Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Idaho, 2006. / Abstract. "August 2006." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 222-227). Also available online in PDF format.

This dissertation is about the learning and use of science at the level of local community. It is an ethnographic account, and its theoretical approach draws on actor-network theory as well as neo-Marxist practice theory and the related notion of situated cognition. This theoretical basis supports a work that focuses on the many heterogeneous transformations that materials and people undergo as science is used to help bring about social and political change in a quasi-rural community. The activities that science becomes involved in, and the hybrid formations as it encounters local issues are stressed. Learning and knowing as outcomes of community action are theorized. The dissertation links four major themes throughout its narrative: scientific literacy, representations, relationships and participatory democracy. These four themes are not treated in isolation. Different facets of their relation to each other are stressed in different chapters, each of which analyze different particular case studies. This dissertation argues for the conception of a local scientific praxis, one that is markedly different than the usual notion of science, yet is necessary for the uptake of scientific information into a community. / Graduate

O objetivo desta pesquisa à compreender como comunidades agrÃcolas Lagoa dos Cavalos, Junco, BarbatÃo e CÃrrego Salgado, municÃpio de Russas, CearÃ, tÃm construÃdo alternativas ao desenvolvimento em defesa de seu modo de vida e como estratÃgia de resistÃncia à expansÃo do agronegÃcio na subbacia do Baixo Jaguaribe. O marco referencial se concentra nas categorias analÃticas âideologia do desenvolvimentoâ (Rigotto, 2008), âalternativas ao desenvolvimentoâ (Santos, 2005), âagroecologiaâ (Altieri, 2009) e âconflito socioambientalâ (Acselrad, 2004.). A abordagem metodolÃgica encontra-se na hermenÃutica de profundidade de Thompson (1996), perpassando por mÃtodos etnogrÃficos da observaÃÃo participante (Malinowsky, 1984) e da descriÃÃo densa (Geertz, 1989). Como resultados da descriÃÃo do modo de vida agrÃcola tradicional das comunidades Lagoa dos Cavalos, Junco, BarbatÃo e CÃrrego Salgado, desvelamos o processo sÃcio-histÃrico na construÃÃo de alternativas de convivÃncia com o semiÃrido; caracterizaÃÃo da agrobiodiversidade e sua inter-relaÃÃo com os processos de trabalho na agricultura familiar e na apicultura; o potencial da organizaÃÃo comunitÃria e da transiÃÃo agroecolÃgica na promoÃÃo da saÃde no campo. Em relaÃÃo à caracterizaÃÃo do conflito socioambiental entre comunidades agrÃcolas e o ÃrgÃo governamental DNOCS, desvelamos as tramas do conflito entre o modelo de produÃÃo do agronegÃcio e os modos de vida agrÃcolas do sertÃo do CearÃ; as limitaÃÃes dos instrumentos de avaliaÃÃo de impactos ambientais; o movimento de resistÃncias local; construÃÃo de alternativas territoriais como contraproposta ao projeto original do governo federal. Este estudo de carÃter descritivo-documental inter-relaciona saÃde, meio ambiente e produÃÃo a partir de um estudo empÃrico e traz reflexÃes sobre o potencial endÃgeno das comunidades para construÃÃo e efetivaÃÃo de polÃticas pÃblicas de desenvolvimento territorial rural e promoÃÃo da saÃde no campo. / The purpose of this research is to understand how the agricultural communities of Lagoa dos Cavalos, Junco, BarbatÃo and CÃrrego Salgado, in the municipality of Russas, state of CearÃ, Brazil, have created alternatives to development in defense of their way of life and as a strategy of resistance to the expanding large-scale agribusiness at the sub-basin of the Lower Jaguaribe River. Our reference framework draws from the analytic categories of âideology of developmentâ (Rigotto, 2008), âalternatives to developmentâ (Santos, 2005), âagroecologyâ (Altieri, 2009) and âsocio-environmental conflictâ (Acselrad, 2004). The methodological approach is based on the depth hermeneutics of Thompson (1996), reaching over the ethnographic methods of participant observation (Malinowsky, 1984) and thick description (Geertz, 1989). As results of the description of the traditional agricultural life of the communities of Lagoa dos Cavalos, Junco, BarbatÃo and CÃrrego Salgado, we reveal the social and historical process in the creation of alternatives of coexistence with the semi-arid climate, characterizing the agricultural biodiversity and its interrelation with the work processes of family-based agriculture and beekeeping, along with the potential for communitorganization; and the process of agroecological transition in the promotion of health in the countryside. Regarding the characterization of the socio-environmental conflict between the agricultural communities and the National Department of Public Works against Drought (in the Brazilian acronym, DNOCS), we unveil the threads of the tension between the production model of agribusiness and the agricultural ways of life in the dry countryside of the state of CearÃ; the limitations of the instruments for evaluating environmental impacts; the local movement of resistance; and the construction of territorial alternatives as a counterproposal to the original project laid down by the federal government. Based on an empirical work, this descriptive-documental study dwells with the linkages between health, environment and production, and presents some reflections on the endogenous potential of the communities in the construction and effective execution of the public policies of rural development and promotion of health in the countryside.

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of the local Citizenship Council in assisting new immigrants upon their arrival in the community, and during their subsequent early residence in their new environment. The study considers the problems of organization and administration faced by the Councils; and the individual and group adjustments faced by the immigrant. The broad implications of community organization, and of education for citizenship, are also examined. Time and geographical factors limited the study to three Councils, located in Vancouver, Victoria, and Nanaimo. The essential material of the study has been derived from interviews with various executive members of the Councils concerned, and from perusal of their records and minutes of meetings. This resulted in some limitations, especially when the minutes or records were inadequate or incomplete. The study shows (1) the value of the guidance, leadership and stability provided by the Community Chest and Councils, when new organizations are formed within the community; (2) that a Council programme should evolve out of discussion and participation with local voluntary groups interested in the adjustment of the immigrant, and with the government agencies concerned; (3) membership should include representatives of ethnic groups, who should participate in planning the programme; and (4) that care is required in formulating any policy regarding citizenship education within the community; initially, their programme should be primarily concerned with meeting the immediate needs of the immigrant. It is hoped that this study will be of value to Citizenship Councils now functioning, by emphasizing the need for application of sound community organization principles; and will assist Councils now in the formative stage, by pointing out some of the difficulties encountered in creating a voluntary organization which attempts to work with diverse nationality groups. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate

An increasing desire on the part of the public to have more control over the environment in which they live is raising demands for a more decentralized decision-making structure. These demands mean a change in the power structure. Information has become the source of power and control. If citizens are to be involved equally in decisions, it means they must have freer access to the reception and distribution of information - especially in the mass media. Television as a medium has the capacity to deeply involve people and to transmit a large volume of information. In Canada, the content of broadcast television is controlled by the government agency, the CBC, and private broadcasters. Financial interests (advertisers and stockholders) can exert strong influence on programme content. A scarcity of broadcast channels and very expensive and complicated equipment restrict access to broadcast television. Cable television offers a solution. It has a potential capacity of eighty-two channels; it does not require as sophisticated equipment; and the Canadian Radio-Television Commission requires the cable system operator to provide a community channel. Free access by citizens to a cable channel for expression and information is the basis of community television. Several cases, in which media access and citizen influence over decisions were improved, were examined. The Fogo Island project exhibited the power of film to help a community to formulate its goals and define solutions to its problems. The Drumheller project used video-tape, instead of film, to the same ends. In both these projects the citizens controlled the content of the "programmes". The Barrie experiment used two electronic media (television and telephone) for dialogue. The content of the programme was determined by a community committee. The Richmond project used electronic dialogue but the content was greatly influenced by a technical panel. The experiment in the West End was designed to spur discussion of the future of that area, to interest some residents in the use of video and cable television for expression of their attitudes about West End life and some directions for development. On a small scale the experiment was successful; the extension over a longer period of time will determine its final outcome. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

This study is an initial and exploratory venture toward examining organizational change as it applies to the field of social welfare in Greater Vancouver. Specifically the formulation for documenting change as outlined in the proposal of the Area Development Project of the Greater Vancouver Area was used in three separate case studies. The study has concerned itself with documenting the process of organizational change (both planned and unplanned), rather than analyzing the effect organizational change has had upon services and/or agencies. The first case study deals with three social actions initiated in 1964 by the Society of Women Only, a group of deserted women in the Vancouver Area. In each action process the organization was attempting to create change in governmental systems of a mutual support and social control nature. The change processes were documented from their inception but not to their conclusions. The structured organizational change documented in the second case study occurred in 1961. At that time two divisions of the Social Planning Section of the Community Chest and Councils of Greater Vancouver, the Groupwork and Recreation Division and the Family and Child Welfare Division were combined. The combined divisions became the Welfare and Recreation Council. The whole change process was documented from its inception in 1960 until the change was assessed by a special committee in January - March 1965. The third case study considers the documentation of organizational change being attempted in a geographic area known as Sunrise Park in the city of Vancouver. The purpose of this change process has been to formulate plans for action by the health, recreation, education and welfare agencies towards solving problems that exist or may exist as a result of the introduction of a large public housing project into the area. The case study deals with change process in its initial stages as the organizational change in the period under study was only just beginning. Each writer has concluded his case study by making a number of critical observations concerning the utility of the selected model for the development of both theory and practice in the field of community organization. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Myers, Robert James; Belknap, John Victor / Graduate

Feminist researchers have noted the invisibility of women in power structure studies to date and have suggested that it is the methods of main-stream social science research that systematically obscure women's political activities. The primary objective of this study is to identify and describe the women who participate in the public decision-making process at the community level, as a test of the suggestion that there is a bias in the methods, and as a way of beginning to correct the present lack of knowledge about women's contributions to community politics. There is, however, no accepted theory of community power, and the organization and distribution of power in a Canadian suburban community, a previously unstudied setting, could not be taken for granted. Therefore, the research has been designed to determine both the structure of power in the community and the location of women in that structure. Variations on standard research methods are used to identify men and women active in community politics, and interviews with elected and other community leaders provide data about the leaders, their memberships in key organizations, and their political activities and strategies. Fictitious names are given to the community, some of the local organizations, and the community leaders in order to protect the anonymity of the informants. The distribution of power in the community is found to conform to the elite power structure model. An organized opposition somewhat limits the power of the dominant clique, but this does not constitute evidence of the mutual control that some researchers state is the case in pluralistic societies. A comparison of the data in this and other studies indicates that individuals active in sectors such as business, government and the independent professions, are predominant in all the communities in the comparative survey, no matter what type of community or what methods are used to identify the community leaders. It is suggested that this finding lends weight to the stratification theorists' assessment of the distribution of power in the community. It is concluded that the methods of power structure research are designed to focus on the most powerful members of the community, and active women will be under-reported because, although they are similar to influential men in personal characteristics, women are not often elected to positions of power, they are less likely than men to be members of the associations and institutions through which political power is organized, and they are less often active in the issues that are important to the dominant men. However, main-stream social science research has been designed by men to focus mainly on men's experiences. Women have been classified only in terms of the men in their lives, their political behaviour has been defined in different ways than men's, and researchers and informants alike have not thought of women as influential in public decision-making. By using methods which draw attention to the women who are active in community politics, it is shown that women participate in many ways to shape public policy, from activities that are designed to influence economic issues and land use decisions, to those which influence the type of educational and welfare programs available to the community. Women bring many personal resources to the decision-making process, but lack the organizational resource bases that men use to exert influence and gain political power. Women, like less powerful men in the community, exercise influence in different ways than the men in the dominant clique. It is recommended that the study of women's political experiences be used as a starting point in studying the organization, exercise and distribution of power at the community level from the perspective of relatively powerless individuals and groups. It is hoped that apart from offering women a way to validate their political experiences and to understand the nature of the limitations on their power, such studies will provide the impetus to renew efforts in developing a comprehensive theory of community power. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

Feminist community organizing involves members of a geographic locale or social network coming together to address a shared issue or problem affecting the lives of women in order to find a collective solution (Dominelli, 1995; Israel, Checkoway, Schulz & Zimmerman, 1994; Selsky, 1991). While the organizational theory literature has traditionally focused on the exchange of financial and material resources as the main reason for forming partnerships (Gulati, 1998; Kanter, 1989; Oliver, 1991), a growing body of feminist literature (Acker, 1995; Brown, 1992; Eisenstein, 1995; Feree and Martin, 1995; Reinelt, 1994) and community development literature (Dominelli, 1995, Israel et al., 1994; Kretzman & McKnight, 1993; Minkler & Wallerstein, 1997; Selsky, 1991) emphasizes the importance of other types of resources such as skills, lived experience, knowledge, information and social networks. In addition, feminist collectivity offers a promising alternative to hierarchy in terms of valuing and mobilizing the diverse pool of resources brought to a feminist community-based initiative by participants from varied social locations (Callahan, 1997; Dominelli, 1995; Reinelt, 1994). The purpose of my study was to investigate participant understandings of the resources they brought to a feminist community organizing initiative designed to increase the access of women on low-incomes to community recreation, and how emergent organizational practices affected resource utilization. A case study analysis of 'Women Organizing Activities for Women' (WOAW) that is comprised of a diverse group of women on low incomes, community partners, and university-based researchers was conducted. The research methods for this project included the analysis data obtained in Interactive Research Meetings (n=3) with each of the WOAW participant groups to determine individual and collective resources. Observations of Phase I WOAW meetings (n=9) were recorded using fieldnotes and verbatim transcripts and served as the data source for examining patterns of resource utilization given emergent feminist collective organizing practices. Fieldnotes and transcripts were analyzed using Atlas.ti data computer software. Participants from the three groups identified over 200 examples of resources they were bringing to WOAW and described a number of connections between resources, as well as multiple meanings of single resource types, which differed based on their roles and locations in the organization. These findings contribute to the literature by linking resource identification in new ways to the process of resource utilization. The results also contribute to practice by challenging assumptions about the types of resources brought by different collaborators and by identifying organizational practices that enhance or inhibit resource utilization. My analysis revealed that there was ambiguity between participant groups about who was bringing what resources, which led to assumptions being made about who would take on certain tasks in the group. I also found that while feminist collective organizing practices enabled participants to name and share resources in an empowering and respectful environment, that time constraints, ambiguity about roles and participants' lack of familiarity with the process were challenges to mobilizing available resources. / Education, Faculty of / Kinesiology, School of / Graduate

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Masters of Arts in the Department of Social Work University of Zululand, South Africa, 1977. / The purpose of this study is to analyze and evaluate the approach to the practice of community work in a newly developing rural community. The Valley Trust, a social welfare organisation engaged in a health promotion scheme in a rural community is used for the purpose of the analysis and*evaluation. The study report consists of nine chapters which will be briefly discussed as follows : Chapter 1 : This is an introductory chapter which deals with the following aspects, viz.: motivation; objectives; method; and limitations of the study together with the method of presentation of the report. Chapter Z : In this chapter the community concept is discussed. Attention is paid to the analysis of the community concept, the rural community, and the characteristics of the rural community. Chapter 3 : Chapter 3 gives a detailed discussion of the key terms that are used in community work. These are : community organisation, community development and community work. Chapter 4 : This chapter deals with social work and its role in the newly developing communities. Particular aspects to which attention has been given are : the nature of social work; the focus and the contribution of social work activities in the newly developing communities; the role of the social worker; and the equipment of a social worker for rural community work in the newly developing communities. Chapter 5 : Chapter 5 gives attention to aspects of particular importance to social change. These aspects are : the prerequisites for building a community work programme; the.factors associated with the social needs and problems among the newly developing communities; planned social change and the role of the agent of change; and certain principles and factors to be taken into account by an agency involved in community work. Chapter 6 : In this chapter attention is given to an analysis of the community of' the Nyuswa Reserve. In this analysis points of particular importance are : the description of the Nyuswa Reserve and its inhabitants; the economic aspects of the people; the labour aspects; the educational aspects; social welfare services; communication means; and the tribal council as a unit of local authority. Chapter 7 : Chapter 7 deals with The Valley Trust, the social welfare agency involved in community work. Attention is given to the historical survey and the objectives of The Valley Trust. Further discussion covers the membership of the Association; the Management and administration of The Valley Trust; personnel and finances. Chapter 8 : This chapter gives attention to community work as practised by The Valley Trust. The discussion also covers the nature and range of services provided by The Valley Trust; the influence of the work of The Valley Trust; the evaluative remarks on the services of The Valley Trust. Chapter 9 : Chapter 9 deals with conclusions, recommendations and guidelines for the future. / University of Zululand

Federally mandated citizen participation has been controversial since its inception in 1964. It has been as difficult to implement in practice as it has been to define conceptually. An examination of the literature related to this federally mandated citizen participation uncovers a number of untested assumptions relating to the individual political behavior of those for whom participation is mandated. This literature concentrates on forms of organized group participation, and the direct action of these groups in the planning and policy-making process, but it tends to ignore the fact that participation in the organized neighborhood groups advocated is essentially an individual political decision. Also ignored is the substantial body of research and literature related to individual political behavior which generally finds that levels and rates of participation are a function of socio-economic factors. This well established research suggests those for whom participation is mandated--residents of low income and low socio-economic status neighborhoods--are the least likely to become politically active. The general weakness of this body of research and literature, which is based largely on the electoral process, is that it fails to adequately explain or predict the significant levels of participation actually exhibited by lower income and lower socio-economic status individuals in the War on Poverty, Model Cities, and similar programs. A more holistic model of political behavior based on social-psychological concepts allows a much broader view of the elements which may contribute to this more non-traditional type of political behavior. Such a model has been developed by Robert Lane and others. It suggests perceptual and attitudinal variables which may be especially useful in explaining and/or predicting the participation of lower socio-economic status individuals in these programs. These perceptual and attitudinal variables, and their relationships to political participation, are the focus of the research undertaken in this dissertation. Through a random sample household interview survey, a study of the perceptual and attitudinal variables associated with resident participation in elections, issues, and neighborhood groups was undertaken in two low income neighborhoods in the City of Portland, Oregon. The survey results suggest that individuals active in neighborhood groups and issues are not necessarily the same individuals highly involved in traditional electoral activity. These survey results indicate a number of perceptual and attitudinal variables significantly associated with participation in neighborhood groups and issues: (1) the perception of the existence of neighborhood problems; (2) salience of perceived neighborhood problems; (3) feelings of personal and/or group efficacy in doing something about the specific problems perceived; (4) perception of the social and political nature of identified neighborhood problems; (5) attitudes toward the value of participation as a desired end in itself; and (6) attitudes toward voting, petitioning, collective action, non-violent protest, and violent protest as approved and effective means to solve neighborhood problems. The survey results also indicate systematic differences in the perceptual and attitudinal variables associated with the participation of Black and White survey respondents. White participation appears to be much more highly related to the perception of neighborhood problems than Black participation. Whites in the study appear to participate as a means to solve problems they perceive in their neighborhood, while participation seems to be more an end in itself for the Blacks surveyed. The results of the survey tend to validate important elements of a social-psychological model of political behavior. The results also suggest that more attention needs to be focused on the relationships between individuals' perceptions of their environment and political behavior.