Theses and Dissertations

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COVID-19, policymaking, and the production of harm in the meatpacking sector
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Luxton, India M., author; Malin, Stephanie, advisor; Opsal, Tara, committee member; Cross, Jennifer E., committee member; Sbicca, Joshua, committee member; Ipsen, Annabel, committee member; Hausermann, Heidi, committee member
In March 2020, the United States was forced to respond to the impending threat of COVID-19. Businesses, schools, and many of society's institutions shuttered in hopes of preventing mass transmission. And yet, meatpacking plants remained open. By September 2021, over 59,000 meatpacking workers tested positive for COVID-19 and close to 300 workers had died from the virus (Douglas 2021). In this dissertation, I document the socio-political, structural, and institutional roots of high rates of COVID-19 transmission among meatpacking workers—and the impacts of firm decisions and federal, state, and local governance structures on workers. I utilize literature pertaining to industrialized animal agriculture, political economy, green criminology, and racial capitalism to analyze the intersections among policymaking and production of harm within the meatpacking sector. Drawing on 39 in-depth interviews, critical policy ethnography, and content analysis, I explore the impacts of labor and food policies on the safety and wellbeing of meatpacking workers prior to and during COVID-19. Through an extended multiscalar case study of the JBS plant in Greeley, Colorado, I trace the involvement of agribusiness actors in federal, state, and local level policymaking during COVID-19. I examine how legacies of racialized labor exploitation have enabled firms to uphold the treadmill of meat production and perpetrate hazardous working conditions—conditions further upheld through corporate self-regulation, rather than federal intervention. I document how regulatory power of the federal agencies tasked with protecting worker and public health, including the CDC and OSHA, has been greatly diminished in recent years due to declined funding, staff capacity, and a neoliberal political structure that favors corporate self-responsibility over state enforcement. I argue that a system of harm has been codified into the regulatory system; harm that emerges directly from policymaking and the outcomes of a neoliberal capitalist political-economic system. Throughout this dissertation, I analyze how meatpacking workers' vulnerabilities during COVID-19 were amplified by issues of procedural injustice and historical legacies of racial inequality and exploitation. I conclude with a discussion of theoretical and policy implications and offer suggestions for future research
Open Access
Mississippi prisons as sites of environmental injustice: extreme heat, social death, and the state
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Luzbetak, Austin, author; Opsal, Tara, advisor; Mao, KuoRay, committee member; Malin, Stephanie, committee member; Jacobi, Tobi, committee member
Expanding on existing literature which understands incarcerated people as victims of environmental injustice and states as complicit actors in the production or allowance of environmental harm, I explore how incarcerated people in Mississippi experience extreme heat and how the state of Mississippi manages heat in state carceral facilities. I answer these questions by drawing on data from letter correspondence with people in three state prisons in Mississippi, as well as conducting critical policy analysis on relevant Mississippi laws, policy documents, and Department of Corrections reports. My findings from correspondence show that extreme heat amplifies the experience of "social death" already endemic to incarceration. More specifically, extreme heat intensifies incarcerated peoples' experiences of social disconnection and isolation, humiliation, and loss of sense of self, all of which produce social death. Moreover, state law and Mississippi Department of Corrections policy do not adequately protect incarcerated people from extreme heat, which I characterize as a state-green crime of omission. Instead, my findings from critical policy analysis demonstrate how the state of Mississippi is centrally focused on turning people in prison into laborers to maintain the state's carceral arm and provide benefits to counties, municipalities, and state agencies. I argue that these data have profound implications not only for environmental justice researchers and green criminologists, but more broadly for all who are interested in the project of prison abolition.
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
"It was a disaster for us:" 15 years of farming in the shadow of Bumbuna Dam
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Stevick, Katherine, author; Luna, Jessie, advisor; Raynolds, Laura, committee member; Hausermann, Heidi, committee member
This thesis draws on interviews, participatory mapping, and participant observation in Kalanthuba chiefdom, Sierra Leone, to explore how Limba farmers in Kadala and Kamathor villages understand life with Bumbuna Dam 15 years after its construction. In the first chapter, I argue that the government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) and its industry partner, WeBuild, have taken Limba farmers' land and abandoned the people, leaving them to fend for themselves. Government investment in green energy has transformed villagers into what some anthropologists have termed "surplus populations," who must now scrabble for survival as historic livelihood strategies become increasing untenable. "Surplus" in this context does not imply a neo-Malthusian notion of a population explosion, but rather people who have been left in a vulnerable position half-in and half-out of capitalist economic relations, rather than becoming a fully proletarianized labor force. In the second chapter, I borrow a phrase which recurred throughout my interviews—"sitting in the dark"—to frame how Limba farmers' experience and theorize this half-in, half-out position and experience of abandonment. Villagers use "sitting in the dark" to refer to a figurative lack of education, understanding, and power as well as a literal exclusion from access to electricity. For residents of Kadala and Kamathor, I argue, darkness symbolizes not only exclusion from the material benefits of Bumbuna Dam, but also from modernity as a status with attendant material benefits. Limba leaders' attempts to gain access to electricity for their people, therefore, can be understood as a bid for inclusion in the benefits of green energy development and in the material advantages of being "modern."
Open Access
Inequitable, disparate outcomes for U.S. divorces in 2022: how gender and age moderate family income and divorce
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Falkinburg, Buday, author; Nowacki, Jeffrey, advisor; Roberts, Anthony, committee member; Braunstein, Elissa, committee member
Divorce can significantly affect personal income, which economically harms adults and children during the post-divorce recovery. Half a century of research on how much a divorce affects gender stays relevant even to this day. What are the heterogeneous effects of divorce on income? Female divorcées potentially have less time to recover from a gray divorce than male divorcées due to a shorter time for higher education, job training, and career development. Devastating consequences plummet if divorcées are not adequately prepared or have a solid plan to rebuild their financial stability. Lower wage-earning potential and segregated occupations significantly affect female-headed households. Investigating the effects of divorce on the gendered family income differential is critical to research, as divorce, gender, and age are contributing mechanisms for the likelihood of the feminization of poverty. Examining the interaction of gender and age in the consequential context of divorces continues to marginalize female divorcées but significantly harms older divorced men more. Divorced women most likely will experience a delayed start to recuperate from the lost time of economic growth and wealth accumulation compared to male divorcées. An imperative suggestion for women is to obtain higher education credentials before significant life events such as marriage, childbirth, or divorce to obtain long-term economic stability.
Open Access
Understanding first-generation, low-income, Latinx student networks: an exploration of student support at a modern land-grant university
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Mellott, Bailey, author; Cross, Jennifer, advisor; Luna, Jessie, committee member; Gonzalez-Voller, Jessica, committee member
This thesis employs qualitative analysis of social network data and interview transcripts to explore the social networks and support systems of 18 first-generation, low-income, Latinx students at Colorado State University (CSU), an Emerging Hispanic-Serving Institution (eHSI) and land-grant university in Northern Colorado. Framed by intersectionality, critical race theory and social network theories, the study investigates how students establish connections on campus, the nature of these connections, and how students make sense of how their networks support them in pursuit of their educational goals. The findings highlight the centrality of peer relationships and the critical influence of mentors and campus programming in fostering student engagement and persistence. The thesis underscores the importance of culturally responsive institutional support and promoting an inclusive educational environment, and ends with brief recommendations for institutions including expanded and resourced programming to further support diverse student needs and aspirations.
Open Access
Students with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic: how an inverted disaster impacted educational access, student outcomes, and family strain
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Bendeck, Shawna Lee, author; Cross, Jennifer E., advisor; Malin, Stephanie A., committee member; Hastings, Orestes P., committee member; Hausermann, Heidi, committee member
During the COVID-19 pandemic, school buildings were closed, and education took place through a variety of at-home, virtual, and hybrid learning models. These alternative teaching modalities were especially challenging for students with disabilities. As a socially vulnerable population, children with disabilities and their families are at greater risk of poor outcomes during disasters and disruptions in schooling. The pandemic was also a different type of disaster. In this dissertation, I propose the COVID-19 pandemic was an inverted disaster, defined by the following characteristics: it was temporally and spatially unbounded; it posed a physical yet invisible threat to all human lives; and its ubiquity and invisibility led to the breakdown of institutional and social support systems. As schools were closed, educators were left unprepared for continued learning during such an event. Students with disabilities rely on the consistency of educational and therapeutic services, accommodations, and modifications for their continued learning and growth. The pandemic presents an urgent need to examine the delivery and consequences of education for these students, and to discover best practices for moving forward. This dissertation is guided by the following research questions: 1) How was education altered during the pandemic? 2) How did shifts in education differentially impact students with disabilities and their parents? and, 3) How did parents mitigate the impacts of school closures during the pandemic, despite the unique challenges posed by the disaster? To answer these questions, I conducted a mixed-methods study that included: 1) surveys with 125 parents and caregivers of children in K-8 grades; 2) qualitative in-depth interviews with a subsample of 39 parents in Northern Colorado; and 3) social network analysis with 29 of these parents. Fifty percent of parents who participated had at least one child with a disability. This study represents a total of 248 children, 83 of which were identified as having a disability qualifying them for special education services. First, findings from this dissertation revealed that due to a lack of preparation and planning for an inverted disaster, schools were unable to provide consistent, equitable educational services to students with disabilities throughout waves of the pandemic. These students faced structural barriers to education that limited their access to general and special education, therapeutic services, and their peers and educational support systems. Second, due to these barriers, students with disabilities experienced greater setbacks in their academics, physical and mental health, and their socio-emotional development. Third, parents experienced strain on their roles, their homes, and their relationships. Role conflict was greater for parents who had a child with a disability. Fourth, parents of children with disabilities reported more stress, worry, and lower wellbeing than their peers. The intersectionality of disability with single parenthood, race, socioeconomic status, and work location impacted various aspects of mental health in disproportionate ways. Fifth, parents mitigated the impacts of the pandemic and school closures by altering forms of connection with their social networks and by developing new networks to meet the unique demands of the pandemic. Parents with stronger social support networks (i.e. larger, denser, more diverse, etc.) experienced less mental health strain than parents who had weaker networks. Social networks provided a buffer to the negative impacts of the pandemic and school closures on parents. This dissertation contributes to scholarly literature by introducing the concept of the inverted disaster as a new way to define the pandemic and understand its impacts on educational equity, children with disabilities, and their parents. This research outlines how the characteristics of the inverted disaster led to a breakdown of institutional and support systems and to the exclusion of children with disabilities from vital educational and therapeutic services. It also examines the disproportionate impacts on parents, linking patterns of disadvantage with mental health outcomes. Methodologically, I explore how the strength of social networks can be measured and analyzed as mitigating factors on parental mental health. Based on the findings from this research, I recommend strategies for improved disaster management and educational policies for continued special education during disaster that prioritize children with disabilities. I also propose strategies for community building and strengthening social networks among at-risk families.
Open Access
Immigration detention and the treadmill of production: a cycle of ecological and social disorganization
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Hagan, Alexander, author; Mao, KuoRay, advisor; Malin, Stephanie, committee member; Hausermann, Heidi, committee member
Conflict and group-threat theorists consistently debate what causes threat perception towards out-groups like migrants. These back-and-forth analyses focus on economic versus cultural reasoning. However, they often ignore the environmental context and political-economic structures influencing public perception. To complicate and scale these theories, this study relies on ecological degradation, characterized by Superfund sites, to determine how it influences the local economy and public perception of immigrants. Nearly one-third of United States prisons are within 3 miles of a Superfund site. Though the existing literature has pointed to the relationship between prison siting and ecological disorganization, the proximity of the immigration detention facility (IDF) to environmental harm has not been included in the broader toxic prison scholarship. This study first finds that nearly half of IDFs are located within 10 miles of a Superfund site. Next, regressing facility proximity data on county-level economic and social conditions helps understand the likelihood of their proximity to a Superfund site. A percentage point increase in a county's unemployment rate in 2017 compared to 1990 is associated with an 8 percent decrease in distance between an IDF and Superfund NPL site. Counties with a lower percentage of White Americans tend to have IDFs situated closer to Superfund NPL sites. If IDFs are treated as locally undesirable land uses (LULUs), their development relies on establishing sites of acceptance or Please in My Backyard (PIMBY) movements towards these facilities. This study finds that PIMPY movements towards immigration detention facilities near Superfund sites are motivated more by economic precarity than perceived cultural threat. This aligns with the motivation of the citizen/worker actor in the Treadmill of Production and Law (ToP/ToL) theory. The other actors within treadmill theory include corporations and the state. To test if these actors and the relationships between them apply to immigration detention, a secondary analysis is conducted to determine the association between these corporations' annual revenue and their political campaign and lobbying expenditures. Using data from 2015 to 2020, the two largest private prison and detention corporations, CoreCivic and GEO Group annual revenue and revenue from federal contracts share strong positive correlations with their political and lobbying spending. Though treadmill theory has traditionally been reserved for environmental crime, laws, and enforcement, this study shows that incarceration and detention policies are constructed by state, corporate, and labor actors to maintain accumulation and influence threat. Immigration detention is used to reestablish the state's legitimacy through the allure of jobs in areas harmed by environmental crimes and economic precarity. These associations further reveal the cyclical relationship between ecological and social disorganization in counties harmed by environmental degradation in the United States.
Open Access
Types of foreign direct investment and the informal economy: a cross-national assessment
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Li, Ang, author; Roberts, Anthony, advisor; Hastings, Orestes 'Pat', committee member; Weiler, Stephan, committee member
How does foreign direct investment (FDI) affect the size of the informal economy? Some argue FDI reduces the size of the informal economy by promoting formal employment, while others contend that it facilitates a 'race to the bottom' and leads to the informalization of work. However, the empirical evidence on the effects of FDI is inconclusive. I suggest that this is attributed to previous studies overlooking the sector-specific effects of FDI on the informal economy. Using panel data of 76 countries between 2000 and 2018, this study examines how FDI inflow into the primary, secondary, and tertiary sector, affects the size of the informal economy and whether these effects are moderated by the development and institutional quality of the recipient countries. It shows that primary-sector FDI reduces informal economy in the Developed Countries while increasing informal economy in the Less Developed Countries. This could potentially be explained by the finding that institutional quality suppresses the positive effect of primary-sector FDI. Although I did not find statistically significant results of the impact of secondary- and tertiary-sector FDI, this limitation might be resolved in future study when industry-level FDI data becomes available. Overall, my findings suggest that the impact of FDI on the size of informal economy are heterogenous and can be better explained by the structure rather than the overall magnitude of FDI.
Open Access
The original Green Revolution: the Catholic Worker farms and environmental morality
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Stock, Paul Vincent, author; Carolan, Michael, advisor
The following dissertation examines the history of the Catholic Worker farms. The Catholic Worker have printed a newspaper, run houses of hospitality and farms in the hope of treating people with dignity and working toward a common good. Founders Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin encouraged a Green Revolution predicated upon education, care for those in need and an agrarian tradition. Drawing on Jacques Ellul's work on the effects of a technological society, I offer the Catholic Worker farms as one way to mitigate those same effects. The Catholic Worker farms provide one illustration of an environmental morality that is counter to the ethics and theoretical morality common to the discourse of environmentalism.
Open Access
Reregulating the flows of the Arkansas River: comparing forms of common pool resource organizations
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2008) Lepper, Troy, author; Freeman, David M., advisor
What sociological attributes characterize the form of an enduring social organization that empowers individually rational self-interested actors to provide themselves with a common property resource and collective good? In order to address this research question, the analyst compared three common property resource and collective goods organizations for water management located in the Arkansas River basin of Colorado to an integrated ideal type model combining the work of David Freeman and Elinor Ostrom. It was the objective of this research to employ empirical observations while giving consideration to existing common property resource theories in an effort to formulate new theory. The three organizations being studied in this research were: (1) The Arkansas River Water Bank Pilot Program, (2) The Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District, (3) The Lower Arkansas Valley Water Management Association. A brief overview of the findings were as follows: (1) The Arkansas River Water Bank Pilot Program failed to show the characteristics that the analyst's integrated ideal type model would suggest were important to the creation of a long-enduring organization. The pilot program also failed to generate local interest. (2) The Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District had some attributes of the integrated ideal type model, and is believed to have been partially successful for this reason. This organization will require further observation in the future to see just how successful it will be. (3) The Lower Arkansas Water Management Association had virtually all the characteristics of the integrated ideal type model. It was the only organization studied that should be considered a success story, success being defined by member support for the organization and the capacity of that organization to re-regulate flows on the Arkansas River. Implications for policy and theory are also addressed in this dissertation. The conceptual "ideal type" models do identify variables and relationships that can be associated with success and failure of social organizational experiences in the Arkansas Valley. The empirical observations of the three valley organizations do support aspects of the conceptual models found in the literature. Additionally, new theoretical propositions will be advanced.
Open Access
International trade of electric vehicle batteries and lithium: a network approach to trade structure and structural inequality
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) DeBruin, Jacob, author; Roberts, Tony, advisor; Luna, Jessie, committee member; Stevis, Dimitris, committee member
As international efforts toward clean energy transition and climate mitigation have been made, the international trade of emission-reducing technologies and their necessary materials has grown. Few technologies have seen as much growth as electric vehicles and their lithium-ion batteries; and few materials have seen as much growth as lithium. Research on international battery and lithium trade is extensive but has yet to examine the formation of the trade structure and its structural inequality. This study uses bilateral trade data from the UN COMTRADE database and country attribute data from the World Bank database to (1) measure the overall structure of and structural inequality in international electric vehicle battery and lithium trade networks; and (2) analyze determinants of the trade networks' formation. Results indicate that the international trade of electric vehicle batteries and of lithium are characterized by a core-periphery pattern—by which certain countries occupy the center of trade, and by which certain countries occupy the margins—and therefore, that there is an inequality in the distribution of trade relationships among countries participating in battery and lithium trade. The results also indicate that differences in countries' GDP and country's structural position in the networks largely determine the likelihood of trade-relationship formation. Inferentially, the results provide some evidence for (ecologically) unequal exchange in the trade of commodities that ostensibly support clean energy transition and sustainable economic development, like electric vehicle batteries and lithium.
Embargo
Manure management decision-making of cattle-feed growers in northeastern Colorado
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Stroheim, Erich, author; Carolan, Michael S., advisor; Lacy, Michael G., advisor; Hogan, Michael J., committee member; Hoag, Dana L. K., committee member
Rural water supplies, including household wells and small-town water systems, located near livestock production and irrigated agriculture operations are often at risk for high nitrate-levels resulting from concentrated feedlot manure disposal as administered by livestock-feed farmers. Efficient manure management is one approach to minimizing nutrient pollution of rural groundwater and surface waters, and crop-farmers near the feedlots are de facto manure managers. This study observes how farmers value manure and whether they frame manure as a waste disposal issue, as an important fertilizer resource, or both. This distinction places manure management in the overlap between environmental sociology and natural resource sociology. The study identifies factors related to how farmers choose fields on which to apply manure, the monetary value of cattle manure as perceived from a farmer's perspective, and how densely farmers choose to apply manure. Using response data from a mail-survey of farmers operating near feedlots, I found that a farmer's manure source, perceptions about manure application, and practical knowledge, along with some personal and farm-operation characteristics, are related to how farmers perceive manure's value, and to how efficiently they apply it. Having one's own livestock and viewing manure as an inexpensive fertilizer are factors that appear to increase manure's perceived value. Factors that reduce manure's perceived value include years of experience in farming, cover-crop nutrient crediting, size of an operation, and concern for the hazard of water pollution. Recognizing the nutrient value of applied manure to reduce the quantity of commercial fertilizer being applied could substantially increase a farm's profitability while protecting water resources from over-application of nutrients. Yet while farmers typically reduced the nitrogen application on a manured field, that reduction was usually small relative to the nutrients added. This concurs with the results of numerous other studies concluding that many farmers are deliberately over-fertilizing to seek the best possible yield and applying extra nitrogen to plan for the most favorable climatic conditions possible. While farmers might be expected to distribute manure more sparingly over a larger field, the opposite turned out to be true. This finding is consistent with the plausible hypothesis that larger fields are especially appealing as places to dispose of large amounts of manure. In addition to exploring some of the practical aspects of a farmer's role as a manure manager, I have found it relevant to consider some of the structural background elements that make it inevitable for most farmers to over-apply nitrogen as a means of maximizing yield when growing cattle-feed crops. Farmers' economic success depends in large part on complying with the recommendations of agricultural conglomerate companies that supply their inputs. Note that nitrogen is typically over-applied to corn crops even in areas where no manure is used or available. Being expected to over-apply nitrogen, farmers are unlikely to hold back on applying manure, and are likely to see only benefits in adding organic matter to the land they are cropping. The primary research presented here provides some dimensions in which to work with farmers, aiming toward curbing the over-application of crop nutrients.
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
An assessment of previously unresolved homicide cases in Colorado to investigate patterned outcomes leading to resolution
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Reese, Amber, author; Unnithan, Prabha, advisor; Nowacki, Jeffrey, committee member; Hughes, Shannon, committee member
The purpose of this research is to consider whether specific characteristics of an unresolved homicide impact whether it is likely to be solved and what the implications of the findings mean for the future. First, a review of the literature proposes that urbanization and other factors have resulted in the dramatic decline of homicide cold case clearance rates and examines the factors associated with case clearance, including case-specific as well as departmental responses. To assess relationships across previously unresolved homicide cases, data were collected and coded from a list of solved Colorado cold case homicides from 1970 to 2017. An initial qualitative analysis of the data (N=111) was completed, and exploratory correlative tests were implemented to investigate patterned outcomes moving from the cause of death towards factors that assist in cold case homicide resolution. The analysis suggests, among others, that access to resources, specifically a Cold Case Unit, leads to greater likelihood of case resolution in certain causes of death, not including death by firearm. There is support for findings from prior literature on the topic which argue that level of funding is crucial to cold case investigation. Given the implications of this important topic, more research is needed to better understand the relationship between cold case homicides, factors involved in the solvability of various cause of death, and for the use of specialized Cold Case Units.
Open Access
Resilience for all/resiliencia para todos: achieving justice for Latinx communities following the 2013 Colorado floods
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Truslove, Micaela, author; Malin, Stephanie A., advisor; Luna, Jessie K., committee member; Browne, Katherine E., committee member
Environmental justice arose out of people's and communities' needs to address concrete problems of inequitable environmental exposures and contamination. However, resilience scholarship has largely failed to engage with the environmental justice (EJ) literature, and resilience remains a highly contested term that fails to adequately address issues of vulnerability and power. A holistic view of EJ—community-based and focused on distributive, procedural, and recognition elements of outcomes and practices—helps assess justice aspects of resilience-building, especially when used in conjunction with a community capabilities focus. I build on these points by arguing that an EJ framework provides an ideal lens through which to explore social justice in community engagement around resilience-building to climate-related events. This study uses data from a critical discourse analysis, semi-structured interviews, and a multi-dimensional environmental justice (EJ) framework coupled with Matin et al.'s (2018) concept of "equitable resilience" to explore how Latinx cultural brokers and resilience practitioners in Boulder County, Colorado are making disaster preparedness and community resilience-building efforts more just and equitable following a devastating flood event. Most importantly, I find that cultural brokers' participatory and inclusive form of community-building work—and the community that emerges from such work—is resilience. I also find that, although Boulder County resilience-building efforts are moving toward more just and equitable practices, cultural brokers and resilience practitioners face systemic and institutionalized barriers to fully realizing distributive, procedural, and recognition justice and increasing community capabilities. Lastly, I show that cultural brokers use small but powerful acts of counterstorytelling, or testimonios, in predominantly white spaces to expose and unsettle entrenched power structures. An EJ framework used in conjunction with the concept of equitable resilience can help resilience and disaster practitioners assess and improve their resilience and disaster preparedness programming and efforts. This study also contributes to the disaster and community resilience scholarship by providing a new way to evaluate community resilience-building efforts using a critical EJ-capabilities lens. This approach addresses issues of distributive, recognition, and procedural (in)justice as well as attending to underlying power imbalances and inequality that can limit community capabilities.
Open Access
Determinants of deforestation in Vietnam, 2008 – 2015
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Tran, Thai Binh, author; Roberts, Anthony, advisor; Mao, Kuoray, committee member; Pena, Anita, committee member
New methods including satellite data, geographic information systems (GIS), and remote sensing processing have discovered human expansion over forest areas referred as forest degradation. This study acknowledges these findings but insists on using official data to address some drawbacks of previous studies. These drawbacks include (1) the focusing on limited areas, Central Highlands areas, instead of a national scale, (2) exclusion of resources trade from the analysis, (3) lacking consideration of the spatial and longitudinal autocorrelation, which is overlooked in panel analysis; and (4) the inconsistency of the relation between poverty and deforestation. This research investigated the effects of land-use change from agricultural expansion and timber extraction, resources trade, and community poverty on province-level forest coverage in Vietnam from 2008 to 2015 using panel and spatial autoregressive modelling. After accounting for resources trade, effect of agricultural expansion as well as forest extraction disappear. In addition, panel analysis suggests no covariate along poverty rate affects forest coverage while the spatial analysis suggests literacy rate and agricultural land are also have significant effects.
Open Access
Why organizations matter: certification experiences of coffee producer groups in Guatemala
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Heller, Andrew, author; Murray, Douglas, advisor; Stevis, Dimitris, committee member; Browne, Katherine, committee member; Raynolds, Laura, committee member
Coffee producers are just emerging from a long decade of low prices and oversupply. In response to these problems, many producers organized into groups and sought certifications based on social or environmental standards. This dissertation presents three case studies of producer groups in Guatemala and their experiences with certification in the coffee sector. Using a combination of ethnographic research methods, it argues that both certification systems and producer groups need to adapt so that producers can benefit from the potential gains of certification. Organizations are the focus of the analysis, emphasizing the capabilities necessary for producers to be able to access the benefits of certification. Certification within the coffee sector is a field of research that has implications for development studies, economic sociology, agrofood studies, and globalization. This dissertation concludes that the voices of the producers themselves are a forgotten key to providing organizations, whether of the producers themselves or the organizations that regulate certification, with the tools necessary to meet their goals. This study provides valuable information about the attitudes and interests of small producers in the context of organization and certification.
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
Multicultural education & perceptions of racial inequity among White Americans: a cohort analysis
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Sims, Shelby, author; Roberts, Tony, advisor; Hastings, Orestes P., committee member; Sbicca, Joshua, committee member; Schmidt, Jenne, committee member
Growing concern over racial injustice in the United States has warranted an investigation into the perceptions of racial inequality among White Americans. The phasal introduction of multicultural education (ME) in the United States has continually increased the exposure of newer cohorts of White Americans to diverse cultures and perspectives of social reality experienced by racial minorities. However, prior studies have neglected to empirically evaluate whether ME improved perceptions of racial inequity among White Americans. Using the General Social Survey (1972-2018), the present study uncovers patterns of changes in perceptions of racial inequity among White Americans. Specifically, I utilize an inter-cohort approach to illuminate patterns of association between ME cohort, educational attainment, and regionality. I conduct a thorough evaluation of the age-period-cohort dilemma in relation to racial attitudes and determine a year fixed-effects model the most empirically consistent model with the data. The multivariate analysis confirms that perceptions of racial inequity have in fact progressed with the implementation of ME. In addition, the results confirmed that more progressive racial perceptions are associated with increased educational attainment and less progressive racial perceptions are associated with Southern adolescence. Neither of these effects is contingent on ME exposure and both operate independently of educational content. The implications of these findings and subsequent recommendations for continued research on ME and White racial perceptions to continue striving for racial equity through public education.