Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Mf117 Frye Mountain Interviews / Jeffrey "Smokey" Mckeen, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History Finding Aids

Interviews done by Jeff "Smokey" McKeen concerning the farming community of Frye Mountain in Waldo County and its acquisition by the federal government in the 1930s. Interviews cover the problems like having to selling land to the government, bad roads for automobiles, and other issues.

Mf056 Skinner Settlement Project, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History Finding Aids

A series of interviews about farm life in Maine at the turn of the twentieth century, conducted by students in Oral History and Folklore: Fieldwork in the fall of 1974. The interviewees discuss life at the Skinner Settlement in East Corinth, Maine; including house layouts, furnishings; farm buildings; machinery; clothing; and social customs.

Mf215 Guide To Farming Deer Foot Farm, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History Finding Aids

Oral history of the multi-generational Johnson-Mink Farm, later known as Mink Dairy Farm, then Deer Foot Farm, Appleton, Maine. Chris Roberts interviews his grandparents Keith and Grace Mink, his mother Sue Ellen Mink-Roberts, and great-aunt Natalie Irene (Mink) Gushee about the family farm and its operation through the first three generations of ownership. The property was acquired in 1897 and became a truck farm producing produce, eggs, and dairy.

Mf121 Maine Organic Farmers And Gardeners Association (Mofga), Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History Finding Aids

This collection contains interviews with people associated with the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA) and the Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine. Themes include the process of beginning to farm organically, the early development of MOFGA and its growth; the Common Ground Fair and its expansion; marketing organic food; farming strategies; raising livestock; and MOFGA's interactions with conventional farmers and the wider community.

Who Farms The Future? Producing The Next Generation Of Agriculturalists, Jordyn L. Mcmaster Neely

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The proportion of young farmers and ranchers (ages 18-35 years old) within the agricultural workforce has been declining, raising concerns about the sustainability of the food supply. To gather more tools for solving this problem, this thesis research seeks to understand why young people want to work in agriculture by studying how they develop aspirations for an agricultural career. This thesis employed both survey and interview processes to gather data on how participants think about the field of agriculture in the context of both the challenges and opportunities for entry. Participants were asked how wide range of factors contributed to …

Ecological-Niche Modeling Reveals Current Opportunities For Agave Dryland Farming In Sonora, Mexico And Arizona, Usa, Hector G. Ortiz-Cano, Robert Hadfield, Teresa Gomez, Kevin Hultine, Ricardo Mata-Gonzalez, Steven L. Petersen, Neil C. Hansen, Michael T. Searcy, Jason Stetler, Teodoro Cervantes-Mendivil, David Burchfield, Pilman Park, J. Ryan Stewart

Faculty Publications

For centuries, humans occupying arid regions of North America have maintained an intricate relationship with Agave (Agavoideae, Asparagaceae). Today Agave cultivation, primarily for beverage production, provides an economic engine for rural communities throughout Mexico. Among known dryland-farming methods, the use of rock piles and cattle-grazed areas stand out as promising approaches for Agave cultivation. Identifying new cultivation areas to apply these approaches in Arizona, USA and Sonora, Mexico warrants a geographic assessment of areas outside the known ranges of rock piles and grasslands. The objective of this study was to predict areas for dryland-farming of Agave and develop models to …

Neoliberal Economic Policies: Implications Of Structural Adjustment Programs (Saps) And Free Trade On Small-Scale Farmers And Agricultural Production In Latin American Developing Nations, Alaynah Mowjee

Anthropology Undergraduate Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Debe Ser Dirigida: Theories Of Community Organizing For Research Management In The Context Of Rural Ecuador, Meghan Edwards

Student Symposium

This research analysis and literature review discusses the factors that mobilize individuals to take an active role in community-led resource management. After reviewing major contemporary theories of resource management such as Elinor Ostrom's polycentric theory, CPR theories, and Arnstein's ladder, the essay then applies these theories to the context of the Quijos Valley in Ecuador, where the author conducted informal interviews with community members both involved and not-involved in managing fragile soil ecosystems. The literature review considers the idea that individuals are more likely to take an active role in research management when there are strong community bonds, and highlights …

Los Impactos Del Cambio Climático En Las Comunidades Aymaras En Putre, El Valle De Azapa Y Arica, Lindsey Kaufman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Research Question: How is climate change affecting Aymara communities in Putre, the valley of Azapa, and Putre?

Objectives: To understand the effects of climate on communities by 1) describing which environmental problems exist and their impact on agriculture and ranching, 2) understanding the patterns of migration away from the ancestral land, 3) exploring the connections to the social determinants of health that exist with these change, and 4) analyzing the significance of these changes in the agriculture for the communities’ traditions and connection to the land.

Background: Aymara communities have historically inhabited agricultural and ranching lands in …

Reclaiming The Future Through Small-Scale Agriculture: Autonomy And Sustainability In The Caribbean, Dana M. Conzo

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation, “Reclaiming the future through Small-Scale Agriculture: Autonomy and Sustainability in the Caribbean,” is a political-economic analysis of land politics, foodscapes and foodsheds, and small-scale agricultural activities in plantation economies on the Caribbean island of St Kitts. Using ethnographic and geographic methods, such as participant observation, interviews, social network analysis, and foodshed mapping, I investigate the cultural and economic niche of local farmers, documented and analyzed the island’s foodshed, and provide a historical and economic background of St Kitts to link historical processes to contemporary spatial organization and agricultural practices. I consider the complexities of food inequalities and food …

Toxicants, Entanglement, And Mitigation In New England’S Emerging Circular Economy For Food Waste, Cindy Isenhour, Michael Haedicke, Brieanne Berry, Jean Macrae, Travis Blackmer, Skyler Horton

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

Drawing on research with food waste recycling facilities in New England, this paper explores a fundamental tension between the eco-modernist logics of the circular economy and the reality of contemporary waste streams. Composting and digestion are promoted as key solutions to food waste, due to their ability to return nutrients to agricultural soils. However, our work suggests that food waste processors increasingly find themselves responsible for policing boundaries between distinct “material” and “biological” systems as imagined by the architects of the circular economy—boundaries penetrable by toxicants. This responsibility creates significant problems for processors due to the regulatory, educational, and structural …

Rural Development In Papua New Guinea: Mining, Logging, Agriculture, And Alternatives, Tj Askew

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines multiple approaches to providing rural, indigenous Papuans with improved social services and economic opportunities. Rural Papuans, who make up 80 percent of the population, face below average rates of nutrition, education, disease, crime, and other quality of life indicators. Due to location, land use rights, lack of infrastructure, and minimal access to economic markets, the PNG government has struggled to provide rural communities with basic social services. Historically, the development of resource extraction projects such as mining, logging, and agriculture have been the main strategies used to improve the livelihood of rural Papuans, with limited success. This …

The Syndemic Landscape: A New Paradigm For Montana Suicide Prevention Grounded In Agricultural Renewal, Emory Chandler Padgett

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Montana has had one of the highest suicide rates in the nation for half a century, and since 2000, it has risen almost 50%. Despite suicide’s alarming persistence in the state, there has been minimal academic study of suicide or mental health specifically in Montana, so this thesis attempts to answer a few questions: Why does Montana have such a high suicide rate? Is there something culturally, historically, or socially unique about Montana that contributes to suicide? Are current prevention efforts helpful, harmful, or lacking? Could a consideration of culture and land benefit an understanding of suicide in Montana? What …

Mf013 Cranberry Culture In Massachusetts Project, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History Finding Aids

A series of 20 accessions featuring interviews done by Stephen Cole and Linda Gifford (1982-1983) documenting cranberry growing in southeastern Massachusetts. Content of this collection is available for educational purposes only.

Climate Change And The Ancestors: Rain, Gender And Politics In An African Water Catchment, Jessie Fredlund

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Uluguru, a small mountain range in eastern Tanzania and one of the rainiest places in East Africa, serves as the principal water catchment for Tanzania’s largest city, Dar es Salaam, and for commercial farms along the country’s central coast. Home to smallholder farmers who cultivate a variety of crops on mostly rain-fed farms, the catchment has been a site of struggle over water and nature since the nineteenth century. Today, climate change has rendered rainfall increasingly unpredictable, and a wave of “sustainable development” interventions has pressured farmers to change their practices and to engage in unpaid forms of ecological labor …

Seeding Sovereignty: Sensory Politics And Biodiversity In The Karen Diaspora, Terese Virginia Gagnon

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation traces the sensory and political dimensions of Karen refugees' co-movements with their seeds, plants, and agricultural practices in exile. It also tentatively explores understandings of sovereignty beyond the frame of the Westphalian nation-state through engagements with seed and food sovereignty in three locations that complicate understandings of territorial sovereignty. In this dissertation I explore what I call "agricultural forgetting" and how it occurs for Karen refugees in the context of the camp. Agricultural forgetting, I suggest, is the process by which linkages between people and plants are broken generationally. Such forgetting occurs in especially sudden and forceful ways …

Cultivating Historic Farms: A Study Of Late-Nineteenth Century Maryland Farms, Sarah N. Janesko

Northeast Historical Archaeology

This study examines late-19th century farmsteads in Anne Arundel County, Maryland to measure and explain changes in agriculture and the effect of farming strategies on the local landscape. Agricultural census data from 1850–1880 in the county’s First Election District are used to measure significant changes in crop production after the Civil War. From this local level analysis, one farmstead is analyzed to understand those agricultural changes at the household level. Results from exploratory statistics, two-sided independent t tests, and one-way analysis of variances demonstrate that mean production of tobacco, wheat, and corn decreased significantly in the decades after the Civil …

Role Of Farmer Knowledge In Agroecosystem Science: Rice Farming And Amphibians In The Philippines, Catherine R. Propper, Lisa J. Hardy, Brittni D. Howard, Rica Joy B. Flor, Grant R. Singleton

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Rice (Oryza sativa) agriculture provides food and economic security for nearly half of the world’s population. Rice agriculture is intensive in both land and agrochemical use. However, rice fields also provide aquatic resources for wildlife, including amphibians. In turn, some species may provide ecosystem services back to the farmers working in the rice agroecosystem. The foundation for understanding the complexity of agroecosystem–human relationships requires garnering information regarding human perceptions and knowledge of the role of biodiversity in these rice agroecosystems. Understanding farmer knowledge and perceptions of the ecosystem services provided by wildlife in their fields, along with their …

A Landscape Perspective On Climate-Driven Risks To Food Security: Exploring The Relationship Between Climate And Social Transformation In The Prehispanic U.S. Southwest, Colleen Strawhacker, Grant Snitker, Matthew A. Peeples, Ann P. Kinzig, Keith W. Kintigh, Kyle Bocinsky, Brad Butterfield, Jacob Freeman, Sarah Oas, Margaret C. Nelson, Jonathan A. Sandor, Katherine A. Spielmann

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Spatially and temporally unpredictable rainfall patterns presented food production challenges to small-scale agricultural communities, requiring multiple risk-mitigating strategies to increase food security. Although site-based investigations of the relationship between climate and agricultural production offer insights into how individual communities may have created long-term adaptations to manage risk, the inherent spatial variability of climate-driven risk makes a landscape-scale perspective valuable. In this article, we model risk by evaluating how the spatial structure of ancient climate conditions may have affected the reliability of three major strategies used to reduce risk: drawing upon social networks in time of need, hunting and gathering of …

Growing Relations: An Ethnographic Study On Rice, Vanilla, And Yams In Madagascar, Tyler Macintosh

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

I examine the various ways in which the rice, wild yams, and vanilla that grow in northern Madagascar feature in the lives of numerous people including rural community members, representatives of the Malagasy government, and foreigners, focusing especially on the distinctive networks of relationships entailed by each of these plants. Each case presents interesting dilemmas from which we can gain insight into the everyday lives and hardships faced by rural Malagasy. Rice is a staple crop which both feeds and employs many Malagasy. More importantly it is at the base of everyday life, sustaining and creating important social ties. Wild …

Oppression And Dispossession Out Of Fields Of Plenty: Colonialism And Indigenous Agricultural Transformation, Brandon R. Katzung Hokanson

Student Publications

Colonial encounters generate incredible degrees of societal transformation. Such transformations most often occur at the expense of the colonized majority and ultimately serve as means to benefit the colonizer minority. A specific case where this kind of unbalanced societal change can be observed is colonialism-induced transformations to indigenous agriculture. In this paper I use both ancient and modern examples of colonial encounters —Roman Gaul and French West Africa—to show that a number of conclusions can be drawn on how colonialism impacts indigenous agriculture. I argue that in both Roman Gaul and French West Africa, colonial-induced changes to agriculture brought forth …

Shaftesbury's Atlantis, Andrew Agha

Theses and Dissertations

This research posits that seventeenth century natural philosophy as purported by the Royal Society of London had a major impact on the way the First Earl of Shaftesbury directed the settlement of the English colony Carolina. When Carolina was first settled in 1670, the colonists were ordered by Shaftesbury and his Lords Proprietors of Carolina cohort to test experimental exotic crops like cotton, sugarcane, grapes, olive trees, and indigo, but since those crops did not produce exportable surpluses, they have been labeled as failures. Instead, this study recognizes those failures as integral components to the scientific process of experimentation. That …

German Immigration And Its Ties To Landscape Change In Nebraska, Lindsey Labrie

Honors Theses

This thesis uses a multidimensional approach to frame the different waves of German immigration within the context of land use change in Nebraska. By recounting the historical challenges and struggles Germans faced in their homelands, this thesis provides similarities between historical immigration patterns throughout the state. Observing the timing of these movements of people paints a clearer picture of how these immigrants might have helped change the farming and cultural landscapes of Nebraska. Knowing and recognizing historical immigration in Nebraska cultivates a deeper appreciation for the current relations between immigrants and Nebraska’s physical landscape.

The Interwoven Existences Of Official Catholicism And Magical Practice In The Lived Religiosity Of A Transylvanian Hungarian Village, Cecília Sándor

Journal of Global Catholicism

During the last five years I have been doing field research in a Transylvanian Hungarian village, Sânsimion (Hu: Csíkszentsimon). I present my research on this religiously homogenous, Catholic community’s worldview. Based on interviews conducted with members of the village’s various age groups, I map religious and magical knowledge passed down through the generations, using the theoretical frame of collective memory and religious transmission. Second, I highlight two different but coexisting “constructions of reality” in this rural community. By “constructions of reality,” I mean interpretations of reality expressed in narrative discourses and local magical practices that are closely and inextricably interwoven …

Mf004 Aroostook Oral History Project, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History Finding Aids

The Aroostook Oral History Project, 1971-1972, which resulted in a collection of 119 cassettes (now digitized), totaling 73 hours. Interviews of more than 150 people were conducted by Helen K. Atchison covering a wide range of topics including early county history, early farming and machinery, the Aroostook War, railroading, lumbering, potato farming, maple sugar making, folk songs, folklore, folk medicine, politics, town meetings, cross-border migration, smuggling, Indians, sporting camps, schools and schooling, tall tales, superstitions, and many other aspects of the county's cultural heritage. Twenty tapes recorded in French and two tapes recorded in Swedish have not been abstracted and …

Mf015 Curran Family Homestead Project, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History Finding Aids

A series of student interviews done for Edward D. “Sandy” Ives’ class focused on the Curran Family Homestead, a living history museum in Orrington, Maine. Interview topics include: memories of Alfred, Eddie, and Catherine Curran; dairy farming in East Orrington during the first half of the twentieth century; MA Crook and Sons Hillside Dairy; relationship between the Kimball family and the Currans; swimming in the Fields Pond in the summer; tobogganing on the Curran property in the winter; a genealogy of the Curran family; growing up in Orrington and spending time on the Curran farm; daily management of the farm; …

Mf176 Maine Ethnographic / Barry H. Rodrigue Collection, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History Finding Aids

This collection contains items deposited by Barry H. Rodrigue that contains the sub-collection, Ashland Family Collection.

Mf019 Foxfire Bicentennial Project, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History Finding Aids

Part of a nationwide project coordinated by E. Wigginton, founder of Foxfire, of interviews with the elderly about their lives and their hopes and fears for the future of the nation.

Panel 3 Paper 3.3: Māori Ancestral Landscapes And The Celebration Of Prowess In Cultivation And Resource Gathering: Digesting Natural Heritage As An Expression Of Culture, Xavier Forde

ISCCL Scientific Symposia and Annual General Meetings // Symposiums scientifiques et assemblées générales annuelles de l'ISCCL // Simposios científicos yy las Asambleas Generales Anuales

The provision of food and other natural resource for subsistence is celebrated in the histories of Māori tribes, in episodes relating to the ancestors who brought crops from Hawaiki in their migration to Aotearoa New Zealand, or who demonstrated prowess in the cultivation or gathering of resource. The oral histories of these ancestors and their feats of provision are still evidenced in aetiological stories, place names, and expansive archaeological fields, and artefacts that shape cultural landscapes, map out the natural resource around the country, and continue to act as a repository of indigenous knowledge today.

Climate-Smart Agriculture: Building Resilience For Women Farmers In Kalchebeshi, Nepal, Annika Ruben

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This case study outlines women’s involvement in climate-smart agriculture and key climate adaptation strategies which are being implemented in the town of Kalchebeshi, Nepal. Kalchebeshi is considered a Resilient Mountain Village because of the town’s integrated approach to addressing climate change and building resilience for farmers. Key findings examined gender differences in farming responsibilities and the significance of farmers’ groups in women’s overall decision making and community involvement. Additionally, changes in water management and pesticide use have been shown to have a positive impact on the lives of women farmers in Kalchebeshi. This paper reinforces the importance of involving vulnerable …