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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Farmer Discontent In Periurban Bangalore: The Utopia Of Agricultural Modernization, Neoliberal Developmentalism And The 21st Century Global City, Zhe Yu Lee
Geography Honors Projects
Today’s agricultural production in periurban Bangalore is structured by deteriorating ecological conditions and lack of enabling economic environment. Many farmers live in precarity even as market logic has become hegemonic given the dominance of input and capital-intensive cash crop production, a situation exacerbated by the threat of government-driven land acquisition. In my honors thesis, I argue that epistemological assumptions regarding agricultural modernization and neoliberal developmentalism that undergird this mode of production have come to largely structure the operation of institutional frameworks and individual subjectivities. However, these “external” influences are never fully totalizable and by invoking notions of assemblage and hybridity, …
National Park Service Relevancy In The 21st Century: An Exploration Of Racial Inclusion And The Urban Push, Claire E. Finn
National Park Service Relevancy In The 21st Century: An Exploration Of Racial Inclusion And The Urban Push, Claire E. Finn
Geography Honors Projects
As the National Park Service (NPS) approaches its centennial in 2016, it grapples with relevancy as the U.S. racial demographic shifts from a majority white population to a majority people of color population. In this paper I explore the following questions: What is the NPS doing to create racially inclusive places? How do NPS goals of inclusion connect to its recent emphasis on urban parks and populations? Through an analysis of official park documents, expert interviews, and a comparative case study between two Minnesota NPS units (Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA) and Voyageurs National Park), I assess the …
Lawn Dissidents: Performing Whiteness Through Sustainability In Urban Residential Yards, Amy Lebowitz
Lawn Dissidents: Performing Whiteness Through Sustainability In Urban Residential Yards, Amy Lebowitz
Geography Honors Projects
“Lawn dissidents” are people who violate norms of turfgrass yards often found in suburbia. This thesis uses ethnographic methods to examine how these subjects’ sustainability-oriented lawn alternatives create meaning by manifesting values and performing identities. I argue that such lawn alternatives operate as positional goods that inscribe exclusion into landscapes. “Green” yardscapes yield social and environmental benefits to “dissidents” while burying the ways capitalism codes lawn alternatives, enacting a regime of whiteness no better for equity and inclusion than suburban lawns. Nonetheless, I turn hopefully to sharing economies as tools to expand sustainability initiatives beyond elite, eco-conscious whiteness.
Retelling Ebola's "Outbreak Narrative" Through Media Coverage Of The 2014 West African Epidemic, Anoushka Millear
Retelling Ebola's "Outbreak Narrative" Through Media Coverage Of The 2014 West African Epidemic, Anoushka Millear
Geography Honors Projects
The 2014 Ebola Virus Disease epidemic, unprecedented in magnitude, has been the focus of worldwide media attention. How does media coverage of the epidemic seize on anxieties of an interconnected world to reinforce longstanding perceptions of Africa as dangerous and chaotic? I compare this media coverage to the model Ebola "outbreak narrative," using critical discourse analysis to contextualize representations of Africa within an increasingly interconnected world. I argue that media coverage reproduces a constructed Western understanding of Africa that will persist long after the epidemic is brought under control.
Examining The Effects Of Ecotourism In The Lashi Lake Wetlands, China, Caitlin K. Toner
Examining The Effects Of Ecotourism In The Lashi Lake Wetlands, China, Caitlin K. Toner
Geography Honors Projects
The rapid development of ecotourism in Asia encourages new strategies to simultaneously attract tourists and preserve natural environments in formerly isolated and underdeveloped regions. Since the introduction of China’s policy of an open economy in 1978, China has recognized the opportunity to promote tourism in order to foster economic development. Compared to China’s coastal cities, the inland provinces contain few industrial cities and transportation infrastructure. For economic development, inland provinces have taken advantage of their natural areas and ethnic minorities as a commodity to attract foreign and domestic tourists in their region. While the literature addressing ecotourism often focuses on …