Digital Commons Network^™

Coastal Plastics Abatement On Aquidneck Island, Rhode Island: Stakeholder Perspectives And Lessons Learned, Paige Myatt

Sustainability and Social Justice

This practitioner research focuses on the stakeholder perspectives and lessons learned about mitigating plastic pollution in the marine environment of Aquidneck Island, Rhode Island. It uses a mixed method approach of surveys, interviews, focus groups, and active participation in mitigation strategies to answer four main research questions. These questions aim to gather perspectives on the problem from multiple stakeholders in the community, including the general public, the restaurant industry, and local and state governments. This research also investigates what factors make this community a leader in igniting social change and reducing plastic pollution. The active involvement of the researcher via …

“Greening” Worcester: Municipal Best Practices For Sustainability, Erin Mckeon, Charline Kirongozi, Jared Duval, Antannia Greene, Qianshu Sun, Zewei Yao

School of Professional Studies

In response to the urgent threat posed by climate change, more and more cities, including Worcester, are attempting to become more environmentally responsible and sustainable. Worcester is attempting to develop ways to become more sustainable; both to strengthen their communities and to protect the planet. The Green Worcester Working Group (GWWG) tasked the Clark Capstone Team with researching best practices for municipal sustainability. The GWWG has set the following priorities: climate change mitigation, resilience, open spaces, sustainable resource management, education and awareness. Taking these into account, the Clark Capstone Team researched the sustainability practices of cities in New England, across …

Engaged Scholarship For Environmental Justice: A Guide, Chad Raphael

Communication

This guide was written for distribution at the Environmental Justice and the Common Good Conference, hosted by Santa Clara University’s Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education in May 2019. The conference convened representatives from Jesuit and other universities with a broad range of community organizations to strengthen our common understanding and advancement of community-engaged scholarship for environmental justice (EJ). Given its immediate audience, the guide focuses primarily on the U.S. context, although it also discusses the major global causes and impacts of EJ, and how Americans have been inspired by engaged scholars around the world, from whom we have much to …

Losing Louisiana: Race, Techno-Science, And The Disappearing Geographies Of The Lower Mississippi River Delta, Monica Patrice Barra

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Based on eighteen months of ethnographic and historical research in southeast coastal Louisiana (USA), this dissertation explores the racial histories, engineering and scientific practices, and geophysical processes that have shaped land loss and coastal restoration in the lower Mississippi River Delta. Rather than treating land loss simply as a natural process or matter of environmental restoration, this ethnography examines its cultural, material, and political dimensions, especially for communities of color that have already experienced long histories of loss — of property, livelihood, and political rights. A focus on the geophysical transformations of the river - dictating land growth, sinking, and …

Resisting Industrial Food Systems On The Web: How Non-Profit Organizations Use Digital Technology For Sustainability Education, Aleksandr Segal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the link between how community-based organizations use digital tools with the fundamentally resistance-based philosophy that these organizations have at the core of their mission. It aims to uncover how non-profit organizations (NPOs) that work in community development through food and agriculture use digital tools, and how their digital communication strategies relate to issues of resistance to neoliberalism and industrialization in the food and agriculture sectors.

Using a foundation of existing literature on food and agriculture, climate change and waste management, critical theory, and technology in pedagogy, this thesis will contextualize how non-profits resist neoliberal regimes of de-traditionalization …

Case Study: La Bisutería De La Escuela Especial De Nebaj, Amos Pomp, Leah Dunlevy

The International Undergraduate Journal For Service-Learning, Leadership, and Social Change

In the Ixil Region of Guatemala’s Quiché Department, there is social stigma against people with physical, intellectual and developmental disabilities. Parents of children with special needs are often ashamed of their children and reluctant to take them outside or send them to school. Worldwide, children with disabilities are less likely to attend school, receive academic support to attain educational goals, and to experience familial and emotional support that increase quality of life. A similar lack of support for children with disabilities in Guatemala perpetuates their lack of access to opportunities for academic, social, and professional development, which contributes to stereotypes …

Creating Low-Carbon Communities: Evaluating The Role Of Individual Agency And Systemic Inequality In San Jose, Ca, Erin Jessica Ronald

Helene Lafrance Library Undergraduate Research Award

Following a scholarly need to test compelling community level sociodemographic representations of environmental behaviors and outcomes, a sequential mixed method approach was used to evaluate the connections of human agency and systemic inequalities with carbon footprints. Statistical analyses of the 2016 SDG San Jose Dashboard data of city blocks and 2009 - 2013 ACS survey data were supplemented with interviews with eight climate action-oriented community engagement professionals in the South Bay. Boundary limiting socioeconomic conditions for systemic inequalities and human agency, dimensions of Gidden’s Structuration model, were specified. Partially supporting structural inequality theories, socioeconomic resources, primarily, and to a lesser …

Creating Change: Finding Older Adults Role In Local Environmental Issues, Meagan Riche

Community Engagement Student Work

Every person, regardless of their age, race, sex, class, disability or religion should have access and the resources needed to be an active participant in their community. The goal of this project is to highlight the importance of creating opportunities for the aging population to be involved in community initiatives and in particular, environmental initiatives. This project is meant to create awareness of senior’s role and capabilities to be active in a community, potential barriers older adults face in participation and the importance of acknowledging and including older adults in community conversations that have the potential to impact their future.

Post-Colonial Restructuring Of Human Rights Systems In Morocco, Kristen Hansen

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

A surge of academic criticism has followed the NGO corporatization trend (‘NGOization’) of the 1980s. NGOs have been called an extension of neoliberal ideology as they are pressured to depoliticize and corporatize their structures. NGOs have been forced to fit into an international schema of aid work that compromises their ability to bring about impactful change within their own communities. This trend has been cultivated by shrinking neoliberal governments and an intensified reliance on NGOs to fulfill international human rights requirements. This project examines the role of Rabat women’s rights organizations within the context of Morocco as a neoliberal state …

Disaster Vulnerability And Social Capitals In The Gulf Coast And Flint, Michigan, Vanessa Parks

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I explore the migration intentions, self-rated physical and mental health, and alcohol use of people living in regions facing environmental stressors. In my first chapter, I examine factors that predict willingness to move away from southeast Louisiana, a region threatened by land loss, hurricanes, and environmental pollution. Specifically, I assess the relationships risk perceptions, place attachment, and fishing employment have with willingness to move. I find that risk perceptions are positively related to willingness to move and that place attachment and fishing employment are negatively related to willingness to move. In my second chapter, I show the …

Climate Justice Movement Building: Values And Cultures Of Creation In Santa Barbara, California, Corrie Grosse

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

This article analyzes how young people in the climate justice movement cultivate a prefigurative culture centered on justice as a response to the threat of climate change. Employing grounded theory and drawing on data from in-depth interviews with 29 youth activists and participant observation in Santa Barbara County, California, the birthplace of both the environmental movement and offshore oil drilling, I argue that four key values—relationships, accessibility, intersectionality, and community—enable movement building, a stated goal of the climate justice movement. These values emerge from interviewees’ words and practices. Drawing on John Foran’s (2014) notion of political cultures of creation, I …

The Disproportionate Burden Of Asthma By Race, Sex, Income And Education, Lisa Elizabeth Stack

Wayne State University Dissertations

This paper seeks to understand the relationship of county level median air quality with adult asthma risk, and the disproportional adult asthma risk by sex, race, income and education, controlling for individual and county effects. The specific objectives of this work are to answer the following questions: 1) What is the difference exposure of the median AQI by race, controlling for county and individual effects? 2) What is the difference in exposure of the median AQI by sex, controlling for county and individual effects? 3) What is the difference in exposure of the median AQI by education, controlling for county …

Exploring Educational Journeys, Barriers, And Motivating Factors Of Tribal College Students Through Capabilities Approach, Francis Arpan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Educational attainment and success have often been linked to an increase in opportunities in life and when viewed from the lens of lifelong earnings, the greater an individual’s educational attainment, the greater the lifelong earnings. As a population, Native Americans have the highest poverty rate of all racial categories in the United States at 26.2% (Economic Policy Institute 2016). When looking at the connection between education and poverty, it is vital to note that only 14.1% of Native Americans over the age of 25 have a bachelor’s degree or above (US Census 2015). This lack of educational attainment falls well …

Confronting The Ngo: Struggling For Agency And Approximating Freedom Through The Works Of Michel Foucault And Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Samantha Coss

Pitzer Senior Theses

This project aims to consider the proliferation of the NGO in the 21st century and the implications that this model has for justice, freedom and social change. The nonprofit, or nongovernmental organization, will be examined using theorists and thinkers Michel Foucault and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in hopes of understanding the ways in which the NGO limits freedom and perpetuates violence. There will be an exploration of struggling for agency beyond the nonprofit, including an introduction to examples of other change-making models from the United States and Latin America. The goal of this project is to critically examine the current frameworks …

Towards Food Justice: Strategies Of Community Engagement For Local Food Nonprofits, Garrett Stern

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Nonprofit Studies Capstone Projects

Over the past two decades there had been a significant shift in American values around food and health. The increase of diet-related illness and the growing awareness of the local food movement have helped to shape the discourse on healthy, nutritious, sustainably grown food. Food justice advocates and organization have inserted social justice principals of equity and self-determination into the dialogue of health and food. There has been a similar shift in the nonprofit sector in regard to local food programing, with local food nonprofits advocating for equity and inclusion in nonprofit food programing. Community engagement is key to putting …

Vulnerability And Social Justice, Martha Albertson Fineman

Faculty Articles

This Article briefly considers the origins of the term social justice and its evolution beside our understandings of human rights and liberalism, which are two other significant justice categories. After this reflection on the contemporary meaning of social justice, I suggest that vulnerability theory, which seeks to replace the rational man of liberal legal thought with the vulnerable subject, should be used to define the contours of the term. Recognition of fundamental, universal, and perpetual human vulnerability reveals the fallacies inherent in the ideals of autonomy, independence, and individual responsibility that have supplanted an appreciation of the social. I suggest …

Campaigning On An Environmental Justice Platform: Irmalinda Osuna For Upland City Council, District 3, Jenny Bekenstein

Pitzer Senior Theses

After successfully organizing around preserving Cabrillo Park in Upland and feeling a lack of local political representation, Irmalinda Osuna ran for Upland City Council in the 2018 midterm elections. As one of the many female candidates in the 2018 elections, Irmalinda led a grassroots, community-led political campaign in which she advocated for environmental justice and the preservation of parks, a more inclusive community, increased civic participation, a more efficient use of technology in politics, and support for small businesses.

Gendered Recreational Fisheries Management And North American Natural Resource Policy, Erin Burkett

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This dissertation applies feminist theory to investigate women’s participation in wildlife-based recreation and how natural resource management organizations conduct stakeholder engagement in a North American context. Gendered social processes, including norms and expectations, as well as gendered cultures, can constrain women’s participation in recreation through social sanctions and disenfranchisement. Gender and leisure scholars have studied these dynamics in sport and leisure contexts, but how individuals negotiate these constraints is understudied in a wildlife-based recreation context. Social constructions of gender also contribute to imbalances of power within formal natural resource management organizations and influence how stakeholder engagement policies and programs are …

Comandantas And Caracoles: The Role Of Women In The Life And Legacy Of The Zapatista Movement, Roxanne Rozo-Marsh

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis delves into the role of women in the Zapatista movement and how that role has changed over time in the private, public and political spheres. It also draws parallels between the struggle for female liberation within Zapatismo and the struggles of working-class, women of color movements in the United States. Chapters are focused on topics including women's involvement in the San Andrés Accords, the Women's Revolutionary Law, the Other Campaign and Marichuy's electoral campaign as well as personal observations from time spent in Oventik, a Zapatista caracol. As complement to the text, the thesis includes a visual zine.

The Water Changed Me As A Person: How Childhood Experiences With Water Affect Behavior And Attitudes Towards Water As An Adult, Victoria Heim

Honors Theses

This research serves to identify how childhood experiences with water impact a person’s attitudes and behaviors towards water issues later in life. Current research looks at more one-dimensional studies, such as only attitudes and behaviors from childhood, or not exploring multiple variables such as gender and community type and childhood experiences. By interviewing two distinct groups of students in terms of typical environmental attitudes and behaviors expressed by members of each group or political party, the College Republicans and the Office of Sustainability, we can see how the individual respondents from each group may have had childhood experiences that shaped …

Building Bridges: Examining Race And Privilege In Community Economic Development: Introductory Overview, Priya Baskaran, Renee Hatcher, Lynnise E. Pantin

Faculty Scholarship

The country has been in economic recovery since the Great Recession in 2007. Home prices have since stabilized after the mortgage and foreclosure crisis that followed the Recession. In late 2017, the federal government passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, leading to a surge in corporate earnings. As of the time of this writing, major stock indicators are at all-time highs, and interest rates are low. But corporate indicators and interest rates do not paint the entire picture. Most of the economic recovery is in affluent, predominately white parts of the country, while distressed areas inhabited by people of …

Can Offshore Wind Electricity In Taiwan Be Sustainable?: The Case Of Taiwan's First Offshore Wind Project, Formosa 1 In Miaoli, Yu Ju Lin

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

While sustainability is implementing all over the world to strive to balance the development and environment, Taiwan is also committed to the transition towards renewable energy, and offshore wind electricity is one of the emerging industries with potential, therefore taking its newly operated project as a case study. The purpose of the research is to determine whether offshore wind electricity is a viable solution to achieve inclusive sustainability in Taiwan and the concept of procedural justice is involving to examine the planning and construction stages of the development while environmental justice is applied to evaluate the overall outcome from the …

The Green Web: Evaluating Online News Communities And Their Environmentalism, Stian Himberg Roussell

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In the past news and media were disseminated through channels that were difficult for consumers to communicate with. Now a new form of news dissemination is taking place on the internet where communication between consumers and producers exists. Crowdsourced social media sites, where users elect and vote on articles and comments to represent a topic, are creating new forms of news dissemination, which heavily alters media content, and community discussions. This study was conducted in order to better understand how crowdsourced social media platforms affect users’ perception of environmental topics, issues, and problems. It focuses on the crowdsourced social media …

It Is Not A Cohort Thing: Interrogating The Relationship Between Age, Cohort And Support For The Environment, Philip Schwadel, Erik W. Johnson

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Cohort replacement is one widely implicated, but seldom studied, mechanism of long-term change in public opinion toward environmental protection. A key difficulty in extant research has been empirically distinguishing cohort effects from those of age. Applying recent methodological advances in age– period–cohort models, we examine the disaggregated effects of age, time period, and birth cohort on changes in Americans’ support of federal spending for environmental protection between 1973 and 2016. Results suggest that cohort replacement provides little explanatory power. Instead, we find large age effects, with the young more likely to be pro-environmental in their views, and substantial changes across …

Diy Art And Community Activism, Preston Allen

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This study explores the collaborative process of members of DIY art collectives in the Pacific Northwest as understood through a collective action lens focused on the cooperative links and motivations of the art collectives. Participant observation and in-depth interviews were used to gather data showing the process of establishing and maintaining membership in a DIY art collective, and the values that motivate the collective’s continuation. Drawing on Howard Becker’s art world framework as well as literature on social movements and art activism, I show how the DIY art world of this study is fluid, open, and driven by values of …

Resistance Beyond The Frontier: Concepts And Policies For The Protection Of Isolated Indigenous Peoples Of The Amazon, Minna Opas, Luis Felipe Torres, Felipe Milanez, Glenn Shepard Jr.

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

No abstract provided.

The Formation Of Climate Change Beliefs Among Young Adults In Appalachian Kentucky: A Consideration Of The Role Played By Economic Risk Perception, Rebecca Johnson

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the Caudill College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by Rebecca Johnson on December 6, 2018.

Justice And The River: Community Connections To An Impaired Urban River In Salt Lake City, Taya L. Carothers

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Local communities have the right to participate in decision-making about environmental resources near where they live. Local governments have tried to gather feedback from communities to help improve the decisions they make, but have not always done a good job getting feedback from minority or urban communities. This dissertation provides one step toward obtaining this kind of public input in a majority minority community surrounding the Jordan River in Salt Lake City. Children and adults participated in this research. I present findings from two surveys, from work with children, and from adult interviews to understand how this community relates to …

Transforming "Rights" To "Justice" And "Power": Reframing Attitudes On Environmental And Reproductive Health Of Indigenous Women In The United States, Jayla Johnson

Denison Journal of Religion

The effects of environmental degradation, targeted acts of violence against land and reproductive capacities, and Christian fundamentalism on Indigenous women’s spiritual/health practices are inseparable when addressing the mistreatment of Native women’s environment and the reproductive oppression within their communities in the United States. Johnson argues that reframing the language around environmental and reproductive “rights” to mean “justice/power” is pivotal to the process of re-envisioning a more justice-oriented framework towards Indigenous women’s environmental and reproductive health. The five components of this paper are 1) The Historical Impact of Colonization on Indigenous Women’s Health, 2) the Influences of Christian Fundamentalism on the …

Note From The Editors, Seth Schoenhaus, Eva Rosenthal

Denison Journal of Religion

No abstract provided.