Geography faculty and staff with seniors presenting honors thesis. l-r: Professors Daisaku Yamamoto, Madeline Hamlin, Emily Mitchell-Eaton, William Meyer, Peter Klepeis, Technician Myongsun Kong, Erin Flannery '23, Keegan Kessler '23, Sophia Ferrero '23, Professor Adam Burnett.
Seniors Erin Flannery, Keegan Kessler and Sophia Ferrero presented honors projects on May 10, 2023.
Sophia Ferrero's thesis is titled "Multiplicity is Key: New Paths to Understanding Development Projects Through the Comparison of Life-Environmentalism and Environmental Justice."
Abstract
Development projects intend to fulfill broad societal needs, but, inherently, must occupy specific places. Therefore, they generate conversations, questions, and conflict within and around host communities. Environmental Justice is widely used within Anglo-American literature to critically analyze these cases. This paper puts EJ and Life-Environmentalism in conversation with one another to not only how they speak to one another, but also what they might be able to teach each other in the process. I first conduct a geography-historical analysis of these frames in which I define potential points of intersection, and then complete a comparative analysis and discussion of LE and EJ empirical case studies of waste, nuclear energy, and recreational development project communities. I found that more care for local linguistic, cultural, historic, and experiential contexts is necessary in future EJ studies. Conversely, understanding village-government power dynamics, which permeate both living common sense and national morality, can help LE more deeply understand what influences residents’ behaviors. Varied multiplicity and localization of knowledge systems are important, especially when approaching with an Anglo-American-based theoretical approach. Cross-cultural, integrative conversations between literature that acknowledges and values multiplicity are key to building capacity to understand the knowledges and logics of development project host communities.
Erin Flannery's thesis is titled "Geographies of Inclusion: The Efficacy of Social Entrepreneurship at Facilitating Refugee Socioeconomic and Financial Inclusion in Host Communities."
Abstract
When refugees enter host countries, they leave behind their livelihoods and support system, and bring their skills and traditions. Female refugees have especially limited rights and opportunities in host countries, therefore the UNHCR has implemented a social enterprise program to facilitate inclusion. This study compares social, economic, and financial inclusion for refugees working in social enterprises across Turkey, Malaysia, and Pakistan to identify barriers to inclusion. This research focus is unique as it merges situated UNHCR staff perspectives with a critique of the formal institution. In this study, I identified barriers to social, economic, and financial inclusion through interviews with UNHCR staff and social enterprise leaders working with refugees across these countries. I engaged in a mixed-method approach of interviews, survey data, and policy analysis of the Refugee Convention and country-specific asylum policies. My central argument is that public opinion is the most significant factor affecting the overall inclusion of female refugees working with social enterprises in Turkey, Pakistan, and Malaysia. Public opinion affects laws, day-to-day processes, and refugees’ acceptance into a host community. Additional barriers that impact refugee inclusion are legal frameworks, ethnolinguistic differences, and the constrictions of a patriarchal society, all of which affect women’s ability to work.
Keegan Kessler's thesis is titled "Knowledge, Power, and the Intimate: Engaging Feminist Political Ecology and Life-environmentalism to Understand Disasters"
Abstract
Disasters reveal the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural processes underscoring everyday life. Research about disasters tends to inform models for disaster mitigation and recovery strategies, influencing the very ways in which disasters are understood in society. Therefore, it is important to understand the contexts and insights of research approaches in disaster studies, as the ways in which research analyzes disasters and their implications have very real repercussions concerning lived experiences of disasters. Feminist Political Ecology (FPE) is an Anglo-American research approach widely used in studies of environmental issues that aims to understand the relation between dynamics of gender and the natural environment. By putting FPE and Life-environmentalism in conversation, I demonstrate how contexts of human-environment relations, history, culture, and language influence disaster theory and post-disaster recovery, in turn influencing people’s understanding of disasters. In a comparative analysis of case studies concerning tsunamis, nuclear disasters, and volcanic eruptions, I found that, among the various intersections and divergences, how knowledge is understood, how politics and power are engaged with, and how emotions and the body are analyzed have significant influence on the insights that FPE and Life-environmentalism draw in empirical disaster studies. These distinctions are also expanded to a wider discussion of geographic knowledge production. By confining non-Western communities and ideas to Western understandings of disasters, and more broadly, general understandings of space and place, it invites the potential to skew lived experiences and bring new meanings to those experiences. Therefore, I suggest that Western-dominated research put itself in conversation with other ontologies and epistemologies to reflect upon assumed ways of understanding and being
All presenters received honors recognition.
