Mountain Scholar :: Browsing by Author "Carolan, Michael, committee member"

Browsing by Author "Carolan, Michael, committee member"

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Open Access
Building a Mile High City: theorizing rhetorical infrastructures in Denver's development
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Clark, Jordin, author; Dickinson, Greg, advisor; Dunn, Tom, committee member; Gibson, Katie, committee member; Carolan, Michael, committee member
This dissertation utilizes multi-methodological practices to showcase rhetoric's role in directing, arranging, and negotiating urban development projects to sculpt a particular, and particularly power-laden urban identity. To this end, I theorize rhetoric as an influential urban infrastructure that guides how people construct and enact the built environment, everyday embodied practices, and community identity. Defined as the symbolic and material claims in and to urban spaces, rhetorical infrastructures, I contend, direct, arrange, and negotiate space's multiple trajectories into a practiced, everyday urban identity. Specifically, I theorize memory, imagination, and vernacular as rhetorical infrastructures through three different case studies across Denver's development. My first case study examines memory as a rhetorical infrastructure in Denver's first historic district, Larimer Square. Through spatial stories of frontier grit and exploration, I argue that Larimer Square directs Denver's trajectories toward white exceptionalism and unfettered expansion. My second case study analyzes the process of development through the rhetorical infrastructure of imagination in North Denver's ongoing project to redevelop the National Western Center and the surrounding neighborhoods of Globeville, Elyria-Swansea. Through mental mapping interviews, archival research, and spatial criticism, I analyze when and how varying spatial imaginaries collide to arrange the space's openness to multiple histories into place-making strategies that usher Denver into a global, yet homogenized, future. In the final case study, I pivot to vernacular infrastructures in a section 8 housing district in Denver, Sun Valley. Using photovoice methodology, this chapter showcases care, play, and growth as bottom-up, repair-oriented practices that (re)build community networks and relationalities during Denver's COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. Examining Denver's development across space and time, I argue that, through the rhetorical infrastructures of memory, imagination, and vernacular, Denverites and city officials sculpt an urban identity of white exceptionalism and unfettered expansion. As open and multiplicitous, however, these spaces come to be negotiated through everyday practices that, if only momentarily, reroute infrastructures towards roots and community care.
Open Access
Climate justice and feasibility
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Hunter, Taylor, author; Shockley, Ken, advisor; McShane, Katie, committee member; Carolan, Michael, committee member
The primary motivation for this Thesis is to understand whether it is in fact feasible for rich countries, like the United States, to fulfill their humanitarian obligations through an international climate treaty. And if this is infeasible, why? Alongside this motivation, is a motivation to bring to light another important dimension to climate justice that is often lost within the scale and the urgency of climate change, namely the misrecognition of Indigenous peoples. My task in Chapter One is to explain how Eric Posner's and David Weisbach's employment of the political feasibility constraint of International Paretianism functions in international climate policy discourse. I work to show how climate policy outcomes solely constrained by International Paretianism will predictably violate basic humanitarian constraints. Posner and Weisbach defend a Two-Track Approach to climate policy, where the ends of justice are best achieved though policy means independent of a climate treaty. Their view entails that climate policies should not be designed with regard to constraints of justice. Rather than satisfy constraints of justice, a climate treaty need only satisfy the political feasibility constraint of International Paretianism. I work to show the policy outcomes that follow from the feasibility constraint of International Paretianism, which are morally unacceptable because they violate basic humanitarian obligations. Posner and Weisbach justify these moral costs by appealing to what is and what is not politically feasible, per International Paretianism. I will work investigate the legitimacy of this feasibility constraint in Chapter Two. My task in Chapter Two is to investigate the political legitimacy of International Paretianism. I begin by clarifying how feasibility constraints function in normative theorizing and I defend what I consider to be an appropriate function for International Paretianism. There are two general functions that feasibility constraints can serve in policy decision making. Hard feasibility constraints function to rule out policy outcomes that are in principle impossible due to invariant conditions, while soft feasibility function inform our practical deliberations about what we can do given our contingent circumstances. Soft constraints allow us to acknowledge that there are limits on what we can realistically accomplish, while also acknowledging that we can work to change these limits. In this Chapter, I will argue that we should not make the mistake of using International Paretianism as a hard constraint. I will argue that it is conceptually possible for states to act for reasons other than the common interest of their citizenry. As such, International Paretianism is a soft feasibility constraint. I conclude with an analysis of why it is that International Paretianism is a soft feasibility constraint for the United States. My task Chapter Three is to present one possible way that institutions can govern themselves towards an interdependent collective continuance, and to identify a soft feasibility constraint that is relevant to the ability of US federal agencies to integrating such institutional capacities. Indigenous people have an epistemic advantage on how to respond to climate change, and in an ameliorative way. Yet, they are not procedurally or culturally recognized for their knowledge. I consider this to be a constraint on our ability to appropriately respond to climate change. In this Chapter, I will present the way in which the Potawatomi Nation, members of the Anishinaabe Intellectual Tradition, have and continue to interdependently govern themselves toward collective continuance. I will argue that Indigenous peoples in fact have an epistemic advantage in this particular subject matter, which is due to a long history of colonially-induced ecological displacement and relocation. I will conclude by identifying and defending what I believe to be a 'soft' cultural feasibility constraint on the ability of federal agencies to work in reciprocal relations of knowledge exchange with Indigenous peoples at the procedural level of climate policy decision-making. The normative upshots of this Thesis are that (1) the citizens of the United States have a responsibility to change their government institutions such that they can be responsive to humanitarian constraints, as well as ecological limits. And (2) one way in which this responsibility may be realized is through members of the United States correcting for an identity prejudice that would preempt the United States government from instituting reciprocal relations of knowledge exchange with Indigenous people.
Open Access
Creating a tribal national park: barriers that constrain and mechanisms that promote collaborative and adaptive environmental management
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Lovell, Ashley, author; Pickering, Kathleen, advisor; Carolan, Michael, committee member; Reid, Robin, committee member; Taylor, Peter, committee member
In an era of rapid social and environmental change, frequent public protests and the documented decline of ecosystem health have demonstrated that traditional environmental management approaches are ill equipped to address public concerns and adapt to changing ecosystems. To address these challenges, researchers and communities have combined the concepts of collaboration and adaptation to create adaptive co-management. This approach acknowledges that socio-ecological systems are complex and constantly in flux while emphasizing public participation and collaborative learning as mechanisms to create novel solutions to social and ecological challenges. Adaptive co-management encourages land managers to collaborate with local communities to monitor the health of their relationship and the ecosystems they seek to protect. While in theory, adaptive co-management should allow land managers and communities to learn from previous experiences and explore new alternatives to improve natural resource management, few studies empirically analyze the process and outcomes of this new approach. I collaborated with the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the National Park Service to evaluate a case study of adaptive co-management in the South Unit of Badlands National Park. Working closely with the Tribe and the Park Service I conducted a participatory evaluation of this collaborative relationship. Data was collected through participant observation, in-depth interviews and a review of policy documents and local archives. A key academic finding from this study is that while the Tribe possessed fewer resources and less authority than the Park Service, they exercised power in the co-management process because they spoke on behalf of indigenous knowledge and Native American sovereignty. A key applied finding from this study is that while Tribe and the Park Service share the desire to create the nation's first Tribal National Park in the South Unit, their motivations for this goal vary considerably. To encourage the sustainability of this adaptive co-management effort, the Park Service and the Tribe must iteratively evaluate their relationship, recognize the benefits and challenges of diverse perspectives, and build social networks within and between their collaborating organizations. This case study illuminates mechanisms, such as collaborative learning and the combination of tribal consultation with co-management, that can encourage more equitable and adaptive environmental management in the face of social and environmental change.
Open Access
Demand management' and injustice in rural agricultural irrigation in western Colorado: an anatomy of ambivalence
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) MacIlroy, Kelsea E., author; Hempel, Lynn, advisor; Carolan, Michael, committee member; Malin, Stephanie, committee member; Kampf, Stephanie, committee member
The Colorado River is overdrawn. Decisions made a century ago created an institutional framework allowing overuse while climate change has exacerbated it with increasing temperatures and reduced natural flows. 'Demand management', a key component of the 2019 Upper Basin Drought Contingency Plans, would utilize water conserved from consumptive use to create a 500,000 acre-foot storage pool, only used to protect the Upper Basin of the Colorado River in the event they were unable to meet water delivery obligation to the Lower Basin. Rural irrigators on Colorado's West Slope would be the prime contributors to such a program, but largely responded with ambivalence. Increasingly, collaborative water governance is cited as the best way to create change in water distribution. However, if rural irrigators respond with ambivalence, why would they participate voluntarily in such a program? Using a grounded theory approach, interviews and focus groups with 45 participants, and participant observation, I explore why rural irrigators were ambivalent towards a program that would, ostensibly, protect them in times of water shortage. Drawing from the concept of sociological ambivalence and the literatures of water justice, hydrosocial analysis, and rurality, I describe the symbolic and material landscape that shapes perceptions of 'demand management'. I argue irrigators were ambivalent because they understood the need for water conservation, but they also perceived injustice in terms of distribution, recognition, and representation. Since rural irrigators are the linchpin in any water conservation program that would address overuse in the Colorado River Basin, their perceptions of injustice must be addressed. Findings provide key insight into water governance as it relates to crafting effective water policy.
Open Access
Exploring personal, business, and community barriers and opportunities for food entrepreneurs
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Colpaart, Ashley M., author; Bunning, Marisa, advisor; Thilmany McFadden, Dawn, advisor; Auld, Garry, committee member; Harmon, Alison, committee member; Miller, Jeffery, committee member; Carolan, Michael, committee member
Specialty food businesses, characterized as local, craft or artisan, produce unique and highly differentiated food items often made in small quantities from high-quality ingredients. Nationally, the increasing market demand for specialty food is simultaneously spurring a growth in food entrepreneurship and food businesses that need access to licensed commercial space. Due to their unique values, a subset of food entrepreneurs may be considered 'social entrepreneurs' who use their business as a catalyst for social, cultural, or environmental change. This dissertation research model and hypotheses were developed as a triangulation of three innovative approaches to various fields of study influencing how the food sector is evolving to address emerging consumer and supply chain dynamics. These include; a) a new management behavioral concept, Perceived Business Effectiveness, b.) previous research on entrepreneur characteristics, and c.) potential experience and opportunities that may influence food entrepreneurs based on the Community Capital Framework. The primary objectives of this research are to determine the unique mission, values or community capital-based attributes of food entrepreneurs and to evaluate how this set of factors may affect a food entrepreneur's interest and key criteria when searching for commercial kitchen space. The primary methods included a national survey of food entrepreneurs (n=140) and a pilot program resulting in 4 case studies from Northern Colorado. Multidisciplinary empirical analysis was applied including gamma correlations to compare and contrast various factors and a 2-step probit regression analysis and the calculation of marginal effects from that model. Survey results found that food entrepreneurs in search of commercial kitchen space had dissatisfaction with finding appropriate space (p=0.04), availability of enough days/time to rent (p=0.00), location (p=0.07), availability of equipment (p=0.02), and parking (p=0.07). Results also found significant gamma correlations for questions related to food safety, social fairness, and resource mobilization indicators like sourcing locally and participating in the sharing economy. Further, respondents looking for commercial space were 9% more likely than those not looking for space to use a theoretical sharing economy technology to help them find and access commercial kitchen space. The three-month pilot program successfully placed four food entrepreneurs searching for production space in four different commercial kitchens in Northern Colorado. The kitchens included a school district, church, commissary kitchen, and functioning pizza parlor. A major contribution of this work is in the identification of key drivers for food entrepreneurs in the emerging access economy, suggesting that "access" to goods and services may becoming more desirable than "ownership" of them.
Open Access
Fair Trade certified coffee estates: can Fair Trade USA promote workers' well-being, empowerment and gender equity in Brazilian and Nicaraguan coffee plantations?
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Rosty, Claudia Magalhaes, author; Raynolds, Laura T., advisor; Hempel, Lynn, committee member; Carolan, Michael, committee member; Stevis, Dimitris, committee member
In 2012, Fair Trade USA began to certify coffee estates, previously restricted to small producer organizations, to expand the benefits of fair trade to hired laborers. This dissertation research analyzes the implications of the Fair Trade USA certification of coffee plantations in 1) bolstering workers' well-being, 2) empowerment, and 3) gender equity on certified coffee estates in Brazil and Nicaragua. Using a cross-national comparative design and multi-methods qualitative techniques, this study examines how the Fair Trade USA certification of coffee estates plays out differently within each national context. The findings suggest that Fair Trade USA fosters worker's well-being in coffee estates when operating below national labor legislation and sectoral standards, and indicate variation, unevenness and limitations in bolstering worker's empowerment. This research reports marginal gender equity impact on rural workers.
Open Access
Farmers markets as facilitators of eco-habitus
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Barnhardt, KM, author; Hastings, Orestes P., advisor; Carolan, Michael, committee member; Mueller, Megan, committee member
In this study, I seek to resituate eco-habitus into Pierre Bourdieu's understanding of the field to show how farmers markets can structure themselves as facilitators of spaces where all individuals, specifically those with low economic and cultural capital, can enact their eco-habitus. To ask how farmers markets can achieve this, I explore what predictors lead to a market accepting the United States Department of Agriculture's, Food and Nutrition Services, Nutrition Programs (NP), as forms of payment, the presence of nutrition and health programs, and food donation and conservation programs. I also provide a breakdown of the types of programming markets provide. To examine, this I conducted an original national survey of farmers market managers (N=473). I combined this with data from the American Community, County Presidential Election Returns, and the US Census. Logistic regression results indicate more liberal counties have a higher probability of accepting NP and having food donation programs, while more urban counties have a higher probability of having nutrition programming. Markets in more affluent counties are less likely to accept NP, while urban counties with higher percentages of people of color, and low-income individuals, suggest these individuals still possess eco-habitus but might be pulling from non-dominate ethical repertories commonly associated with eco-habitus. This study offers a critique of farmers market and who has access to them, contributes to the growing literature on eco-habitus, and attempts to resituate eco-habitus into Bourdieu's understanding of field. It also provides a national survey of farmers market managers.
Open Access
How universities participate in agricultural extension: a comparative study of two Chinese agricultural universities
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Shan, Yan, author; Taylor, Peter Leigh, advisor; Swanson, Louis, committee member; Carolan, Michael, committee member; Cabot, Perry, committee member; Opsal, Tara, committee member
University-based agriculture extension is a system set up to help local farmers access the newest agricultural technology and techniques developed by universities, which is comparatively different from the traditional government-led approach. US is currently the only country in the world which has based this service within the university, yet many other developing countries have started to incorporate universities into their agricultural extension system in order to improve the effectiveness of the agricultural extension services. However, little literature pays attention to how the universities adopt this practice and how this adoption influences the organizational capacity of universities. This study tries to fill this gap by exploring how two Chinese agricultural universities adopted two different ways to build platforms for conducting agricultural extension, how these newly built platforms impact agricultural extension activities, and what the future for these new platforms looks like in terms of institutionalization. This dissertation draws on relevant literature of organization theory and rural sociology to frame the innovation process happening in these two agricultural universities. The research questions which this dissertation tries to answer are: 1) How did the university incorporate this new function into their daily practices; 2) What kind of organizational changes did they experience? Is there a better way to do this? 3) How might this new practice in the university influence the previously existing agricultural extension system? To explore these questions, I conducted a comparative case study that included: 1) semi-structured in-depth interviews with key informants; 2) direct field notes from the local sites of universities; 3) secondary documents including collaboration contracts, university handouts, news reports, official websites etc. There are several major findings from this dissertation research. First, the two universities both made within-organizational change and outside-organizational change. They had similar within-organizational change which is clearly required by the national policy to build a new institute for extension within the university. But the New Institute faced different issues of legitimacy in the two universities. With regard to outside organizational change, the two universities built different kinds of platform to conduct agricultural extension activities, one established physical land with all kinds of facilities and the other one is project oriented. Different platforms bring the two universities both unique advantages and distinct challenges. Second, with these organizational changes, the new practice of agriculture extension transformed their previous singular, sporadic individual activities of agriculture extension by upscaling the extension team and funding for the activities. Third, though via different platforms, the two universities face similar challenges of institutionalizing university-based extension. With the platform with physical land comes with the issue of development differentiation and the platform based on projects lacking a stable safeguard mechanism. Fourth, the decision of how to build platforms is not a standalone issue but is related to the history, current economic and political conditions of each of the universities. This dissertation contributes to theory by illuminating the process of how university organizations change or innovate to fulfill the new role of university-based agricultural extension. Based on the findings from this study, I argue that universities need support from local governments or local agribusiness to fulfill this new role of agricultural extension, otherwise the advantages of university in agriculture extension cannot be realized. There is no certain path universities need to follow to complete this task and it depends on the local situation and the social contexts of each university. Lastly, this dissertation contributes to methodology with its comparative in-depth case study of institutional innovation in Chinese universities. What's more, this study also proposes some practical suggestions for universities to consider when creating their own agricultural extension platforms and partnerships with local governments and local agribusiness to promote agricultural extension. This study also shows the need for further study related to the future development of these newly built university-based agricultural extension and the organizational capacity of universities to become involved in agricultural extension across different locations and social contexts.
Open Access
"If you're on good terms with those people, you'll always have a place to eat": a Bourdieusian approach to food justice in a pay-what-you-can café
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Shreeve, Kelly, author; Sbicca, Joshua, advisor; Carolan, Michael, committee member; Jablonski, Becca, committee member
Alternative food initiatives (AFIs) are widespread, leading to questions from food justice scholars about whether these initiatives are doing justice. One common question is the degree to which initiatives are inclusive of race and class differences. This thesis undertook a four-month qualitative study of a unique, but less commonly studied initiative, a pay-what-you-can (PWC) cafe in a Mountain West state. The organizational structure lacks financial barriers to entry, allowing for people from all economic statuses to participate. Through a Bourdieusian analytical framework, and a multifaceted notion of justice, the thesis finds that the organizational rhetoric that values community, providing 'good food' to those without money, and recognizing the abilities of different individuals, explains which groups participate, how they are recognized, and the distribution of resources within the cafe. This matters because it shows how values and broader organizational rules affect how AFIs are able to do justice. These findings contribute to the literature on AFIs by focusing on newly emerging PWCs and expands debates about how such initiatives do food justice.
Open Access
Invasion of the killer bee: an historical examination of governmental, agency, and beekeeper response to Africanized honeybee colonization in the southern United States
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Howard, Lahoma J., author; Taylor, Peter L., advisor; Carolan, Michael, committee member; Naug, Dhruba, committee member
This study is an exploration of the effects that the migration of Africanized honeybees has had on the beekeeping industry in the southern U.S. The Africanized honeybee has had a disruptive effect on agriculture and beekeeping during its long migration from Brazil where it was released in 1954 to most of the southern U.S. Utilizing both historical-comparative and qualitative interview methods, an applying a theoretical framework of food regimes, technological lock-in theory, and Bourdieu's concept pf Habitus, this study explores how this bee has impacted both beekeeping and agricultural systems, and why it is such a bad fit for U.S. farming. The findings from this study help to define not just how this bee is a bad fit for farming, but also illuminates why our farming practices may be incredibly detrimental to our managed honeybee colonies upon which we depend.
Open Access
Manufacturing precarity: a case study of the Grain Processing Corporation/United Food and Commercial Workers Local 86D Lockout in Muscatine, Iowa
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Gabriel, Jacqulyn S., author; Murray, Douglas, advisor; Carolan, Michael, committee member; Taylor, Peter Leigh, committee member; Stevis, Dimitris, committee member
On August 22, 2008, approximately 360 workers were locked out of their jobs at Grain Processing Corporation (GPC) in Muscatine, Iowa, after the company and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 86D failed to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement at the expiration of their existing agreement. This study examines the GPC/UFCW lockout within the context of the growth of precarious employment in the United States. Using this labor dispute as a case study, it illustrates how lockouts are implicated in the generation of precarious employment and how workers and unions respond when confronted with employment precarity. This study suggests that the steady decline in union membership, density, and collective bargaining power in U.S. manufacturing over the last several decades has placed those manufacturing workers who are still covered by collective bargaining agreements at risk of their employers initiating lockouts as a means to displace and replace them and their jobs with more precarious forms of employment. Indeed, by locking out its bargaining unit employees and replacing them with workers hired through a temporary employment agency, GPC was able to effectively take around 360 relatively well-paid, permanent, unionized manufacturing jobs and turn them into precarious jobs. In doing so, the company also rendered some 360 workers precarious. Thus, in addition to demonstrating how GPC was able to deploy a lockout to achieve precarious employment relations, this study examines how the locked out workers and their union responded to the precarious position they were placed in as a result of the labor dispute. This study draws on data gathered primarily through in-depth interviews with a sample consisting of 62 of the approximately 360 locked out workers roughly five and a half years into the GPC/UFCW labor dispute. It summarizes, describes, analyzes, and explains these workers’ experiences both prior to and following the lockout. In doing so, it highlights both the negative and positive effects of the labor dispute from the perspective of those workers who experienced it firsthand. For instance, it reveals a number of difficulties these workers faced as a result of being locked out of their jobs. Yet, it also reveals that most of these workers experienced a rather remarkable “recovery” after ultimately being displaced from their jobs at GPC as a result of the lockout. In fact, the majority of workers in this study who sought reemployment after being locked out by the company were able to secure jobs that were comparable, and in most cases superior, to their jobs at GPC in terms of wages, benefits, and working conditions. I use an inductive approach to analyze and conceptualize the factors that contributed to these workers’ “recovery” from the lockout. This analysis shows that the most important factors in explaining the relatively positive outcome of the labor dispute for a significant number of workers in this study was their social capital and human capital coupled with a favorable local labor market. Overall, this study contributes a worker-centered account of the changing nature and quality of employment relations in the United States. It also contributes to our understanding and analysis of how employment precarity is being generated and how workers and unions are responding to employers’ efforts aimed at achieving precarious employment relations.
Open Access
"No topic is taboo": PETA's post-feminist pivot to human-centric imagery
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Brown, Victoria L., author; Anderson, Karrin Vasby, advisor; Aoki, Eric, committee member; Carolan, Michael, committee member
In this thesis I argue that the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) perpetuate exclusionary and hurtful images in their "Boyfriend Went Vegan and Knocked the Bottom Out of Me" (BWVAKTBOOM) campaign. This campaign focuses on a young couple whose amorous activities leave the young woman, Jessica, with severe injuries. This campaign uses the manipulation of presence and absence to create controversy surrounding Jessica's agency. PETA uses this controversy to help forward a post-feminist ideology. This post-feminist message allows PETA to denigrate women to reassert masculine power and identity. I argue PETA chose to do this because of the "crisis of masculinity" that permeates popular media. The campaign reasserts masculine power through the reproduction of hypermasculinity, heteronormativity, and whiteness. The BWVAKTBOOM campaign reproduces hurtful, hegemonic images to reassert (vegan) masculine identity.
Open Access
Rocky Mountain high: an environmental history of Cannabis in the American West
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Johnson, Nick, author; Fiege, Mark, advisor; Orsi, Jared, committee member; Howkins, Adrian, committee member; Carolan, Michael, committee member
Drugs are plants, too. Every ounce of tobacco, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, alcohol, or even coffee consumed in the United States today is the result of a profound human-plant relationship. The history of these relationships tells us much about how these plants have figured into human history and the human condition. It also illuminates how these plants went from being coveted elements of seductive nature to their current status as controversial and illicit commodities. The general revulsion with which we currently approach drugs, the people who use them, and the plants that produce them has effectively obscured the important place of drugs and drug plants in history. Current histories of Cannabis in the United States treat it first and foremost as the drug marijuana. But by foregrounding the plant that produces it--Cannabis indica--I am able to highlight the many important relationships Americans formed with it throughout the twentieth-century American West, and what these relationships tell us about drug plants and their place in our society. Examining these relationships not only provides fresh insights into relations of race, class, and gender in American history, but it also sheds light on under-examined topics such as cross-cultural contact, the buildup of traditional knowledge, the development of unofficial agriculture and commodity chains, and on the basic desires shared and pursued by all humanity.
Open Access
Sub-federal ecological modernization: a case study of Colorado's new energy economy
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Giannakouros, Stratis, author; Stevis, Dimitris, advisor; Davis, Sandra, committee member; Carolan, Michael, committee member
European nations have often employed policies of explicit government intervention as a preferred means of addressing environmental and economic challenges. These policies have ranged from grey industrial policies focused solely on industrial growth, competitiveness and innovation to policies of stronger ecological modernization, which seek to align industrial interests with environmental protection. In recent years these policies have been mobilized to address the threat of climate change and promote environmental innovation. While some US Administrations have similarly recognized the need to address these challenges, the particular historical and political institutional dynamics of the US have meant that explicit government intervention has been eschewed in favor of more indirect strategies when dealing with economic and environmental challenges. This is evident in the rise of sub-federal policies at the level of US states. Supported by federal laboratories and public research, US states have adopted policies that look very much like sub-federal versions of industrial or ecological modernization policy. This thesis uses the Colorado case to highlight the importance of sub-federal institutions in addressing environmental and economic challenges in the US and explore its similarities to, and differences from, European approaches. To achieve this goal it first develops an analytical scheme within which to place policy initiatives on a continuum from grey industrial policy to strong ecological modernization policy by identifying key institutions that are influential in each policy type. This analytical scheme is then applied to the transitional renewable energy policy period from 2004-2012 in the state of Colorado. This period starts with the adoption of a renewable energy portfolio in 2004 and includes the 'new energy economy' period from 2007-2010 as well as the years since. Looking at three key turning points this paper interprets the 'new energy economy' strategy using the analytical scheme developed and identifies the political and social institutions that frame this transition. Drawing upon these findings, the paper analyses the implications of the Colorado case for understanding sub-federal initiatives in the US and concludes with a summary of the broader comparative institutional lessons.
Open Access
The intensification revolution in dryland cropping systems: implications from field to landscape scale
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Rosenzweig, Steven, author; Schipanski, Meagan, advisor; Stromberger, Mary, committee member; Carolan, Michael, committee member; Davis, Jessica, committee member
A global transformation in semi-arid cropping systems is occurring as dryland (non-irrigated) farmers shift from crop rotations reliant on year-long periods of bare fallow to more intensively cropped systems. Bare fallow has reduced year-to-year variability in crop yields, but it has also constrained crop productivity and, therefore, reduced carbon (C) inputs to soils. Exposure to tillage and erosion, combined with C limitation, has gradually degraded dryland soils and reduced their capacity to capture water and supply plant nutrients, requiring dryland farmers to rely on external inputs to support plant growth. However, the emergence of no-till has enabled dryland farmers to save enough water to replace bare fallows with crops, a practice called cropping system intensification. Cropping intensification has potential implications for the environment and economy of dryland agriculture as it impacts every aspect of the agroecosystem – from soil health, to weed and nutrient management, to crop yields. This dissertation seeks to unravel the economic and environmental implications of cropping system intensification at both the field and landscape scale in the US High Plains, and to understand the social dynamics underpinning this revolution. I quantified the impacts of cropping system intensification on a range of soil health parameters on 96 dryland, no-till fields in the High Plains. Three levels of cropping system intensity – wheat-fallow, mid-intensity, and continuous – were represented along a potential evapotranspiration gradient that increases from northwestern Nebraska to southeastern Colorado. I conducted in-depth interviews with farmers to examine the motivations, perceptions, and social interactions that influence decisions about whether and how much to intensify, and to collect detailed field histories including input use and crop yields. To scale up the implications of these field-level analyses, and to assess the current extent of the cropping revolution in the High Plains, I conducted a spatial analysis using high-resolution satellite crop data to examine changes in cropping patterns over time at the landscape scale. I found that cropping system intensification was positively associated with soil organic carbon, aggregation, and fungal biomass, and these effects were robust amidst variability in environmental and management factors. I also found that intensified systems were associated with greater potentially mineralizable and total nitrogen (N), and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal colonization of wheat roots, suggesting that cropping intensity enhances internal cycling of N and phosphorus (P). Continuous dryland farmers also achieved greater total crop production using fewer external inputs than wheat-fallow farmers, leading to enhanced profitability. To explain the social dynamics underpinning the cropping system revolution, I build on Carolan's application of Bourdieusian social fields to agriculture, and find several overlapping fields within Carolan's more general fields of sustainable and conventional agriculture, which are reflected in different degrees of intensification. I identify strategies for change, some of which would serve to reshape social fields, and others which leverage existing social positions and relationships, to enable farmers to overcome the barriers constraining cropping system intensification. Results from the spatial analysis suggest that, from 2008 to 2016, the High Plains witnessed a profound shift in cropping systems, as the historically dominant wheat-fallow system was replaced by intensified rotations as the dominant systems across the landscape. I estimated that these patterns over the 9-year study period increased annual grain production and annual net farm operating income, slightly reduced herbicide use, and increased C sequestration, contributing to greenhouse gas reductions. I projected each of these implications to a scenario of 100% continuous cropping adoption to estimate the potential environmental and economic impacts of cropping system intensification in the High Plains. Overall, my findings suggest that dryland cropping systems are gradually intensifying in the High Plains, and these trends are likely reversing historical negative environmental and economic trends to enhance the profitability and environmental sustainability of dryland agroecosystems.
Open Access
The social process of knowledge creation in science
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Love, Hannah Beth, author; Cross, Jennifer E., advisor; Fosdick, Bailey K., committee member; Nowacki, Jeffrey, committee member; Carolan, Michael, committee member
The Science of Team Science (SciTS) emerged as a field of study because 21st Century scientists are increasingly charged with solving complex societal and environmental challenges. This shift in the complexity of questions requires a shift in how knowledge is created. To solve the complex societal health and environmental challenges, scientific disciplines will have to work together, innovate new knowledge, and create new solutions. It is impossible for one person or one discipline to have the quantity of knowledge needed to solve these types of problems. Tackling these problems requires a team. My dissertation articles report on how knowledge is built and created on a spectrum of scientific teams from university students to long-standing teams. Collectively they answer: how is knowledge creation a social process? To answer this question, my dissertation used a mixed-methods approach that included: social network analysis, social surveys, participant observation, interviews, document analysis, and student reflections. The most important finding from my dissertation was that social relations and processes are key to knowledge creation. Historically, knowledge acquisition and creation have been thought of as individual tasks, but a growing body of literature has framed knowledge creation as a social product. This is a fundamental shift in how knowledge is created to solve complex problems. To work with scientists from other disciplines, individuals must develop personal mastery and build the necessary capacities for collaboration, collective cognitive responsibility, and knowledge building. Complex problems are solved when scientists co-evolve with teams, and individual knowledge and capacity grows alongside the ability for "team learning" Knowledge, then, is a collective product; it is not isolated or individual, but constructed and co-constructed through patterns of interactions.
Open Access
Theorizing commensality discourses: food truck communication and influence in local culture
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Combs, Mitch, author; Aoki, Eric, advisor; Khrebtan-Hörhager, Julia, committee member; Elkins, Evan, committee member; Carolan, Michael, committee member
Food trucks offer spaces of commensality where people negotiate cultural identity and senses of place though practices, tastes, and performances communicated through enactments of food sharing. In this dissertation, I theorize commensality as a rhetorical texture of subcultural ideology, a rhetorical texture of resistance to cultural gentrification, and as a digital process of online community building. I use rhetorical criticism and ethnographic methods of participant observation to analyze physical spaces of food truck commensality in Fort Collins, Colorado: The FOCO Food Truck Rally and North College Avenue. Additionally, I conduct a media discourse analysis of the Fort Collins food truck Instagram community. Overall, I argue that commensality operates as a subcultural ideology resistant and reifying of gourmet elitism, a rhetoric of difference resistant to cultural gentrification, and a process digital commensality building community through social mediated branding, networking, and audiencing.
Open Access
Tracing hydrosocial change: the social constellations of water access and allocation for oil and gas development in Colorado
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Boone, Karie, author; Laituri, Melinda, advisor; Carolan, Michael, committee member; Hempel, Lynn, committee member; Poff, LeRoy, committee member
Increasing water use for OG development in Colorado suggests a change in the social constellations of water governance. Colorado's water allocation institutions, practices and policies relationally shape and are shaped by water's biophysical movement over space and time through a hydrosocial cycle. The hydrosocial cycle (HSC) framework examines social complexity of water governance institutions by systematically analyzing institutional change and continuity to identify the causes and consequences of decreasing agricultural water access. Starting with history, change and continuity are operationalized through a historical institutional framework that systematically pinpoints institutional outcomes resulting from a particular sequence of events, policies and practices occurring in a unique context. This historical institutional analysis finds that social complexity can be measured more accurately by attending to relational and informal institutions, operationalizing the HSC framework to address ambiguities between historical policy and contemporary practices. To capture social complexity, then, this research considers how objects in nature and society are relational so that their meanings and uses depend on human agency and context. Colorado's institution of water rights is relational in two crucial ways. First, formal institutions are shaped by their social, political, and environmental settings/contexts. Concomitantly, formal institutions are shaped by processes and interactions that link Colorado's energy and water institutions across policy topics and levels of government instead of viewing them as evolving in isolation. A hydrosocial analysis additionally captures social complexity of water institutions through an examination of the often overlooked informal social processes occurring 'under the surface'. Informal institutions are nuanced norms, decision-making structures, unwritten rules and activities that shape and are shaped by agent's lived experiences. These informal dealings are consistently negotiated day-by-day, are not defined in formal laws, policies or organizational documents but help explain formal institutional change and actual policy outcomes. The integration of informal and relational institutions links the hydrological and social while further enriching our understanding of how increasing water use for OG extraction shapes agricultural water access and allocation in Colorado's rural communities. The changing nature of water use is taking place in Colorado's rural agricultural regions and in appropriated river basins, the Colorado River in the western part of the state and the South Platte River Basin flowing through the eastern plains. This dissertation asks if agricultural water users in these basins and in Colorado's top OG producing regions, Weld and Garfield Counties, are experiencing changes in water access related to increased water use for OG development. It additionally examines the implications of these changes. Each of the following chapters addresses this question while making theoretical and conceptual contributions to the HSC framework. The first two chapters utilize a comparative case study methodology to provide in-depth examination of the 'how' and 'why' of historical and political change processes, an important step in building understanding of Colorado's changing agricultural water allocation and access. A historical institutional analysis finds that social complexity can be measured more accurately by attending to relational and informal institutions. Chapter two examines relational and informal institutions from the perspective of water users on the ground and in the field. Interviews qualitatively investigate if agricultural water users are experiencing changes in water access related to increased water use for OG. In response, four primary themes emerged from an analysis of interview data: decreasing and differential water access for producers, leasing land and water from municipal and industrial users, maintaining agricultural water rights, and balancing equity in water access. Findings illuminate the important and changing role Agricultural Water Supply Organizations (AWSOs ) play in balancing equity in and maintaining water access for agricultural users. Chapter three suggests attending to increasing social distance in the U.S, including the rural-urban divide, by infusing policies with rural understandings. An embodied and inclusive pedagogy encourages empathy so that fewer political divides surface when rural communities feel silenced and forgotten. Interdisciplinary learning paradigms should work to generate empathy so that urban-biased water policies and practices infuse understanding across difference and foster social cohesion
Open Access
Understanding the dynamics and management of organic nutrient sources in smallholder farming systems: an interdisciplinary approach
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Magonziwa, Blessing, author; Fonte, Steven, advisor; Davis, Jessica, committee member; Carolan, Michael, committee member; Paustian, Keith, committee member
Smallholder farmers often face challenges in managing soil fertility due to limited inputs and high spatial variability on their farms. In many places, soil fertility, and overall soil health, is on the decline, and management of organic nutrient sources (ONS) can play a vital role in sustaining the productivity of soils. However, in mixed smallholder crop-livestock systems there is often competition for crop residues between retaining residues within fields versus feeding them to livestock. Understanding how ONS produced on-farm are managed, and the flows and drivers of this essential resource is critical for the restoration and sustainable management of soil fertility and health in smallholder agroecosystems. The objectives of this study were to: i) validate a soil health tool kit developed to facilitate smallholder research and management involving the use of ONS and other soil management strategies; ii) evaluate how different maize-based ONS (shoot, roots, manure) influence soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics; iii) understand socio-cultural, economic, and environmental drivers of ONS allocation and use; and iv) understand management and environmental drivers SOC and nutrient (N, P and K) balances across various management scenarios. To address these objectives, a soil health tool kit to provide in-field quantitative data that are comparable to formal laboratory methods was assembled. I then validated methods used in this tool kit against standard analyses conducted at national laboratories on soils collected from 36 smallholder farms in Kenya and 115 farms in Peru. My results showed that permanganate oxidizable C and pH measured with the tool kit from Kenyan and Peruvian soils were highly correlated to the same variables measured by a standard laboratory. The tool kit and standard laboratory measures of available P were less well correlated, but also showed a significant positive relationship. Both tool kit and standard lab analyses displayed similar abilities to predict maize grain yield in Kenya. My findings suggest that the tool kit methods proposed in this study have broad applicability to smallholder farms for explaining variability in crop yields, assessing soil properties of different plots and quantifying management-induced changes in soil health. In the next study, I used a mesocosm experiment and a 13C natural abundance approach, where organic residues (maize shoots, ex-situ maize roots, in-situ maize roots and cattle manure) were incubated for 11 months to trace maize-derived C into different SOC pools. My findings indicated that there was greater stabilization of shoot-derived C (2 X more than manure and 1.6 X more than ex-situ root C) in the mineral-associated organic matter fraction. At the same time, mineral additions of N, P and S (aimed at adjusting the stochiometry of the added residue inputs) led to a 60% decrease in C stabilization in the mineral-associated fraction, compared to a control with no nutrient additions. My study highlights the potential importance of residue retention as a strategy to maintain SOC and therefore soil health and did not support the idea that strategic N, P, and S additions can facilitate C stabilization in soil over the long-term. I then used focus group discussions and conducted a survey of 184 farming households to understand socio-economic, socio-cultural, and environmental drivers of ONS allocation and use at farm scale in three contrasting agroecological zones of western Kenya. I found that the more resource endowed a farmer is, the more ONS are allocated to the main production plot within a farm. However, beyond resource endowment I observed that agroecological location, and tenure, perceived soil fertility, gender and social connections also had important influences on ONS allocation. Lastly, I examined case studies from three representative farm types within three agroecological zones in western Kenya and used a modelling approach to estimate nutrient and C flows in and out of fields. Based on the estimated flows, I then examined different scenarios representing alternative possibilities for ONS management in the region. I noted differences in inputs and allocation between the three zones, but these did not affect the overall balances, which were largely influenced by fertilizer inputs, as well as nutrient export in harvest and soil erosion. Overall nutrient balances were variable, but largely negative across the zones, farm types and field types. When exploring the different management scenarios, reducing erosion led to significantly less negative N balances in all locations. A full residue retention scenario indicated the greatest impact on K balances, while for SOC scenarios with full residue retention and lablab (a high biomass legume) incorporation resulted in at least 50 % more SOC compared to current practices. Scenarios indicate that retaining residues as well as implementing erosion control measures have the potential to effectively reduce nutrient losses as well as improve SOC stocks and that these practices should be encouraged. As research and development organizations continue to engage with smallholder farmers to reduce the burden of global food insecurity, the insights gained by this research will allow for better anticipation of drivers and obstacles to improved nutrient management in these farming landscapes and communities.
Open Access
When walls talk: consumption, gender, and identity in children's bedrooms
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Solverud, Jessica Ann, author; Dickinson, Greg, advisor; Aoki, Eric, committee member; Carolan, Michael, committee member
In this thesis I assert that the discourses of both ideal and real depictions of children's bedrooms serve as vehicles for social doxa. The catalogs of Restoration Hardware Kids, Pottery Barn Kids, and The Land of Nod convey not just what an ideal boy's bedroom or girl's bedroom looks like, but what an ideal boy or girl looks and acts like. Thus, children's bedrooms operate as pedagogical sites of gender. Illuminated by Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus, furniture pieces and decorative accessories are revealed to facilitate disparate motions, lifestyles, and habits which construct disparate gender identities. In this thesis I argue that both ideal and real depictions of children's bedroom spaces function as pedagogical spaces, reflecting the doxic expectations of gender and facilitating accordant enactments of masculinity or femininity. The embodied relationship between the children and their material environment weaves the gender habitus of girlness or boyness into their performance of everyday life.