Mountain Scholar :: Browsing by Author "Mumme, Stephen, committee member"

Browsing by Author "Mumme, Stephen, committee member"

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Open Access
Accountability and legitimacy in transboundary networked forest governance: a case study of the Roundtable on the Crown of the Continent
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Jedd, Theresa, author; Betsill, Michele, advisor; Stevis, Dimitris, committee member; Mumme, Stephen, committee member; Cheng, Antony, committee member
Using a social constructivist ontology to examine key debates and areas of inquiry vis-à-vis the democratic nature of transboundary forest governance, this research examines the case of the Roundtable on the Crown of the Continent, an instance of networked governance. Part I builds up to an examination of the movement toward conceptualizing transboundary networked governance, exploring the claim that government has given way to governance, blurring the lines between public and private, and moving beyond its antecedent models--systems theory and complexity, corporatism, state-in-society, new public management and privatization, inter alia--to reflect a more complicated and inherently collaborative relationship between state, society, and market-based actors. The dissertation project, then, investigates several key questions. At a basic level, it asks, what does networked governance look like, and in the case of the Crown Roundtable, how might these arrangements be adaptive given the absence of an overarching forests treaty? Looking deeper into the implications of networked governance, the project then moves to an investigation of the ways that these processes become legitimate modes of governing and how they allow actors to hold each other accountable. Evidence in the Crown Roundtable suggests that the state is simply one actor among many. In this sea of various players, without the traditional forms of accountability, how do we ensure that governance retains its democratic qualities? The second part (chapters 4, 5, 6, 7) builds from the initial observations in the first part (chapters 1, 2, and 3) that state boundaries in the Crown of the Continent are transected by landscape identities and norms. It examines the implications for maintaining democracy in governance. Given the lack of institutions (such as the juridical, legal, and electoral channels) available at the domestic level, how can actors be held accountable? What do shifts toward a flattened and fragmented forest governance landscape represent in terms of both the ability of diverse actors to relate to one another and also for the participants to see NG as a worthwhile process to engage? In answering these questions, Part II examines whether NG architectures are able to incorporate channels for accountability while simultaneously drawing upon a broad base of participation and maintaining social legitimacy. Finally, the dissertation concludes with thoughts on institutional design. In so doing, it hopefully contributes to an understanding of how to build collaborative networked arrangements that are better able to address transboundary environmental problems.
Open Access
Examining comprehensive internationalization at two state comprehensive universities (SCUs): a comparative case study of the internationalization process
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Griffin, Jermain, author; Jennings, Louise, advisor; Kuk, Linda, committee member; Wolgemuth, Jennifer, committee member; Mumme, Stephen, committee member
This study examines how state comprehensive universities (SCUs) made internationalization an institutional priority amidst competing interests. This study integrated the American Council on Education's Model for Comprehensive Internationalization (2012), organizational change theories including evolutionary and revolutionary change (Burke, 2014), and literature on SCUs (Fryar, 2015; Henderson, 2005, 2007) in a qualitative comparative case study design to understand how comprehensive internationalization can be achieved at an SCU. The research is presented in three manuscript chapters. The first manuscript chapter focuses on how campus advocates for internationalization understood the concept of comprehensive internationalization. Internationalization at both institutions was centered on the curriculum and co-curricular experiences, with less attention to other features of a comprehensive international model. This key finding corroborates past iterations of how internationalization is described in US higher education, raising questions about the ground support for broader efforts of internationalization at SCUs that encompasses other key features of comprehensive internationalization as outlined by leaders in the field, including the American Council on Education (ACE) Center for Internationalization and Global Engagement (CIGE) (2016). The second manuscript chapter explores how internationalization advocates characterized how internationalization occurred at their institutions and how it was working. Participants from both institutions attributed increased communication between colleagues, primarily among the faculty, but also with some staff divisions, as key to building momentum for internationalization at their institutions. Finally, the third chapter examines how SCUs managed comprehensive internationalization against other competing interests. Participants from both institutions shared different degrees of struggle with finances and public support for publicly-funded higher education among other competing interests.
Restricted
Failure to communicate how American progressive neoliberal campus policies contribute to conservative mistrust of higher education and skepticism towards research on anthropogenic global warming
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Bork, Nathanial, author; McIvor, David, advisor; Cafaro, Phil, committee member; Hitt, Matthew, committee member; Mumme, Stephen, committee member
When conservatives believe American universities implement policies that limit their free speech rights and demean their social identities, their support for the institution can decline. Negative partisanship and political polarization push consumption of agreeable media and distrust of antagonistic media, which means conservative media and social media are a major source of information about the contemporary university system for that population. I hypothesize that this is an important variable, among many, in understanding why conservatives reject environmental research on topics such as Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). To explain this phenomenon, I begin by reviewing the current research on conservative skepticism of AGW. I add to this literature through a treatment effect experiment I conducted, which reaffirms the findings of others that those on the political right perceive themselves as under threat on campus, which impacts their experiences in the classroom and their views of higher education. Second, I conduct a critical analysis of higher education as a progressive neoliberal university. I argue that, as a neoliberal institution, the contemporary university tries to operate as a financially successful organization that manages its resources, employees, and students efficiently; and as a progressive institution, it dedicates itself to bringing about social and political changes, especially through the use Inclusion, Equity, and Diversity (IED) policies, and that these two goals create conflicts with one another. Third, I use the work of the social theorist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas to diagnose these conflicts as social pathologies, both in terms of material harm to students and faculty, and as generating campus conditions which violate his 'ideal speech community,' which I use as my model of social health. I then look at Habermas's contributions to the disciplines of Discourse Theory and Public Deliberation, and demonstrate how these fields offer pathways to improving campus policies, which could hopefully improve the public perception of the university, and its research as being legitimate in our current hyper-partisan political environment. Fourth, I use Social and Political Psychology to explain why current approaches to gain the cooperation of conservatives on AGW initiatives are not working, and explain how understanding social identity, particularly partisan social identity, can produce Best Practices that reach people across the political spectrum and encourage deliberation and cooperation. Finally, I look at various reform proposals to higher education, which aim to achieve IED goals in ways that are also inclusive of conservative and heterodox thinkers, and explain why implementing them would benefit students, faculty, and administrators.
Open Access
Hydraulic fracturing and the corporate colonization of the subsurface
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Fryer, M. Zoe, author; Macdonald, Bradley, advisor; Mumme, Stephen, committee member; McIvor, David W., committee member; Bubar, Roe, committee member
The United States presidential election of 2000 played a prominent role in determining the trajectory of the country for the next quarter of a century. The new millennium ushered in a new era with the George W. Bush administration chosen by the courts and the electoral college, the proliferation of hydraulic fracturing, Citizens United which flooded politics with money, restrictions in democracy, and persistent global climate crises. This dissertation will explore the role of the state in facilitating the corporate colonization of the subsurface. Drawing upon the ideas within Ralph Miliband's The State in Capitalist Society, this dissertation will critically analyze American pluralism and the state to reveal the many ways in which American democracy by the people has become democracy by the corporations. Analysis will be conducted using power structure research wherein key governmental positions held by the gas and oil elite will be identified, while using the overall framework of Miliband's state apparatus, including the five areas of the executive, the administrative, the coercive, the judicial, and the sub-state. The primary argument maintained throughout this dissertation is that the gas and oil industry elite have commandeered American democracy and policies to provide for their own benefit, at the expense of the American people and the health of the environment. The conclusion will include the work of Michael Lowy to argue for an eco-socialist leaning future wherein the gas and oil and subsurface are reclaimed as property of the state to be held in preservation.
Open Access
Institutions and structural transformations in the North American economy
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Walke, Adam Gregory, author; Weiler, Stephan, advisor; Vasudevan, Ramaa, advisor; Fremstad, Anders, committee member; Mumme, Stephen, committee member
It is often asserted that secure property rights and legal frameworks conducive to the functioning of markets are essential institutional foundations of a capitalist economy. It is sometimes even claimed that they are preconditions of economic growth. Efforts to implement those institutions have, however, produced heterogeneous outcomes for different groups of people. This dissertation considers the effects of two waves of institutional change in North America: the nineteenth-century privatization and subsequent alienation of communal property in the United States and Mexico and the late-twentieth-century neoliberal reforms in Mexico. Both episodes contributed to profound structural transformations in the North American economy. In the process of shaping important aspects of the present capitalist economies of Mexico and the United States, the above-mentioned institutional changes resulted in land loss, dispossession, the destruction of traditional livelihoods and, for many people, insertion into labor markets on the lowest rungs, with reduced autonomy, and with little or no job security. The dissertation examines three cases of communal property privatization. First, it considers the effect of the 1887 Dawes General Allotment Act on American Indian migration using data from the 1930 U.S. Census. The results suggest that individuals who were likely to have lost land due to allotment had a higher propensity to migrate to cities and to other states. Second, historical literature is reviewed to understand how the privatization of communal property under Mexico's 1856 Lerdo Law exacerbated land loss and inequality. That episode inspired subsequent efforts to reverse the effects of privatization through the creation of a new form of communal property known as ejidos during and after the Mexican Revolution. Third, the consequences of 1992 constitutional reforms allowing the privatization of ejidos are considered. The main finding is that municipalities with larger relative declines in ejido and agrarian community membership (as a percentage of population) and more land sales to non-ejido-members experienced larger increases in income inequality. Mexico's 1992 ejido reforms were part of a broader set of neoliberal reforms aimed at seamlessly integrating the country into the North American and global economies. Trade and investment regulations were liberalized, which contributed to the spread of cross-border production sharing or "offshoring" arrangements in the manufacturing sector. The last section of the dissertation considers the effects of those arrangements on employment volatility. The main finding is that reliance on offshoring-related revenues generally had a large, positive impact on manufacturing-sector employment volatility in Mexico over the 2007 to 2020 period. In contrast, trade that was not related to offshoring had, at most, a weak impact on volatility. The main policy implication is that attracting jobs in the labor-intensive stages of transnational manufacturing production processes may entail the risk of increasing employment volatility.
Open Access
Justice, democracy and the siting of nuclear waste repositories: the Buan and Gyungju cases of South Korea
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Huh, Youngsoo, author; Macdonald, Bradley J., advisor; Duffy, Robert J., committee member; Mumme, Stephen, committee member; Kim, Joon, committee member
Siting a radioactive waste repository in a nation is one of the most controversial environmental issues to date. During the last two decades, the Korean government has failed to site a repository in the face of vehement opposition from the potential host sites. The repeated failures of the Korean government's siting policy are due to the fact that it relied on the DAD (Decide, Announce and Defend) siting policy emphasizing the technical and economic criteria while neglecting the demands from the local communities to participate in the decision making process. As a consequence, the Korean government discarded the conventional DAD policy to adopt the VA (Voluntary Approach), which is based on participatory democracy. In 2005, this change in the siting policy took effect resulting in the competitive referenda to host the repository in four cities, in which Gyungju City won the competition. Three requirements for the VA siting policy are safety, compensation and the democratic procedure. No doubt that safety and compensation are the minimum requirements for any siting policy. However, the Korean cases prove that the democratic procedure is a more crucial factor over safety and compensation in order to obtain the local community's acceptance of the facility. The most basic assumption of the VA is that the host communities should not be sacrificed to serve the interests of the rest of the country. Therefore, the siting is feasible only when it can benefit both the host communities and the rest of the country together. In this respect, the democratic procedure in the VA must include the concepts of justice, which takes into account the long-term effects of the siting on the host communities. Hence, the Korean cases will be analyzed in terms of whether the ideal conceptions of justice and democracy are practiced in the siting process. In particular, the "Buan Conflict" and the "Gyungju Referendum" will be compared and analyzed in detail since they represent the two typical examples of success and failure in the Korean siting policy. The process leading to the resolution at Gyungju, however, is too flawed to be considered democratic. Also from the perspective of environmental justice, the Gyungju siting has many problems. Nevertheless, even the imperfect democracy practiced in Gyungju achieved significant success since it contained the most essential element of the VA: self-determination by the affected people. Despite its limitation, the Gyungju case illustrates how the VA has the best potential to elicit a social consensus required to solve the nuclear waste siting dilemma.
Open Access
Rhetorics of song: critique, persuasion & education in Woody Guthrie & Martin Hoffman's "Deportees"
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Kannan, Vani, author; Doe, Sue, advisor; Langstraat, Lisa, advisor; Mumme, Stephen, committee member
This thesis investigates the lyrical and musical elements of the song "Deportees," and considers the song's reinterpretation in two contemporary songs. Through autoethnographic writing and rhetorical analysis, I analyze the way all three texts respond to silences in popular media, and in doing so, shed light on the nationalistic ideologies embedded in that silence. I argue that the songs' preservation and circulation of marginalized histories and the performance practices through which they circulate suggest their rich rhetorical and pedagogical potential to inform scholarship in rhetoric and composition. I conclude that transnational feminist analysis and production of song texts and autoethnographic writing can support rhetoric and composition's commitment to social justice by offering guidelines for composing critical texts that respond to silences in the historical record, and allow students and scholars to "write themselves into" transnational events.
Open Access
Romero's rhetoric: blurred audience identity as unifying tactic in war-torn El Salvador
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Gabriel, Darcy, author; Doe, Sue, advisor; Garcia, Antero, committee member; Mumme, Stephen, committee member
In this thesis I examine a homily given by Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador in 1979, "The Church's Mission in a Crisis." In particular, I use critical discourse analysis in three main areas. First, I analyze the intertextuality and genre conventions associated with Archbishop Romero's homily. Second, I examine the ways that Archbishop Romero brought various audience groups into his homily in order to broaden the scope of audiences who could be receptive to his call for social justice. Finally, I examined how the homily interacted with and interrupted power relations. I found that Archbishop Romero followed the tradition of Catholic doctrine from Vatican II and Puebla in making direct connections between scripture and daily life in his homilies. In this way Archbishop Romero was able to incorporate into his homilies the call to action for social justice. "The Church's Mission in a Crisis" upheld the distance between the Church and the poor, but it also pushed back through the inclusion in the homily of results from a diocese survey. Through my examination of the influence of the homily, I used the framework of social movement rhetoric in order to examine the influence that Archbishop Romero had rather than attempt to trace the ideological impact of one homily. In this way, using critical discourse analysis to examine texts within social movements allows for in-depth case studies of texts in a way that encourages situating the case study within the larger social movement.
Open Access
Sharing water across boundaries in the Colorado River Basin: mapping agricultural policies, data, and perspectives
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Sternlieb, Faith, author; Laituri, Melinda, advisor; Waskom, Reagan, committee member; Mumme, Stephen, committee member; Heikkila, Tanya, committee member
Emerging institutional arrangements that incorporate water sharing indicate changes in both the political and environmental climate in the Colorado River Basin (CRB). These arrangements are geographically taking shape at the intersections of hydrologic, political, and sectoral boundaries. Water sharing arrangements (WSAs) foster an array of relationships between institutions and between actors and organizations responsible for designing and administering rules and policies, where the agricultural (Ag) sector is at the center of these arrangements. Water sharing provides a means to better understand different types of overlapping boundaries, contributing to new theories and methodologies about changes in governance. Therefore, the culmination of this research seeks to answer the question: what is the role of boundaries in water sharing arrangements and their potential contribution to agricultural water governance in the Colorado River Basin? This dissertation presents three boundary studies of WSAs in the CRB, illuminating changes in governance related to increasing the legal and political capacity to share water under stressed conditions. A political boundary analysis shows emergent patterns in Ag water governance, patterns which resulted from a boundary typology incorporating physical, political, and sectoral boundaries. The boundary typology was applied to the other two studies: a geospatial analysis of water sharing arrangements and a case study in the CRB through interviews with farmers and Ag water managers of Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) projects. A geospatial analysis provides the necessary arena to geovisualize Ag water governance through the introduction of governance layers. Governance layers are defined by two key components: (a) mandated or naturally occurring geographic boundaries and (b) decisions made based on those boundaries. The third study tests the application of the boundary typology and its innate connection to scale to better understand the geographic perspectives of farmers regarding changes in Ag water governance, especially as they relate to WSAs in the Basin. The focus of the interviews is on the USBR, specifically to better understand whether the USBR inhibits or encourages water sharing across hydrologic, political, and sectoral boundaries. Together these three studies demonstrate the importance of hydrologic, political, sectoral, and other boundaries in collective and individual decision-making by agricultural water users, irrigation districts, the state, and the federal government about water management for agriculture across the basin. In addition, boundaries, whether bonafied or fiat, can be spatialized, or localized in space. Finally, just as space is integral in understanding agricultural water governance, so is place, such as the places that support agriculture. Places throughout the CRB are changing. The boundaries that define place are shifting, making way for new opportunities like the water sharing arrangements that have revolutionized an aging system.
Open Access
Small government, big problems: climate change adaptation policy in North American Great Lakes localities
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Gelardi, Carrington, author; Schomburg, Madeline, advisor; Scott, Ryan, committee member; Mumme, Stephen, committee member; Denning, Scott, committee member
The Great Lakes region is home to 30 million people, one of the world's largest economies, and the world's largest freshwater ecosystem. These characteristics make the region uniquely vulnerable to climate change. Local governments in the area are subject to the impacts of climate change whether they are prepared for them or not. To explore this issue, this paper seeks to answer the question, "What is the state of local climate change adaptation policy in the Great Lakes region?" Most literature that exists on local adaptation focuses on larger cities with populations over 50,000 people. This project fills that gap by looking at climate plans from all U.S. local governments that border the Great Lakes regardless of their size. To do this, climate change adaptation plans and policies were gathered from each county and sub-county municipality (such as cities, villages, towns, and townships) in the United States that border the Great Lakes. A text analysis was performed that compared the documents to regional climate science, as well as an inductive content analysis to pull out the major topics in each plan. Local governments in the Great Lakes region are in the beginning stages of adapting to climate change. 6% sent back relevant policies. Many of them were small governments with under 20,000. Findings suggest a lack the capacity to adequately adapt, especially within the smallest governments. The degree of assistance needed from larger institutions to supplement any insufficiencies is still unclear. The results of this project capture a snapshot of how local governments bordering the Great Lakes are (or are not) adapting to climate change. This can be used to foster intergovernmental learning on how sub-state governments in the region can adapt, while also providing insight into the boundaries of local action in the face of a global issue.

Browsing by Author "Mumme, Stephen, committee member"

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