Browsing by Author "Fred Cubbage, Committee Member"

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    Garbage or Godsend?: Contested Meanings Among Conservation and Humanitarian Groups on the United States Border
    (2010-03-23) Shellabarger, Rachel Marie; M. Nils Peterson, Committee Chair; Erin Sills, Committee Member; Fred Cubbage, Committee Member
    Conservation and human rights are currently threatened by direct and indirect effects of border enforcement practices on the Arizona-Sonora border. Increased border enforcement in urban areas has pushed migrants into remote conservation areas, threatening both the vulnerable borderland ecosystems and the human migrants passing through them. This study examines responses to human and environmental impacts of border policies in the case study region of Altar Valley in southern Arizona, where migrant traffic has increased greatly as a result of the expanded border enforcement near urban centers. We use ethnographic methods to explore and understand the actions of land-management and humanitarian aid groups attempting to address the socio-ecological crises wrought by increased border enforcement, in order to look for ways to reduce the crises through a better understanding of the context. Community partners include the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, the Coronado National Forest, and the No More Deaths humanitarian aid group, all located within 25 miles of the Arizona-Sonora border. The results of this study, carried out largely during the summer of 2008, describe how the actions of land-management and humanitarian groups eventually conflicted and resulted in littering citations for the humanitarian aid volunteers who left water for migrants along trails on the wildlife refuge. The conflict was branded as an issue of conservation versus human rights. I argue that the conflict between land-management personnel and humanitarian aid volunteers arose not just from differing conservation and humanitarian goals, but from their different conceptions of problems associated with border activity and different ideas of the borderlands as a place.
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    The Rich Go Higher: The Political Ecology of Forestry, Fire, and the Wildland-urban Interface in Northern Utah
    (2009-04-13) Roberts, Jason Steadman; Fred Cubbage, Committee Member; Jerry Jacka, Committee Chair; Nora Haenn, Committee Member
    Abstract Roberts, Jason S. “The Rich Go Higher†: The Political Ecology of Forestry, Fire, and the Wildland-urban Interface in Northern Utah. (Under the Direction of Dr. Jerry Jacka). In the years following the National Fire Plan and the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, mechanical fuels reduction has become an accepted and favored fire prevention practice in interface communities as public funds have become available to subsidize the protection of private lands. However, based on ethnographic fieldwork, it is apparent that fuels reduction in these areas is often constrained by a tension between aesthetics and functionality that precludes the complete accomplishment of management objectives. The allocation and use of public funds in private, primarily affluent communities therefore reveals sharp socioeconomic differences in both accessibility to and control of nature. The wildland-urban interface is yet another example of the ways in which powerful, political economic interests actively define nature for the purposes of their own consumption. In this thesis, I explore the current state of fire management in the wildland-urban interface through participant observation while working on a brush removal crew for the state of Utah. I argue that the members of the brush removal crew, while seemingly working to prevent fires from breaching the wildland-urban interface, are actually engaged in the maintenance of social hierarchy through paid conformance with an upper class landscape ethic.