Place and Environment Commons^™

Queer Ecologies: A Final Syllabus/Zine Product Of Our Independent Study, Yeh Seo Jung, Ray Craig

Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal

This zine is the product of our independent study course Queer Ecologies, which is an exploration of bio-social systems using a queer and feminist theoretical lens. We aim to look critically at knowledge formation and construct alternative visions for more just and sustainable relationships between science, nature, and ourselves. While queer theory most directly interrogates the normative structure of heterosexuality both in humans and in biology more broadly, these studies include analyses of hierarchy, power, and value. Queer Ecology can be used to examine phenomena such as climate change, extinction, pollution, species hierarchies, agricultural practices, resource extraction, and human population …

Rethinking Food Regime As Gender Regime: Agrarian Change And The Politics Of Social Reproduction, Diana Mincyte

Publications and Research

This paper presents a synthetic reading of the food regime and gender regime concepts to consider current trends in deagrarianization. Its underlying goal is to articulate a research agenda for studying the food regime through the lens of gender and labor relations. Combining insights from feminist scholarship and early debates on family farming in agrarian studies, it underscores the role of social reproduction in shaping agro-food systems. Focusing on relations in production it reconsiders family, kinship and strong ties as a form of social organization in capitalist production, emphasizes the significance of ideology on the household level, and underscores the …

Climate Change, Extreme Events And Mental Health In The Pacific Region, Walter Leal Filho, Murukesan Krishnapillai, Aprajita Minhas, Sannia Ali, Gabriela Nagle Alverio, Medhat Sayed Hendy Ahmed, Roselyn Naidu, Ravinesh R. Prasad, Navjot Bhullar, Ayyoob Sharifi, Gustavo J. Nagy, Marina Kovaleva

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Purpose: This paper aims to address a gap in investigating specific impacts of climate change on mental health in the Pacific region, a region prone to extreme events. This paper reports on a study on the connections between climate change, public health, extreme weather and climate events (EWEs), livelihoods and mental health, focusing on the Pacific region Islands countries. Design/methodology/approach: This paper deploys two main methods. The first is a bibliometric analysis to understand the state of the literature. For example, the input data for term co-occurrence analysis using VOSviewer is bibliometric data of publications downloaded from Scopus. The second …

Airplane Hangars And Triple Hills: Renovation, Demolition, And The Architectural Politics Of Local Belonging At The Our Lady Of Csíksomlyó Hungarian National Shrine, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

In 2019, Pope Francis, leader of the global Catholic Church, celebrated an outdoor Mass at the Our Lady of Csíksomlyó Hungarian national shrine in Romania. When the Franciscan Order that runs the shrine published renovation plans for the altar where the pope would appear, the Facebook post received over 800 outraged comments, including one man who asked, “How can such a beautiful Hungarian symbol, so perfectly integrated into the landscape, be humiliated like this?” By situating these expressions of outrage in the history of Eastern European material politics, I argue that the aesthetic value the commentators were defending – a …

Girls’ Education And Child Marriage In Central Africa | Insights From Qualitative Fieldwork Part Ii: The Republic Of Congo, Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika, Wolf Ulrich Mféré Akiana, Quentin Wodon

Journal of Global Catholicism

Child marriage is defined as a formal or informal union before the age of 18. As in much of sub-Saharan Africa, the prevalence of child marriage remains high in the Republic of Congo (RoC), in part because educational attainment for girls is low. Based on qualitative fieldwork, this article looks at communities’ perceptions of child marriage and girls’ education and their suggestions for programs and policies that could improve outcomes for girls. The article also discusses potential implications for Catholic and other faith-based schools, as well as faith leaders.

Girls’ Education And Child Marriage In Central Africa | Insights From Qualitative Fieldwork Part I: The Democratic Republic Of Congo, Geneviève Bagamboula Mayamona, Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika, Quentin Wodon

Journal of Global Catholicism

Child marriage is defined as a formal or informal union before the age of 18. As in much of Sub-Saharan Africa, the prevalence of child marriage remains high in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in part because educational attainment for girls is too low. Based on qualitative fieldwork, this article looks at communities’ perceptions of child marriage and girls’ education and their suggestions for programs and policies that could improve outcomes for girls. The article also discusses potential implications for Catholic and other faith-based schools, as well as faith leaders.

The Parish Choir Movement And Generational Festivals In Romania’S Socialist Period: New Community Festivities In Transylvania’S Gheorgheni (Gyergyó) Region, Eszter Kovács

Journal of Global Catholicism

Among the post-1945 East European socialist regimes, Romania and Poland were the only countries where the Catholic Church—despite government interventions, controls, and bans—managed to play a significant social and political role in community life. This case study provides an ethnographic description of the parish choir movement and graduating class reunions, called “generational festivals” in Hungarian, in the Gheorgheni (Hu: Gyergyó) region in the 1970s and 1980s. The gatherings will be analyzed in the context of everyday life, the socialist system’s distinctive shortage economy, and official limits on religious activity that characterized the era. I will first describe the world of …

Overview & Acknowledgments, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Exploring Environmental Racism, Quality Of Life, And Inequalities In Kentucky Counties, Bailey Harder, James Maples

Kentucky Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Environmental racism explores how pollution-producing industries are systematically constructed in and around poor, minority communities. Exposure to pollutants over time negatively impacts resident well being and quality of life while economic trends limit opportunities to relocated. Kentucky provides a valuable opportunity for exploring environmental racism. The state’s long dependency on coal extraction has created environmental opportunities for studying this phenomenon amid deindustrialization throughout the region. This study examines how changes in air pollution (a proxy measure of environmental toxins) correlates to poverty, quality of life, and resident racial demographics. Results indicate that Kentucky counties with higher air pollution had lower …

Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey (Nasis) 2023 Methodology Report, Bureau Of Sociological Research

Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey (NASIS)

No abstract provided.

Life In Hampton Roads Report: The 14th Annual Life In Hampton Roads Survey, Randy R. Gainey, Jesse Richman, Tancy Vandecar-Burdin, Wendi Wilson-Smith, Mackenzie Kibler, Nana Boateng, Caylin Smith

Life in Hampton Roads Survey Report

[From the Executive Summary]

The Social Science Research Center (SSRC) at Old Dominion University (ODU) is pleased to present the results from the 14th annual Life in Hampton Roads (LIHR) survey. The purpose of the survey was to gain insight into residents’ perceptions of the quality of life in Hampton Roads. Surveys this year were completed over the telephone as they were last year and prior to 2020. Less than two-thirds of respondents rated the quality of life in the region as excellent or good (62.3%). This is lower than last year (69.3%) and is lower than most previous non-COVID …

Nasis 2023: Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey Questionnaire, Bureau Of Sociological Research

Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey (NASIS)

No abstract provided.

City Flags And The Politics Of Urban Revitalization: The Case Of Syracuse, Ny, Grace Risinger

Honors Theses

People tend to care about flags, but are not aware that their city has a flag. A recent wave of flag redesigns has been happening in the United States since a 2015 TED Talk was posted widely criticizing city flags. This subject prompted my professor, Daniel Alvord, to ask for a research assistant for his project to understand this phenomenon. For my thesis, I focus on a specific flag redesign initiative in Syracuse, NY, through an ethnographic case study. By applying previous urban sociological literature to my focus on flag redesigns, I can connect the Syracuse community member’s increased civic …

Gendered Perceptions Of Climate Change And Agricultural Adaptation Practices: A Systematic Review, A. T. M. Sanaul Haque, Lalit Kumar, Navjot Bhullar

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The present systematic review was undertaken to obtain a detailed understanding of how climate change perceptions and adaptation differ globally by gender and different intersections among the farmers. Findings from 41 studies selected following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol, mostly from Africa and Asia, suggest that climate change perceptions and adaptation are highly contextual and considerably varied by gender and different intersections. Existing gender role, farmers’ age, education, knowledge, marital status, intra-household power structure, religion, social status and ethnicity were intersecting with gender and climate change perception and adaptation. Apart from gender and intersectionality, access …

Feeling And Hearing Country As Research Method, Anne Poelina, Marlikka Perdrisat, Sandra Wooltorton, Edwin L. Mulligan

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This paper explains Feeling and Hearing Country as an Australian Indigenous practice whereby water is life, Country is responsive, and Elders generate wisdom for a communicative order of things. The authors ask, as a society of Indigenous people and those no longer Indigenous to place, can we walk together in the task of collectively healing Country? The research method uses experiential, creative, propositional, and practical ways of knowing and being in and with local places. Evidence may take many forms based upon engagement with an animate, sentient world. The research method can generate new meanings, implications and insights, and regenerate …

Reading Group As Method For Feminist Environmental Humanities, James Gardiner, Hayley Singer, Jennifer Hamilton, Astrida Neimanis, Mindy Blaise

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This article argues that reading groups are a collective field building and research method in Feminist Environmental Humanities, an interdisciplinary scholarly area at the intersections of feminist social justice and environmental concerns. We begin by historicising three Australian Feminist Environmental reading groups (COMPOSTING Feminisms, Eco Feminist Fridays, The Ediths) within a longer feminist tradition, then demonstrate how they respond to declining research funding in the neoliberal university and accelerating ecological crisis. Drawing on survey data, we first thematically code and analyse the results to categorise the groups’ functions and impacts. Departing from more traditional data analysis, we then develop a …

The Digital Environmental Humanities (Deh) In The Anthropocene: Challenges And Opportunities In An Era Of Ecological Precarity, John Ryan, Lydia Hearn, Paul Arthur

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Researchers in the complementary fields of the digital humanities and the environmental humanities have begun to collaborate under the auspices of the digital environmental humanities (DEH). The overarching aim of this emerging field is to leverage digital technologies in understanding and addressing the urgencies of the Anthropocene. Emphasizing DEH’s focus on natural and cultural vitality, this article begins with a historical overview of the field. Crafting an account of the field’s emergence, we argue that the present momentum toward DEH exhibits four broad thematic strains including perennial eco-archiving; Anthropocene narratives of loss; citizen ecohumanities; and human-plant-environment relations. Within each of …

Distilling Best Practice Principles For Public Participation In Impact Assessment Follow-Up, Angus Morrison-Saunders, Jos Arts, Jenny Pope, Alan Bond, Francois Retief

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Building upon principles for public engagement and for impact assessment (IA) follow-up, this paper distils best practice principles specific to public participation in IA follow-up. Literature review, followed by a simple survey distributed to IA follow-up and/or public engagement practitioners, helped identify key principles and related published sources. Twelve principles for public participation in IA follow-up are presented, which relate to (1) mandatory public reporting, (2) ease of access to published material, (3) full transparency, (4) clarity about the IA follow-up process, (5) input to decision-making, (6) continuous access to IA follow-up activities and feedback, (7) independent verification, (8) two-way …

Care Visits: Obligations, Opportunities And Constraints For Vietnamese Grandparent Visitors In Australia, Hien Thi Nguyen, Loretta Baldassar, Raelene Wilding

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

In examining the ageing-migration nexus from a Global South perspective, this paper explores the obligations, opportunities and constraints of caregiving performed by Vietnamese grandparent visitors during their sojourns in Australia. Employing a grounded theory approach and care circulation framework, we investigate how grandparent visitors and adult migrant children experience and understand care and ageing in contexts of mobility, including an analysis of how gender, age, socio-economic contexts and culture shape and affect their care norms and practices. The analysis emphasizes the critical contributions that Vietnamese grandparents make to the reproductive labour of their adult migrant children who often face challenges …

“The Ice Is Melting And I Don’T Want Santa To Drown!”: Reflections On Childhood, Climate Action, And Futurity, Lucy Hopkins

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This paper’s reading of a specific cultural artifact to emerge from children’s climate activism in contemporary Australia enacts an argument that children themselves can be seen to be redefining childhood and futurity through their climate activism and demonstrates how their placards are evidence of this. It argues that we as critical childhood scholars can follow their lead by uncovering the discourses that underpin their activist slogans. In doing so, we can set about contesting the limiting and disempowering discourses of childhood that would dismiss the very idea of children as political participants in the fight to save the planet.