Faculty Publications

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Open Access
Agricultural conservation networks in Iowa
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023-09) Luxton, India, author; Ellis, Elizabeth, author; Arnold, Parker, author; Shakya, Prasiddha, author; Lee, Juliet, author; Ravetta, Emilia, author; Toombs, Ted, author; Mook, Anne, author; Cross, Jeni, author
Iowa's farmlands, celebrated for their remarkable agricultural productivity, are facing pressing environmental challenges, including soil erosion, waterway nitrogen pollution, and vulnerability to extreme weather events. These issues imperil the state's agricultural sector's long-term sustainability and economic stability. Despite substantial investments from governmental and non-governmental entities to encourage conservation practice use, adoption rates remain persistently low. In this report, we use quantitative, qualitative, and social network analysis on a sample of 38 farmers to understand how social networks shape their adoption of conservation practices. We analyze data through a systems framework and compare counties with high- and low-adoption of conservation practices to assess influences from the individual farmer level to the broader societal context. We conclude with a discussion of strategic implications to promote conservation adoption.
Open Access
Collaborative concession in food movement networks: the uneven relations of resource mobilization
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019-05-21) Sbicca, Joshua, author; Luxton, India, author; Hale, James, author; Roeser, Kassandra, author; MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland, publisher
How do food movements prioritize and work to accomplish their varied and often conflicting social change goals at the city scale? Our study investigates the Denver food movement with a mixed methods social network analysis to understand how organizations navigate differences in power and influence vis-à-vis resource exchange. We refer to this uneven process with the analytical concept of "collaborative concession". The strategic resource mobilization of money, land, and labor operates through certain collaborative niches, which constitute the priorities of the movement. Among these are poverty alleviation and local food production, which are facilitated by powerful development, education, and health organizations. Therefore, food movement networks do not offer organizations equal opportunity to carry out their priorities. Concession suggests that organizations need to lose something to gain something. Paradoxically, collaboration can produce a resource gain. Our findings provide new insights into the uneven process by which food movement organizations-and city-wide food movements overall-mobilize.
Open Access
Food, gentrification, and the changing city
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Sbicca, Joshua, author; FUHEM Ecosocial, publisher
Food offers a visceral entry point into the politics and processes of gentrification. Traditional explanations of gentrification - when a neighborhood experiences disinvestment and economic decline followed by "revitalization" and "redevelopment" - hinge on either political economy or cultural drivers. This article discusses the relationship between these two drivers to show how food gentrification is multifaceted and changes neighborhood class and ethnoracial demographics, foodscapes and foodways, and housing. First, poor communities in cities around the world can experience the deleterious effects of food driving gentrification, like when developers use urban agriculture to attract new residents and increase property values. Second, food itself is being gentrified, which for communities marginalized by their race or ethnicity means both the dispossession of culturally important foods that are made "cool" and become unaffordable and the upscaling of food retail that displaces former bars, cafes, restaurants, grocery stores, and gardens. The article concludes with a brief discussion of some social movement strategies and policy approaches that might prevent the harmful effects of food gentrification.
Open Access
How social networks impact agricultural land stewardship in Iowa
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Luxton, India, author; Ellis, Ellie, author; Arnold, Parker, author; Shakya, Prasiddha, author; Lee, Juliet, author; Ravetta, Emilia, author; Toombs, Ted, author; Mook, Anne, author; Cross, Jeni, author
Two-page summary of findings of a social network study to explore conservation practices among farmers in Iowa.
Open Access
Organizational innovation for energy conservation: a case study of Poudre School District
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010-11-12) Lueck, Michelle A. M., author; Byrne, Zinta S., author; Cross, Jennifer E., author
Since 2000, Poudre School District has built seven green schools and steadily improved the energy performance of all existing school buildings. The Operations Services department has received over 30 awards from local, state, and national agencies for energy conservation and sustainable design. This report provides the results of a case study that examined how Poudre School District adopted innovative practices and became a national leader in high performance buildings. We found that the adoption of sustainable design guidelines and a sustainability ethic was part of a larger organizational transformation that made sustainability the core mission of Operations Services. We describe this change process using an eight-step model that builds on previous research in organizational change; and we discuss the importance of framing the changes to generate broad-based support for sustainability. In addition, we found that Operations Services operates as a "learning organization" in a densely connected network with other public and private organizations.
Open Access
Private property rights versus scenic views: a battle over place attachments
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2001-10) Cross, Jennifer E., author
In the West, some of the most volatile political debates revolve around land-use issues. Much sociological research has focused on the relationship between length of residence and attitudes towards the environment, land-use and growth controls, but very little has investigated the relationship between place attachments and attitudes. Through depth interviews with 90 residents of Nevada County, California, I investigate the relationship between place attachments and attitudes toward local land-use issues. I develop a typology that illustrates the influence of attachments to place on attitudes towards land-use issues. This typology is illustrated through the discussion of local land-use issues.
Open Access
Solidarity and sweat equity: for reciprocal food justice research
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Sbicca, Joshua, author; Thomas A. Lyson Center for Civic Agriculture and Food Systems, publisher
Researchers committed to food justice often enter communities and nonprofits with a desire to help. They often think there is a scarcity, such as food, that they want to understand and help to increase. At the same time, research obligations may lead to extracting "findings" without advancing food justice. Such actions may unintentionally work against food justice, especially the goal of dismantling structural inequalities and advancing social equity. This commentary chronicles the ongoing and incomplete process by which I have carried out food justice research and worked toward food justice. In short, reciprocal research requires working with, not for, organizations and communities. This entails ongoing acts of solidarity. One way to express this is through flexibility with research goals in order to tailor all or parts of one’s project to answer questions that increase understanding of how to challenge structural inequalities and advance social equity. Relatedly, openness to how food justice activists and organizations confront the food movement and society more broadly to address whiteness, privilege, racial inequality, and notions of diversity can enrich critical social science. Of equal importance is sweat equity. Most food justice activists and organizations have few resources and cannot serve the whims of researchers. Therefore, providing labor is an important allied act. This increases the researchers' empathy with activists, organizations, and communities, and creates opportunities to build trust and dissolve social boundaries. To enter into a situation that deepens our knowledge of the food justice movement and advances food justice requires solidarity and sweat equity.
Open Access
What is sense of place?
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2001-11-02) Cross, Jennifer E., author
As noted in the call for this year’s papers, "Sense of place has become a buzzword used to justify everything from a warm fuzzy appreciation of a natural landscape to the selling of homesites in urban sprawl. The truth is we probably have no single "sense of place;" instead, we bring to the places we live a whole set of cultural preconceptions that shape the way we respond to the place, and in some measure reshape the place to fit those preconceptions…." This lack of a common definition or understanding of sense of place, results both from the fact that it has become a buzzword used to suit various purposes, and from the interdisciplinary nature of the concept. To provide a little background for the use of the term, I will review some of the definitions used by various social scientists, and then review my own contribution to that literature by summarizing and expanding on a few of the ideas presented at last year’s Headwaters Conference.

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