Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Grounding History Instruction: Engaging Place And Scale Through Iterative Local Inquiry Design, Megan Vangorder

The Councilor: A National Journal of the Social Studies

Teaching local history is often an afterthought in the high school history classroom. It is difficult to find enough instructional time to incorporate local stories and there are often gaps in resource development and approach from a local lens. This article seeks to help teachers articulate a locally driven inquiry approach. Using Illinois as the local framework and the C3 Inquiry Design Model as the tool, teachers can begin to map out how to implement the competing mandates to promote disciplinary skill development, demonstrate content expertise using state mandated units of study, drive student-oriented history, and foster civic competence all …

Beyond Borders: Representations Of Refugees And Place In Clarkston, Georgia, Sarah Ryniker

Theses and Dissertations

In the last thirty years, socio-political shifts within the city of Clarkston, Georgia, have led to an evolution in representations of the city and of its many refugee and immigrant populations. This dissertation examines the site-specific effects of the evolving policies and practices of refugee resettlement and integration within the city of Clarkston and the emerging immigrant gateway of the South. While the city itself has transformed, so have its representations of refugees, challenging imaginative geographies and complicating the mainstream dichotomic racial imaginative geographies and socio-political representation of the U.S. South. Using qualitative methods, I analyze materials from four years …

Collapsing Spaces, Colliding Places: Leveraging Constructs From Humanistic Geography To Explore Mathematics Classes, Valentin A. B. Küchle, Shiv S. Karunakaran, Mariana Levin, John P. Smith Iii, Sarah Castle, Jihye Hwang, Yaomingxin Lu, Robert A. Elmore

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Humanistic geographers distinguish between space and place: “What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value” (Tuan, 1977, page 6). In this essay, we seek to demonstrate how mathematics education researchers and mathematics instructors may find space and place illuminating for understanding important aspects of students’ learning experiences during the coronavirus pandemic—and possibly beyond. Specifically, after introducing the terms and relating them to the context of a university mathematics class, we exemplify how home and class places collided for three undergraduate mathematics students forced to deal with the abrupt …

Cannabis, Communities, And Place: (Re)Constructing Humboldt’S Post-Prohibition Present, Josh Meisel, Dominic Corva, Ara Pachmayer

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

Since 1990, many Cal Poly Humboldt faculty and students have made cannabis the focus of scholarship and learning. This work has been shaped by the political, economic, and cultural legacies of cannabis in Humboldt County. Scholarly interest spans multiple dimensions of cannabis cultivation, commerce, consumption, and related social issues. As a multidisciplinary team of scholars, Cal Poly Humboldt faculty affiliated with the Humboldt Institute for Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research (HIIMR) have also shaped the Bachelor of Arts in Cannabis Studies that will launch in Fall 2023. This is the first social science degree program in the United States with this orientation. …

Disorientations, Noah Greene-Lowe

MFA in Visual Art

The materials that make up the ordinary and mundane in the United States also reinforce and normalize a white spatial imaginary. Conventions of mapping, imaging of land and landscape, and elements of the built environment continue to orient us in a logic of space as property. In my sculptural work, I employ strategies of disorientation and creative repair, or reconstruction, to unsettle the spatial practices of whiteness and structures of power embedded in the mundane, the familiar, and the domestic. I consider the planned cohousing community where I grew up as an influence on my work, and my whiteness. By …

Master's Project: Belonging To Place: Redefining Wilderness And Renewing Human-Land Relationships In The Champlain-Adirondack Biosphere Region, Lillian Reid Howell

Rubenstein School Masters Project Publications

This project examines how wilderness has historically defined human relationships to land and explores how the wilderness concept might evolve to bring humans into relationship with place in the Champlain-Adirondack Biosphere Region (CABR). The research findings suggest that wilderness has perpetuated a separation between nature and culture that has greatly influenced our collective cultural psyche in the West, and in order to move forward, these elements must be reintegrated into a single holistic system. A review of Indigenous perspectives on wilderness and human-land relationships offers an alternative to the Western wilderness model, which is followed by a discussion of these …

Tales From A Placeholder: A Relational Journey With Land, Place, People And Self, Kalle O. Fox

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The proposed thesis is a collection of place-based, long- and-short-form creative nonfiction essays. The places of interest are where the author spent different amounts of time in during her twenties, including Iceland, Miami and Seaside, Florida, Butte and Missoula, Montana, and a series of National Parks on the western side of the Continental Divide. This thesis is informed what cultural geographer Yi Fu Tuan coined as topophilia: the affective bond between people and place. “Place” and “sense of place,” while each having their own array of definitions in environmental scholarship, are considered interchangeable in the context of my work. A …

Mining Urban Perceptions From Social Media Data, Yu Liu, Yihong Yuan, Fan Zhang

Journal of Spatial Information Science

This vision paper summaries the methods of using social media data (SMD) to measure urban perceptions. We highlight two major types of data sources (i.e., texts and imagery) and two corresponding techniques (i.e., natural language processing and computer vision). Recognizing the data quality issues of SMD, we propose three criteria for improving the reliability of SMD-based studies. In addition, integrating multi-source data is a promising approach to mitigating the data quality problems.

What Spatial Environments Mean, Thora Tenbrink

Journal of Spatial Information Science

Language is one of the most prominent means of representing human thought. Spatial cognition research has made use of this fact for decades, exploring how humans perceive and understand their spatial environments through language analysis. So far, this research has mainly focused on generic cognitive aspects underlying everyday purposes such as knowing where objects are, how they relate to each other, and how to find one's way to a familiar or unfamiliar location. However, human concepts about space can be threatened by change, as the environment changes. Across the globe, people become increasingly aware of climate-change related threats to their …

Mobile Passages: Unpacking The Seasonal Lifestyle From Quebec To Topeekeegee Yugnee (Ty) Rv Park, Broward County, Southeast Florida, Tara Kai

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to investigate the lived experiences of multi-locational actors and the production of unique forms of socialization and community using the seasonal movements and settlements of the Québécois population (also referred to as “Floribécois”) in Broward County, Florida during the winter months. This study employs interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) which is theoretically rooted in hermeneutic phenomenology. IPA recognizes that there are shared perspectives and lived experiences of a group of people about a concept or a phenomenon. This analysis comprises of collectively shared meanings, while being mindful of the unique experience of a single individual and/or subgroup. The …

Politics Of Belonging: Identity, Integration, And Spatial Practices Of Algerian Immigrants And Their Descendants In Paris, France, Elizabeth Nelson

Theses and Dissertations

Using a geographic framework, this dissertation explores how Algerian immigrants and their descendants perform identity and negotiate belonging in French society. Bringing together critical theorizations of race, identity, space, and place, this work investigates what it means to be a racialized minority in a postcolonial context and to learn and experience the boundaries of ‘Frenchness.’ It is based on the narratives of Algerian immigrants who have migrated to Paris, France, and their French-born children. The empirical evidence of the case studies highlights the myriad ways in which Algerian immigrants and their descendants encounter and structure their interactions with French society, …

The Dancing Between Two Worlds Project: Background, Methodology And Learning To Approach Community In Place, Anindita Banerjee, Shaun Mcleod, Gretel Taylor, Patrick L. West

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This article recounts the history to date of the Dancing Between Two Worlds (DBTW) project, which was initiated by a team of artist-scholars at Deakin University in 2018. DBTW’s brief was to engage the Indian community living in the western fringes of Melbourne in a project on civic belonging, cross-cultural artistic identity, and the performance of outer-suburban Indian diaspora. Working with the creative and community energies that are activated at the intersection of the creative arts and demographically inflected place, the Deakin researchers collaborated with local artists with an Indian background on a major performance in late 2019: …

On The Acceptance Of Urban Beavers In Martinez, California, Zane A. Eddy

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

As ecosystem engineers, beavers construct complex riparian and wetland habitats that benefit many other species, including endangered salmonids. Through their landscape alterations, beavers also promote increased groundwater recharge and provide refugia during wildfires and high flow events by impounding water and allowing it to spread across the landscape. Prior to the North American colonial fur trapping campaigns, there were between 60 and 400 million beavers in North America. By the beginning of the 20th century, beavers were extirpated from many parts of the continent, however through human efforts, their population has since rebounded to between 10 and 15 million. The …

Mapping Flat, Deep, And Slow: On The 'Spirit Of Place' In New Cinema History, Jeffrey Klenotic

Faculty Publications

This essay engages in a creative, heuristic, and reflexive consideration of the ‘localities’ of cinema audiences by exploring New Cinema History as a place. New Cinema History is conceptualised as a place continually produced in and through its interactions with the heterogeneous multiplicities of situated audiences and experiences of cinema that form the topoi of its landscape of inquiry. In reflecting on how this placialised landscape has been and might be represented, I argue that New Cinema History’s ‘spirit of place’ is most productive when rendered within a ‘splatial’ framework that draws upon practices of flat, deep, and slow mapping …

I’M Afraid Of That Water: A Collaborative Ethnography Of A West Virginia Water Crisis, Luke E. Lassiter, Brian A. Hoey, Elizabeth Campbell

Brian A. Hoey, Ph.D.

Geographies Of Transition—From Topical Concerns To Theoretical Engagement: A Commentary On The Transitions Research Agenda, Christian Binz, Lars Coenen, James T. Murphy, Bernhard Truffer

Geography

This viewpoint takes stock with the ‘geography of sustainability transitions’ (GOST) as it is presented in the transitions research agenda. GOST has been a relatively recent addition to transition theorizing, addressing the need for greater sensitivity and attention to the scales, spatialities, and context-specific factors that shape transitions. In our view, the agenda represents a rather narrow perspective on GOST, which is geared to two empirical themes, namely urban transitions and transitions in developing countries. While these are relevant and topical issues, the section lacks sufficient acknowledgement of the increasing engagement of geographers with transitions studies and the theoretical approaches …

Living Rivers, Cosmopolitan Activism, And Environmental Justice In The Bengal Delta, Daniel Adel

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This thesis explores the social movements and civil society activism to protect the rivers that flow through Bangladesh—the cradle and terminal delta floodplain of the transboundary Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna river systems—, as well as ways to build regional cooperation and watershed democracy in South Asia. The research drew on four overarching fields of study: environmental justice, southern environmentalism, ecological nationalism, and environmental governance. These four bodies of scholarship helped address the overarching question: how are civil society organizations analyzing and responding to the water diversions and degradation of Bangladesh’s transboundary rivers? Semi-structured interviews were conducted with civil society organizations …

Environmentally Responsible Land Use, Spring/Summer 2010, Issue 22

Sustain Magazine

No abstract provided.

Repurposed Spaces In Berlin And Johannesburg, Rebecca Kukla

Theses and Dissertations

Berlin and Johannesburg are repurposed cities, which were spatially designed to enforce a defunct social order, and which now must be used in new ways by new residents. Through a reading of several sites in each city, I examine how repurposed urban spaces and their inhabitants shape one another.

“‘The Strata Of My History’: Reading The Ecological Chronotope In Wendell Berry’S That Distant Land”, Ellen M. Bayer

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This article examines Wendell Berry’s short story collection, That Distant Land (2004) through the lens of the ecological chronotope. Berry’s characters cultivate an intimate relationship with their physical environment, and the land, in turn, inscribes their history within it. Furthermore, it is through a shared sense of responsibility to the land that the characters foster a sense of community, shared history, and timeless connection with each other. My analysis of Berry’s fiction employs the notion of the ecological chronotope as a lens for understanding the environmental implications encountered at the intersection between time and place in That Distant Land. …

The Place In Displacement: Stories Of Loss From The Chan-75 Dam, Patrick Daniel Mckenzie

Senior Theses

In 2008, AES (a U.S.-based, Fortune 500 power company) began construction on the Chan-75 dam in Nance del Risco, Panama. This dam flooded and displaced four indigenous Ngobe communities. However, this displacement represents more than just a relocation of people; it represents a fracturing of families and communities. While some impacts of displacement are obvious, other aspects of day-to-day loss are often ignored. Changes in family relations and sense of control, for example, cannot possibly be compensated by a corporation. This thesis examines both the history of the Chan-75 dam and the impacts its construction has had on one family.

The Uphill Battle Of Environmental Technologies: Analysis Of Local Discourses On The Acceptance And Resistance Of Green Bin Programs, Carrie Warring

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Many Canadian municipalities have been looking for alternative sustainable waste management solutions since landfill capacity has been decreasing and siting new facilities often results in vehement local opposition. In Ontario, there is no provincial mandate for organic waste diversion targets, where most large-sized municipalities have implemented a Green Bin program while other jurisdictions of varying size still have not. This paper uses discourse analysis to explore predominant and counter discourses that have resulted in Guelph sustaining a Green Bin program, while London has not implemented a Green Bin. Manuscript one explores the interaction of provincial and local municipal discourses in …

The Larger Conversation: Contemplation And Place By Tim Lilburn, Emory Shaw

The Goose

Review of Tim Lilburn's The Larger Conversation: Contemplation and Place.

Place, Memory, And Archive: An Interview With Karen Till, Karen Till, Emily Kaufman, Christine L. Woodward

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

Dr. Karen Till is Professor of Cultural Geography at Maynooth University, director of the Space & Place Research Collaborative (Ireland), and founding co-Convener of the Mapping Spectral Traces international network of artists, practitioners, and scholars. Till’s 2005 book, The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place, explores German memory and modernity, showing how places and spaces exemplify the contradictions and tensions of social memory and national identity. Her current book in progress, Wounded Cities, is based upon geo-ethnographic research in Berlin, Bogotá, Cape Town, Dublin, Minneapolis, and Roanoke. It highlights the significance of placebased memory work and ethical forms of care …

"You Can't Just Take A Piece Of Land From The University And Build A Garden On It": A Case Study Of The Indigenous Food And Medicine Garden At Western University, Laura J. Peach

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Indigenization efforts at Canadian Universities are growing, yet the meanings and tensions associated with these spaces have not been well documented. This thesis draws from a case study of the Indigenous Food and Medicine Garden at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada to investigate its origins, uses and meanings. This thesis utilized an Indigenous-Guided research methodology to conduct in-depth interviews (n=17) of key stakeholders, including Garden founders and users. Interview data were transcribed verbatim and categorized using thematic analysis. Results indicated that a web of relations between all interviewees best represents the creation story of the Garden. Further, assertion of …

Events, Social Connections, Place Identities And Extended Families, Bernadette Quinn, Theresa Ryan

Articles

The study reported here investigates the role that planned social gatherings play in shaping social connections, forging group identity and re-affirming connections with significant ‘home’ places within families where relationships extend across space. Empirically, it draws on a study of the Gathering, a 2013 national tourism initiative that encouraged people in Ireland to organise ‘gatherings’ to attract ‘home’ family members scattered across the globe. It reports data generated using mixed methods administered in two Irish counties. The findings demonstrate the profound meanings that the gatherings had for participating family members. The events served to strengthen existing family ties and to …

Becoming Human In The Land: An Introduction To The Special Issue Of Heritage: Landscapes, Drew Hubbell

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This introduction to the special issue of Landscapes theorizes the questions suggested by the theme, "Landscape: Heritage." Weaving personal narrative with literary criticism, cultural studies, human geography, and ecology, the essay examines the way humans become human by developing complex relationships with landscapes over time. As landscapes contain the physical traces of human habitation and development, certain narratives of human inhabitants are written and memorialized in and by those landscapes. The monumentalization of specific heritages leads to contests between human groups who require certain heritages to be memorialized, but not others. Greater awareness of one's humanity requires recovery of polyphonic …

Temporary Places : The Balkan Refugee Route, Eric Martin

Sponsored Events -- List

Disasters, terrorist activities, wars, and other factors trigger large streams of people fleeing crisis and seeking refuge. These flows reached record levels in Europe from 2015 to 2017, when many refugees took "the Balkan route," through Greece, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Serbia, to reach north-western Europe. A massive response, one of the largest humanitarian actions in Europe since the Balkan Wars in the 1990s, included volunteers and organizations from the public and nonprofit-sector. Due to complexities and national variations in policy making, this crisis response consisted of five different, though somewhat overlapping phases, in which the "place" …

The Terranauts By T.C. Boyle And The Addlands By Tom Bullough, Carly E. Thomas

The Goose

Review of T.C. Boyle's The Terranauts and Tom Bullough's The Addlands.

Implications Of Unmanned Aircraft Systems And Sense Of Place: A Case Study In The Mono Basin, Sara Elizabeth Matthews

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This paper contributes to an understanding of the social implications of using UAS in natural resource areas; specifically, the ways in which these tools impact human constructed sense of place. This paper draws on in-depth interviews and document analysis to (a) develop an understanding of place meanings held among Mono Basin stakeholders and (b) define the ways in which increased UAS presence may interact with these visions of place.

In short, this research shows that sense of place in this rural area is influential in the way that UAS are received by local stakeholders. The changing nature of place meanings …