This thesis argues that nonhuman animals are constructive of human societies by virtue of the complex relationships they form with humans, both at an individual and at a community level. This thesis also suggests that particular constructions of human/ nonhuman animal relationships fail to account for animal agency, and that the transgressions of liminal animals highlight this agency. Specifically, this thesis uses two case studies – deer in Oak Bay and bears on the Central Coast – to show how nonhuman animals can be seen as actors and as active shapers of our mixed-species social orderings and communities. This thesis argues that, rather than being passive objects who are subject to government policy and human orderings, these nonhuman animals are shaping political processes in their communities through the relationships they have formed with the humans around them. / Graduate

Na última década a agricultura familiar passou por transformações importantes e inéditas. A nova dinâmica econômica, globalizada é acompanhada por outra dinâmica política e institucional, que reconheceu a agricultura familiar como um setor econômico importante, insere a agricultura familiar nas atenções das políticas públicas. Um exemplo é o Programa Nacional de Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar (PRONAF) que surgiu em 1996 e representa uma importante mudança paradigmática nas políticas públicas para a agricultura familiar, por meio de uma política de crédito e assistência técnica, adequadas e direcionadas à dinâmica da produção familiar. Na pesquisa, a missão é explorar os efeitos do PRONAF no município de São Lourenço do Sul – RS, onde se concentram um grande número de beneficiários. Os resultados indicam que sem dúvidas, o PRONAF é extremamente importante para a economia local, baseada fundamentalmente na agricultura. O Programa proporcionou o acesso ao crédito e à assistência técnica a um significativo grupo de agricultores. As metodologias operacionais do Programa baseadas no associativismo e cooperativismo influenciaram na organização do setor e na criação de inúmeras associações de agricultores, cooperativas de crédito e de comercialização. A operacionalização cooperada e multiescalar do Programa exigiu que as diferentes organizações dos diferentes níveis fizessem acordos e parcerias, o que trouxe maior fluxo de informações e maior agilidade entre os órgãos públicos, ONGs e organizações privadas. Evidentemente não é possível afirmar que todas as demandas da agricultura familiar foram repentinamente atendidas e solucionadas. O PRONAF é um programa dinâmico e inacabado, um aspecto natural, uma vez que é uma experiência ainda recente. A cada novo plano de safra, algumas ferramentas são substituídas, aprimoradas e incluídas, de forma que tornem o Programa mais completo. Os resultados empíricos têm evidenciado algumas fragilidades, mas que não abalam o mérito do PRONAF. / In the last decade the family agriculture went through important and new transformations. The new globalize economic dynamics is followed by another institutional and political dynamics, that recognized family agriculture as na important economic sector, and it inserts family agriculture in the attentions of the public policy. An example is the Programa Nacional de Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar (PRONAF – National Program of Familiar Agriculture Fortifying) that appeared in 1996 and represents an important paradigm change in the public policys for family agriculture, by means of credit policy and technique assistance, ajusted and directed to the dynamics of the family production. The mission in this research is to explore the effect of PRONAF in São Lourenço do Sul country – RS, where a great beneficiaries number concentrate. The results indicate that undoubting PRONAF is extremely important for the local economy, based mainly in agriculture. The program provided access to the credit and technique assistance to a significant group of agriculturists. The operational methodologies of the program based in the associations and cooperatives had influenced the organization of the sector and the creation of innumerable associations of farmers and commercialization and credit cooperatives. The cooperated and multi scale operational of the program demanded from different organizations of different levels agreements and partnerships, which brought greater flow of information and greater agility among the public agencies, private NGOs and private organizations. Evidently it is not possible to affirm that all the demands of family agriculture suddenly had been taken care of and solved. PRONAF is a dynamic and unfinished program, a natural feature, as long as it is a still recent experience. To each new harvest plan, some tools are replaced, improved and enclosed, to turn the program more complete. The empirical results have evidenced some fragility, but that do not shake the merit of the PRONAF.

Keeping forestland intact has emerged as a critical policy objective at state and federal levels. This target has been supported by substantial public investment. The collective impact from the bequest decisions of millions of landowning individuals and families has the potential to affect the extent and functionality of future forests in the United States. Despite a growing body of research devoted to studying these transitions in forest ownership, much remains unknown about how family forest owners make decisions in this arena. The social and emotional dimensions of woodland succession planning have been particularly under-examined. This thesis explores the process of planning for the future use and ownership of woodlands through in-depth analysis of 32 semi-structured interviews with family forest owners in Massachusetts, Maine, New York, and Vermont. The first article investigates how family forest owners evaluate and integrate stories derived from their social networks when planning for the future of their woodlands. Analysis of the themes contained in stories framed as “cautionary tales” revealed common fears surrounding succession planning. The second article explores the complexity of emotional relationships with family forests showing how emotional geographies manifest in the succession planning process. Together, these studies deepen understanding of how family forest owners plan for the future of private woodlands and offer implications for Extension and outreach.

The current global food system is market-driven and depends on the exploitative commodification of our basic need to eat. It has been consistently condemned for its incapacity to account for justice, sustainability, welfare, and health. Developing alternative food system strategies is a necessary step towards creating a more sustainable and just reality. By conducting a comparative analysis using semi-structured interviews and virtual mapping between a rural area and an urban city in Ontario, Canada, the relationship between food geographies and the development of diagnostic (problem-oriented) and prognostic (solution oriented) framings within the corporate food regime is explored. Considering the influences of socio-geographical context (i.e. urban or rural), and the impacts of cognitive and physical food distancing adds new perspective and considerations to the existing literature. The results found that the urban participants had more robust diagnostic and prognostic framings than the rural participants. They also found that the impacts of food distancing were represented by the participants differently; The urban participants experienced more significant cognitive and physical distancing, but were mostly worried about the impacts of cognitive food distancing, whereas the rural participants were mostly focused on the impacts of physical distancing and were less affected by both types of distancing.

As knowledge about the constellating set of environmental and social crises stemming from the neoliberal global food regime becomes more pressing and popularized among US consumers, it has brought Indigenous actors asserting their political sovereignty and treaty rights with regards to their homelands into new collaborations, contestations, and negotiations with settlers in emerging food politics domains. In this dissertation, I examine solidarities and affinities being forged between Coast Salish and settler food actors in Puget Sound, attending specifically to how contested sovereignties are submerged but at play in these relations and how settler desires for belonging on and to stolen Indigenous lands animate liberal and radical food system politics. The dissertation presents my ethnographic fieldwork in South Puget Sound over a period of 18 months with two related Coast Salish food sovereignty projects that brought Indigenous and settler food actors into weedy collaborations. One was a curriculum development project for Native and regional youth focused on the revitalization of Coast Salish plant landscapes, knowledge, pedagogies, and systems of reciprocity. The other was a campaign to counter the introduction of genetically engineered salmon into US food markets and coastal production facilities across the Western Hemisphere, which I situate within longstanding salmon-centered social and political struggles in Coast Salish territories in the context of Indigenous/settler-state relations. Throughout these engagements, I identified how multicultural, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist food movement frameworks share in common with neoliberal nature privatization schemes modes of disavowing the geopolitics of Indigenous sovereignty within the US settler state. The research reveals patterns in how Coast Salish food actors push back against the ways settler food actors are plugged into settler colonial governmentality. These insights, in turn, helped to make legible how inherited liberal mythologies of the nation-state and legal orders rooted in the doctrine of terra nulliuslimit the stakes of food system work in terms of inclusion and equality, and miss their collusion with structures that unmake the human-land relationships that Coast Salish people define as existential and (geo)political. In my analysis, I engage Indigenous critiques of settler colonialism to complicate Marxian, Deleuzian, and Foucauldian analyses of North American alternative food politics, while doubling back to consider the ways the disavowal of ongoing Indigenous dispossession functions across these literatures and the social practices they influence, ultimately to consider how food-centered scholarship, environmentalism, and politics in North America stand to be transformed by what I argue is a Coast Salish ‘politics of refusal’. This project is unique in attending to how settler colonial theory, Indigenous critical theory, and Indigenous politics in North America enrich and complicate the literatures provincializing the Nature-Culture divide, as well as a largely Marxian and antiracist critical food studies literature. It contributes to settler colonial studies as a project of redefinition for the study of US politics and society while specifically bringing that interdisciplinary project into the ambit of North American critical food studies scholarship.

Från 1970 fram till 2020 har 117 av Sveriges 290 kommuner haft en minskad befolkning. Trots att det är så pass många kommuner som har en minskande befolkning är det inte ett ämne man generellt sett pratar om i Sverige. Denna studie har studerat två av dessa kommuner, Avesta och Hällefors kommun, genom bland annat intervjuer med både tjänstemän och politiker som metod för att få en djupare förståelse i frågan. Fokus har legat på vilka konsekvenserna blir av en långvarig befolkningsminskning samt hur en kommun kan hantera denna situation.  Studien visade att de två studerade kommunerna har ett flertal tomma bostäder, en högre arbetslöshet bland unga människor och en avvikande demografi, med en överrepresenterad del av befolkningen i ej arbetsför ålder till skillnad från övriga landet. En vidare konsekvens av överskott av tomma bostäder kan bli att dessa kommuner utsättas för social dumpning, ett fenomen där personer i behov av kommunalt stöd får aktiv hjälp att flytta till andra kommuner. I detta fall har Hällefors fått en högre andel av personer i behov av kommunalt stöd.  Båda kommunerna visade att de fortsatt planerar att nå en befolkningstillväxt. De åtgärder de har genomfört för att bevara sin befolkning är att delvis satsa på utbildning. De är medvetna om att unga personer i större utsträckning tenderar att flytta ifrån kommunen, och för att hantera detta har Hällefors satsat på utbildning för att locka till sig lika många studenter som det antal som flyttar därifrån för att studera. I Avesta vill man att personer som flyttat från kommunen ska ha ett positivt minne av kommunen och således flytta tillbaka senare i livet, när man eventuellt vill skaffa familj. / Between 1970 and 2020, 117 out of the 290 Swedish municipalities have been shrinking, despite that almost half of the municipalities have had a shrinking population; the subject is generally not discussed in Sweden. This study has been focusing on two different municipalities, Avesta and Hällefors municipality, to get their perspective on the consequences of a prolonged population decline and how to handle it. This has been done through interviewing both officials and politicians from each of the two municipalities.  This study has been indicating that the two municipalities have had a higher amount of empty residences, a higher degree of unemployment of young people and a higher degree of people not in working age compared to the rest of Sweden. One consequence of the large amount of empty residences is social dumping, a phenomenon where a person in need of support gets active help from their own municipality to move to another municipality. In this study Hällefors municipality has had a higher proportion of the population in need of support. Both of the municipalities have been planning for population growth, they have implemented measures to preserve the current population, partly through investments in education. Both are aware that young people in a greater extent will move out from their municipality, to handle this Hällefors municipality has been expanding their education with the goal of attracting the same amount of students that move away to study. Avesta municipality wants people who have moved away to have a positive memory of the municipality, in hope that they want to move back later in life when they want to settle down.

Studiens syfte är att få en djupare kunskap om hur ledande turismaktörer framställer Stockholm skärgård i deras marknadsföring genom ord, bild och film. Studiens ansats har varit av en kvalitativ sådan där en kombination av netnografisk samt visuell analys har hjälpt för att samla in datamaterial. Fyra turismaktörer valdes ut för att studera hur de framställer Stockholm skärgård i deras marknadsföring på sociala medier (Youtube och Instagram) och hemsidor. Till hjälp har författaren använt sig av teorin Imaginative Geographies för att förstå hur mytiska bilder av en plats kan få en så stor inverkan att de blir kollektivt delade meningar. Resultatet visar att olika framställningar som att Stockholm skärgård ingjuter frihet, upplevs som en helt annan värld och de fantastiska landskap är romantiseringar som marknadsförs på turismaktörernas sociala medier.

This dissertation examines how relatives of gun-violence victims, specifically Black women, move about their environments in the aftermath of sudden and tragic loss. I explore the following research questions: 1) How do Black women, who are co-victims of gun homicide, navigate spaces of trauma? 2) How does the experience of trauma extend into other spaces and spatialities of their lives? 3) What are the social, political, and health implications for Black women with limited mobility who are co-victims of gun homicide? This study draws on a literature synthesis on health geographies, geotrauma, and Black Feminist Geographies, as well as auto-methods, specifically a Black Feminist auto-ethnography (BFA). BFA involves analyzing your own experiences in relation to others in their family and community. My autoethnography of my lived experiences in the neighborhood I grew up in started with the observation of my mother in the aftermath of losing my brother to gun violence in 2012. My dissertation develops a research agenda to theorize how racism, poverty, and trauma compound and how Black women craft survival strategies as they navigate landscapes of trauma. I describe the ways that conventional approaches to understanding gun violence can overlook the layers of trauma and fail to capture the nuances or lived experience of being a co-victim of gun violence. I propose BFA to center and understand the lived experience of co-victims of gun violence and to bear witness to the ways we engage with the world around us while processing the trauma that is carried with us. My autoethnography uncovers key strategies my mother and I used to cope with our loss, especially in the face of institutional failures from the policy. This research points towards a need for better mental health resources for co-victims of gun violence as they process their grief. / Geography

Using autoethnography, combined with qualitative data collected through innovative online methods, this dissertation explores the experience of navigating the emotional geographic space of graduate school for non-visibly disabled students such as learning disabilities, and mental health disabilities at two southern Ontario universities. Autoethnography merges tenets of ethnography and autobiography to allow researchers to prioritize their own experiences as valuable data and “making it possible to construct the ethnographic scenes that happened and the fictional scenes that didn’t—but could have” (Ellis, 2004, p. xx). As such, the work produced by autoethnography is “expressive rather than representational” (Kiesinger, 1998, p. 74) This dissertation is a narrative based on real and fictionalized events told through dialogue between the author, a composite character, and six co-participant graduate students who provide their stories through e-mails and a collaborative blog. Academic literature, observations, areas for future research, and recommendations are woven into the dialogue and layered throughout the dissertation in non-dialogic sections. Davidson and Milligan (2004) posits, “Our emotional relations and interactions weave through and help form the fabric of our unique personal geographies” (p. 523). By focusing on unacknowledged and misunderstood “emotional labor” (managing emotions in paid work environments) and emotion work (managing emotions in unpaid work environments) (Hochschild, 1983), this dissertation demonstrates how non-visibly disabled students must perform “extra work” that distinguishes their experiences and the effort required to navigate the spaces and places of academia. With a specific focus on the process of acquiring and implementing academic and workplace accommodations, it draws on the literatures and theoretical insights of emotional geography and critical disability studies to demonstrate how these disabilities are misunderstood and stigmatized, which results in an accommodation process that is both humiliating and inadequate to support non-visibly disabled graduate students. Thus, understanding the emotional geography of the accommodation process is vital to creating effective academic and workplace accommodations for non-visibly disabled graduate students. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Modern research on the shared points of natural and cultural heritage has opened new opportunities for the investigation of the dimensions of this natureculture phenomenon. Theo bjective of this study is to develop this subject by analysing the dialogue between the most critical human geographies and the heritage field. The theories on social space and place, non-places, liminality or phenomenological dwelling help both to find the character of a place and observe threats in the crisis of “loss of place” processes under postmodern conditions. These background phenomena that I name here as the Spatial Turn is linked to the heritage field through the (2008) Québec Declaration on the Preservation of Spirit of Place. This heritage factor in the search for the Spirit of Place is put into practice with the Arctic region as a case study. Analysing the Spirit of Place of the area, we shall also search for some of the threats and prospects for the region that will see the most changes in its natural and cultural heritage in the next years.