Community development is an ongoing issue that faces communities as they develop. This is a case study where two communities where faced with an identical development proposal involving Bluegrass Stockyards. Bluegrass Stockyards a prominent livestock marketing business, located in Lexington, KY needed to relocate its facility and looked at communities in Lincoln and Woodford County Kentucky as possible new locations. By looking at the case of Bluegrass Stockyards this study is able to use Conflict Theory, Growth Theory and Frame Analysis to look at the development process and issues that was associated with this development proposal. With the two communities being faced with the same proposal, and the proposals having different outcomes, the study is able to gain a better understanding of how development occurs within these two rural communities. This study provides information to both developers and community development professionals on what issues will need to be addressed with a livestock marketing center relocation and how the different issues should be addressed in order to make the process more efficient and beneficial to the involved communities.

This paper discusses women’s involvement in their children’s mathematics education. It does, where possible, focus Torres Strait Islander women who share the aspirations of Aborginal communities around Australia. That is, they are keen for their children to receive an education that provides them with opportunities for their present and future lives. They are also keen to have their cultures’ child learning practices recognised and respected within mainstream education. This recognition has some way to go with the language of instruction in schools written to English conventions, decontextualised and disconnected to the students’ culture, Community and home language.

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Purpose Study explored the relationships of ethnic identity, culture, and social cohesion to mammography, cancer screening, and preventive medical visits among African-American and Afro-Caribbean women in Broward County, FL. Purpose was to understand non-compliance to screening recommendations for breast cancer among disadvantaged Black women in an area of high prevalence. Methods A bounded convenience sample of 117 women (49% African-American and 51% Afro-Caribbean) completed a cross-sectional survey and a subset (n=87) participated in semi-structured discussion groups. Both measured perceptions related to breast cancer, defined ethnic identity or culture, and suggested social and cultural factors influence of ethnic identity, culture, and social cohesion on participation with mammograms and preventive medical care visits. Survey included the Multi-Group Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) and Other-Group Orientation Scale (OGO) for ethnic identity and the Risk Behavior Diagnosis Scale for cancer perceptions. Methods were bivariate, Mann-Whitney U, linear, and logistic regression. Results Half of participants (51%) self-identified as Caribbean. OGO was positively associated with overall attitudes (p< 0.01), perceived urgency (p = 0.05), and perceived benefit related to breast cancer. Linear regression indicated that Afro-Caribbean women (referent) would perceive less urgency to screen (p = 0.05) and lower risk for breast cancer (p = 0.03) than African-American women. Participants explained that personal and neighborhood cultural norms along with health perceptions along with structural factors connected to access and use of medical services influence Black women’s participation in preventive medical services and cancer screening. Conclusions Ethnic identity was associated with women’s perceptions of risk, urgency, and benefit for breast cancer screenings. These perceptions may have had a greater influence on the decisions of Afro-Caribbean women not to comply with screening recommendations or participate in preventive medical care actives than for African-American women. Compliance was also mediated by cultural perceptions of fear, relevance, motivation, and sense of support along with other structural factors. All had contributed to the varying degrees that Black women had sought medical care in this community. Thus, tailoring health interventions to account for variations in within-group characteristics is warranted. [This research was supported in part by NIH/NIGMS R25 GM061347.]

Environmental Justice defines the environment as the spaces where we live, work, and play. The Environmental Justice (EJ) Movement has traditionally used this definition to organize against toxics in communities. However, within EJ work, prisons or policing have often not been centralized or discussed. This means that the approximately 2.2 million people in prison are excluded from the conversation and movement. Additionally, communities and activists are identifying police and prisons as toxics in their communities, but an analysis of policing and prisons is largely missing in EJ scholarship. This thesis explores the intersection between prisons, policing, and pollution. It outlines how prisons, policing, and pollution are connected and reveals why this intersection is critical to understand in Environmental Justice (EJ) scholarship and organizing. Based on interviews with formerly incarcerated individuals in San Antonio, Texas, and a case study of the Mira Loma Women’s Detention Center in the Antelope Valley of California, this thesis expands the realm of EJ work to include and center the spaces of prisons and policing and complicates the definition of toxicity as it has been traditionally used and organized against in the EJ movement. I argue that policing and imprisonment are toxic systems to our communities and contradict and prevent the development of safe and sustainable communities. Thus, understanding prisons and policing as toxic to both people and to the environment, we should move toward abolishing these toxic systems and building alternatives to them. To this end, or rather, to this new beginning, [prison-industrial-complex] abolition should be explored as a framework within EJ to push us to fundamentally reconsider our ideas of justice, to better and differently approach the practice of making environmental justice available for all because abolition is not only about dismantling, but it is largely about building more just, safer, and more sustainable communities. This thesis brings abolition and EJ discourses together to assess the potential for coalition building between abolitionists and EJ activists to work toward a common goal of building safe, sustainable, and more just communities for everybody. I conclude that abolition should be embraced as a framework within EJ to liberate our carceral landscape and to imagine, and subsequently, create a new environmental and social landscape.

Ecotourism is a rapidly growing global export industry that aims to uphold the ethics of responsible tourism by engaging with local communities and encouraging environmentally conscious travel. With existing critiques of the greenwashing of ecotourism and the tendency for tourism agencies to exploit host communities, I advocate for participatory community-based models of ecotourism. This thesis explores both the material and conceptual benefits of community-based ecotourism through the critical examination of community-based ecotourism projects in Rio de Janeiro Brazil. Focusing on the implementation of ecotourism in of some of Rio de Janeiro’s peripheral communities, areas that are impacted by social and spatial marginalization, this thesis argues that the cultural and environmental history of a location are inseparable. When ecotourism is participatory and community-based, it can be a method for sharing cultural and environmental knowledge. Exploring the parallels between environmental justice toxic tourism and community-based ecotourism, this thesis examines the extent to which ecotourism can be used as a tool for social justice, serving to valorize the land histories and lived experiences of communities. Beyond generating money for host communities, the case studies of participatory ecotourism demonstrate the potential for ecotourism to serve as a platform for advocating for land rights in historically marginalized communities.

The town of Amherst, Massachusetts is home to the flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst College, and Hampshire College, institutions that have greatly influenced the town’s prolific history of political activism as well as the high educational attainment and economic status of the majority of its residents. Often hailed as a liberal utopia, research on the political mobilization occurring in this town provides insight into the process and limitations of ally politics: when most of the residents of Amherst are White, how do they engage in racial justice activism? When most of the residents are wealthy and/or highly educated, how do they engage in challenges to capitalism’s structural inequalities? In this thesis, I approach these questions by examining the political mobilization process of myself and others in three organizations: Coming Together, Re-Evaluation Counseling (RC), and the student organization, UMass Alliance for Community Transformation (UACT). I explore how Coming Together focused on antiracism in a process of focused personal reflection about racial identity and personal antiracism practices, and how that process silenced the people of color in the organization, was vii detrimental to my own mental health, and demobilized many potential-activists. In an effort to understand this organization better, I explore the practices of personal reflection and the vision of social change in RC, an organization which greatly influenced Coming Together. I argue that the more holistic and rigorous personal reflection in RC was more empowering, although taxing of energy. Finally, I contrast these experiences with the political mobilization I experienced in the UACT introductory course, Grassroots Community Organizing (GCO). I argue that the ongoing facilitation in critical personal reflection, relationship- and community-building, and practice in activism work in GCO was politically mobilizing and simultaneously produced a community culture of anti oppression. Ultimately, this thesis argues that effective activism against racism requires activism against capitalism, and vice-versa, and that highly intentional anti-oppression community-building can denaturalize, and mobilize participants against, the capitalist ideologies of alienation and competition. In order to do this comparative work, I rely heavily on the methods of participation observation and, rooted in Black feminist anthropology, autoethnography.

Professional interactions that are both functional and mutually beneficial are rare. The purpose of this study is to explore an application of a Third Culture Building (TCB) approach, a mutually constructed interpersonal process between two individuals, for Black American professionals (with advanced knowledge acquired from institutions of higher learning), to generate a new space in Predominantly White Institutions (PWis). These institutions include settings where the racial composition is becoming consistently more diverse (through past desegregation efforts). Although the U.S. has moved beyond integration and the monumental Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, racism and intercultural barriers that prevent functional cross-cultural communication still exist in these settings. This research is directed toward answering the question: How might Black American professionals generate a Third Culture space in PWis through cross-cultural social exchange? The research builds on my previous study where the TCB approach was found to be conducive for the intercultural barriers faced by Black Americans in PWis. The research emphasizes the perspective of Black Americans and de-emphasizes the perspective of White Americans, given the body of literature that points to their adaptation and intercultural interactions in the U.S. and in international contexts. A sample of six Black American professionals (ages 30 to 72; 4 men and 4 women) from my baseline study was invited to take part in this study. Respondents were chosen based on their backgrounds and similarity of race, to learn about their perspectives of the intercultural interactions in PWis. Participants live in the Midwest region of the U.S. Using interpretive, critical theory, and other qualitative approaches, the discussions from a focus group and interviews were transcribed and combined with the interviewer's notes. The participants' responses were organized around TCB frameworks and the interview questions, and then reduced to codes. Two evaluators reviewed the interview data, codes, and themes.

This paper discusses women’s involvement in their children’s mathematics education. It does, where possible, focus Torres Strait Islander women who share the aspirations of Aborginal communities around Australia. That is, they are keen for their children to receive an education that provides them with opportunities for their present and future lives. They are also keen to have their cultures’ child learning practices recognised and respected within mainstream education. This recognition has some way to go with the language of instruction in schools written to English conventions, decontextualised and disconnected to the students’ culture, Community and home language.

No description available.