This thesis analyzes the gendered impacts of plant-based alternatives to petroleum, commonly called biofuels. Synthesizing case studies, scientific research and policies papers, this theoretical work adopts the term “agrofuels” coined by the peasant organization La Vía Campesina to reflect the true nature of these commodities – one of dispossession and ecological destruction. This paper documents the falsity of the claim that the fuels are “sustainable” by presenting facts linking them to deforestation, loss and pollution of water sources, destruction of important biodiversity and the knowledge that maintains this diversity, as well as economic exploitation. Most importantly, I verify that the adoption of agrofuel expansion exacerbates gendered patterns of exclusion and, in most cases, worsens women’s positions within the communities targeted for feedstock production with regard to land tenure, household energy maintenance, independent income and physical integrity.

In this dissertation, I establish a theoretical and empirical critique of modern forms of environmentally sustainable technology. Theoretically, I critique the application of environmentally sustainable technologies in modern capitalist economies using the treadmill of production theory and metabolic rift theory. I also expand on these theories by developing an analytical concept – the displacement paradox. The displacement paradox refers to a counterintuitive phenomenon, where green technologies expand rather displace traditional production processes. Empirically, I assess the assumptions of the displacement paradox by analyzing the relationship between organic farming and agrochemical application, organic farming and greenhouse gas emissions, organic farming and water pollution, and alternatively fueled vehicles and total fuel consumption per vehicle. In each of these cases, I find that green technology (in the form of organic farming and alternatively fueled vehicles) is not displacing traditional production processes, and instead expanding alongside them. I argue that these findings are a result of the broader socioeconomic structure that green technology is produced under. Specifically, I contend that because current socioeconomic systems are established around traditional production processes, to substantially reduce environmental degradation, green technologies must operate as a social and technological counterforce to traditional production processes. Currently, the green technologies explored in this dissertation act as a technological alternatives to traditional production processes, making them commodities that sustain the current structure of social relations, as opposed to social and technological counterforces to environmentally hazardous forms of production. I conclude that in order for green technologies to successfully reduce environmental degradation, they must be established under social conditions that support their use over traditional production processes.

This thesis asks what effects concepts of resilience may have on political action and the ongoing ecological crises we see developing throughout the world. Specifically, it addresses disruptions in wild salmon migration, spawning, and fisheries brought about by industrial aquaculture in the so-called Broughton Archipelago in unceded Kwakwaka’wakw territories on the north east coast of Vancouver Island. These disruptions will be looked at as examples of resilience thinking in action. Through this example this thesis will examine the relationship between manifestations of resilience thinking and the emergence of metabolic rifts between nature and society that bring with them ecological crises. This thesis will begin by tracing the genealogy of resilience thinking from its origins in systems ecology to its depoliticizing formation in political-economic development. Through this it will show where resilience has been split from its origins as a socio-ecological concept, into purely social and ecological formations that interact in a zero-sum relationship. As a depoliticizing force, resilience works through the aforementioned cleavage to atomize individuals and distance them from their connections to socio-ecological communities, favouring instead marketized relations that reinforce capitalism, colonialism, and the state form. Following this, this thesis will argue that this cleavage and resilience thinking more broadly also generate sites of metabolic rifts within and between nature and society and are factors in their reproduction and geographic spread. Resilience however need not be a fully depoliticizing force. Taking up from the work of Roberto Esposito on relational community and immunization, this thesis ends with an exploration of how resilience thinking can return to its socio-ecological roots and be used in emancipatory, decolonial, and ecologically sound ways that will help in the reconstituting of the metabolic cycles within and between nature and society disrupted by rifts. Understanding how resilience thinking plays a role in depoliticization and the generation and reproduction of metabolic rifts makes space for turning this mentality on its head. Reconstructing a more holistic socio-ecological form of resilience helps to provide the necessary political tools to challenge underlying structures of domination and exploitation that put our socio-ecosystems at risk. / Graduate

Over the course of the last several decades, an increase in the level of concern surrounding the various health and environmental consequences of current, popular waste disposal methods, including landfilling and incineration, have resulted in an increase in municipal recycling efforts. These efforts take place primarily at the residential and commercial levels, while the availability of recycling in public spaces like sidewalks, transit stops, parks and other areas is not something that is often encountered in cities around the United States. This thesis studies the implications and opportunities for public space recycling through the action research process during which I conducted case study research of existing public space recycling programs in Portland, Oregon, and New York, New York, alongside the planning and implementation of a pilot program for transit stop recycling in Austin, Texas. The aim of this thesis is to examine and establish various goals and common strategies for the implementation of public space recycling programs and ultimately make a case for this arguably invaluable, yet often overlooked, recycling initiative. Working under the theoretical framework of the urban metabolism and Karl Marx’s theory of the metabolic rift, the reimagining of waste disposal practices to include widespread materials recycling is one avenue for the restructuring of the relationship between the city and the natural environment. The expansion of recycling practices into public spaces forwards the overall mission to make recycling an integral part of daily life. If implemented properly, the widespread implementation of recycling programs like public space recycling could begin to heal the fragmented urban metabolism and ensure the longevity of the ever-evolving urban and natural environments. The conclusions of this research revolve around the importance of context for public space (and other) recycling practices. This research shows that for public space recycling to succeed as a strategy for the mainstreaming of recycling practices and the reparation of the metabolic rift, the unique characteristics of each individual public space must be taken into consideration upon the implementation of a public space recycling program. / text

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xiii, 182 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / Representing a distinct contribution to the tradition of comparative international research in the environment, this dissertation studies the effects of national economic restructuring programs, implemented under the administration of multilateral development institutions, on the fertilizer intensity, energy intensity, and value efficiency of national commodity agriculture for the period 1980 to 2002. Known as structural adjustment, these conditional loan agreements have been thoroughly studied with respect to various social outcomes but in terms of environment impact, sociological investigation has been limited to case studies and to preliminary quantitative analyses of deforestation. Examining the consequences of structural adjustment on soil fertility management is a unique contribution to the field. Combining empirical work with theoretical explication, I frame the object of study using agrarian systems theory and the concept of societal metabolism, examining how the problem of soil fertility in the modern era has become subsumed into industrial processes that are fossil-energy intensive. Relating this historical development to the ongoing dialectic between the forces, relations, and conditions of production, I investigate how the international division of labor, manifested in the uneven and combined development of national economies, facilitates an international division of nature and thereby reproduces the hierarchical system of appropriation that drives the ongoing global expansion of the metabolic rift. Laying out competing theoretical perspectives on the potential for rational management of agricultural modernization, in the empirical component of this project I employ cross-sectional time-series panel regression analysis of secondary data on national development indicators in order to evaluate the relative merits of these contrasting theories for the sustainable development possibilities of Third World nations. The cumulative effects of structural adjustment significantly and independently increase the negative externalities of agricultural modernization while at the same time diminishing the potential economic efficiency of intensive nutrient management. / Committee in charge: Richard York, Chairperson, Sociology; John Foster, Member, Sociology; Robert 0 Brien, Member, Sociology; Joseph Fracchia, Outside Member, Honors College

The main objective of my dissertation is to analyze and compare the socio-ecological implications of the adoption of genetically modified (GM) seeds and alternative agroecological farming methods for farming communities in Alberta, Canada and Andhra Pradesh, India localities situated in contrasting geopolitical, socio-cultural, and structural-institutional contexts in the global economy. For this research, the adoption of GM canola in Alberta and GM cotton in Andhra Pradesh are used as comparative case studies to explore the qualitative impact of agricultural biotechnology on farming communities. Many studies have examined the potential impact of GM crops, but few have looked beyond economic cost-benefit analysis. In this dissertation, I examine social and cultural aspects of farmer decision-making in the adoption of the new seed technology, farmer receptivity to new cropping methods, knowledge translation between laboratory and farmer, and the impact of global knowledge-based technology on local knowledge systems, socio-cultural practices, the nature-society relationship, and gender relations. I use a global ethnography methodology and draw on a series of field interviews with farmers to provide sociological insight into how global processes of the Gene Revolution impact different farming communities in different localities in the world-economy. In this dissertation I argue that the debate about the new agricultural technologies (e.g. GM seeds), the environment and agrarian crises should not be narrowed to the question of new technologies per se. Rather it should be understood from an agrarian political ecology perspective articulating political economy (neoliberal governance at global, national and provincial levels, and the processes of dispossession of primary agricultural producers from their means and conditions of production), socio-cultural systems (the construction of hegemonic discourse about genetically modified organisms, agricultural deskilling, gender relations), and ecosystems (a process of mastering nature, monoculturization, environmental risks, metabolic rift) in the context of neoliberal globalization. My fieldwork study of the Gene Revolution provides closer, more fine-grained research and analysis of its impacts with sensitivity to local class and status, gender and cultural issues, and the ways in which farmers technology adoption decisions can dramatically alter overall quality of life, local knowledge systems, community development, the sustainability of agriculture and the ecosystem itself.

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Discourse has the power to organize thought—and therefore, to limit imagination. The purpose of this project is to trace the contours of climate change discourse constructed by transnational fossil fuel corporations, to make visible the ideological barriers it creates to imagining post-capitalist alternatives. It is undertaken in the context of a well-established urgency for global collaboration to halt, mitigate, and adapt to the social, economic, and ecological impacts of climate change, and takes as its point of departure the fundamental link between ecological degradation and the capitalist mode of production (with its accompanying imperatives of accumulation and profit), as well as the necessity of counter-hegemonic praxis to pursuing system-transformative change on the scale required for humanity to negotiate the looming crisis in a just and ecologically viable way. Conceptualizing popular media as a discursive battleground in which the voices of corporations (through the evolving mediums of advertisement) are privileged, I employ critical discourse analysis to explore the framing of climate change messages by five major transnational oil and gas corporations, toward developing an analytical framework for the burgeoning climate change movement grounded at the intersection of global corporate capitalism and ecological degradation. Climate change messages included images, videos, and narratives intended for public consumption which spoke to the source, resolution, and/or future of human-induced and climate-related ecological problems. These were drawn from corporate websites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter feeds, and YouTube channels over the course of 2016. As action research, I have undertaken this project with the explicit aim of empowering climate movements – of which I count myself a part – to imagine alternative futures. To contribute to this aim, I have created a media literacy toolkit that links corporate climate change messages with the interests they represent to make visible the dynamics of power that mobilize those interests. / Graduate

This dissertation focuses on public diplomacy efforts targeted at persuading other countries to strengthen their domestic and international climate change policies. While previous research on climate diplomacy has addressed the global negotiations extensively, the role of embassies and the interplay between diplomats, their partners and the instruments and storylines they employ, has so far not received the scholarly attention it deserves. This is despite the fact that such behind-the-scenes outreach is one of the most promising tools available to engage other states. The dissertation aims to fill this literature gap by examining climate public diplomacy conducted by embassies and consulates of four EU states: the UK, Germany, Sweden and Denmark. The European Union, and these states in particular, were chosen because they have sought to portray themselves as leaders in tackling climate change while undertaking extensive climate diplomacy. The United States and China were chosen as target states since they have been the main focus of EU climate diplomacy, due to their position as the two largest aggregate contributors to climate change. The dissertation addresses public diplomacy in the field of climate change applied to both the federal/national and subnational levels of governance of these states. The main research question tackled by this dissertation is: What role do embassies and consulates play in climate diplomacy, and how effective is this diplomacy? In answering this, the research focuses on identifying environmental discourses and framings of climate change employed by embassies/consulates for different audiences, and assesses the impact of these frames. A central finding was a strong trade and growth orientation of climate diplomacy. The diplomatic network identified industry, especially fossil-fuel intensive businesses, as allies. Some companies that were embassy partners supported climate denial behind the scenes.