Community gardens are places where people connect, share, and engage their social and ecological communities. The purpose of this thesis was to document and communicate participants’ experiences of community-building through community gardening in Kenora, Ontario, Canada. The primary method used was Photovoice, whereby a group of twelve participants shared photos and stories of their garden communities in a series of workshops. Follow-up interviews were used to get participant feedback on the Photovoice process and fill gaps in the data, while participant observation was used to triangulate data. Results suggest a uniquely relational perspective of community gardening, the significance of sharing and learning in the garden, as well as success with and barriers to social capital and ecological citizenship among gardeners. Of particular importance, future garden initiatives should facilitate opportunities for intergenerational bonding, connecting across community gardens, building gardens in accessible locations, addressing systemic barriers to inclusion, and conducting further community-based research.

In this study, I aim to understand business responses to social-ecological grand challenges. Prior research has suggested that problem identification and attribution help to foster meaning and action on societal issues. In particular, framing theory has offered significant insight into individual actors' cognitive processes, their skillful articulation of socially resonant interpretive frames, and the role of particular actor categories and repertoires in framing success. At meso and macro levels, researchers have tended to focus on social movements and the outcomes of highly charged political contests between these groups and state actors. As such, we know far less about the co-creative mechanisms and contextual ‘raw materials' that underpin meaning making activities and interaction between groups, especially in instances where the focus is on firms and the significance being attached to ambiguous societal issues for which they are not directly responsible. A key outstanding question is therefore: how do firm-internal agents interpret, signify and mobilize organizational responses to grand challenges? In an effort to address these lacunae, this study explores the proactive efforts of three firms to interpret the complexity of social-ecological grand challenges that they share with the rest of society and to address these issues through meaningful and mitigating action. My inductively derived theoretical model of ‘interactional framing for issue advancement' shows how the active engagement of external influences by internal change or ‘signifying agents' facilitates action on grand challenges within and beyond the firm. While framing activities charge grand challenge issues with meaning and help to organize actors' understanding of, experience, and action around these issues, material affordances and interaction with external actors provide the enabling environment for resonant interpretations to take hold and to facilitate enactment. Grounded in my cases, the model also depicts the progressive sequencing of signifying agent efforts across three broad stages: Introduction and Disruption, Experimentation, and Enactment. My analysis contributes to the management literature by suggesting that the signification work of firm-internal agents is a process of mediation, shaped by the distinct and emergent character of grand challenges and the interplay of social and material mechanisms. Because such issues require a greater emphasis on problem-solving and novel sources of information, my account contrasts with conventional representations of meaning-making as a relatively straightforward line of action from individual logics ‘pulled down' from institutional systems and packaged attractively to appeal to ‘outsiders' less involved in the processes of signification. It also provides an alternative to the popular view of meaning construction as a ‘contest' or essentially dispute-oriented process. Instead, I argue that grand challenge issue advancement demands a more intricate, interactional and contextual process of meaning-making by interested actors and issue proponents internal and external to the firm. The model of signification work I offer in this study thus more fully captures the perspective that actors do not simply assess and attach importance to complex issues, but construct the very nature of the issue itself, and that this construction is a precursor to collaborative action on grand challenges.

Predicting crime trends via individual and community level-factors associated with crime is common across criminology, public health, and psychology. From social disorganization theory, crime rates are linked to neighborhood ecological characteristics that may shape the occurrence of illegal activities. Expanding this view, Shaw and McKay (1969) and Sampson (1993) emphasized the role of appropriate parental supervision and stable familial homes in reducing crime. Bursik and Grasmick (1993) further highlighted the influence of structural factors such as poverty and divorce. Social disorganization theory includes a discussion of systems within the social ecological model, three of which will be discussed. The micro system (immediate environment) involves factors like family. The mesosystem is where microsystems link, such as between family and community. Lastly, the exosystem (indirect environment) captures larger structures (e.g., economic influences) which help create the built environment comprised of the neighborhood and social services. These levels overlap and may provide information related to specific factors predictive of crime. Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is a multi-dimensional concept that encapsulates physical, mental, emotional, and social functioning and has been used for risk factor identification (Yin, Njai, Barker, Siegel, & Liao, 2016). In the social ecological model, HRQOL exists in the micro (e.g., child abuse, intimate partner violence), meso (e.g., prenatal care), and exosystems (e.g., neighborhood poverty). For example, a host of research has discussed the contribution of neighborhood disadvantages to increased intimate partner violence rates (Miller-Graff & Graham Bermann, 2014), while other studies have found economic disadvantage and violent crime to negatively impact birthweight (Masi, Hawkley, Piotrowski, & Pickett, 2007). Although these factors, along with others like drug use and various health factors, have been linked to violent crime, the exploration of social ecological predictors for sexual crimes has been comparatively neglected. In a systematic review of risk factors for sexual crime perpetration, Tharp and colleagues (2014) examined 191 empirical studies and identified two societal and community factors (gender-based factors like female education level and environmental factors like homicide rates), 23 relationship factors, and 42 individual-level risk factors for sexual crime perpetration. To attain a better understanding of the potential range of predictors of sexual crime, the current study will utilize data extracted from two publicly available data bases. The first is the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations (TBI) database, which includes crime statistics for each of the 95 counties in Tennessee. Reported number of crimes against persons in 2018 will be examined in the current analysis with variables categorized as either sexual (n=7 offense categories) or violent, non-sexual (n=11 offense categories) crimes. Violent non-sexual crimes will be collapsed into one variable to serve as the comparison group. The second data base, County Health Rankings and Roadmaps, provides data on health factors contributing to quality of life. For all Tennessee counties, 11 community variables will be included. These factors were selected because they reach across the social ecological levels of micro (e.g., single-parent households, teen births, low birthweight), meso (e.g., substance use factors, health factors including mortality and insurance), and exosystems (e.g., children in poverty, disconnected youth). A multinomial logistical regression will be conducted to investigate whether specific community level factors predict the rate of sexual crime beyond the prediction of violent, non-sexual crime. The overall model significance will be examined by the collective effect of the community level predictors. A key factor in promoting community safety while simultaneously preventing sexual violence involves comprehensive strategies that stretch the range of social ecology. Less is known about predictors of sexual violence than those of other crimes. Further, more research has examined individual-level factors related to sexual crime perpetration. A more nuanced understanding of predictors of sexual violence at social ecological levels can assist in the development of more comprehensive prevention and intervention programs that target multiple levels of risk.

No description available.

In this article we summarize histories of nonlinear, complex interactions among societal, legal, and ecosystem dynamics in six North American water basins, as they respond to changing climate. These case studies were chosen to explore the conditions for emergence of adaptive governance in heavily regulated and developed social-ecological systems nested within a hierarchical governmental system. We summarize resilience assessments conducted in each system to provide a synthesis and reference by the other articles in this special feature. We also present a general framework used to evaluate the interactions between society and ecosystem regimes and the governance regimes chosen to mediate those interactions. The case studies show different ways that adaptive governance may be triggered, facilitated, or constrained by ecological and/or legal processes. The resilience assessments indicate that complex interactions among the governance and ecosystem components of these systems can produce different trajectories, which include patterns of (a) development and stabilization, (b) cycles of crisis and recovery, which includes lurches in adaptation and learning, and (3) periods of innovation, novelty, and transformation. Exploration of cross scale (Panarchy) interactions among levels and sectors of government and society illustrate that they may constrain development trajectories, but may also provide stability during crisis or innovation at smaller scales; create crises, but may also facilitate recovery; and constrain system transformation, but may also provide windows of opportunity in which transformation, and the resources to accomplish it, may occur. The framework is the starting point for our exploration of how law might play a role in enhancing the capacity of social-ecological systems to adapt to climate change.

This PhD thesis provides an analysis of how an adaptive governance approach can be applied to address existing and emerging challenges in global governance with a focus on marine, wild-capture fisheries. All the papers share a coupled social-ecological framing while providing diverse but complementary perspectives. Paper I provides a lens through which it is possible understand the types of interactions that link social and ecological components of fisheries systems at the global scale. The key result of this paper was the development of a marine social-ecological framework to guide future modelling and scenario analysis. Paper II describes the process of emergence and spread of new ideas in marine governance using Marine Spatial Planning as an illustrative case study. The study shows how governance innovations may contribute to resolving the mismatches between the scale of ecological processes and the scale of governance of ecosystems. A key finding of the paper is the identification and explanation of the mechanisms by which informal networks of actors are able to influence the emergence and spread of new governance forms from the local to the global scale. Paper III focuses on governance of ocean areas beyond national jurisdiction. The key finding from this paper is the urgent need for existing and emerging governance institutions to build capacity for responding to the challenges facing governance of marine fisheries. These challenges arise from unexpected shifts in markets, technology and society. Paper IV develops a set of four imaginative but plausible ‘radical’ futures for global fisheries drawing on trends compiled from a diverse evidence base. The four resulting narratives aim to act as lenses for engaging debate and deeper reflection on how non-linear changes in technology and society might radically shift the operating context and core assumptions of fisheries governance in the future. These papers make a novel contribution to Sustainability Science through their focus on 1) the conditions for, and mechanisms of emergence of diverse and divergent governance forms, 2) the role of agency in complex actor settings, 3) the need for governance institutions to not only deal with, but also be able to anticipate surprise, and 4) the development of scenarios of marine social-ecological futures using a creative and rigorous narrative approach. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: Manuscript.</p>

The aims of this study are; (a) to explore how Somali women experience their adjustment in the Swedish society in connection to societal systems, and (b) to investigate these women’s perspective of how to make the adjustment process more effective in respect to their needs. The adjustment of the participants has been investigated through a social ecological theoretical framework. Thematic analysis has been utilised to present three themes; assistance, inclusion and self-sufficient which are discussed using social ecological theoretical perspective. Results showed that lack of assistance and sufficient information has led to these women feeling helpless and lost motivation to adjust. The women showed disappointment with regard to self-sufficiency which has not been what they have expected. The suggestions made by the interviewees included assistance in their native language during their first years in the new country, inclusive opening of meeting places and an increased assessment of personal resources when receiving help to find employment. Making adjustment more effective for newly arrived immigrants in new countries is fundamental to international social work.

This thesis explores the question of how social power is accounted for in the theory and practice of resilience. Beginning with a critical assessment of the social ecological systems (SES) perspective that underpins much of the theory and study of resilience, this thesis develops a framework, based on Gaventa’s powercube, for understanding power that also incorporates a much less hierarchical understanding of the dimensions of space and time. This revised ‘powerplane’ framework is applied to two empirical case studies of practices of resilience. Applying the powerplane to the case of government-led Scottish community emergency resilience planning finds that while the practices of resilience result in greater levels of engagement and interaction between local and regional levels of government, a gap exists between local government and the public it represents. Applying the powerplane to the grassroots case of Transition Town Peterborough, Canada, shows that intimate knowledge of local social and political institutions can allow a grassroots organisation to introduce resilience ideas into social and political community life. Together the two case studies reveal three key insights from resilience practices aimed at local contexts, rooted in: (1) institutionalising community engagement practices; (2) differences between formal and informal understandings of resilience; and (3) the scope of the risks resilience is aimed at mitigating. Critically exploring these issues in turn helps to illuminate questions about the efficacy, as well as the social and political implications of the resilience practice in question. For theory, the research shows that reconsidering hierarchical notions of scale and time in SES resilience can provoke new thinking about the role of power in resilience practices. In doing so, insights from this research offer novel challenges and complementarities to they way existing critiques of resilience approaches to account for social power issues.

Unintended pregnancy is a global public health threat that affects the lives of women, families, communities, and society. In 2008, the rate of unintended pregnancy in Ethiopia was 101 per 1,000 women aged 14 to 44 years. Although Ethiopia has experienced a steady increase in modern contraceptive use since 2004, this increase did not result in a proportional decline in unintended pregnancy, total fertility rates, or rapid population growth. In this cross-sectional study, associations between individual, interpersonal, community, and societal factors and contraceptive uptake were tested using a sample of 3,863 women aged 15 to 49 years who participated in the 2016 Ethiopian Demographic and Health Surveys. Statistically significant predictors of contraceptive use were included in the logistic regression model. Findings showed that age, education, marital status, type of residence, and wealth index reliably predicted contraceptive use. Increase in age, highest level of education, and wealth index were associated with 13%, 15%, and 65% increase in the odds of contraceptive use, respectively. Being married was associated with 85% decrease in the odds of contraceptive use and being from an urban residence was associated with 56% increase in the odds of contraceptive use. Results of the study can be used to develop targeted family planning interventions to increase contraceptive use and reduce unintended pregnancy, child and maternal mortality, total fertility rates, and rapid population growth in Ethiopia.

<p>Global biodiversity is currently being lost at an unprecedented rate, posing a threat to vital ecosystems and hence the generation of ecosystem services that human society is entirely reliant upon. Within the European Community, the EU has set a target of halting biodiversity loss within the territory by 2010. This goal is intended to be operationalized by the implementation of the Habitats Directive and the Birds Directive. These directives constitute the framework for the establishment of a coherent ecological network, referred to as the Natura 2000 network.</p><p>This study examines and analyses the socio-ecological complexities surrounding the designation of Natura 2000 sites in Östhammar municipality, Sweden. The use of a case study-approach to focus on this area is applied in pursuit of identifying and explaining the inherent intricacies in the designation processes and linking them to the broader global context. Throughout Europe, biodiversity exists in a rich variety of grasslands, but only a few studies have been performed to establish appropriate conservation management strategiesrequired for each habitat. This study makes a significant contribution towards shedding light on the Natura 2000 designation process, a phenomenon which has previously been only modestly documented, especially in Sweden. Ecosystem management is discussed and utilized as the theoretical basis for managing ecosystems sustainably, and an important aspect of note is the recognition that the distinction between man and nature needs to be understood as artificial and arbitrary.</p><p>The study explains how social-ecological factors have had a prominent effect on the designation process of Natura 2000 sites. The main determining factor behind the designation process has been the time-constraints, which have affected the designation of SCIs as well as the interaction between the Uppsala CAD and local stakeholders. The lack of adequate participatory approaches used during this process has heightened the risk of compromising the aim of the network: to achieve Favourable Conservation Status (FCS) for natural habitat types as well as species.</p> / <p>Biodiversiteten världen över minskar i en tidigare aldrig skådad hastighet vilket resulterar i ett hot mot fundamentala ekosystem, samt dess produktion av de ekosystemtjänster som det mänskliga samhället är beroende av. På grund av detta har EU satt upp målet att stoppa förlusten av biodiversitet inom unionens gränser tills 2010. Detta mål skall uppnås genom implementeringen av Habitat- och Fågeldirektivet. Dessa direktiv utgör ramen för etableringen av ett sammanhängande ekologiskt nätverk, det så kallade Natura 2000 nätverket.</p><p>Denna studie utreder samt analyserar de socio-ekologiska aspekter som omger utpekandet av Natura 2000 områden i Östhammars kommun, i Uppsala län i Sverige. Genom appliceringen av en fallstudie av området söker denna uppsats att identifiera samt förklara inneboende svårigheter i processen av dessa utpekanden, samt att sätta dem i ett globalt sammanhang. Inom Europa existerar biodiversitet bland annat i olika typer av ängar, dock har endast ett fåtal studier tagit sig an uppgiften att formulera anpassade förvaltningsstrategier för dessa habitat. Denna studie bidrar till att sprida ljus över implementeringen av Natura 2000, ett fenomen som tidigare endast studerats i blygsam utsträckning, speciellt i Sverige. Den teoretiska grunden utgörs ekosystemansatsen, som appliceras för att utvärdera ett uthålligtförvaltande av ekosystem. Vidare understryks vikten av att betrakta ekosystem och mänsklig aktivitet som ett och samma system, och att synen på dem som skilda system bör anses artificiell och motsägelsefull.</p><p>Denna uppsats förklarar hur socio-ekologiska aspekter har påverkat utpekandeprocessen av Natura 2000-områden i Östhammars kommun. De avgörande faktorerna bakom detta är en identifierad tidsbrist, vilket har influerat utpekandet av områden av gemenskapsintresse samt interaktionen mellan Länsstyrelsen i Uppsala och lokala markägare. Bristen på samverkan och information har resulterat i en förhöjd risk av att målet med nätverket inte kommer att nås: att åstadkomma gynnsam bevarandestatus för arter och habitat.</p>