Browsing by Author "Carolan, Michael S., committee member"
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Item Open Access Collaborative climate change management: exploring new management techniques(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Cobb, Ashley, author; Thompson, Jessica Leigh, advisor; Welling, Leigh, committee member; Carolan, Michael S., committee memberGlobal climate change requires a shift in natural resource management practices and increased collaboration among land managers and surrounding communities. This qualitative study explores opportunities to enhance collaboration through collaborative conservation practices and scenario planning. I studied the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem in the northern Rocky Mountains to explore how partnerships between land management agencies can adapt to the challenges of climate change. In this thesis, through participant observation and a literature survey I examine the complexity of climate change impacts on ecological and sociological communities in the Crown. I also study the process of scenario planning as it was applied to climate change management in two case study parks in the National Park Service. I explore how scientists and decision-makers participating in the process of scenario planning challenged their assumptions about environmental management and negotiated the amount of scientific certainty needed to move forward with management. Through the exploration of these two case studies I conclude that climate change may be the window of opportunity for land managers to reconsider their roles, management objectives and partnerships.Item Open Access Coming to terms with staying, going, and returning: a rural community ethnography(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Reinig, Lydia L., author; Aoki, Eric, advisor; Griffin, Cindy L., committee member; Carolan, Michael S., committee memberThis thesis studies how people in a rural small town within the larger United States come to understand and talk about the dynamic processes of young people "staying" in, "going" from, and "returning" to their hometown. The exigency for this thesis is twofold. First, people from small towns must at some point face the question of whether to remain in or to leave their hometown. For the younger generation this question is typically answered during the transition into adulthood (i.e., high school graduation and one's 18th birthday), but often will be addressed many more times in their lifetime. While "staying," "going," and "returning" may be understood as a normative process, these actions have profound and distinct impacts on the future of the U.S. American rural small town. Second, the small town in middle America provides a unique and academically underappreciated location for inquiry. Understanding how both young people and other members of a community make sense of "staying" and "going" provides insights into rural community life. Grounded in the Ethnography of Communication this study takes up three broad research questions for analysis: RQ 1: How do people in a rural community make sense of young people's (i.e., 18-30 years of age) practices of staying, leaving, and returning to their hometown? RQ 2: What are the localized taxonomy of terms (Hymes, 1974) used by participants to describe the phenomenon of "staying," "going," and "returning?" RQ 3: What do participant discourses reveal about "coming to terms with cultures" (Philipsen, 2008)--the negotiation of two or more cultural codes in one's life? Using ethnographic interview procedures, supplemented by participant observation of the community, the narratives of 11 interlocutors--six young people and five older community members--are engaged in responses to research questions. Young people narrate the pinnacle moment of high school graduation as a catalyst opportunity to leave the community. Throughout interviews both young people and community members describe the importance of young people coming back to visit during the years that they are away at college and beyond. Moreover, not all young people intend to leave the community and never return. Those who do return, both to visit and to live, are situated as forever members of the community by older generations who take vested interests in the lives of young people. Three unique, interconnected taxonomies develop in participants' narratives regarding considerations: "you come back," "it's (like) family," and "everybody knows everybody." Interlocutors' negotiations of "everybody knows everybody" in contrast to "everybody knows your business" reveal tensions between autonomy and collectivity as interlocutors personally and communally engage in "coming to terms with 'staying,' 'going,' and 'returning.'" Ultimately, collective orientations towards family are privileged in motivating "staying" and "returning" practices. An underlying tension arose in narratives; how can the cultural code of collectivity, or code of "staying," be maintained when an individualistic narrative, or code of "leaving," is appropriated? While the default trajectory of "schooling" and jobs elsewhere explains why some young people leave indefinitely, young people's narratives are supplanted by their overarching commitments to stay and contribute to the community. Instead of focusing on the liminal experience, interlocutors elect to focus on their small town identities, creating a code of recognition that acknowledges the requisite need for education beyond high school. The requisite post-high school education means young people must leave and perhaps will subsequently relocate. That said, the code of recognition is firmly grounded in the collectivistic role of family and community in one's life. Ultimately, the code of recognition acknowledges the presence of individualistic and collectivistic ways of speaking and being. This thesis then explores "coming to terms with cultures" (Philipsen 2008) through the codes of "staying," "going," and "returning," making contributions to the study of U.S. American speech communities first called for by Philipsen in 1975.Item Open Access Deconstructing homegardens: food sovereignty and development in northern Nicaragua(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Boone, Karie, author; Taylor, Peter L., advisor; Fernandez-Gimenez, Maria E., committee member; Carolan, Michael S., committee memberThrough analysis of data from interviews, documents, and participant observation this study addresses the challenges and opportunities of homegardens as an effective strategy to promote food sovereignty and prepare for the projected negative climate change impacts. Why may farmers in the Segovias region of Nicaragua resist changing their food production and consumption strategies? This research examines the conceptualization of food sovereignty from the level of international food governance and highlights the disconnects that arise from NGO interventions. I suggest that promoting food sovereignty effectively will require concrete counter development strategies that lead NGOs to transform and democratize how they work.Item Open Access Is there an heir apparent to the Crown? A more informed understanding of connectivity and networked environmental governance in the Crown of the Continent(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Bixler, Richard Patrick, author; Taylor, Peter Leigh, advisor; Carolan, Michael S., committee member; Cross, Jennifer E., committee member; Cheng, Antony S., committee memberMulti-actor and multi-level processes characterize contemporary environmental governance where a multiplicity of actors and modes of governance are operating in diverse and overlapping spheres of authority. No fixed spatial or temporal level is appropriate for governing ecosystems and their services sustainably, effectively, and equitably. Rather, ecological processes interact across a range of spatial scales, which has led to an increased interest in the way networks operate and govern environmental processes across landscapes. These governance schemes involve communication and coordinated action by federal, state, and local agencies working with private landowners, nonprofit organizations, and industry. They involve multiple, interconnected issues within contexts that are complex, dynamic, and involve uncertainties. Working across multiple levels reveals governance and coordination challenges that often outstrip capacities, structures, and decision-making processes of the individuals or organizations involved. The processes of initiating multi-actor governance is not politically neutral, nor does it exist in a vacuum. It rather reflects competing interpretations of the appropriate distribution of power in a network and how information and knowledge are created and acted upon for environmental governance. Through this dissertation, I maintain that making progress towards these challenges requires a concerted effort and focus on the role of community-based conservation within the broader and emerging cross-scale networks of environmental governance. These cross-scale networks of landscape governance can either strengthen the role of community-based natural resource management or undermine them. To this end, my dissertation entitled: "Is there an Heir Apparent to the Crown? A More Informed Understanding of Connectivity and Networked Environmental Governance in the Crown of the Continent" uses social network analysis and qualitative interviews to explain the mechanisms that nurture cross-scale linkages that enhance collaborative community capacity in environmental governance. Building on a fundamental premise of landscape conservation, ecological connectivity, I develop three conceptual ideas in this dissertation: that social connectivity is a necessary prerequisite for network governance and landscape-scale conservation. Social connectivity includes concepts of social networks and is concerned with how information flows between individuals and organizations. Discourse connectivity is that crucial next step that links the social and the ecological together through a process of narrative and problem framing. Finally, I develop the idea of assemblage connectivity. The interest here is how the previous three concepts (ecological, social, and discourse) catalyze the conditions for cross-scale conservation that strengthens the role of community-based natural resource management. This framework is then applied across three empirical issue 'case-studies', invasive species management, grizzly bear conservation, and climate adaptation.Item Embargo Three essays on food policy adoption and economic welfare(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Kashyap, Pratyoosh, author; Jablonski, Becca B.R., advisor; Suter, Jordan F., committee member; Hill, Alexandra E., committee member; Carolan, Michael S., committee memberThis dissertation contains three chapters that empirically explore policies supporting school meals and local food marketing as well as drivers of food demand with the goal of providing comprehensive insights into their complexities and implications, ultimately contributing to a deeper understanding of the food systems. Recognizing school meals as critical safety nets for children in low-income households, many states in the United States (U.S.) are passing legislation to adopt universal free school meals, linking their funding to the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), a federally funded universal free school meal program. In the first chapter we develop a unique school district-level dataset and use a Cox regression model to demonstrate the importance of federal- and state-level policy factors in increasing the likelihood of CEP adoption. In the second chapter, we examine the relationships among stocks of community wealth, state legislation supporting farm to school (FTS), and the intensity of FTS activities. Leveraging the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 2019 FTS Census, a new disaggregated database on state-level FTS policies, a new dataset of stocks of local wealth, and using a Heckman selection model, we find positive associations between cultural and social capital and FTS intensity, and associations with state FTS policies. In the third chapter, we shift our focus to examining economic welfare implications in the event of an African Swine Fever (ASF) outbreak in the U.S. Although ASF is not a food safety risk and has never been detected in the U.S., little is known about changes in U.S. pork demand in case of an outbreak. Using an online survey experiment, we find that the demand for pork is predicted to shift downward by approximately 31% resulting in an annual welfare loss of $55.46 billion in the pork market, exacerbating the losses to pork producers. Results also indicate that government institutions are most trusted when it comes to sharing news about food safety, strongly suggesting its importance in generating awareness prior to and during an ASF outbreak.Item Open Access Visibility, legitimacy, and power: a North Carolina fishing community and governance of the commons(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) May, Candace K., author; Taylor, Peter Leigh, advisor; Carolan, Michael S., committee member; Lacy, Michael G., committee member; Stevis, Dimitris, committee memberResearchers studying common pool resource (CPR) governance argue that the participation of natural resource dependent people in formal processes of natural resource governance is essential for the sustainability of those resources. In accord with the vast body of related research and political activism, the United States fisheries management system promotes co-management practices as the pathway to sustainable fisheries governance. Nevertheless, empirical evidence illustrates that local fishers are increasingly disappearing from the fishing industry and their communities at the same time as the degradation of fisheries is increasing. I examine this contradiction through a case study of a community of commercial fisherpeople in Two Rivers, North Carolina. I develop the concepts of visibility, legitimacy, and power to capture the multiple levels and scales of structure and agency that shape the participation of local fishers in governance activities and lead to environmental degradation. Data was collected through interviews, observations, and review of policy documents and local archives. An important finding from this study is that many local fishers practice active non-participation, - intentional non-involvement in formal political activities while instead engaging in informal fisheries governance activities. However, the political inactivity associated with active non-participation decreases the legitimacy and power of local fishers, hastening their disarticulation from the fisheries, further decreasing the efficacy of formal political processes and ultimately resulting in unsustainable fisheries governance. Through the active political participation of commercial fishers, there is hope and a way forward for the future of fisher livelihoods and the sustainability of the nation's fisheries.