Environmental Studies Commons^™

Rights Of Nature: The Indigenous-Led Movement For Sovereignty And A Sustainable Future, Kathryn Schug, Ted Gordon

The Journal of Social Encounters

The rights of nature movement works to grant legal rights to beings other than humans. Led by Indigenous communities across the globe, the movement is grounded in commonly shared Indigenous beliefs that regard non-human beings as are our relatives and as deserving of the same legal rights as humans. Grounded in Indigenous worldviews, the rights of nature movement pursues the twin goals of creating an environmentally sustainable future and enshrining legal protections for Indigenous values and practices. This article explores how the White Earth Nation, a federally recognized Ojibwe tribal government in Minnesota became the first in the United States …

Effects Of Climate Change On Women’S Security Dynamics In Baragoi, Samburu County, Kenya, Rehema Zaid Obuyi

The Journal of Social Encounters

The paper unearths how climate change influences women’s security dynamics in fragile and conflict-affected contexts in Baragoi Samburu County Kenya. It provides an opportunity to rethink security. Security responses must be at par with evolving security underlying forces. One of the precursors is that individuals and groups that were traditionally excluded from combat both as participants and targets such as women and children have now become prime targets. This demands a shift in strategy by not only focusing on traditional threats but also getting more specific linking our approaches to gendered non-traditional security threats. Alternative soft power approaches to addressing …

Climate Science, The Military-Industrial Complex, And The Political Economy Of Knowledge-Making: Beyond The Capitalist Ontology Of Nature?, Daniel Cunha

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

Climate science is one of the main political drivers of today’s world, informing critical scholars and social movements alike. Yet, many scholars associate it with projects of domination (the Cold War, capitalism, imperialism) while relying on it to elaborate a critique of capital. This article proposes a new historical account of climate science. Drawing from archival findings, interpreted with historical sociology combined with the critique of political economy, the article shows that a conflict developed at the National Academy of Sciences during the Vietnam War, between scientists who wanted atmospheric research to be under the auspices of NATO, as proposed …

Thinking Blue / Writing Red: Marxism And The (Post)Human, Stephen C. Tumino

Publications and Research

Thinking Blue/Writing Red interrogates contemporary culture across a range of texts, from the pandemic (‘Covid’ and ‘Trump Speak’) to high theory (Melville's narratives) and popular culture (Beyoncé's ‘Formation’ and Super Bowl performance, Twin Peaks , metamodern ‘cli-fi’ films). Inspired by Derrida’s idea of the secret, Tumino examines the significance of social movements (Black Lives Matter, Occupy, alter-globalization) and naïve art (Darger, Ryden) to argue that these texts speak of the secrets that capitalism cannot speak. Contending that the cultural surfaces narrate only the ‘nonsecret,’ that to see the social logic of the culture one must dig into what Bruno Latour …

Guest Editor's Note, Rajiv Thakur

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

The Adaptation Wedge: Capacity-Building Scenarios For India’S Cities, Jagan Shah

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

The increasing frequency and severity of floods, heat waves, and storm surges impacting global cities, combined with the growing morbidity in public health, necessitates prompt and effective climate action. Adaptation and mitigation require adequate and appropriate institutional, technical, and societal capacities—all of which are in short supply in most low- and middle-income country cities that are experiencing growth while suffering vulnerabilities. Although national governments are alerted to climate risk and the imperatives of planning, financing, and managing climate transitions, their responses to capacity constraints and approaches to capacity building display neither urgency nor scale. We use a scenario-building methodology to …

Statement From The Indiana Academy Of The Social Sciences And Board Of Directors

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

The Decline Of Republican Democracy And Rise Of The Techno-Authoritarian State: Reading Dystopian Novels In Hindi Literature, Manindra Nath Thakur

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

In the past few decades, the nature of capitalism has changed fast as it has lost its philosophical justification based on the principle of the common good. There have been many avatars of the idea of the “common good”: “white man’s burden to civilize the world,” “welfarism,” and “neoliberal concept of freedom of choice.” Capitalism now seems to have moved in a new direction, however, and it has failed to produce any further philosophical justification for its existence as a mode of production despite generating unprecedented economic inequality. Consequently, there is a rising tension between capitalism and democracy in societies …

Economic Development In Legacy Cities: Current And Emerging Challenges And Opportunities, Neil Reid, Sujata Shetty, Jane Adade

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

As manufacturing employment has declined in the traditional manufacturing regions over the past decades, many communities have experienced population loss and overall economic decline. Local economic development professionals have had to grapple with long-term structural changes in the economy as well as short-term jolts. To gain insights into the changing landscape of economic development, we interviewed economic development practitioners in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The interviews focused on their perception of current and emerging challenges and opportunities with respect to economic development in their respective communities. Having identified the major challenges and opportunities, we asked them to articulate the …

Displacement, Social Justice, And The Right To The City: A Review And Critical Reflections In The 21st Century, Tara Fitzgerald, Brij Maharaj

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

This paper aims to review the literature and themes relating to displacement, social justice, and the right to the city in the 21st century. Displacement, in its various forms, is central to understanding the human rights abuses and livelihood implications when urban rights are revoked, forcing inhabitants to the periphery, and is the focus of this paper. Whereas the city’s services, resources, and opportunities should be a collective right advanced by local authorities for all who occupy urban space, displacements lead to resettlement and impoverishment, especially as livelihoods are disrupted. Urban renewal, through mega-projects, clean-up campaigns, and speculative gentrification processes, …

Introduction To The Special Issue

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Volume 26, Issue 2 (Special Issue) -- Full Contents

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Mission And Editorial Policy

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Spaces Of Progress And The Challenge Of “Mindfulness” In A Postcolonial World, M. Satish Kumar

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

Progress implied both change and improvement in the colonial and postcolonial world. Such a concept of progress came to be enshrined in specific geographical places. The notions of development and underdevelopment in the postcolonial context thereafter supplanted this idea. Over time, while the structures of colonial domination dissolved, those of embedded regional inequalities came to be deeply entrenched, thereby urging for Thich Nhat Hanh’s approach to “mindfulness” in a “postcapitalist,” postcolonial world. The key question is whether postcolonialism has reached an impasse in its delivery and deployment of ideas across the widening gulf between the spaces of progress and stagnancy. …

Notes On The Future Possibilities Of Engaged Anthropological Research: Why Decolonizing Anthropology Needs Black Diasporic Feminist Theory And Methodologies, Meryleen Mena

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

While in the past decade there have been more ethnographic accounts that shed light on minoritized stories and demystify the specific challenges that women and femmes experience during their research, much is desired to prepare students and junior scholars from marginalized identities for fieldwork research. Reflecting on a moment of precarity in the context of pre-impeachment São Paulo, I explain why the integration of Black diasporic feminist thought, method, and praxis is critical to further decolonizing efforts in anthropology. Beyond reflection, this narrative calls for sustained politically active engagement to establish an anthropology of liberation.

Author Biographical Notes

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Charles H. Schaffer: “Alger County Charcoal King”, Thomas J. Straka

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

One of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula’s earliest industries was iron production. Iron furnaces (smelters) were part of that industry; these were primarily fueled by charcoal, produced in hundreds of charcoal kilns scattered across the Upper Peninsula. Charcoal burning was a major industry in its own right, and one person, Charles H. Schaffer, came to dominate it, earning the name “Alger County Charcoal King.” His empire began when the Detroit, Mackinac and Marquette Railroad expanded east from Marquette and was centered on charcoal kilns at the Onota station in Alger County. When wood supplies near Lake Superior declined, he expanded his charcoal …

The Destruction Of Louisiana Wetlands: An Environmental History, 1900-2000, Gloria H. Adams

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Louisiana experienced a loss of almost 1,800 square miles of land during the 1930s, primarily due to the sinking of the state's coastal wetlands. In the early 1970s, both public officials and private residents began to recognize the situation on the coast. State and federal leaders reached a consensus that immediate action was necessary to tackle the issue. Over a span of around four decades, authorities in Louisiana and Washington, D.C. enacted a sequence of legislation and regulations with the intention of safeguarding fragile ecosystems such as the wetlands in the state. In the 1980s, authorities also initiated the development …

Authorizing Violence: Spatial Techniques Of Citizenship Politics In Northeast India, Samarth Vachhrajani

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Authorizing Violence: Spatial Techniques of Citizenship Politics in Northeast India studies the spatial and legal instruments through which Hindu Nationalism and its political front, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), operates in Northeast India. I document the means through which authoritarian power has been introduced into a democratic structure of governance. Emphasizing the role of architecture and spatial knowledge, I attend to how the violence of disenfranchisement and dispossession is legitimized under the force of law.

For this, Chapter 1, entitled 'Legislating Containment,' turns to the legal instrument of citizenship and studies the Goalpara detention center and multi-purpose criminal …

Settler Colonialism And Ecosystem Change: How Ideology Has Shaped Minnesota’S Environments, Sarah E. Hobby

History Honors Projects

The formation of a uniquely American land ethic—defined by European political history and Christian biblical doctrine and forged through systems of dispossession—is central to the creation of environments within the United States today. Using Minnesota as a microcosm to understand how settler colonial interactions played out all across the United States, this paper analyzes connections between violent dispossession of Indigenous people and the degradation of environments. By understanding how Ojibwe and Dakota people think about and have shaped Minnesotan lands throughout their history and comparing Indigenous land-ethics to the Euro-American-settler land ethic, this paper evaluates the role that ideology and …

Witches On The Wind: Weather Magic In New England Folktales, Zephyros Quinn Craven

Thinking Matters Symposium

The English language folktales collected from coastal New England in the 19^th and 20^th centuries display a prominence of weather magic motifs compared with folktales from other regions of the United States. This paper aims to explain the success of the weather magic theme in New England folklore collections and to serve as a starting point for scholarly discourse on the subject, which has hitherto been sparse. This study utilizes climate research, both scholarly and popular collections of folktales, local travel guides, and colonial and labor histories. Through a combination of historical analysis, comparative study, and textual analysis, …

Challenges To Reindeer, Reciprocity, And Indigenous Sami Sovereignty Amidst The Impact Of Green Energy Developments, Lisa Heikka-Huber

IdeaFest: Interdisciplinary Journal of Creative Works and Research from Cal Poly Humboldt

The Indigenous people of Europe known as the Sami, (also spelled Saami) many of whom live throughout the world, have continued to maintain active nomadic communities today as their ancestors did. A wide spanning region of Northern Europe’s Arctic Zone or Sampi often referred to as Fennoscandia, encompasses four countries, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia’s Kola Peninsula (Roland & Löffler, 2012). The nomadic Sami people follow the migration pathways of their reindeer herds through the wilderness bi-annually. This paper will discuss many perspectives, including the battle Sami people and other Indigenous communities have endured while combating green energy development from …

“Dome Of The Continent”: Mount Whitney, Continental Expansion, And The Democratization Of The Sierra Nevada, Joseph Esparza

Eastern Sierra History Journal

This article explores how Tumanguya, the Paiute name for what settler-colonists called Mount Whitney, became a landmark presence in the American environmental culture--and why.

Outpatient Fall Prevention In Ambulatory Adults 65 Years Old And Over, Dorothy L. Osborne-White

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Scholarly Projects - Archive

Background: In the United States (U.S.), falls are the leading cause of injury among adults 65 and over, resulting in 36 million falls yearly (Moreland et al., 2020). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2023), one in four older adults experiences a fall each year. Falls are the world's second most prominent cause of accidental deaths (World Health Organization [WHO], 2021). Falls are the leading cause of both fatal and non-fatal injuries among older adults (Moreland et al., 2020).

Methods: A quality improvement project that included a fall bundle was implemented in a primary clinic. A …

“Sounds Like” Redemption? On The Musicality Of Species And The Species Of Musicality, Tyler Yamin, Alice Rudge

Faculty Journal Articles

Popular and academic studies of music frequently claim that human musicality arose from the so-called ‘natural world’ of non-human species. And amid the anxieties produced by the Anthropocene, it is thought that the possibility of reconnecting with the natural world through a renewed appreciation of music’s links with nature may usher in a new era of posthuman environmental consciousness, offering repair and redemption. To critique these claims, we trace how notions of ‘musicality’ have been applied to or denied from non-human entities across diverse disciplines since the late nineteenth century. We conclude that such debates reinforce the separation that they …

The Ecological Underpinnings Of Famine: Irish Agriculture And Land Use Under British Colonialism, 1534-1852, Wyatt Bandy-Page

Pitzer Senior Theses

Ireland’s Great Hunger (1845-52) cannot be reduced to merely potatoes and blight. This thesis approaches the Great Hunger in the context of agricultural and land use changes under British colonialism (1534-1852). Across seven centuries, successive waves of settlers seized the most productive lands, eventually giving rise to a series of plantation schemes designed to maximize the extraction of Irish human and natural capital. Land use transformations under colonial rule severely restricted Gaelic foodways and kept the Irish laboring classes at bare subsistence levels, while the produce of Irish plantations fueled English economic development. Following the onset of blight in 1845, …

Historical Evolution Of The Late 20th-Century Maritime Claims, The Concept Of The Nine-Dash Line, And The Dispute In The South China Sea, Kamil Nowak

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This study discusses the origins and development of the South China Sea dispute. It briefly analyzes the overlapping maritime claims, their justifications and legal aspects, and key clashes between the actors across the second half of the 20th century. It uses a historical perspective to assess the present-day conflict. The study discusses the impact of international agreements, national policies, claimants' domestic factors, and external influences connected to the geopolitical situation of the period to determine how they influenced the dispute. The analysis reveals that amidst more pressing global events, the South China Sea issue was frequently overlooked by the international …

Community Resilience And Creating Capacities For Risk Reduction In First Nations Communities, Case Study In Minegoziibe Anishinabe (Pine Creek First Nation), Brittany S. Lavallee

Capstone Collection

The colonization of Indigenous peoples in Canada has serious consequences on First Nations, including forced removal and displacement from their ancestral lands, environmental degradation, declining resources and capacities, and human rights violations. First Nations communities are currently facing the amplified effects of human-driven climate change. Sustainability of the environment is not just a concept, but a practiced way of life, that recognizes the interdependence of all living things. This deep respect for Aki (earth) is at the foundation of First Nations cultures and continues to guide their actions to insure better futures for Seven Generations. The community of Minegoziibe Anishinabe …

Reviewers And Referees

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Author Biographical Notes

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.