Geography Commons^™

New Materialism: An Ontology For The Anthropocene, Melinda Harm Benson

Natural Resources Journal

This article argues that the Anthropocene is not simply a new geologic epoch; it is an opportunity to embrace a new ontology. In it, we can reconfigure our orientation to the material world. The current, dominant ontology casts humans as villains responsible for mass extinctions, polluted oceans, and climate change. This ontology reinforces a familiar binary—one in which humans are separate from and doing things to nature. Humans are ruining the planet, causing it to fundamentally change in ways that are not “natural” precisely because humans are the agent of change. This view is perhaps best described by environmentalist Bill …

Mapa De Territorios Indígenas Y Diversidad Cultural En Las Fronteras Amazónicas Ucayali Y Madre De Dios (Perú) Y Acre (Brasil), Gtaso, David S. Salisbury Et Al.

Geography and the Environment Maps

Mapa de Territorios Indígenas y Diversidad Cultural en las Fronteras Amazónicas Ucayali y Madre de Dios (Perú) y Acre (Brasil)

Map of Indigenous Territories and Cultural Diversity in the Amazonian Borders Ucayali and Madre de Dios (Peru) and Acre (Brazil)

Geospatial Analysis Of Care And Mortality In The 2014 Liberia Ebola Outbreak, Marion Carlton Kinkade

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014 to 2016 had more than 28,000 suspected, probable, and confirmed cases. It was the largest Ebola outbreak in history. Of the 28,000 cases in the three Ebola-affected countries, Liberia had 10,000 cases with almost 5,000 deaths. The Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) entered Liberia along the border of Guinea and moved to the capital city of Monrovia where the virus spread. Ebola Treatment Units (ETUs) were constructed throughout the response in locations where there were available facilities versus distance to care challenges. This study examined the association of distance from villages to ETUs …

Senior Editor In Chief's Note, Kenneth D. Colburn

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Natural Disaster, Crime, And Narratives Of Disorder: The 1861 Mendoza Earthquake And Argentina’S Ruptured Social And Political Faults, Quinn P. Dauer

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

Social scientists studying natural disasters have generally found an absence of panic, a decrease in crime, and survivors working together to find basic necessities in the days and weeks after a catastrophe. By contrast, political and military authorities implement measures such as martial law to prevent chaos and lawlessness threatening private property. The media amplifies narratives of disorder, creating the perception of uncontrolled masses wantonly committing crimes in a disaster’s aftermath. Historians study natural disasters to view political, social, economic, and cultural structures stripped of their everyday veneer. The 1861 earthquake that destroyed the provincial capital of Mendoza in western …

Effects Of Cisnormative Beauty Standards On Transgender Women’S Perceptions And Expressions Of Beauty, Delmira Monteiro, Mixalis Poulakis

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

The authors conducted a qualitative study exploring the effects of cisnormative beauty standards on transgender women’s perceptions and expressions of beauty. Twelve self-identified Caucasian transgender women completed a semistructured interview that provided descriptive data related to the women’s perceptions of societal beauty standards. Analysis of the data revealed the following primary themes: Participants viewed the beauty of transgender and cisgender women as diverse or as encompassing a broad range of variability; societal beauty standards were influential on participants’ expressions of beauty; and participants’ viewed out-group transphobia as a factor contributing to discriminatory and prejudicial perceptions of transwomen’s beauty.

“But I Only Wanted Them To Conform”: A Detailed Look Into The Initial Cohort Of Girls At The Indiana Reformatory Institution For Women And Girls Between 1873 And 1884, Molly Whitted, Michelle Williams

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

For the past four years, as part of a group of currently and formerly incarcerated scholars, we have researched the “inmates” and staff at the Indiana Women’s Prison during the institution’s first decade. Then known as the Indiana Reformatory Institution for Women and Girls, the facility was located near downtown Indianapolis on Randolph and Michigan Street. We focused on a key constituent of the Indiana Reformatory for Women and Girls: the girls themselves, heretofore voiceless and uninvestigated.

Our primary sources include the annual reports of the reformatory and the original registries for the girls during the survey period of 1873–1884. …

Citizen Initiative To Improve Local Government Ethics: Northwest Indiana Experience, Calvin Bellamy

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

After more than 50 years of widespread public corruption in Northwest Indiana, a small group of citizens and public officials met over a period of several months and developed a largely voluntary response. The result was the Shared Ethics Advisory Commission, which trains public employees on ethical decision making, provides specialized training for department heads and board and commission members, and hosts an annual ethics summit for the general public. Periodic employee ethics surveys indicate a positive effect of the training. In addition, the commission has developed a Candidate Ethics Action Pledge administered in each local election cycle, and a …

Measures Of Challenging And Excitatory Parenting Behavior As Predictors Of Later Child Self-Regulation, Zachary Havlin

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

Challenging and excitatory parenting behaviors play an important role in children’s development, particularly in regard to the development of selfregulation; however, no well-established measures of parent-child interactions exist that record such behaviors. In the current study, I compare two recently developed coding systems that intend to address this issue: the Risky Interaction Support and Challenging (RISC) and Marbach coding systems. A subset of videos from the New Parents Project (NPP) data set at 12 and 18 months was coded using both scales, then a factor analysis was conducted for each scale. Regressions were conducted to look at the predictive power …

Antidiscrimination Ordinances In Northwest Indiana: An Event-History Analysis Of Municipal Policies Since 1992, James Paul Old, Kimberly Palmer Fields

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

In recent years, municipalities throughout Indiana have passed antidiscrimination ordinances that protect the rights of individuals who belong to racial, ethnic, or sexual minorities. Political scientists have proposed competing theories of policy-adoption processes that suggest a number of internal factors (such as socioeconomic characteristics, governmental capacity, or issue salience) or external factors (such as mandates/incentives from higher-level governments or influence from neighboring communities) as predictors of policy adoption; however, most existing studies focus on state-level processes, and those that focus on municipalities consider only large cities in different states. To more clearly distinguish between state-level effects and local effects, this …

Carnivore-Livestock Conflicts In Chile: Evidence And Methods For Mitigation, Valeska Rodriguez, Daniela A. Poo-Muñoz, Luis E. Escobar, Francisca Astorga, Gonzalo Medina-Vogel

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Human population growth and habitat loss have exacerbated human–wildlife conflicts worldwide. We explored trends in human–wildlife conflicts (HWCs) in Chile using scientific and official reports to identify areas and species with higher risk of conflicts and tools available for their prevention and mitigation. The puma (Puma concolor) was considered the most frequent predator; however, fox (Lycalopex spp.) and free-ranging or feral dog (Canis lupus familiaris) attacks were also common. Our results suggest that the magnitude of puma conflicts may be overestimated. Domestic sheep (Ovis spp.) and poultry (Galliformes) were the most common species predated. …

Richwood, West Virginia After The 2016 Flood: Place, Devastation, And Hope In An Appalachian Community, Christine Elizabeth Witt

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

How does a community cope with a crisis that threatens its identity or even its existence? This is the question facing the town of Richwood, West Virginia, after a devastating flood that impacted much of the town in 2016. Some of the consequences of the 2016 flood were the loss of the high school building, followed by difficulties receiving the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) money to rebuild the school, and a loss of additional FEMA money for other critical issues due to alleged corruption. How do community residents cope emotionally with devastation? How do they understand the causes of …

Multidimensional Analysis Of Vulnerability: Methodological Advances And A Case Study From Malawi., Park Mcmillan Muhonda

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Since 1990s rural households in Malawi, constituting 85% of the population, have experienced deepening livelihood vulnerability, often manifested as persistent food insecurity. Livelihood crises have since been blamed on or attributed directly to weather perturbations/climatic shocks i.e. El-Nino induced climate variability/drought conditions. This study revealed that persistent livelihood crisis in rural Malawi cannot be attributed to or squarely blamed on weather shocks alone, rather it is at the intersection of various livelihoods shocks that rural livelihood vulnerability in Malawi is exacerbated i.e. worsening and deepening.

Thus, rural livelihood vulnerability to climate shocks in Malawi is manifest not in isolation but …

West Virginia Waterscapes: Surface And Mineral Owners’ Perspectives On Groundwater Contamination Due To Natural Gas Extraction, Bethani Turley

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In the past decade, northwest West Virginia has experienced increasing natural gas extraction from the Marcellus shale. Because water usage for natural gas extraction is high and increasing, there has been a proliferation of concerns about gas extraction’s impacts on surface and groundwaters, especially how hydraulic fracturing and drilling impacts residents’ access to safe household well water. This issue is particularly salient in rural West Virginia, where many residents rely on groundwater wells for household uses. This thesis, based on 30 in-depth interviews with surface and mineral owners, explores resident perspectives and lived experience of natural gas extraction’s impacts on …

Mineral Exploration Investigation In The Northern Sierra Madre Occidental, Mexico, Labdan Nijr Alqahtani

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Sierra Madre region is rich in mineralized deposits, but it is hard to access because of the rugged terrain. Remote sensing and GIS can help in mineral exploration and regional structural analysis. The purpose of this project is to study linear, curvilinear, arcuate, and circular features in the Sierra Madre Occidental of Mexico in order to improve exploration possibility. It is of great interest to know the relationship between lineament intersections, caldera features because of the location of potential mineral occurrences. In this study, 4,445 lineaments were mapped manually using directional filters applied to satellite images. A total of …

Gis Analysis Of The Mid-Nineteenth Century Emigration Of The Old Lutherans From Prussia, Joel Seewald

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The Old Lutherans constituted fewer than 20% of the Germans who emigrated from Prussia between 1835 and 1854. In this study, more than 483 cities and villages of origin of 6,911 Old Lutherans were mapped. These origins were in the central provinces of Brandenburg, Pomerania, Posen, Saxony, and Silesia. More emigrants came from Pomerania overall and during every time period except 1849-54. The areas with the most emigrants were north central Pomerania, northern Brandenburg, southeast Brandenburg, and western Silesia. Emigrant destinations were primarily America and Australia. American destinations included New York, Wisconsin, and Texas, but the state that many went …

Whitewater Ecotourism Development In Bhutan: Opportunities And Challenges For Local Communities, Kira E. Tenney

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Whitewater raft and kayak ecotourism can provide environmental, social-cultural, and economic benefits and opportunities to local communities, but can also result in respective challenges. Globally, adventure ecotourism is seen as a potent win-win strategy for conservation and local community development; however, there is a significant proportion of adventure and whitewater tourism that do not meet ecotourism tenets, and there is a call for incorporating greater investment in local community involvement. Whitewater ecotourism is particularly significant because of the unique opportunities and challenges associated with rivers, the resource upon which the industry directly depends. Clean, free-flowing rivers provide a range of …

Understanding Tourism Within A Social-Ecological System: Ometepe Island, Nicaragua, Chelsea Leigh Leven

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Tourism endures as a major component of development strategies worldwide, despite a dearth of documented successes. Tourism failures arise in part from simplistic and reductionist approaches to sustainability and tourism. Successfully implementing tourism to support sustainable futures requires, at a minimum, a more holistic and complex conceptualization than tourism currently receives, including recognition of how human values shape a system. To achieve a more complex understanding of tourism, I analyzed tourism through a social-ecological system (SES) perspective using the paradigm of resilience thinking. Through a case study in Ometepe, Nicaragua, my research considered opportunities for tourism contributions to sustainable futures …

Glacial Deposits, Vol. 44, 2019, Department Of Geography, Geology, And The Environment

Glacial Deposits

Newsletter of the Department of Geography, Geology, and the Environment

Crafting Stone Discoidals On The Frontier: Production And Identity In Southwest Virginia, Hamilton Hastie Bryant

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Stone discoidals are widely recognized as a class of artifacts associated with Mississippian cultural traditions and even some of its various descendant communities. Excavations at the Carter Robinson site a Fourteenth Century Mississippian frontier site in Lee County Virginia have revealed evidence of the production of stone discoidals. Although craft production in Mississippian societies has been the subject of much debate little to no attention has been given to the production of stone discoidals. The purpose of this thesis is to explicate the method of stone discoidal production at Carter Robinson and to explore how this production was organized overtime …