Matching Items (7)
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- All Subjects: Social Research
- Creators: Stancliff, Michael
Description
This dissertation explores vulnerability to extreme heat hazards in the Maricopa County, Arizona metropolitan region. By engaging an interdisciplinary approach, I uncover the epidemiological, historical-geographical, and mitigation dimensions of human vulnerability to extreme heat in a rapidly urbanizing region characterized by an intense urban heat island and summertime heat waves. I first frame the overall research within global climate change and hazards vulnerability research literature, and then present three case studies. I conclude with a synthesis of the findings and lessons learned from my interdisciplinary approach using an urban political ecology framework. In the first case study I construct and map a predictive index of sensitivity to heat health risks for neighborhoods, compare predicted neighborhood sensitivity to heat-related hospitalization rates, and estimate relative risk of hospitalizations for neighborhoods. In the second case study, I unpack the history and geography of land use/land cover change, urban development and marginalization of minorities that created the metropolitan region's urban heat island and consequently, the present conditions of extreme heat exposure and vulnerability in the urban core. The third study uses computational microclimate modeling to evaluate the potential of a vegetation-based intervention for mitigating extreme heat in an urban core neighborhood. Several findings relevant to extreme heat vulnerability emerge from the case studies. First, two main socio-demographic groups are found to be at higher risk for heat illness: low-income minorities in sparsely-vegetated neighborhoods in the urban core, and the elderly and socially-isolated in the expansive suburban fringe of Maricopa County. The second case study reveals that current conditions of heat exposure in the region's urban heat island are the legacy of historical marginalization of minorities and large-scale land-use/land cover transformations of natural desert land covers into heat-retaining urban surfaces of the built environment. Third, summertime air temperature reductions in the range 0.9-1.9 °C and of up to 8.4 °C in surface temperatures in the urban core can be achieved through desert-adapted canopied vegetation, suggesting that, at the microscale, the urban heat island can be mitigated by creating vegetated park cool islands. A synthesis of the three case studies using the urban political ecology framework argues that climate changed-induced heat hazards in cities must be problematized within the socio-ecological transformations that produce and reproduce urban landscapes of risk. The interdisciplinary approach to heat hazards in this dissertation advances understanding of the social and ecological drivers of extreme heat by drawing on multiple theories and methods from sociology, urban and Marxist geography, microclimatology, spatial epidemiology, environmental history, political economy and urban political ecology.
ContributorsDeclet-Barreto, Juan (Author) / Harlan, Sharon L (Thesis advisor) / Bolin, Bob (Thesis advisor) / Hirt, Paul (Committee member) / Boone, Christopher (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This study explores the potential risks associated with the 65 U.S.-based commercial nuclear power plants (NPPs) and the distribution of those risks among the populations of both their respective host communities and of the communities located in outlying areas. First, I examine the relevant environmental justice issues. I start by examining the racial/ethnic composition of the host community populations, as well as the disparities in socio-economic status that exist, if any, between the host communities and communities located in outlying areas. Second, I estimate the statistical associations that exist, if any, between a population's distance from a NPP and several independent variables. I conduct multivariate ordinary least square (OLS) regression analyses and spatial autocorrelation regression (SAR) analyses at the national, regional and individual-NPP levels. Third, I construct a NPP potential risk index (NPP PRI) that defines four discrete risk categories--namely, very high risk, high risk, moderate risk, and low risk. The NPP PRI allows me then to estimate the demographic characteristics of the populations exposed to each so-defined level of risk. Fourth, using the Palo Verde NPP as the subject, I simulate a scenario in which a NPP experiences a core-damage accident. I use the RASCAL 4.3 software to simulate the path of dispersion of the resultant radioactive plume, and to investigate the statistical associations that exist, if any, between the dispersed radioactive plume and the demographic characteristics of the populations located within the plume's footprint. This study utilizes distributive justice theories to understand the distribution of the potential risks associated with NPPs, many of which are unpredictable, irreversible and inescapable. I employ an approach that takes into account multiple stakeholders in order to provide avenues for all parties to express concerns, and to ensure the relevance and actionability of any resulting policy recommendations.
ContributorsKyne, Dean (Author) / Bolin, Bob (Thesis advisor) / Boone, Christopher (Committee member) / Pijawka, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
An asset-based approach to vulnerability, as presented in Voices of the Poor: Can Anyone Hear Us? and World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty, provides a possible theoretical framework for understanding vulnerability to human trafficking. Case studies, field studies and narratives of human trafficking provide evidence that the assets of victims of trafficking play a significant role in human trafficking. This appears to be true both with regard to how traffickers exploit victim assets and with regard to how successful human trafficking prevention efforts are implemented. By exploring and further establishing this connection, I hope to provide evidence that a model of human trafficking acquisition incorporating elements of victim assets and the assets of communities deserves field-testing. Such field-testing will hopefully confirm the deep connection between assets and human trafficking activity and establish the necessary connections anti-trafficking activists will need to create a predictive version of the model with regard to individual vulnerability to human trafficking. Lastly, I argue that, provided the connection between human trafficking vulnerability and victim asset levels holds, an asset-based approach provides a rhetorical framework to resist policies that compromise asset levels of particularly vulnerable populations.
ContributorsFees, Kyle Elliot (Author) / Stancliff, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Behl, Natasha (Committee member) / Murphy Erfani, Julie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Interviews of nine managers within the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division's Western Region were conducted by a researcher who also works as a Wage and Hour Investigator. The intention of this research was to survey the differences in trafficking-related training and experience throughout the region, to examine the role of the Wage and Hour Division in human trafficking casework, and to explore potential areas for growth. This thesis recommends that upper level agency management produces standards for training, interagency engagement, and procedures and also provides suggestions for best practices and effective enforcement.
ContributorsNorberg, Katherine Joanne (Author) / Stancliff, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Simmons, William (Committee member) / Téllez, Michelle (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
In this study, the researcher develops a documentary-driven methodology to understand the ways four women in the United States use their involvement in the belly dance phenomenon to shape their ongoing individual identity development. The filmmaking process itself and its efficacy as a process to promote self-understanding and identity growth among the participating belly dancers, are also investigated phenomenologically. Methodological steps taken in the documentary-driven methodology include: initial filmed interviews, co-produced filmed dance performances, editorial interviews to review footage with each dancer, documentary film production, dancer-led focus groups to screen the film, and exit interviews with each dancer. The project generates new understandings about the ways women use belly dance to shape their individual identities to include: finding community with other women in private women's spaces, embodying the music through the dance movements, and finding liberation from their everyday "selves" through costume and performance.
ContributorsWatkins, Ramsi Kathryn (Author) / Bolin, Bob (Thesis advisor) / Hegmon, Michelle (Committee member) / Hjorleifur Jonsson (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This paper is seeking to use exploratory factor analysis to construct a numeric representation of Hill Collin's matrix of domination. According to Hill Collins, the Current American matrix of domination, or the interlocking systems of oppression, includes race, gender, class, sexual orientation, religion, immigration status, disability, and age. The study uses exploratory factor analysis to construct a matrix of domination scale. The study launched an on-line survey (n=448) that was circulated through the social network Facebook to collect data. Factor analysis revealed that the constructed matrix of domination represents an accurate description of the current social hierarchy in the United States. Also, the constructed matrix of domination was an accurate predictor of the probability of experiencing domestic abuse according to the current available statistics.
ContributorsAzab, Marian (Author) / Quan, H. L. T. (Thesis advisor) / Keil, Thomas (Committee member) / Stancliff, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
ABSTRACT This thesis analyzes the discourse surrounding proposed solutions to the immigration phenomenon in the United States. I conducted two qualitative media analyses on the rhetoric and conceptual frames found in mass media newscasts reporting on the immigration debate. The first analysis covered the general immigration debate and the second covered the appearance of American southwest ranchers. Specifically the analyses contrasted the media's coverage of root economic causes to the immigration phenomenon in comparison to reactionary solutions as proposed by leading immigrant attrition organizations such as the immigration think tank, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and Republican linguist, Frank Luntz. The main argument of this thesis is based on an analysis of how the media has used southwestern ranchers as expert witnesses for reactionary solutions on a national level. An acute qualitative media analysis was used to compare the rhetoric found in the media coverage of southwestern ranchers versus the rhetoric found in 12 in-depth interviews I conducted with ranchers in the American southwest. This thesis contends that the media has successfully turned southwestern ranchers into spokespersons for border security rhetoric, furthering the binary debates on border security and immigration reform and thus obscuring the conditions which force migrants to leave their home countries. The grounding theoretical framework for this thesis is based on David Altheide's qualitative media analysis which identifies how certain frames and common narratives ultimately construct a way of discussing the problem or the kind of discourse that will follow. This was structured on Atheide's qualitative media analysis protocols to dissect mass media newscasts covering the immigration debate and more specifically the mass media's coverage of southwestern ranchers. The qualitative media analyses were employed to determine whether the discourse found in nightly newscasts falls in line with root causes of immigration or FAIR's concern with reactionary solutions. To further assess the media's ability to shape discourse, and ultimately policy, these qualitative analyses were compared with in-depth interviews of the ranchers.
ContributorsFuente, Nicolás Antonio de la (Author) / Téllez, Michelle (Thesis advisor) / Stancliff, Michael (Committee member) / Gomez, Alan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010