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Full-Text Articles in Place and Environment

Drowning In Rising Seas: Navigating Multiple Knowledge Systems And Responding To Climate Change In The Maldives, Rachel Hannah Spiegel Jan 2017

Drowning In Rising Seas: Navigating Multiple Knowledge Systems And Responding To Climate Change In The Maldives, Rachel Hannah Spiegel

Pitzer Senior Theses

The threat of global climate change increasingly influences the actions of human society. As world leaders have negotiated adaptation strategies over the past couple of decades, a certain discourse has emerged that privileges Western conceptions of environmental degradation. I argue that this framing of climate change inhibits the successful implementation of adaptation strategies. This thesis focuses on a case study of the Maldives, an island nation deemed one of the most vulnerable locations to the impacts of rising sea levels. I apply a postcolonial theoretical framework to examine how differing knowledge systems can both complement and contradict one another. By …


Locating Gendered Resistance: Interethnic Conflict, Environmental Disaster, And Feminist Leadership In Sri Lanka, Allison A. Donine Jan 2016

Locating Gendered Resistance: Interethnic Conflict, Environmental Disaster, And Feminist Leadership In Sri Lanka, Allison A. Donine

Pitzer Senior Theses

In geographically vulnerable and politically unstable regions such as Sri Lanka, I argue that linking natural hazards and climate-induced disasters to existing social issues is more pressing than ever. In the case of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, it was impossible to dissociate the two. Looking though the lens of distress, in conflict and environmental disaster, this thesis explores how women have transformed moments of victimization into opportunities for resistance and agency. This thesis examines the following questions: Within the geo-political context of Sri Lanka, how does social stress (human-made or environmental) produce conflict and resistance to patriarchal traditions along …


'The Earth Is Crying Out In Pains Of Childbirth': Bauxite Mining And Sustainable Rural Development In The Brazilian Atlantic Forest, Lena R. Connor Sep 2011

'The Earth Is Crying Out In Pains Of Childbirth': Bauxite Mining And Sustainable Rural Development In The Brazilian Atlantic Forest, Lena R. Connor

Environmental Analysis Program Mellon Student Summer Research Reports

In 2003, residents of the Serra do Brigadeiro Territory, a rural region of Southeastern Brazil in one of the few remaining patches of the Atlantic Forest, learned of a large number of bauxite concessions in their territory given by the federal government to the prominent Companhia Brasileira de Alumínio (CBA), Brazil’s largest aluminum producer. Because the region prides itself on its small-scale agriculture and its lush natural environment, the mining has been the source of much contention in the community. Introduced to the topic by the international conservation non-profit and research center, Iracambi, I spent two months in the territory …


A New Paradigm: Brazilian Catholic Eco-Justice Activism In The Neoliberal Age, Lena R. Connor May 2011

A New Paradigm: Brazilian Catholic Eco-Justice Activism In The Neoliberal Age, Lena R. Connor

Environmental Analysis Program Mellon Student Summer Research Reports

This paper analyzes how traditional liberation theology in Brazil has been adapted in the neoliberal age to encompass ecological goals and rhetoric. In this research report, I first examine the work of prominent Brazilian ecotheologians, Ivone Gebara and Leonardo Boff. I then look into the applications of such ecological liberation theology in Catholic activism in Brazil, focusing on the role of religious advocacy in dam controversies, land reform, and mining.


A Place Like This: An Environmental Justice History Of The Owens Valley - Water In Indigenous, Colonial, And Manzanar Stories, Monica Embrey May 2009

A Place Like This: An Environmental Justice History Of The Owens Valley - Water In Indigenous, Colonial, And Manzanar Stories, Monica Embrey

Pomona Senior Theses

This text provides an environmental justice analysis of the stories of the people who lived in the Owens Valley, who watered its land and cultivated its crops—pine trees, apple trees, and kabocha alike. Telling the personal stories of challenge and resistance that manifested alongside the oppressive forces of military and state domination provides the opportunity to align forcibly relocated, exploited and incarcerated people’s struggles throughout time. This text starts with The Nü’ma Peoples who were the first humans to live in the Owens Valley and continues with the struggle for empire between rival colonial empires of agriculture and distant urban …