Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2024, American Culture Studies

Everyone can relate to hearing stories about our changing world. Yet far fewer people ask how these stories change depending on where in the world they are told. Indeed, many ignore the wicked problem caused by garbage, and focus on narratives from the global North. This study aims to combat this by comparing the narratives of the global North and the global South through a decolonizing methodology. Specific groups from the global South include Indigenous American peoples, Aboriginal Australian peoples, as well as Bangladeshi and neighboring cultures. Specific groups from the global North include Americans and Canadians. To highlight these narratives, the art of storytelling is employed, focusing on scientific knowledge, Indigenous knowledge, narratives from fiction and documentary, and personal storytelling as sources to illustrate these points. The use of garbage as a commodity that intersects with cultural, social, and political influences is also explored. Issues of environmental justice and how it intersects with racism and colonialism to fuel the garbage crisis are investigated. The relationship between Indigeneity and garbage, along with traditional ecological knowledge, is another topic explored and expounded upon. Garbage as a wicked problem is analyzed through narratives, seeking a deeper understanding of its consequences, with a particular focus on how storytelling and wisdom may point to a way out of the crisis. This dissertation introduces the concept of the “Plasticocene,” a term coined within this study to encapsulate the era where plastic waste has become a defining feature of our environmental and cultural landscapes. This term highlights the pervasive influence of plastic pollution on global ecosystems and human societies, offering a critical lens through which to analyze the contemporary garbage crisis and potential sources of garbage justice. Through rigorous analysis of policy, literature, and cultural texts, this study contributes to a nuanced (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Amílcar Challú Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Amy Morgan Ph.D. (Other); Lara Lengel Ph.D. (Committee Member); Amy Robinson Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Environmental Justice; Environmental Studies

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2024, Geography

In a world where foraging is as popular as ever, it is becoming increasingly important for management agencies to develop strategies to address this activity. The response by management agencies has not been uniform, nor has their effect on the foraging community. Because of this novelty and irregularity, it is important to study the political ecology of foraging policy. In this study, I take a closer look at the people who harvest nontimber forest products (NTFPs), the people who manage forests, and the relationship between these two groups.

Committee: Harold Perkins (Advisor) Subjects: Geography

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, 2020, Integrated Bioscience

The Laurentian Great Lakes system holds approximately 20% of the world's available surface freshwater while being an immense economic engine for the region. Lake Erie, one of the five North American Great Lakes is classified as highly stressed and deteriorating. Flooding and erosion issues stemming from record-high water levels, as well as excessive nutrients causing harmful algal blooms which compounds the problems. This work investigates novel ways to approach, solve, and manage some of Lake Erie's most pressing problems. First, a historical political ecology approach was used to trace the history of land use practices that transformed the Great Black Swamp into the industrialized agricultural system that the Maumee River Watershed (MRW) is today. The analysis chronicles transformations in structure and function of the MRW implicating diverse drivers such as agricultural practices, legacy nutrient reservoirs, altered landscape hydrology, and energy policy while making policy recommendations at various scales. Second, a low-cost, open-source DIY spectrophotometer was developed in order to obtain crowd-sourced data to understand nutrient loading trends throughout the watershed, particularly the MRW. Tests of this device indicate that the typically expensive hardware is not the limitation. Rather, reagent performance is the leading cause of uncertainty. Third, a social-ecological risk and vulnerability model to flooding and erosion was created for the Ohio Lake Erie shoreline by adapting established maritime coastal indices to the limnological system. The result is both a foundation for Ohio's Department of Natural Resources, Office of Coastal Management to identify scientifically-informed, place-based priority management areas for erosion and flooding, as well as a methodological roadmap to adapt the Coastal and Place Vulnerability Indices to the other Great Lakes' states and provincial shorelines.

Committee: Peter Niewiarowski (Advisor); Hunter King (Committee Member); John Huss (Committee Member); Robin Kundis Craig (Committee Member); Lance Gunderson (Committee Member) Subjects: Biochemistry; Biology; Ecology; Environmental Management; Environmental Science; Geographic Information Science; Public Policy; Sustainability; Water Resource Management

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Anthropology

How do the environments and social structures that we create and modify to suit our needs affect the individuals that live and work within those environments? Bioarchaeology and political ecology provide novel means by which to understand how the environments we create, both social environments and our modifications of the natural environment, can affect the body and individuals' health disproportionately. This dissertation uses osteological analyses, historic records, trace element analysis (arsenic, barium, and lead), and isotopic analyses (various lead isotopes as well as strontium 87/86) to evaluate how different types of anthropogenic environments can be retained within and have an effect upon the body. Key in this dissertation is how anthropogenic environments and industrial practices transformed environments during the Industrial Revolution in England, and how individuals' interaction with their environments depended upon elements of their biosocial identity and the inequality present within society, both of which ultimately dictate what environments individuals can access. Accordingly, the anthropogenic processes that transformed environments in England and which were prevalent during the industrial period were a systemic threat that had far reaching consequences throughout the country, and possibly the world. This dissertation studies two archaeological collections of individuals from England during the Industrial Revolution. Neither collection is extreme in being either completely industrial and urban, or completely rural and agrarian. Instead, these collections fall within the mid-range of industrialization, though one is larger and more industrialized than the other. The more industrial population was buried at St. Hilda's parish in South Shields, a large industrial town with a variety of industries that include nearby coal mines and the construction of ships and steam engines. The more agrarian population was buried at St. Peter's church in Barton-u (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Mark Hubbe (Advisor); Clark Larsen (Committee Member); Samuel Stout (Committee Member); Christopher Otter (Committee Member); William Pestle (Committee Member) Subjects: Analytical Chemistry; Archaeology; Behavioral Sciences; Biogeochemistry; Environmental Science; European History; Geochemistry; History; Physical Anthropology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Geography

This dissertation consists of three studies which collectively address the intersection of politics of the environment and urbanization in Beijing, China. As Beijing responds to environmental challenges such as pollution and climate change, the municipal government has taken what this dissertation argues is a neo-Malthusian approach to urbanization through a suite of policies aimed at dramatically altering the city's landscape, ecosystem, and human and non-human populations. These include a population cap (announced in 2015), a major afforestation program, the 2016-35 comprehensive plan, a 2017-20 plan for “special action” aimed at rapidly eliminating certain spatial practices, and a 2018-35 plan to turn Beijing into a “forest city.” Organized around the strategically fuzzy goal of “greening” and in hopes of demonstrating an ideal of environment-society relations put forth in China's state ideology of “ecological civilization,” this policy suite has already wrought significant change in Beijing, most notably—and for the first time in contemporary China—the arrest and reversal of a decades-long trend of migration to Beijing: in the four years leading up to 2015, the number of non-local people living in Beijing had been increasing at an average rate of 201,000 per year; over the next four years, it shrank at an average rate of 193,000 for a total reduction of 770,000 through the end of 2019. This dissertation examines the many and varied effects of the enactment of this policy suite, including how these policies rely on and reproduce differences between people, but also how they reconfigure the relationships between nature, urban spatial practices, and the residents of Beijing. It argues that as the city government's policies seek to shrink both the footprint of construction and the city's population, it has “enlisted” trees in the effort to dramatically alter the spatial layout of the city. Based on two and a half years of primarily ethnographic fieldwork from May 20 (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Max Woodworth (Advisor); Alana Boland (Committee Member); Becky Mansfield (Committee Member); Kendra McSweeney (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Studies; Environmental Justice; Environmental Studies; Geography; Urban Forestry; Urban Planning

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, Political Science

This dissertation responds to the global ecological crisis of climate change, showing how the temporal and spatial dimensions of the crisis challenge our capacities to imagine and implement effective political solutions. Rather than being natural limits, I argue these dimensions of the crisis are inherently social and political, derived from contradictions and antagonisms of the global capitalist nation-state system. I thus take a critical approach to ecology and politics, in the tradition of Marxist political ecology. I read Antonio Gramsci's political theories of hegemony and the integral state through an ecological framework that foregrounds the distinct roles that human labor, capital, and the state system play in organizing social and environmental relations. I develop an original conception of hegemony as a fundamentally ecological process that constitutes the reproduction of human relations within nature, which I use to analyze the politics of climate governance and climate justice. Grounded in textual analysis and fieldwork observations of state and civil society relations within the UNFCCC, I show that struggles for hegemony among competing coalitions of state and non-state actors have shaped the institutional frameworks and political commitments of the Paris climate regime complex. I demonstrate how climate governance reproduces capitalist political relations predicated on formal separation of `state' and `civil society,' and the endless accumulation of capital, thereby serving to reproduce, rather than resolve, the contradictions of the crisis. I then center my focus on the global movement of movements for climate justice. Using textual analysis and qualitative fieldwork conducted as a critically-situated, participant-observer of the climate justice movement at various sites, including the COP22 and COP23 climate negotiations, I show how the climate justice movement constitutes itself as a distinctly anti-systemic and ecological historical bloc in world p (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alexander Wendt (Committee Co-Chair); Joel Wainwright (Committee Co-Chair); Jason Moore (Committee Member); Alexander Thompson (Committee Member); Inés Valdez (Committee Member) Subjects: Environmental Studies; Geography; International Relations; Political Science

MS, University of Cincinnati, 2018, Arts and Sciences: Biological Sciences

Many studies on biological diversity aim to understand this topic to increase the impact of conservation efforts. While there are many investigations that seek to explain global patterns of biodiversity, there are few that describe biodiversity in the context of political geography. I sought to create a tool that could be used to explore the role of biodiversity in comparative geopolitical studies related to conservation. In order to understand how conservation studies are performed in the context of political geography, I created a country-based index of biological diversity using Average Taxonomic Distinctness measures. This index differs from other indices by giving a measure of how unique the biodiversity of a country is, rather than giving a simple species richness measure. Furthermore, I chose to use Average Taxonomic Distinctness because it has previously been shown to be robust to biases from sampling effort and sampling area (Clarke \& Warwick, 1998). I demonstrate in this paper that this country-based biodiversity index can be used to identify countries with relatively high or low biodiversity. I also demonstrate that the index holds ecological relevance and can be used in large-scale comparative studies by determining that island countries have higher Average Taxonomic Distinctness, as expected. While I was unable to show that this index was robust to bias from sampling area, I was able to demonstrate that the index was likely robust to biases from sampling effort.

Committee: Theresa Culley Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Eric Tepe Ph.D. (Committee Member); Anne Vonderheide Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Biology

BA, Oberlin College, 2018, Religion

The transposition of the cultural, religious, and sacred onto physical geographies is practiced by humans everywhere as landscapes are canvases for meaning making and integral placeholders of histories. In the Indian context, this practice is distinct for several reasons. Scholars of Hindu traditions recognize that the place-oriented disposition and centrality of land to Hindu traditions and cultures is unprecedented and integral to identity formation in modern India. As India faces increasing environmental degradation, the preservation of “sacred geographies” is especially crucial to the identity of Hindu traditions. The rise of Hindu nationalist (Hindutva) political parties (e.g., the Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP) has heavily influenced the mapping of landscape as distinctly Hindu. By analyzing contemporary environmental movements in India and delineating Hindu nationalist histories and contemporary politics, this project claims that environmental work politicizes the landscape through a Hindutva framework in ways that shape environmentalism to prioritize geographical features tied to imagined Hindu pasts and futures that further a Hindu nationalist agenda.

Committee: Emilia Bachrach (Advisor); Margaret D. Kamitsuka (Committee Co-Chair); Corey Ladd Barnes (Committee Co-Chair) Subjects: Ecology; Environmental Health; Environmental Studies; Geography; Modern History; Regional Studies; Religion; South Asian Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2018, English (Arts and Sciences)

Beset with political, social, economic, cultural, and environmental degradation, along with the imminent threat of nuclear war, the world might be at its end. Building upon Richard Miller's inquiry from Writing at the End of the World, this dissertation investigates if it is “possible to produce [and teach] writing that generates a greater connection to the world and its inhabitants.” I take up Paul Lynch's notion of the apocalyptic turn and suggest that when writers Kurt Spellmeyer, Richard Miller, Derek Owens, Robert Yagelski, Lynn Worsham, and Ann Cvetkovich confront disaster, they reach an impasse whereby they begin to question disciplinary assumptions such as critique and pose inventive ways to think about writing and writing pedagogy that emphasize the notion and practice of connecting to the everyday. Questioning the familiar and cultivating what Jane Bennett terms “sensuous enchantment with everyday” are ethical responses to the apocalypse; nonetheless, I argue that disasters and death master narratives will continually resurface if we think that an apocalyptic mindset can fully account for the complexity and irreducibility of lived experience. Drawing upon Zen, new materialism, and Yagelski's theory of writing as a way of being, I call attention to the affective dimensions of capitalism, anti-apocalyptic thinking, and environmental writing pedagogies that run contrary to capitalist-driven environmental disaster.

Committee: Sherrie Gradin (Advisor); Talinn Phillips (Committee Member); Robert Miklitsch (Committee Member); Wolfgang Sützl (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Rhetoric

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2017, Geography

Geographic research at the intersection between development critiques and political ecology questions a potential disconnect between extra-local development initiatives and local livelihoods. Kenya, under its Vision 2030 for sustainable development, is expanding the national electric grid to many rural areas, potentially introducing electricity as a process and effect on local livelihoods. I assess the introduction of electricity to Mt. Kasigau, a rural area in southeast Kenya, focusing on how the development intervention is perceived and acted upon by local communities and individual residents. Working with community residents in three villages the research employed a mixed methods approach, including participatory GIS (PGIS) to map and analyze the electric grid, and semi-structured interviews to gain local perspectives on the processes of community and household-level electrification. The study mapped eight electrical transformers, 164 connected buildings and 11,607 meters of power lines, indicating about 18% serviced area and 38-71% service population among the three villages. Respondents highlight distinctions among availability, accessibility, and reliability for homes and in the community and distinctive contributions to diversification. Local perceptions on introduction of electricity are clearly positive at Mt. Kasigau and shows benefits to sustainable livelihoods.

Committee: Kimberly Medley Dr. (Advisor); Ian Yeboah Dr. (Committee Member); John Maingi Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Energy; Geographic Information Science; Geography; Political Science

BA, Kent State University, 2017, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

Rogue Wave is a collection of poetry that seeks to explore salient environmental, social, and political issues through an ever-developing set of eyes. The work's thematic arc shadows a child's evolving perspectives, capturing glimpses of formative moments and influential experiences, before turning the resulting ideologies back upon the society and institutions that helped to form them. Emphasis is placed on the vital, inextricable bond that humans share with the natural world, their physical environments, and with one another. These bonds are folded into every poem, whether as positive, joyous influences, or deadly, menacing realities. A central concept is that while progress is not necessarily evil, it too often serves as a stultifying, deadening force that drives a wedge between humanity and its wild, nurturing roots.

Committee: Patti Swartz Ph.D. (Advisor); Katherine Orr Ph.D. (Committee Member); Don-John Dugas Ph.D. (Committee Member); Leslie Heaphy Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Environmental Justice; Environmental Philosophy; Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, Sociology

The Western United States contains not just one of the most arid regions in North America, but also the most urban region of the country. How to supply water to urban areas is one of the great questions of any society, and in the Southwest this was answered through a massive infrastructure centered around the Colorado River. It is my contention that the cities that received this water – such as Phoenix, Las Vegas, and San Diego – have been artificially subsidized in their population and land area growth, and have had to develop specialized economic functions in order to justify further subsidies of water from the river and, by extension, the rest of the country - that they are, in plain terms, hothouse flowers transplanted into an environment that they could never live in without massive inputs. Multiple strands of urban and environmental theory are then presented and examined to gauge their ability to explain, let alone predict, the existence and development of such cities; while human ecology and urban political ecology have the tools and theoretical power to do so, I contend that the presence of technology and money – whether private or from government – is so new and combines so effectively in the form of these hyperspecialized cities that previous theories must be updated. After establishing that there is a sufficient distinction between metropolitan areas in the Colorado River System (MSAs that receive water via the Bureau of Reclamation's massive infrastructure) and those in the Rest of the Arid West, in addition to the rest of the United States, I then conduct time-series regressions with panel-corrected standard errors and conclude the following. Metro areas in the Colorado River System are larger and grew faster than their Arid counterparts in population and land area. The availability of Colorado River water induced land area growth in metropolitan areas such as Phoenix, Tucson, and Las Vegas. Metropolitan economies in the Colorado River System are s (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Edward Crenshaw (Committee Chair); Hollie Nyseth-Brehm (Committee Member); Christopher Otter (Committee Member) Subjects: Environmental Studies; Sociology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, Comparative Studies

My dissertation, "Appalachian Anthropocene: Conflict and Subject Formation in a Sacrifice Zone" diagrams the dominant forces of historical subject formation to see how they shape contemporary responses to extraction-based development and environmental crises. My first chapter examines the new challenges posed by the Anthropocene and neoliberalism in Appalachia, and outlines the general analytical framework of material, conceptual, and affective systems used throughout the dissertation. In Chapter Two I show the violent rearrangement of these three systems as integral to dominant forms of subjectivity and resistance. I then present an overview of these forms of subjectivity before assembling a theory of oppositional subjectivity drawing from Marxism, decolonial, continental, and black philosophy, and queer theory. Chapter Three traces the boundary-making practices of settler colonialism as they shaped the settler-subject in Appalachia. I examine how dominant forces of subjectification emerged under colonialism, the harmful effects that persist, and their impact on contemporary responses to the land-use conflicts surrounding resource extraction and to environmental disasters like the 2014 Charleston Water Crisis. I conclude this chapter by arguing for a renewed attention to residues of settler colonialism in collective political responses to the context of the neoliberal Anthropocene. Chapter Four examines the unifying forces of white supremacy, nationalism, and capitalism as they shaped the citizen-subject over the two centuries following the War of Independence. In this chapter I examine the geopolitical production of the national territory of the United States and socio-political production of the national subject of the American Citizen. I then present oppositional responses to dominant American subjectivity in the writing of the militant Appalachian preacher and poet Don West. I show how he helps us to understand these discourses and more importantly, help (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Eugene Holland (Committee Chair) Subjects: American History; American Studies; Comparative Literature; Economic History; Environmental Health; Environmental Justice; Environmental Law; Environmental Science; Environmental Studies; Native American Studies; Philosophy; Regional Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, Geography

Across the Western Hemisphere and around the world people are calling for reform to decades of punitive international drug control policies. It is abundantly clear that punitive drug control policies have failed to meaningfully reduce rates of illegal drug consumption and production, and that these policies have themselves damaged individuals, families, communities, health, livelihoods, and the environment. The Plurinational State of Bolivia is a major producer of the coca leaf—a medicinal plant native to the Andes, and the primary ingredient in cocaine—and is one of the first countries to institute comprehensive reforms to orthodox drug control policy. Under the leadership of President Evo Morales, cocaleros (coca growers) are carrying out a “community-based” approach to reducing coca cultivation. The approach, known as “social control,” relies heavily on coca growers' taking responsibility to police themselves and each other. Social control is widely seen to reject decades of U.S. government “drug war” policy interventions in Bolivia and elsewhere in the Americas. But more than simply a rejection of U.S. intervention, social control has also effectively realized the stated goals of the international drug control policy community. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, social control achieved a 34% reduction in the amount of land dedicated to coca production from 2010-2014. This dissertation situates the emergence of social control in the context of drug war geopolitics, decades of violent U.S.-supported intervention in Bolivia, and calls for reform to harmful international drug control policy. The dissertation first presents a historical narrative of the drug war as an illiberal tactic of government. Paradoxically, this tactic is couched in liberal discourses that justify state intervention through delineation of socio-spatial distinctions between harm and health in relation to engagement with illegal drugs. This discourse legitimates often-v (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kendra McSweeney (Advisor); Mathew Coleman (Committee Member); Becky Mansfield (Committee Member); Mary Thomas (Committee Member) Subjects: Geography; Latin American Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2015, Geography (Arts and Sciences)

The subject of climate change and adaptation strategies in sub-Saharan Africa is at the forefront of the conversation of poverty and its close link to environmental degradation. Climate experts argue that poverty and natural resource based livelihoods coupled with the low adaptive capacities of those living in sub-Saharan Africa make the region one of the most vulnerable to environmental disruptions associated with climate change. Sub-Saharan African women are viewed as the most vulnerable to climate change because their daily reproductive responsibilities rely heavily on a changing physical environment. Current research into climate change and sub-Saharan African women has prioritized women's short-term vulnerabilities and has, therefore, failed to explore the role of women's agency in long-term livelihood adaptive strategies. This thesis will use a hybrid of feminist political ecology framework and emotional geographies to identify the manifestation of women's emotional agency in climate change livelihood adaptation strategies. This thesis will highlight research gathered as part of a case study of Maasai women in Kirya sub-village of Northern Tanzania. Semi-structured interviews with the Maasai women of Kirya sub-village were used as the primary method of data collection. In Kirya sub-village the women's adoption of irrigated farming practices, creation of their own small business, and the working of paid laborers to neighboring farms were the predominant methods of livelihood adaptation strategies. Emotional agency can be clearly identified throughout women's participation in livelihood adaptation strategies. Emotions act as key motivators in navigation of space. Women in Kirya sub-village found motivation in the anger they experienced related to their inability to meet their reproductive responsibilities. This emotional agency ultimately manifested itself through women's participation in livelihood adaptation strategies, as they are able to mobilize their a (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Edna Wangui PhD (Advisor); Risa Whitson PhD (Committee Member); Tom Smucker PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender Studies; Geography

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2015, Geography

Panama City is experiencing unprecedented urban development, particular in terms of elite real estate and finance, growth associated with the widening of the canal, and illicit activities such as money laundering. Not surprisingly, this hyper-growth is exacerbating environmental hazards whose costs are unevenly borne by residents. A case in point is the 2013 Cerro Patacon Landfill fire and subsequent air quality crisis. Cerro Patacon is a landfill just outside the city where regional waste is delivered and stored. In March 2013, a portion of the landfill caught on fire, releasing harmful toxins into the air for nearly two weeks. While sooty air engulfed the entire city, it was poor residents who experienced the greatest impacts of the fire in terms of respiratory and other health conditions. State response to the fire has not been to address the fundamental question of waste management or uneven exposure to waste-related hazards. Rather, the Panamanian government—with international support —is promoting a neoliberal response and emphasizing that when air quality in the city is poor, residents can `choose' to modify their behaviors to avoid health risks. In my thesis, I use political ecology and social metabolism to conceptualize the city, waste, and development as interdependent and foundationally co-constituting. Using evidence from ethnographic field work, landscape analysis, participant observation and other secondary data analysis, I argue that Cerro Patacon and its population are externalized and vilified by city officials, contributing to and promoting the naturalization of an unproblematic growth model that denies government accountability, wrongly blames certain populations, and justifies social exclusion. However resistance –coordinated or diffuse – is either nonexistent or largely hidden. I argue that hyper-growth and neoliberal governance have permeated Panama City's social metabolism and produce expressly neoliberal subjects, resulting in Panamanians in (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kendra McSweeney Dr. (Advisor); Malecki Ed Dr. (Committee Member); Mansfield Becky Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Geography

MA, Kent State University, 2014, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Geography

Due to a combination of social and climatic factors, anthropogenic water use within Peru has surpassed natural water availability. Existing literature on water management in the arid and semi-arid regions of Peru demonstrates that there are significantly different outcomes related to water security at the community level. In order to produce a comprehensive understanding of the social and environmental causes of water insecurity, this thesis focused on a critical meta-analysis of published case studies related to community level water management in Peru. Three outcomes were analyzed including social equity to resource access, equity and inclusion in the decision-making process, and ecological consequence. As each case study in the analysis shared the environmental constraint of climatic aridity, the analysis highlights the social causes of water scarcity at the community level, providing an impetus for meaningful mitigation. Additionally, the analysis demonstrates the ability for local communities to self govern water resources and highlights the consequences of state-sponsored diversion schemes on community level water management outcomes. Finally, the thesis compares multiple ways in which social equity regarding water access, governance inclusion, and positive environmental outcomes are being achieved at multiple scales within Peru.

Committee: Tyner James (Advisor); Sheridan Scott (Committee Member); Curtis Jacqueline (Committee Member) Subjects: Climate Change; Conservation; Cultural Anthropology; Environmental Justice; Environmental Studies; Geography; Latin American Studies; Natural Resource Management; Public Policy; Sustainability; Water Resource Management

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Geography

Once a dominant canopy tree in Appalachian forests, the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) was rendered functionally extinct by an invasive blight fungus (Cryphonectria parasitica) in the early twentieth century. A century after the arrival of the fungus, blight-resistant chestnuts are now being produced through backcross breeding and genetic transformation, with the ultimate aim to restore the species to its former dominance in eastern North America. Despite restoration's goal of reinvigorating an historic species, nothing about the chestnut's demise and resurgence can be considered purely natural but is instead socioecological all the way down, forged through power relations among human and nonhuman actors, from fungal pathogens to plant geneticists, and from biotechnology corporations to hypoviruses. This dissertation problematizes and contextualizes ongoing efforts to save the American chestnut from functional extinction, explicitly challenging the view of ecological restoration as a straight-forward process by which ecosystems are returned to an ideal or improved state. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, I argue that the restoration of the American chestnut is a biopolitical project in which the species is divided, bred, modified, immunized, and made to live through racialized technologies and discourses. Efforts to protect and restore the American chestnut are not—and indeed were never—solely about the conservation or improvement of species and ecosystems but are also about the construction and defense of national natures. This research also finds that what counts as ecological restoration and biodiversity conservation are under radical revision, driven by novel biotechnologies as well as by the widespread recognition that we live in the Anthropocene—a new epoch in which humankind is a dominant earth system force. In identifying key areas of friction within chestnut restoration, I argue that the `messiness' of the movement is emblematic of (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Becky Mansfield (Advisor) Subjects: Geography

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2013, Geography

Anthropogenic fires are rife in rural Africa as people use fire to modify landscapes for their livelihoods. Although burning occurs as a very significant practice used in traditional resource management and shows some ecological advantages, human set fires are viewed by conservation authorities as destructive and a cause for environmental degradation. This study gains local perspective from three Kamba and three Maasai villages around Chyulu Hills on why fires are used and their influences on local woody plant resources. Between June and July 2012, I conducted 12 focus group discussions and 6 transect walks with Kamba and Maasai participants who reported 22 reasons why they use fires. Employing an applied research design that supports adaptive collaborative management (ACM), the study validates local knowledge on fire management and promotes opportunities for collaborative learning between park managers and local populations that are viewed critical toward better environmental conservation and livelihood security around CHNP.

Committee: Kimberly Medley Dr. (Committee Chair); Mary Henry Dr. (Committee Member); John Maingi Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Geography

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2011, Anthropology

I explore the production of social, cultural, and natural space in the Madre de Dios (Amazonia Peru) biosphere. Following a political ecology approach, I focus on the experiences of locals who worked primarily in gold mining, timber, and other extractive economies prior to becoming tourism guides and examine how the transition to an institutionally regulated livelihood around ecotourism has reshaped the ways they perceive and constitute themselves in relation to concepts of family, nature, insiders and outsiders, ownership, and modernity. I argue that tour guides navigate through a constellation of dialectical relationships that bisect local, national, and global connections and mediate articulations between local labor (the ecotourism guides), national tourism markets (including the Peruvian state), and the global economic system (including NGOs, lodge operators/owners).

Committee: Jeffrey Cohen PhD (Advisor); Mark Moritz PhD (Committee Member); Ray Cashman PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Cultural Anthropology