agent Of Harm And Good Corporate Citizen? The Case Of Tyson Foods, Jennifer Lindmar Schally

Doctoral Dissertations

Industrial agriculture inflicts major harms on nonhuman animals, the environment and human health. How do agribusinesses culturally legitimize their harmful practices? Utilizing critical discourse analysis, I clarify the ways in which one large agribusiness, Tyson Foods, disguises their actions while at the same time presents the image of a benign, good corporate citizen. The discourses employed by Tyson gain legitimacy by drawing on and aligning with larger cultural discourses that are often taken for granted. This research, situated at the intersection of green and cultural criminologies, makes a contribution to these as well as to the burgeoning social harm approach …

Social Movements And Framing Decisions: Ecuador's Campaign For The Rights Of Nature, Maria Fernanda Enriquez Szentkiralyi

Doctoral Dissertations

This study investigates why and how social movements frame their campaigns in the ways they do. It explores Ecuador’s environmental movement, which framed its campaign in terms of the rights of nature. This framing decision is intriguing considering the ideological divisions within the movement, the absence of debate over the plausibility of the frame, and the multiple understandings of the meaning and implications of the rights of nature frame. Surprisingly the framing decision proposed by intellectuals within the movement was endorsed by participants without much clash and disputes.

Challenging current explanations of how framing decisions are made, this study complicates …

The Wild Lands Of Gotham: City And Nature In Jamaica Bay, New York, 1880-1994, Eric Fauss

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines conflicts over Jamaica Bay, a 25,000-acre estuarine lagoon bordering southern Brooklyn and Queens that at the end of the nineteenth century was one of the largest undeveloped areas in New York City. Determining the relationship between city and nature was the central conflict in the bay’s history. While activists, developers, and officials sought to transform the bay into parks, suburbs, and a port, local residents fought to maintain their homes in what they envisioned as the Venice of New York—an unconventional hybrid space of city and nature.

By examining the interplay of competing conceptions of Jamaica Bay …

Communities Of Abundance: Sociality, Sustainability, And The Solidarity Economies Of Local Food-Related Business Networks In Knoxville, Tennessee, Tony Nathan Vanwinkle

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the socio-economic and eco-political dimensions of contemporary localist food movements in Knoxville, Tennessee. More specifically, it explores the implications of the mutualistic and networked socio-economies (solidarity and/or community economies) of such movement expressions as they are experienced, embodied, and understood among the small-scale, independent food-related business owners who often serve as the interpellators of such movements. This study is likewise concerned with ways in which movement actors are actively shaping/creating place (via the processes of emplacement), and relatedly, the way place—as an entity possessive of its own accretions of environmental, historical, cultural, economic, and political identities—shapes actors, …

Bay Area Student Involvement In The Environmental And Food Justice Movements: A Narrative Of Motivations, Experiences, And Community Impact, Laura E. Solof

Doctoral Dissertations

Many California public school students lack exposure to any formal, academic curriculum that emphasizes environmental awareness and activism. This may result in a population of adults who believe they know more about the environment than they actually do, lack the skills to compete in an expanding green job market, lack creativity and the ability to problem-solve, suffer from obesity, depression, anxiety, and attention disorders, and unknowingly contribute to the ever-increasing problems of air and water pollution, land and habitat destruction, and other environmental injustices. Community organizations and university programs are filling this much-needed gap in student environmental education, as they …