Appalachian people have faced stereotyping of their culture and region in popular culture, news media, and art for generations. For more than 150 years, images of the region have been extracted by outside media makers and disseminated widely, solidifying the “hillbilly” stereotype in the national lexicon. This study focuses on such images in reality television shows about Appalachia, and seeks to determine whether or not those images, and the proliferation of them, has an impact on the ways in which Appalachian people understand and accept their own culture.

CAFOs raise tens of thousands of animals in confined cages and feedlots, feed them high calorie diets, and ship them to slaughter in record time. These factory farms (as they are sometimes called) devastate neighboring environments with the releases of toxic methane gas and animal waste. Progress in modernized agricultural production has enabled us to feed the growing population but unintended consequences for human health and neighboring communities are happening. This study examines environmental and human health impacts of CAFOs on Central Mississippi residents. Through analyses of existing studies and data and telephone surveys, the objectives will be met. Risk society theory is used to explain the increase of diseases and environmental risks associated with CAFOs in late modernity. The results do not indicate that neighboring residents of CAFOs in Central Mississippi are more likely to have ill health, a negative quality of life, or environmental degradation, overall.

Na cena contemporânea, a questão ambiental tem sido foco de atenção da comunidade científica de diferentes países, subsidiando a formulação de políticas que permitam conciliar a produção com a satisfação de necessidades humanas e a conservação e uso racional dos recursos naturais. No âmbito rural, a agricultura é uma das atividades que mais deterioram o meio ambiente e cujas conseqüências sociais e ambientais adquirem proeminência no debate mundial. Desde a década de 60 do século passado, quando a crise ambiental ganhou espaço na agenda das discussões internacionais da ONU, surgem mundialmente diversas iniciativas que se colocam como alternativas ao padrão tecnológico da agricultura industrial, resultado da chamada revolução verde. Atualmente a visibilidade dessas iniciativas tem se ampliado e, junto com a sua projeção mundial, observa-se o uso indiscriminado de termos como "agricultura sustentável", "agricultura orgânica", "agricultura natural", "agricultura ecológica" a "agroecologia", seja por desconhecimento de suas distinções, seja motivado por interesses fundamentalmente econômicos na apropriação dessas iniciativas. A presente dissertação propõe-se a um esclarecimento conceitual sobre a Agroecologia considerando os problemas rurais como expressões da sociedade capitalista e do padrão de desenvolvimento hegemônico, cujas interpretações sofrem refrações da atual crise paradigmática da ciência. A pesquisa apresenta uma retrospectiva histórica dos marcos fundantes da Agroecologia no âmbito da Ecologia agrícola através da análise do seu processo de desenvolvimento e enriquecimento teórico, tomando como referenciais os trabalhos de Miguel A. Altieri e de Eduardo Sevilla Guzmán devido a sua projeção internacional e complementaridade das abordagens. A pesquisa identifica um processo de continuidades e rupturas no desenvolvimento histórico da Agroecologia, o que indica a riqueza e, ao mesmo tempo, a complexidade do processo de sua constituição e do tema que abrange, e para além de concepções puramente técnicas e ahistóricas. As continuidades se expressam na incorporação e desenvolvimento do acervo de fundamentos teóricos e conhecimentos técnicos especializados acumulados ao longo de seu processo de formação; e as rupturas encontram-se consubstanciadas na subordinação dessas conquistas ao direcionamento social das pesquisas e ações empreendidas no marco dessa orientação teórica, direcionadas ao desenvolvimento rural. A Agroecologia nessa abordagem, mais que como uma ferramenta para o estabelecimento de sistemas produtivos sustentáveis, afirma a possibilidade de potencializar os processos sociais, resgatando formas de conhecimento e de práticas dos próprios agricultores mediante estratégias metodológicas voltadas ao desenvolvimento rural sustentável. Ela implica a afirmação de um pensamento social crítico - junto a estudantes, profissionais e agricultores - para além da racionalidade instrumental vigente na comunidade científica ocidental. / In the contemporary context, the environmental issue has been the main focus for the scientific community of different countries. They provide background to new policies that join production and satisfaction of human needs together with preservation and rational management of natural resources. In the countryside, agriculture is responsible for most environmental damage, and its socioenvironmental consequences are drawing attention of global debates. Since the1960´s, when the environmental subject was brought up to international discussions at UN, worldwide initiatives have been set in motion to stand for alternatives to the technological pattern of industrial agriculture - result of the so-called Green Revolution. Nowadays, as the visibility of these enterprises increases, along with its worldwide projection, we notice an indiscriminate use of terms such as "sustainable agriculture", "organic agriculture", "natural agriculture", "ecological agriculture" and "agroecology", due to an unclear distinction of these terms or due to economical interests in appropriating them. The present dissertation proposes a conceptual elucidation about Agroecology, considering rural problems as expressions of the capitalist society and the hegemonic development model, whose interpretations suffer refractions from the present science paradigmatic crisis. This research presents a historical retrospective of the beginning of Agroecology, in the Agricultural Ecology field, through the analysis of its development process and theoretical enrichment, taking as backgrounds the works of Miguel A. Altieri and Eduardo Sevilla Guzmán, due to their international recognition and complementary approaches. This research identifies a process of "continuums" and "ruptures" in the historical development of Agroecology, which indicates the richness and complexity of its development and of the subject it embraces, beyond purely technological and ahistorical conceptions. The "continuums" are expressed by the incorporation and development of the theoretical basis and of specialized technical knowledge, gathered along its development; and the "ruptures" are found in the subordination of these conquers to the social aim of research and initiatives taken in the mark of this theoretical orientation, concerning rural development. In this approach, Agroecology means more than simply a tool to design sustainable productive systems, but it represents a possibility to empower social processes, rescuing peasants’ knowledge and practices through methodological strategies aimed at the sustainable rural development. It implies the affirmation of a critic social thought - by students, professionals and peasants - beyond the operational rationality reigning over occidental scientific community.

Poverty within forests is often acknowledged but poorly assessed through economic evi- dence. To some extent, this lack of evidence explains why even if forest conservation has positive effects on households' welfare, such benefits are quite limited. This thesis is aimed at investigating in three steps how forest conservation can help poor forest households to improve their welfare. A first chapter deals with assessing poverty of forest households in Bolivia looking at their asset accumulation and allowing for a poverty trap mechanism that may arise, preventing households to be better off. The empirical analysis does not find evidence for the exis- tence of a poverty trap. Households are slowly accumulating assets over time but such an accumulation does not lead to any improvements in their welfare. Households would remain persistently poor. A second chapter focuses on forest households' labour supply and allocations. Using primary data I collected in Cameroon, a non-separable agricultural household model is employed to identify factors influencing household labour supply and allocations into di- verse activities. The empirical results shows that leisure is an inferior good, households working more when having greater income. Furthermore, households participating in for- est activities have higher levels of welfare than households that do not. Increasing prices of forest resources helps households to improve their welfare. The last chapter deals with designing payments for forest conservation so as to encourage forest households to internalise externalities. These payments are theoretically analysed using a principal-agent game in order to define incentives such that a forest group plants and conserves a great number of trees. Payments are non-zero when observing such con- servation levels and equal to zero in all other cases. Doing so creates a virtuous circle on forest resources. Pro-poor conservation schemes as opposed to non-pro poor, are achiev- able with lower payments.

As urban areas have come to increasing dominate the social landscape, rurality is often defined in negative ways such as being backwards, simple, or even deviant. Urbanormativity is a theoretical approach developed to capture the normative and structural impacts and implications of privileging the urban. The result is not only the construction of urban as correct and positive and rurality as abnormal and backwards, the cultural ideology impacts the structural flow of resources which negatively impacts and results in a marginalization of rural areas. The primary question motivating this research is how does urbanormativity shape the interactions between rural towns and private institutions of higher education located in these towns? In particular, this research examines how the rural anti-idyll and idyll concretize the urbanormative cultural ideology in a local context. Additionally, this research investigates how everyday processes of inequality are enacted adding complexity to how urbanormativity plays out in a particular setting. While much research has examined the role of higher education in urban areas, very little research has examined private higher education in rural places. Still, rural located higher education is important for rural locales as an employer, as a gathering place, as a source of job skills training, and for economic development. Emplacing rural higher education in its respective locale is also important because as an institution, rural located higher education is one mechanism through which rural localities are integrated into larger urban-focused normative and structural systems. Using a case study, this research examined the effects of urbanormativity on local constructions of rurality and the impacts for both the rural locale and the rural located private higher educational institution. In particular, urbanormative cultural ideology played out in concrete ways for both local residents and for faculty and staff of the local private university as they explained the anti-idyllic and idyllic aspects of the local context. These conceptualizations of rurality and their place within the local context hold concrete implications for decision making by residents, those employed by the institution, and the institution itself. Viewed within urbanormativity as an institution that integrates the locale with the larger society and system, this research found that the impact and implications of urbanormativity resulted in challenges including employee and student recruiting and retention as well as becoming a regional university rather than a local college placing both the local community and the private university between a rock and a hard place.

For the last 46 years, the countries of the world have tried to reduce the number of chronically hungry people. Despite all the efforts, the numbers have barely budged from the over 850 million people who were chronically hungry in 1974 until the 2007-2009 food price crisis, when the numbers increased to over 1.02 billion. The blame for this situation has variously been put on bad governance, the lack of adequate market reforms, the market reforms that were imposed on developing nations, and globalization. Food, like other products in this globalized world, is allocated using the market system. One likely place to look for the cause of continuing hunger is at the assumptions that underlie the market system, in particular the assumption of non-coerciveness. This assumption asserts that the market transaction—in this case for food—is freely entered into by both the buyer and the seller and that either can refuse to enter into the transaction if it is not to their advantage. After looking at the traditional understanding of coerciveness in economics, this dissertation examines the logic system of economics concluding that the issue of non-coerciveness is a moral issue, and the argument of Frank Knight that the question of non-coerciveness is an issue of ethics. Using the work of Michael Keeley, this paper concludes that broadly accepted human rights is the best possible criterion for determining whether or not the aggregate food market is non-coercive. If the human right to food is abridged then it can be said that the aggregate food market is coercive and the assumption of non-coerciveness for the aggregate food market does not hold. With 1.02 billion people chronically hungry, 1/6 of humanity, it is clear that the right to food has been abridged and the aggregate food market is coercive. To overcome chronic hunger and enforce the right to food, governments, international agencies, and non-governmental organizations are going to have to supplement markets with non-market measures. The dissertation concludes with a number of recommendations for non-market measures that can be taken to ensure that all people enjoy the right to food.

The objective of this qualitative longitudinal study was to assess stakeholder perceptions after one year of a new school feeding program to contrast and compare to pre-program expectations. Semi-structured interviews were conducted using questions reviewed by an in-country collaborator for cultural sensitivity and appropriateness. Follow up questions were determined from participant response. The interviews were analyzed by performing content analysis using open and axial coding to find key concepts in the data. The results showed the school feeding program met stakeholder expectations regarding reduction in absenteeism and truancy, improving classroom behavior and increasing enrollment as well as relieving short term hunger. The stakeholders also reported unexpected improvements in behavior of the child at home, increased disposable income, and extra meals being served at home.

The thesis 'Civil Society in the Chi River, Northeast Thailand', aims to answer the questions of what civil society means in the Northeast Thai village context, which factors make civil society proactive and how civil society is activated. Participatory action research (PAR) was carried out in two communities in the Chi River Basin to answer the inquiries. The research discusses the contexts of the Northeast Region and the two communities in the Chi River Basin. The people in this area are of the Thai-Laos ethnic group and hold particular beliefs in an amalgam of Buddhism and animism which creates cultural rituals that are different from other regions. The society is based on kinship ties. The economic situation has transformed from an agrarian society to a commercial agriculture society. Through the research process the new term of 'grounded civil society' was created. It means 'the sphere of an autonomous group of local people who actively participate in collective action to deal with their struggles and promote their common interests by mobilizing cultural and social capitals in consort with other people to productively solve their problems. Grounded civil society may include traditional forms of mutual assistance, and formal or informal social associations. It seeks to have a significant influence on public policy at any level'. The research found that grounded civil society was activated by both outside and inside factors. The outside factors included the negative effect of government development projects and the intervention of the participatory action research, which stimulated local people to engage in civil society. The inside factors activating civil society were the poor economic conditions of the villagers and the social capital existing in the communities. The social capital was built up around kinship ties and cultural capital, which generated the social values and norms of the local people. The research concluded with an analysis of the causal links between social capital and civil society claiming that social capital facilitated the creation of civil society. Further research possibilities are suggested.

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