Digital Commons Network^™

From Cow Pasture To Cul-De-Sac: The Intersection Of Rural Values, Memory, And Nostalgia Amidst Suburban Development In The American South, Emily F. Ramsey

Theses and Dissertations

How do residents of a once small farming community react to rapid suburbanization? By examining rhetoric on growth, progress, and rurality, this thesis argues a complex landscape forms where longtime residents weave among pragmatism, disaffection, and nostalgia, with efforts to preserve memories of the past for themselves and future generations.

Growing Together? Community, Culture, And Gardening In Downtown Las Vegas, Tyler S. Schafer

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this manuscript I explore the issue of how groups appropriate broad cultural trends in local contexts. Using the case of a community garden in Las Vegas I examine how social space is imbued with meaning and how those meanings come to shape the subsequent interactions that take place in the meaningful place. This research draws from four years of participant observation at Vegas Roots Community Garden (VRCG), 20 in-depth interviews, hundreds of informal interviews, and content analysis of documents produced by others about the garden and by the garden organization about itself.

I expand on Howard Becker’s (1974) work …

Determining The Barriers To And Opportunities For Community Involvement In The Management Of The Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, Uttarakhand, India, Trisha Singh

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Today’s global political environment places a high value on social equality and economic well- being. In this climate, emphasizing biodiversity conservation over socio-economic development through exclusionary methods of habitat protection has become ethically questioned and politically dangerous. The goal of this research was to understand the barriers and opportunities for local involvement in the management of the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve in Uttarakhand, India. We attempted to understand the feasibility of local community involvement in the management of the NDBR from the perspective of policy-making organizations and that of the local communities.

Key findings highlight barriers to community participation at …

Relationship Between Sustainable Environmental Practices And Sustainable Value Creation: A Conceptual Study On Readymade Garments Industry Of Bangladesh, Mohammed S. Chowdhury, Zahurul Alam, Mizanur Rahaman Chowdhury

Graduate School of Business Publications and Research

Because of the increasing level of industrial contamination the demand for sustainable products and raw materials aligned with the ecological pollution has been on the rise in this horizon. This study theoretically explores the impact of sustainable environmental practices on financial performance of Ready-made Garment (RMG) companies of Bangladesh following the growing literature linking corporate sustainable environmental performance with revenue development and profitability. Various sustainable environmental practices have diverse effects on firm’s performance, as the literature review suggests. From literature review this paper reports four key areas (community, employee, environment and governance) of sustainable practices for sustainable financial performance that …

Engaging San Francisco’S Western Addition In A Community Needs Assessment: A Field Work Report, Bridget Walsh-Dahlberg

Master's Projects and Capstones

San Francisco’s Western Addition is a neighborhood steeped in a history of discriminative policies and actions. Today, while the Western is a vibrant community, it continues to feel the effects of the historic discriminatory practices. This is evident in the disparities seen across many indicators, including: educational success and attainment; health; employment; and housing opportunities. Engage San Francisco, an initiative born from the University of San Francisco’s Leo T. McCarthy for Public Service and Common Good seeks to help improve the lives and success of children, youth and families in the Western Addition through community identified needs. Through campus-community relationships …

Community Building In The Classroom: Teaching Democratic Thinking Through Practicing Democratic Thinking, Danielle L. Lake

Faculty Peer Reviewed Articles

Key to teaching democratic thinking is actively engaging in the practice; and this, the article contends, is best facilitated by an experiential learning model where students are actively using, testing, and transforming not only the materials of the course, but also their own theories and experiences. Educators hoping to inspire democratic virtues and actions should also create and foster opportunities for community-building within the classroom by having students take more ownership for the class. This experiential process of learning disrupts the hierarchical theory-to-practice model traditionally implemented, reinforcing the value of an experiential and iterative practice of reflective engagement. In addition, …

Implementing Sustainable Literacy In Grand Rapids, Mi, Joe Neikirk, Hannah Swanson, Sam Blumer

LIB 322: Wicked Problems of Sustainability

Recognizing the dimensions and complexity of wicked problems, Phoenix Farms has decided to address the issue of sustainable illiteracy in Western Michigan. With a goal to work with local stakeholders, we have partnered with Sonder Farms in order to develop advertisements and classes aimed to raise awareness about, and interest in, sustainability. This partnership with Sonder Farms, a self-sustaining farm located in the Grand Rapids and Allendale communities, has given us the opportunity to put our skills, knowledge, and values to use in our local community. Sonder Farms practices conventional farming as well as aquaponics. Their hope is to target …

Healing And Belonging: Community Based Art And Community Formation In West Oakland, Pablo Miguel Cerdera

Honors Papers

Community Based Art is a model of art making which centers community and interpersonal interaction. Through an in depth case study of Brett Cook's West Oakland based project "Reflections of Healing" this thesis attempts to understand how community is both reflected and constructed in Community Based Art, as well as the political, social, and aesthetic consequences of this construction. Of particular interest are the relationships between art, community, race, class, gentrification, and self-determination. Ultimately, this thesis finds that through an ambivalent and sometimes messy process of collaboration, Reflections of Healing constructs a hopeful and positive image of community that prefigures …

The Multiplicity Of Heritage At Warm Mineral Springs, Jodi L. Johnson

Theses & ETDs

This thesis explores the community and political processes associated with the heritage site of Warm Mineral Springs as it came into public ownership. The study examines the heritage preservation challenges facing the state of Florida and considers the history of preservation in the United States with suggestions on how to model a successful preservation process, based on two years of engagement with Warm Mineral Springs. This thesis uses the literature associated with preservation legislation, economic and social values of heritage within a community, and heritage tourism; examines the multiple layers of history at Warm Mineral Springs from archaeology, ecology, architecture, …

Introduction To Empowered Partnerships: Community-Based Participatory Action Research For Environmental Justice, Christopher M. Bacon, Saneta Devuono-Powell, Mary Louise Frampton, Tony Lopresti, Camille Pannu

Environmental Studies and Sciences

This article introduces a special section on empowered partnerships that deepens a dialogue initiated during the 2010 symposium titled EmPowered Partnerships: Community-Based Participatory Action Research for Environmental Justice. The articles in this section will be divided between issues 1 and 2 of the Journal. After briefly reviewing the definitions and the steps associated with community-based participatory action research (CBPAR), we identify the synergies connecting the underlying principles and values of the environmental justice (EJ) movement and CBPAR. The principles-based comparison is part of an ongoing effort to craft a framework that produces research partnerships that are simultaneously more responsive to …

Sowing Seeds Of Tradition! Applying Traditional Family Values And Adaptive Reuse To Resurrect A Community., O B Aaron Harris Jr

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

There are problems in every community, including South Memphis, Tennessee. Issues that need to be addressed include teen pregnancies, school drop-outs, crime, childhood obesity, and lack of parental guidance. Traditional family characteristics such as spiritual life, caring and appreciation, commitment, flexibilty and openness to change were once guiding forces that have been lost in our current culture. The response has been to provide community centers, which have often failed because they do not teach the basic skills necessary for a productive life. One solution is to convert the Turner Dairy Warehouse on South Bellevue into a facility that will provide …

School, Community And Clinical Psychology Training And Working Together In The Interdisciplinary School Mental Health Field, Mark D. Weist, C. Mills, S. Huebner, B. Smith, A. Wandersman

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Aridity Of Grace: Community And Ecofeminism In Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams And Prodigal Summer, Richard M. Magee

English Faculty Publications

In both Animal Dreams and her later novel Prodigal Summer, Kingsolver constructs narratives of community inhabited by characters with a vivid awareness of the natural world and the threats to that world; furthermore, both novels feature strong female characters who long for a more harmonious life within nature. The novels develop and present forthright ecofeminist themes, with the women in the texts representing ideals of ecologically sensitive living who seek to educate their communities about threats to the environment and the defenses against those threats.

Kingsolver's ecofeminist vision, however, is frequently complicated and contradictory; just as the desert landscape …

The Workplace Project, Emily Stein

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

City As An Ecological Space: Social Capital And Urban Land Use, The , Sheila R. Foster

Faculty Scholarship

One of the goals of land use (and pollution control) law is to force the internalization of these costs. This otherwise economic view of land use law is also rooted, however, in an ecological understanding of urban land use. Legal scholars writing over three decades ago successfully argued, based upon the ecological facts of life, that "[p]roperty does not exist in isolation" because the effects of its uses flow outside of the boundaries of ownership. The notion that property is inextricably part of a network of social and economic relationships, and that its impacts traverse legally defined boundaries and relationships, …

Art And Democracy In Environmental Decision Making, Audrey Stewart

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Global doctrines on sustainable development emphasize public participation as a tenet of environmentally responsible development. Given the Czech government’s tepid stance towards implementing sustainability measures, much impetus for realizing them will have to come from other facets of Czech society, including the public. In spite of the nearly populist feel of a mounting environmental movement in the late 1980s, after the Velvet Revolution the Czech public remained relatively disengaged from environmental involvement. Traditional decision-making venues within the Czech Republic now actively exclude the public from participating, while other pressures stemming from history and present also diminish the public impetus for …

Rural Social Work Bibliography (1999), Roger A. Lohmann, Nancy Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This bibliography was assembled in response to a request from OUP for a rural bibliography on their website prior to publication of our edited book on Rural Social Work Practice (Oxford University Press. 2005).

Through A Lens Darkly--Superfund Spectacles On Public Participation At Brownfield Sites, Kris Wernstedt, Robert Hersh

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

The authors discuss the recent trend in brownfield site development against a backdrop of Superfund experience and explore current barriers to public participation.

Siting, Justice, And The Environmental Laws, Rodger C. Field

Northern Illinois University Law Review

Environmental justice is gaining momentum throughout the country. As a result, industrial development can no longer be determined solely by the dictates of one agency or entity. Environmental justice requires efforts of all to participate in the decision-making process to determine how industry will develop in the future. This article traces the history and themes of the environmental justice movement and examines that movement's impact on industrial development. Specifically, the article focuses on how the environmental justice movement affects future source-siting decisions and its ramifications on the various levels of government and on the industrial development. The article concludes by …

Conflicting Views On Fair Siting Processes: Evidence From Austria And The U.S., Joanne Linnerooth-Bayer, Kevin B. Fitzgerald

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

The authors maintain that, by granting legitimacy to different notions of fairness and building on common values such as responsibility, it is possible to design siting procedures that promote social cohesion, trust and a sense of fair play.