My project is centered around a community garden in Upland, California called the People and Their Plants garden. This garden represents a five hundred year living history designed to show the changes in the ecological landscape of Southern California caused by colonization. This autoethnographic thesis works towards personal, interpersonal, and community-wide decolonization through building reciprocal relationships with Indigenous Elders. I explore, critique and problematize research and ethnography by examining the politics of knowledge, language, history, and ecology. I interrogate my own learned knowledge systems as well as colonial/capitalist food systems—and recognize how those systems/relations have worked to render Indigenous ways of knowing as invisible. Furthermore, I examine the connection between colonialism, gender, and capitalist food systems. I explain how the People and Their Plants garden is an act of resistance to colonial/capitalist food systems as it creates space for alternative economic practices and decolonial food practices. As part of this project, I co-authored a brochure about the garden with a Tongva Elder.

This undergraduate thesis analyzes the narrative and opinion responses of sixteen tropical interviewees to understand environmental realities and argue for the necessity of developing a deep connection to one's place in order to attain true sustainability. Trending themes that influenced this conclusion were: participant reproduction of stereotypes commonly attributed to tropical regions; the emergence of religious doctrine in descriptions of human's role in nature and spiritual depictions of interactions with the unbuilt environment; and explanations of extra-classroom environmental education. I argue that the best way to live sustainably on this planet is to integrate place-based environmental education that fosters both personal comfort with the natural world and a means to understand the global implications of individual actions.

After decades of cuts to federal funding, cities were left with few resources for public services, particularly parks and open spaces. Current trends of massive gentrification in New York City are changing the housing market and other components of the private sector. In addition to altering socio-spatial dynamics in the housing and consumer markets, gentrification can alter public spaces as well. By comparing three New York City neighborhoods at different stages of gentrification, I analyzed socio-spatial dynamics, public and private funding, event programming, and ethnographically observed changes in the physical and social landscape of the park, and neighborhood, over time.

Cigarette butts are rapidly accumulating on our planet; trillions of them are discarded every year. In this paper, I examine why cigarette litter is a problem. I first discuss the biodegradability of filters and its scientific basis, including ways to enhance degradation rates by chemically manipulating filters. I also talk about the persistence of cigarette chemicals and their potential toxic effects on children and animals. I consider other social, economic, and environmental consequences of cigarette filters and chemicals. Furthermore, I discuss various solutions smokers and non-smokers alike have created to address the problem of cigarette litter; these methods come from a wide range of artistic, science-based, and policy-based perspectives. Finally, my thesis examines this issue in the context of a college campus – Pomona College in Claremont, CA. I discuss a map showing the number of cigarette litter around buildings and sidewalks on campus and consider factors that influence the location and high counts of litter. Finally, I make recommendations for the college based on my findings.

Due to its high levels of concern and awareness of environmental issues, rural character, and sparse population, Vermont would at first glance appear to possess the ideal recipe to become a national leader in renewable energy development. Renewable initiatives have focused primarily on wind energy, as over a dozen wind farms have been proposed in the last few years across the state. However, in spite of the widely held belief in Vermont’s wind energy future, its proponents have run into vehement opposition at every proposed site, often successfully impeding the planned developments. This report develops a wide-level framework of the motivations of and complaints presented by wind opposition groups around the state, followed by an analysis of opposition strategies commonly employed. These are contrasted with the tactics used by wind developers and their supporters to remediate or overcome this opposition. Next, this essay will offer a view of the state and local institutional settings in which these battles take place, and finally conclude with a brief analysis of various alternatives to utility-scale wind, offering suggestions for wind’s role in the future of energy in Vermont.

There is an increasing interest in the life outcomes of youth that are exposed to community violence. Previous research has found that community violence has a direct effect on youth development. It has also shown that there are economic costs for communities that have high levels of community violence. Thus far, the literature on youth in these areas has focused on protective factors such as school connectedness, family connectedness, religion and positive life outcomes. There is little research on the affects of mentoring on life outcomes for individuals that were exposed to community violence during adolescence. This study explores mentoring as a mediating variable that promotes positive life outcomes by analyzing data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health studies. A nested multiple regression model was used to evaluate the data. The results show that individuals with mentors are more likely to be civically engaged during young adulthood.

Reliance on foreign oil is a major problem facing the United States due to uncontrollable prices, dealing with hostile nations, and oil wars. Demographic variables, risk perception, community attachment, environmental knowledge, and environmental attitudes of Texans were examined to determine which factors influence attitudes toward the hard- and soft-energy path for ending the U.S. Reliance on foreign oil. The data for this study were collected through a mailed questionnaire which included 1,228 Texans in 12 counties over three ecological regions. The dependent measures, hard-energy path and soft-energy path, were regressed on the independent and control variables to determine which factors influenced energy-path preference. The results of the data analysis of Texans clearly demonstrated that environmental attitudes, and in the end, knowledge of energy solutions are the most powerful predictors of risk perception.

This dissertation examines the question of how communities understand their risk related to global economic and environmental problems and how communities respond to those risks. Specifically, using comparative case study, this dissertation examines the sustainability efforts of two communities, Oberlin, Ohio and Berea, Kentucky. Both communities have created advanced sustainability efforts over more than a decade of work and both communities have well-developed partnerships with the colleges in their communities. It finds that communities are responding to both global risks related to climate change and energy price volatility, but also are making efforts to resolve more localized social problems and economic challenges. This research also demonstrates that communities are particularly interested in increasing their community resilience related to local energy and food production, but also have concerns with addressing the persistent inequalities that exist in their communities.

Recent reports detail a rise in the practice of home food preservation in the United States due to economic woes, nutritional concerns, and increasing devotion to local food production.Home food preservation is the processing of foods in order to extend its shelf-life. Current common approaches to preserving foods at home include pressure canning, freezing, drying, water bath canning, and cellaring/storing. Local food production in four Kentucky counties were examined through in-depth qualitative interviews with home food preservation practitioners to yield a rural/urban comparison. Forty home food preservation practitioners were interviewed between Fall 2009 and Fall 2013. The primary question driving this project is what motivates those who grow gardens and practice home food preservation in an era of readily available, relatively cheap foodstuffs? Secondary questions include, how do the motivations of home food preservation practitioners compare in rural and urban areas? What are the links, if any, between home food preservation and environmental sustainability concerns in rural and urban areas? Each of these questions will be examined through a mixture of qualitative methods and a grounded theoretical approach. In-depth field interviews with 40 preservers, documentary filmmaking, and participant observation were conducted in two rural and two urban Kentucky counties. Interview transcripts were coded by themes, interpreted using hermeneutic analysis, and analyzed by grounded theory. Policy institutes could make gains from this research by building upon already existing community food practices. Agriculture extension agent could use these findings to inform their food preservation programs and improve safety recommendations.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the discrepancies of female breast cancer mortality between the Appalachian and Non-Appalachian regions of Kentucky using data from the Kentucky Cancer Registry. This study identified subtype, reproductive, and regional differences in women with breast cancer in Kentucky. Among women with breast cancer living in Kentucky from 2004 to 2007, one and three live births significantly increased a woman’s risk of breast cancer mortality by 91% and 58% respectively, compared to a woman with zero live births. Progesterone receptornegative tumor status significantly increased a woman’s risk of breast cancer mortality by 64% compared to women with progesterone receptor-positive breast cancer. Residence in the Appalachian region significantly increased a woman’s risk of breast cancer mortality by 3.14-fold. After adjusting for regional interactions, progesterone receptor-negative tumor status in the Appalachian region increased a woman’s risk of breast cancer mortality by 3.13-fold. These findings suggest parity and estrogen receptor tumor status do not contribute to the breast cancer differences between the Appalachian and Non-Appalachian region of Kentucky. The association between progesterone receptor status and Appalachian residency suggest factors associated with the Appalachian region provide the poorest prognosis for a woman with breast cancer in Kentucky.