Matching Items (11)
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- All Subjects: environmental justice
- Creators: School of Social Transformation
- Creators: Klinsky, Sonja
- Resource Type: Text
Description
Sustainability and environmental justice, two fields that developed parallel to each other, are both insufficient to deal with the challenges posed by institutional environmental violence (IEV). This thesis examines the discursive history of sustainability and critiques its focus on science-based technical solutions to large-scale global problems. It further analyzes the gaps in sustainability discourse that can be filled by environmental justice, such as the challenges posed by environmental racism. Despite this, neither field is able to contend with IEV in a meaningful way, which this thesis argues using the case study of the Flint Water Crisis (FWC). The FWC has been addressed as both an issue of sustainability and of environmental justice, yet IEV persists in the community. This is due in part to the narrative of crisis reflected by the FWC and the role that knowledge production plays in that narrative. To fill the gap left by both sustainability and environmental justice, this thesis emphasizes the need for a transformational methodology incorporating knowledge produced by communities and individuals directly impacted by sustainability problems.
ContributorsWest, Madison Sedona (Author) / Graffy, Elisabeth (Thesis advisor) / Klinsky, Sonja (Committee member) / Broberg, Gregory (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Civic engagement is often defined as political activism; to be a part of governmental decision making, the practices thereof, and various efforts of participation in voting. However, civic engagement is also known for its role within non-political work, such as community building and development. Because of the former definition many members of our society have a tendency to not embrace the full potential of their community roles. It is always about who is a Republican, who is a Democrat, who looks better, or who has a better name. Now it must be noted that this is not in absolute, not all members of our society work in this thought process, but many still do. If that doesn't come as a surprise to you, then the simplicity of how you can be an engaged member will. As a student attending Arizona State University at the West campus in Phoenix, Arizona, I have chosen to challenge the traditional view of civic engagement and prepare this development plan for the campus community. Having done so, I not only discovered the paths that one can take to be engaged in such matters, but also continued my role as a civil servant.
ContributorsWaldie, Howard William (Author) / Ackroyd, William (Thesis director) / Smith, Sharon (Committee member) / Alvarez Manninen, Bertha (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor) / School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Waste generation in the U.S. has reached new heights, but the exploitation of Native American lands for waste disposal is nothing new. Many of the negative effects of massive waste production and toxic pollution, such as poor health outcomes and decreased property values, disproportionately burden impoverished, minority communities inside and outside the United States (Brulle and Pellow, 2006). Native American communities have long been exploited for their natural resources and land-use, but in recent decades Indian country has also become a common place to store nuclear, hazardous and municipal wastes. This project is a case study of a local Indian reservation, the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, and examined the socio-historical context of the landfill operations in terms of five principles of environmental justice. Each principle was defined and key moments from the SRPMIC's landfill history were discussed to demonstrate ways that the situation has improved, stayed the same or worsened with regard to the rights outlined in each principle. It was concluded that there needs to be an acknowledgement by involved municipalities and industries of the historical context that make the SRPMIC and other nearby Native American communities "ideal" contractors for waste management. Additionally, while the SRPMIC could currently benefit from looking into the principles of environmental justice as a guide to manage past and operating landfills, the Community will have a specific opportunity to revisit these issues under closer scrutiny during the closure of the Salt River Landfill in 2032 in order to ensure more environmentally just outcomes. Finally, it was concluded that scholarship at the intersection of environmental justice and Native American communities should continue because looking closer at the ways that local Native American communities are facing and resisting environmental injustice can serve to develop future models for other communities facing similar challenges to achieving environmental justice.
ContributorsScott, Nicole Danielle (Author) / Kinzig, Ann (Thesis director) / Harlan, Sharon (Committee member) / Maienschein, Jane (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Community Resources and Development (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of various sociolegal practices of urban public park management on the populace that can access a public park. The theories of environmental justice, critiques of distribution theory, Henri Lefebvre's right to the city, and sustainability are used as justification for this analysis: environmental justice considers the social implications of environmental benefits and burdens; critiques of distribution theory reveal the need to look beyond siting and proximity in environmental justice studies of urban parks; Henri Lefebvre's right to the city espouses the right of citizens to inhabit urban areas; and sustainability requires the balance of environmental, economic, and social factors in urban development. Applying these theories to urban parks reveals sociolegal factors that may inhibit public park use by a diverse public, namely environmental gentrification, park ownership, city ordinances, and physical layout. Each of these create barriers to park use by low-income, minority residents; even those that may live in close proximity to the park. These barriers violate environmental justice, right to the city, and sustainability principles in different ways but create two main problems: displacement and policing of vulnerable populations. This paper concludes with policy recommendations to alleviate the problems posed by these barriers.
ContributorsRugland, Erin (Author) / Lucio, Joanna (Thesis director) / Kim, Yushim (Committee member) / School of Public Affairs (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
This study attempts to answer the following questions: Is civic engagement a social activity among 18-25-year-old college students? How are opinions regarding civic and political engagement impacted by social settings? How are civic and political engagement atmospheres impacted by social distancing and isolation protocol? In this study, the researcher hypothesized that civic and political engagement are social activities, so they are therefore susceptible to changing social context. Since the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted typical social interaction through social distancing and isolation protocol, the researcher hypothesized that it also altered mechanisms of civic and political engagement. Political engagement would be more prevalent among students who participate with others even in pandemic conditions that may otherwise decrease close contact and social interactions. These findings seem to disagree with the literature that suggests young people are supplanting voting with other forms of engagement (Zukin et al., 2006). Rather, the “complexity” denoted in interviews and in reports of engagements on the pre- and post-election surveys suggests that young people are voting as well as dedicating their time to other activities. Voting does seem to be a social activity according to the interviews, poll observations, and the surveys. This is consistent with the literature regarding social norms and group predictors. However, this social aspect of engagement seems to manifest in a wider variety of formats that originally thought. Finally, students continued to engage in the context of the pandemic that surrounded the election in question. It seems that the formats through which students engaged have expanded to maintain the connections that are crucial to civic participation.
ContributorsBrown, Kelli A. (Author) / Cook-Davis, Alison (Thesis director) / Lewis, Paul (Committee member) / Schuster, Roseanne (Committee member) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution & Social Change (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
Media witnessing and storytelling for environmental justice (EJ) provide an avenue to understand the relationships between “multiple realities of environmental injury” and to analyze “fleeting phenomena with lasting form; thereby transforming phenomena that are experienced in a plurality of lives into publicly recognized history” (Houston, 2012, 419, 422). This creates opportunities to challenge and eradicate the oppressive structures that deem certain individuals and groups disposable and ultimately protect the possessive investment in whiteness. Therefore, for the purposes of EJ, media witnessing creates space for dynamic, citizen-based storytelling which can undermine narratives that promote the life versus economy framework that has perpetuated oppression, injustice, and state sanctioned violence. Media witnessing in an EJ context demonstrates the potential for collective understanding and action, political opportunities, and healing.<br/>This paper is an analysis of the process of media witnessing in regards to the Flint Water Crisis and the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and will apply an EJ lens to this phenomenon. It will discuss how media witnessing in response to these two crises can be used as a precedent for understanding and utilizing this framework and digital storytelling to address the crises of 2020, primarily the COVID-19 pandemic and racial injustice. It will then examine how the intersectionality of race, gender, and age has implications for future media witnessing and storytelling in the context of EJ movements. Finally, it will explain how media witnessing can motivate holistic policymaking in the favor of EJ initiatives and the health and wellbeing of all Americans, as well as how such policymaking and initiatives must acknowledge the double-edged sword that is social media.
ContributorsOConnell, Julia (Author) / Richter, Jennifer (Thesis director) / Adamson, Joni (Committee member) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution & Social Change (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
As a democratic innovation involving deliberation and decision making, participatory budgeting (PB) often catalyzes powerful changes among individual participants and within their respective communities. Certain models of PB designate autonomous spaces for young people to determine how to spend a portion of a particular budget, typically that of a municipality or school. These processes of youth PB may address recent trends in the underrepresentation of youth in civic spaces. Following the initial launch of youth participatory budgeting (youth PB) in Cluj (Romania), I spent three weeks in Cluj conducting 45 semi-structured interviews with youth PB participants and one focus group with youth PB facilitators. This thesis explores two areas: (a) the main dynamics of the online Cluj youth PB process (team development and organization, themes of projects proposed and their intended impacts, and inclusion throughout the process) and (b) impact of youth PB on participants (participant learning, change, and empowerment). Main findings suggest that organized groups with ongoing projects dominated the youth PB process and that a majority of projects aspired to impact either all residents of Cluj or a specific youth group (e.g. young artists, young engineers), while very few projects intended to impact young people in Cluj broadly. More than 85% of participants reported feeling empowered by involvement in youth PB. Some differences in learning and change were found by gender, ethnicity, and age. Key recommendations for future iterations of this process include establishing deliberation between teams, encouraging informal group development, restructuring the voting process, and enhancing inclusion of ethnic minorities and migrants.
ContributorsBrennan, Ashley Jane (Author) / Schugurensky, Daniel, 1958- (Thesis director) / Almasan, Oana (Committee member) / Levine, Peter (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Climate adaptation has not kept pace with climate impacts which has formed an adaptation gap. Increasingly insurance is viewed as a solution to close this gap. However, the efficacy and implications of using insurance in the climate adaptation space are not clear. Furthermore, past research has focused on specific actors or processes, not on the interactions and interconnections between the actors and the processes. I take a complex adaptive systems approach to map out how these dynamics are shaping adaptation and to interrogate what the insurance climate adaptation literature claims are the successes and pitfalls of insurance driving, enabling or being adaptation. From this interrogation it becomes apparent that insurance has enormous influence on its policy holders, builds telecoupling into local adaptation, and creates structures which support contradictory land use policies at the local level. Based on the influence insurance has on policy holders, I argue that insurance should be viewed as a form of governance. I synthesize insurance, governance and adaptation literature to examine exactly what governance tools insurance uses to exercise this influence and what the consequences may be. This research reveals that insurance may not be the exemplary adaptation approach the international community is hoping for. Using insurance, risk can be reduced without reducing vulnerability, and risk transfer can result in risk displacement which can reduce adaptation incentives, fuel maladaptation, or impose public burdens. Moreover, insurance requires certain information and legal relationships which can and often do structure that which is insured to the needs of insurance and shift authority away from governments to insurance companies or public-private partnerships. Each of these undermine the legitimacy of insurance-led local adaptation and contradict the stated social justice goals of international calls for insurance. Finally, I interrogate the potential justice concerns that emerged through an analysis of insurance as a form of adaptation governance. Using a multi-valent approach to justice I examine a suite of programs intended to support agricultural adaptation through insurance. This analysis demonstrates that although some programs clearly attempted to consider issues of justice, overall these existing programs raise distributional, procedural and recognition justice concerns.
ContributorsLueck, Vanessa (Author) / Klinsky, Sonja (Thesis advisor) / Schoon, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Eakin, Hallie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
Sustainable communities discourse, literature and initiatives have essentially excluded poor marginalized communities at a time when sustainability efforts require more stakeholders and stakeholder involvement. The families in poor marginalized communities of color in the United States are struggling to meet basic needs (food, medicine, shelter, safety). Additionally, in these communities there is a disproportionate level of forced mobility to prisons, jails and detention centers. These communities are unsustainable. This dissertation is comprised of three articles. I present in the first article (published in Sustainability Journal) an argument for a definition of sustainability that includes recognition of the major, complex and persistent problems faced daily by poor marginalized communities of color (African American, Hispanic/Latino, Native American) including those connected to mass incarceration and high recidivism. I also propose a system-of-communities conceptual framework. In my second article, I explore sustainability assessment tools and find them to be inadequate for measuring the progress toward sustainability of poor marginalized communities with high incarceration and recidivism rates. In order to fill this gap, I developed the Building Sustainable Communities Framework and a Social Reintegration, Inclusion, Cohesion, Equity (Social R.I.C.E.) Transition Tool, a qualitative interview guide (a precursor to the development of a community sustainability assessment tool). In the third article, I test the utility of the Building Sustainable Communities Framework and Social R.I.C.E. Transition Tool through a community-based participatory action study: The Building Sustainable Communities-Repairing the Harm of Incarceration Pilot Project. Three types of participants were included, formerly incarcerated, family members of formerly incarcerated and community members. The Restorative Justice Circle process (based on a traditional practice of Native Americans and other indigenous peoples) was also introduced to the groups for the purpose of having discussions and sharing personal stories in a safe, nonthreatening, confidential and equitable space. During the study, data was gathered for reflexive thematic analysis from two participant groups, in-depth interviews, focus groups and short qualitative surveys. The findings reflect the community is in dire need of a path to stability and sustainability and needs the knowledge and tools to help them make collective community decisions about present and future sustainability issues.
ContributorsAdams, Muriel (Author) / Chhetri, Nalini (Thesis advisor) / Klinsky, Sonja (Thesis advisor) / Boone, Christopher (Committee member) / Pranis, Kay (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
This thesis explores the current standards and the progress being made for civic education in the state of Arizona. To develop a new model, it draws on the programs offered to students in the community of Camden, NJ by the thriving civics department at Rutgers University. Motivated by the current lack of civic resources in Arizona high schools, this research seeks out a practical, community-centered approach to improving the civic education standards. Arizona was one of the first states to make civic education a priority by passing the American Civics Act, but there is still a long way to go to create civically engaged classrooms for students. The proposed plan combines citizenship pedagogy with direct service opportunities, mentorship, and community projects to help students become engaged in their local communities.
ContributorsMiller, Mekenna Moriah (Author) / Simhony, Avital (Thesis director) / Lennon, Tara (Committee member) / School of Public Affairs (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor, Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05