Repository logo

Browsing by Author "Carolan, Michael, advisor"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    A return to the field: youth development through agricultural projects
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Putnam, Reanna, author; Carolan, Michael, advisor; O'Connor Shelley, Tara, advisor; Coke, Pam, committee member
    This case study seeks to document and describe agriculture based youth development programs by examining the AgriCorps program of the Larimer County Conservation Corps (LCCC). This study draws upon community based action research methodology to provide detailed documentation of the AgriCorps program and to assist with future program development. The AgriCorps program is an introductory employment opportunity through which youth, age 14-16, gain work experience, exposure to environmental and social issues in the food system, and complete meaningful conservation work on urban farms and gardens in Larimer County, Colorado. This program provides youth with experience adhering to workplace expectations, opportunities for soft skill development, and resume writing. In addition to personal and professional development, the AgriCorps also gives youth the opportunity to learn more about the social and environmental context of urban agriculture through structured education, informal field talks, and reflection activities. Lastly, the work completed by the AgriCorps crews contributes to meaningful conservation work by providing labor to urban and sustainable agriculture projects in Northern Colorado. The AgriCorps is a unique hybrid several different youth development program types: youth conservation corps; service learning; and garden based education. As such, the AgriCorps program can serve as a model for organizations interested in developing a youth development program that work in partnership with urban agriculture projects. This research also contributes to the limited literature on youth conservation corps and agriculture based youth development programs by highlighting a successful case of youth development through agricultural projects.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Citizens, experts and the environmental impact statement: procedural structures and participatory boundaries
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Davidson, Casey, author; Carolan, Michael, advisor; Taylor, Pete, committee member; Feige, Mark, committee member
    This thesis is a qualitative case-study of environmental management and decision-making as practiced by the Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) in accordance with the environmental impact statement (EIS) process. Because there has been little empirical study of the EIS process despite criticisms that it has generally failed to both meaningfully engage citizens in governance and produce environmental outcomes consistent with the substantive aims of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), this study provides an in-depth and longitudinal analysis of the ways in which EIS procedures impacted the collaborative planning and development of RMNP's elk and vegetation management EIS. To explore how EIS procedures affect environmental planning and management, I use RMNP's archival records to reconstruct the life-cycle of the planning process and the events, processes, actors and considerations that played a role in shaping the trajectory and outcomes of planning. Furthermore, archival data is supplemented with semi-structured interviews to document how the management issue with elk and vegetation was constructed and shaped by the managerial imperatives of the park, the efforts and concerns of interagency collaborators and citizens, and by EIS protocol as it was interpreted by the interagency team and influential upon planning considerations, decisions and outcomes. The findings of this study contribute to an understanding of the EIS as a decision-making procedure and also provide some empirical support for scholarly criticisms of the EIS. However, these findings also suggest that the procedure's affects on environmental governance are more complex than currently theorized and difficult to disentangle from the constraints that divergent interagency orientations, interests and policies, and divisive and impassioned views among citizens pose for environmental governance. Therefore, this study is as much as case-study of interagency collaboration and citizen participation in the context of environmental management in the contemporary U.S. as it is a case-study of the EIS process. For this reason, my discussion of how conflicts and constraints emerged during planning, were addressed by interagency actors, and subsequently impacted public participation and managerial outcomes provides insights useful for scholars of environmental management or governance as well as practitioners who encounter these scenarios both within and outside of the EIS.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Connecting to nature via ecotourism as sustainable development
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) McLane, Daniel Newell, author; Carolan, Michael, advisor; Cross, Jeni, committee member; Hogan, Michael, committee member; Cottrell, Stuart, committee member
    This dissertation presents a case study of ecotourism as sustainable development focused on the potential of the tourist as agent of sustainable development when she returns to the global North. This possibility is framed in terms of a tourist "connecting to nature" and thus becoming an agent of sustainable development. This potential is investigated via the comparison of a "real" rainforest and its "simulation" and this also investigates the role of the biophysical in shaping this connection. After describing an initial period of data collection the author explains why he adopted the framework of "environmental imaginaries" as a language to describe the multiple and often conflicting natures to which tourists connect. Using this framework two forms of connecting are identified, "recruiting" and "reinforcing". The role of the biophysical is explored for both forms of connecting as well as the implications for both upon the tourist's return home.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Growing diverse co-operative networks?: an examination of boundaries and openings to resilient food futures
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Hale, James W., author; Carolan, Michael, advisor; Hempel, Lynn, committee member; Malin, Stephanie, committee member; McIvor, David, committee member
    Efforts to improve connections between people, food, agriculture, and the environment abound – Community Supported Agriculture, land-sharing, school and community gardens – just to name a few. Yet, the ability of groups to work together on such projects, and pull the resources that help them thrive, varies. This is the focal point of this dissertation. Drawing on extensive field work, this research examines how food and agriculture co-operative networks diversify their resources. Through a series of papers, I demonstrate: 1) that the importance of such inquiry lies in a relational approach to resilience thinking which views resilience as the imminent potential of networks to enact diverse resources. Assuming that diversity and equity play a vital role in fueling adaptation and transformation, I pay particular attention to the socio-cultural values and interactions which create openings and boundaries to more diverse network performance. 2) Honing in on the role of frames and framing processes in community development activities, I demonstrate the vital role of cultural and symbolic values in shaping co-operative network resource access. As symbolic power becomes more concentrated, diverse resources becomes more difficult to enact. For example, the more a utilitarian frame shapes co-op member engagement, the more this can limit boundaries and openings to cultural diversity and bridging social capital. My research suggests that while sustained dialog around co-op values can help networks adapt and access more resources, it also requires additional resources which may take away from other activities. 3) While co-operation the verb is often assumed in the co-operative organizational form, my research suggests that co-operative efforts can be unco-operative in practice. By adopting an egalitarian view of co-operation, I show that decision-making can often be exclusionary, that leadership can reproduce socio-cultural inequities, and that the emotional work necessary to co-operative relationships can sometimes limit membership recruitment and engagement.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Professionalization, factionalism, and social movement success: a case study on nonhuman animal rights mobilization
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Wrenn, Corey Lee, author; Carolan, Michael, advisor; Hempel, Lynn, committee member; Lacy, Michael, committee member; Velasco, Marcela, committee member
    This project explores the intra-movement interactions between professionalized and radical factions in the social movement arena using a content analysis of movement literature produced by the Nonhuman Animal rights movement between 1980 and 2013. Professionalized factions with greater symbolic capital are positioned to monopolize claimsmaking, disempower competing factions, and replicate their privilege and legitimacy. Radical factions, argued to be important variables in a movement’s health, are thus marginalized, potentially to the detriment of movement success and the constituency for whom they advocate. Specifically, this study explores the role of professionalization in manipulating the tactics and goals of social movement organizations and how the impacts of professionalization may be aggravating factional boundaries. Boundary maintenance may prevent critical discourse within the movement, and it may also provoke the “mining” of radical claimsmaking for symbols that have begun to resonate within the movement and the public. Analysis demonstrates a number of important consequences to professionalization that appear to influence the direction of factional disputes, and ultimately, the shape of the movement. Results indicate some degree of factional fluidity, but professionalization does appear to be a dominant force on movement trajectories by concentrating power in the social change space. Professionalization appears to provoke the mobilization of radical factions, but it also provides organizations that professionalize the mechanisms for controlling and marginalizing radical competitors.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    The original Green Revolution: the Catholic Worker farms and environmental morality
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Stock, Paul Vincent, author; Carolan, Michael, advisor
    The following dissertation examines the history of the Catholic Worker farms. The Catholic Worker have printed a newspaper, run houses of hospitality and farms in the hope of treating people with dignity and working toward a common good. Founders Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin encouraged a Green Revolution predicated upon education, care for those in need and an agrarian tradition. Drawing on Jacques Ellul's work on the effects of a technological society, I offer the Catholic Worker farms as one way to mitigate those same effects. The Catholic Worker farms provide one illustration of an environmental morality that is counter to the ethics and theoretical morality common to the discourse of environmentalism.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    The sociology of local food and transformational engagement: a case study of the rise of the local food movement
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Ridenour, Laura M., author; Carolan, Michael, advisor; Cross, Jennifer, committee member; Reynolds, Laura, committee member; Miller, Jeffery, committee member
    This qualitative ethnographic case study of the local food movement in Larimer County, Colorado is an examination of the epistemological nature of how key players like chefs, farmers and local food advocates create and reinforce the local food movement. This thesis examines sociological process, and the micropolitics of the community of local food players, illustrating the progression of civic agriculture. I describe how transformative learning, or the process of changing a frame of reference, is key to understanding the capacity of local food movement actors to address complex systemic issues. The analysis reveals how three waves of new local hands-on projects created informal learning situations, increasing systemic and global knowledge of the food system, and how new social networks settings led to civic engagement. Cycles of accretionary knowledge and transformative learning indicate that the performative nature of civic engagement was key to the rise of the local food movement. This research offers guidance to professionals, academics and associations that represent local and regional food systems, in regards to the important role of learning sites and new social networks and that are necessary for personal transformational change and engagement. This study also lends empirical evidence that civic engagement necessitates systemic level thinking, which can inform future criteria and assessments of food movements. Overall, this research demonstrates a framework to analyze movement capacity via the waves of development, and offers a perspective on the rise of the local food movement that provides a more complete explanation of why and how food activism becomes a salient personal motivator that results in aspects of civic agriculture.