Fantasy literature is often dismissed as inferior work, whose primary purpose is to provide an escapist text for its readers. The purpose of this project is twofold: to show that fantasy actively engages social issues and to investigate how this engagement occurs, using the texts of young adult fantasy writer Tamora Pierce. Pierces works demonstrate how conventions of fantasy can be used and broken in order to create new perspectives on modern concerns. My study begins with an examination of fantasy literature and research, with emphases on J. R. R. Tolkien and Tzvetan Todrov. From there, I move on to discuss at length the three social issues most prevalent in Pierces work: environmentalism, feminism, and didacticism. In terms of environmentalism, animals are elevated above modern status, alien species create analogies to human affairs, and magic becomes a metaphor for responsible management and understanding of natural forces. Pierces treatment of feminism, through the portrayals of young female protagonists, has been challenged by critics for perpetuating the male-dominated system. However, a detailed study demonstrates a variety of different reactions and approaches to feminism that cannot be dismissed so easily. Both the environmentalism and the feminism in these novels suggest a desire on Pierces part to impart a didactic message to her young adult audience. While this message may not always be one that Pierce appears to intend, her nuanced approach to the often oversimplified fantasy binary of good and evil creates a worldview more compatible to that of her readers. Through Pierce and her work, fantasy is more than just escape- it fosters revitalization and reconsideration of the modern world.

Thesis (MA)--University of Montana, 2010. / Contents viewed on February 8, 2010. Title from author supplied metadata. Includes bibliographical references.

In the last 30 years, Iran has experienced mounting environmental problems, such as air and water pollution, that are perceived as in need of redress. In order to address and confront these problems, Iran has recently adopted the language and framework of ecological science. Subsequently, the prestige of science in the country has been growing through extensive applications of ecological science at various levels of Iranian society. Viewing this development as a socio-cultural process of modernity in Iran, this dissertation addresses two major issues: First, it investigates the discursive historical conditions of Iran in which modern science, including ecological science, has been developed and practiced since the nineteenth century. Second, it explores the cultural dimensions of environmentalism in Iran through examining its reception by Iranian environmentalists, researchers, and non-expert citizens in Tehran and their attitudes toward it. The analyses of the genealogies of science in Iran show that modern science has provided Iranians with a conceptual framework through which to govern the objects that state authorities, with accuracy and efficiency, wish to identify, analyze, and organize. I argue that the "population" has been a prominent object in the governance of Iran in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and that, more recently, "the environment" has become such an object. Scientific knowledge and management have played a vital role in establishing these mechanisms of governance, thereby the status of science is kept intact in Iran. Drawing on thirteen months of fieldwork in Tehran, I also examine the recent development of environmentalism in urban Iran through changing conceptions of "nature." With Iran's utilization of ecological science, a new conception of nature is recently introduced to society: a scientific formulation of nature. I demonstrate how this notion of nature has become influential along with growing environmental discourses in Iran, and yet, argue that another conception of nature--relating to Iranian nationhood--also makes a key contribution to Iranian environmentalism. In particular, I engage the anthropological perspectives of "materiality" and "heteroglossia" to highlight this point.

An increased interest in environmental concern has been embraced within the consumer market, particularly in the apparel market. As such, environmentally friendly clothing items are becoming more prevalent in the mainstream consumer market. In order to better understand factors relating to environmental concern and environmental apparel knowledge, this study compared students’ environmental orientation and environmental apparel knowledge depending on college major and gender, and identified attitudes and perceptions of environmentally friendly clothing at a university located in the Midwestern area in the United States. Results indicated that some majors, particularly those grouped as Environmentally Related majors differed from other major groups. Gender was found not to make a difference in either environmental orientation or environmental apparel knowledge in this study. Attitudes and perceptions about environmental friendly clothing were evaluated. In addition, some attitudes and perceptions were found to be correlated with scores relating to environmental orientation and apparel knowledge. / Department of Family and Consumer Sciences

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 223-247). / Microfiche. / viii, 247 p. 29 cm

This study explores the qualitatively different ways in which the phenomenon of environmental education is understood or experienced by a purposeful sample of year seven students in Queensland and Saskatchewan. In 'directing the activities of the young', environmental education has, since its genesis, existed in an epistemological quagmire surrounding the development of 'responsible' environmental behaviours. Yet, after some thirty years of research and pedagogical initiative, this is one of only a few studies that have looked at the reality of environmental education through the eyes of young people. Contested and debated, environmental education has received much attention in many countries from educators interested in merging the complexities of the terms environment and education. In the context of this study it is significant to note that environmental education's history bears witness to scholarly discourse and educational initiatives in Australia and Canada. However, while environmental education has continued to expand its presence in pedagogical and didactic endeavour, its history also demonstrates contested ideological foundations regarding its implementation in schools. Queensland and Saskatchewan offer pertinent examples of this contestation. From a global perspective, the goals and objectives of environmental education have been driven, developed and established around international agendas developed at a number of conferences designed and delivered through UNESCO. These global initiatives were then left to local interpretation that often resulted in very different didactic and pedagogic frameworks. Such is the case with Queensland and Saskatchewan where environmental education is situated within a social science framework in Queensland and a science framework in Saskatchewan. However, the pedagogical structure of environmental education was not the focus of this study per se. Instead, this phenomenographic research project looks at how the phenomenon of environmental education is experienced by a group of Year 7 children in each region. These children's experiences of environmental education can be encapsulated in a limited number of qualitatively different conceptualisations. The study finds that, regardless of their country of origin, the children conceptualise environmental education in five ways; Environmental Education as: 'Human Being'. 'Human Escaping'. 'Human Doing'. 'Human Complying'. 'Human Distancing'. Specific components of these conceptions are detailed through 'categories of description' which lend themselves to a structural framework referred to as an 'outcome space'. Through this 'outcome space' it becomes apparent that for the year seven students who participated in this research project, environmental education is, at is best irrelevant, and at its worst depressing. For the goals of environmental education and those who aspire and work towards meeting those goals, this 'cumulative movement of action (environmental education) toward a later result' as noted by Dewey and quoted above, appears to be growing in the wrong direction.

All this has implications for achieving environmental sustainability in a 'real' biosphere that still supplies the 'ecosystem services' that allow humans, and the rest of the biomass, to actually survive (at the same time that its custodians of mind-us- are 'escaping' into customised neo-worlds). This thesis makes some preliminary enquiries into these new logics, the new 'selectors' at work in human meaning making ecosystems that owe little to those produced by billions of years of 'natural selection'. What seems to be at work at present is an enormously accelerated 'cultural selection' of winners and losers in the 'real' and 'imaginary' world. It would be unwise for the modernist systems of thought that still inform many of our institutional responses to the biosphere to ignore the pre-eminent affect of these cultural processes and the strange and possibly disturbing (at least to the ecosystemic biological purists) new 'weedy' entertainment-ecosystems that might arise from their deployment. / This thesis reviews some aspects of these 'new selectors' at work and begins to chart- with an Australian focus- the tentative development of institutional/legal responses and emergent socialites that acknowledge and even leverage, these new forces. It finally suggests a radical set of possibilities, which if they came to pass, would signal the end to the kind of 'public reservationism' that has characterised the 20th century response to nature, wilderness and the 'environmental crisis', and usher in a more chaotic (but still possibly sustainable) era of 'winners' and 'losers' mediated by new social selectors of post-consumption voluntary affiliation. / The 20th century will be remembered for many 'firsts' and many 'revolutions'. One of these 'revolutions' was the process whereby issues surrounding 'nature', the non-human organisms that inhabit it, the human relationship to these organisms, and the human impact on the planet as a whole, came to occupy such a considerable amount of our individual and collective 'attention space' as the century progressed. In a nutshell, over the course of the 20th century 'the environment' became a 'thing' that almost everyone recognised, and which became associated with a wide range of qualities, dreams and fears that impacted, to varying degrees, on almost every human meaning-making system and institution. / 'Environmentalism' has largely been a product of enlightenment, modernist thinking. From the romantic philosophers, poets and travellers of the 18th and 19th century, to the founders of the ecological sciences, to the eco-activists and 'green' political parties of the 20th century, a whole series of intertwining enlightenment systems of thought and practice have informed its discourses and narratives. The logics of these discourses are all around us in our newly networked global mediasphere- at work in environmental organisations, informing government policy- and they form the basis of the environmental story telling that have made green issues so prominent in the media in the last several decades. / Thesis (PhDSoSc(Communic,InformatStud))--University of South Australia, 2005.

The 20th century will be remembered for many ‘firsts’ and many ‘revolutions’. One of these ‘revolutions’ was the process whereby issues surrounding ‘nature’, the non-human organisms that inhabit it, the human relationship to these organisms, and the human impact on the planet as a whole, came to occupy such a considerable amount of our individual and collective ‘attention space’ as the century progressed. In a nutshell, over the course of the 20th century ‘the environment’ became a ‘thing’ that almost everyone recognised, and which became associated with a wide range of qualities, dreams and fears that impacted, to varying degrees, on almost every human meaning-making system and institution. / ‘Environmentalism’ has largely been a product of enlightenment, modernist thinking. From the romantic philosophers, poets and travellers of the 18th and 19th century, to the founders of the ecological sciences, to the eco-activists and ‘green’ political parties of the 20th century, a whole series of intertwining enlightenment systems of thought and practice have informed its discourses and narratives. The logics of these discourses are all around us in our newly networked global mediasphere- at work in environmental organisations, informing government policy- and they form the basis of the environmental story telling that have made green issues so prominent in the media in the last several decades. / All this has implications for achieving environmental sustainability in a ‘real’ biosphere that still supplies the ‘ecosystem services’ that allow humans, and the rest of the biomass, to actually survive (at the same time that its custodians of mind-us- are ‘escaping’ into customised neo-worlds). This thesis makes some preliminary enquiries into these new logics, the new ‘selectors’ at work in human meaning making ecosystems that owe little to those produced by billions of years of ‘natural selection’. What seems to be at work at present is an enormously accelerated ‘cultural selection’ of winners and losers in the ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’ world. It would be unwise for the modernist systems of thought that still inform many of our institutional responses to the biosphere to ignore the pre-eminent affect of these cultural processes and the strange and possibly disturbing (at least to the ecosystemic biological purists) new ‘weedy’ entertainment-ecosystems that might arise from their deployment. / This thesis reviews some aspects of these ‘new selectors’ at work and begins to chart- with an Australian focus- the tentative development of institutional/legal responses and emergent socialites that acknowledge and even leverage, these new forces. It finally suggests a radical set of possibilities, which if they came to pass, would signal the end to the kind of ‘public reservationism’ that has characterised the 20th century response to nature, wilderness and the ‘environmental crisis’, and usher in a more chaotic (but still possibly sustainable) era of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ mediated by new social selectors of post-consumption voluntary affiliation. / Thesis (PhDSoSc(Communic,InformatStud))--University of South Australia, 2005.

The 20th century will be remembered for many "firsts" and many 'revolutions'. One of these 'revolutions' was the process whereby issues surrounding 'nature', the non-human organisms that inhabit it, the human relationship to these organisms, and the human impact on the planet as a whole, came to occupy such a considerable amount of our individual and collective 'attention space' as the century progressed. In a nutshell, over the course of the 20th century 'the environment' became a 'thing' that almost everyone recognised, and which became associated with a wide range of qualities, dreams and fears that impacted, to varying degrees, on almost every human meaning-making system and institution. 'Environmentalism' has largely been a product of enlightenment, modernist thinking. From the romantic philosophers, poets and travellers of the 18th and 19th century, to the founders of the ecological sciences, to the eco-activists and 'green' political parties of the 20th century, a whole series of intertwining enlightenment systems of thought and practice have informed its discourses and narratives. The logics of these discourses are all around us in our newly networked global mediasphere at work in environmental organisations, informing government policy and they form the basis of the environmental story telling that have made green issues so prominent in the media in the last several decades. All this has implications for achieving environmental sustainability in a real biosphere that still supplies the 'ecosystem services' that allow humans, and the rest of the biomass, to actually survive (at the same time that its custodians of mind-us- are 'escaping' into customised neo-worlds). This thesis makes some preliminary enquiries into these new logics, the new 'selectors' at work in human meaning making ecosystems that owe little to those produced by billions of years of 'natural selection'. What seems to be at work at present is an enormously accelerated 'cultural selection' of winners and losers in the real and imaginary world. It would be unwise for the modernist systems of thought that still inform many of our institutional responses to the biosphere to ignore the pre-eminent affect of these cultural processes and the strange and possibly disturbing (at least to the ecosystemic biological purists) new weedy entertainment-ecosystems that might arise from their deployment. This thesis reviews some aspects of these 'new selectors' at work and begins to chart- with an Australian focus- the tentative development of institutional/legal responses and emergent socialites that acknowledge and even leverage, these new forces. It finally suggests a radical set of possibilities, which if they came to pass, would signal the end to the kind of 'public reservationism' that has characterised the 20th century response to nature, wilderness and the 'environmental crisis', and usher in a more chaotic (but still possibly sustainable) era of 'winners' and 'losers' mediated by new social selectors of post-consumption voluntary affiliation.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, November, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.