Browsing by Author "Dockstader, Sue"

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    AN ACCUMULATION OF CATASTROPHE: A POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WILDFIRE IN THE WESTERN UNITED STATES
    (University of Oregon, 2024-03-25) Dockstader, Sue; Foster, John
    This dissertation is an environmental sociological study of wildland fire in what is now the western United States. It examines wildfire management from roughly the 1900s to the present time employing a Marxist historical materialist analysis. The title of this work reflects the accumulated social and environmental effects of capitalism and the interconnected catastrophes of its development. Historically, Indigenous cultural burning shaped western landscapes that provided for human and nonhuman needs, while remaining resilient to environmental disturbances. Capitalist expansion effected a rift in the relationship between humans and fire through dispossession of Native Americans, commodity production, and fire exclusion. This metabolic rift is beset by economic crises, and human displacement enabled the U.S. to mobilize large groups of precarious workers to fight fires which it continues to do today. Rapid and complete fire elimination has left a legacy of unhealthy forests and grasslands that occasionally provide fuel for wildfires that threaten people, structures, and natural resources requiring suppression. This burn-fight-burn cycle, or wildfire paradox, exemplifies what Engels called the “revenge of nature” in which the supposed subjugation of nature exposes humans to unimagined vulnerability. Modern wildfire science evolved in relation to U.S. imperialist military and economic domination that increased global economic activity among Global North countries in the aftermath of World War II. This Great Acceleration increased carbon dioxide emissions responsible for climate change that, in turn has exacerbated wildfire activity as well as propelling human settlement in and near uninhabited, wild areas that spark fires. In recent decades an alliance of polluting industries, utilities, forest owners, and the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sector, have been profiting from the continued CO2 emissions that drive wildfires using carbon trading, third party liability arrangements and novel insurance products with disastrous results. This dissertation concludes with a discussion of possible avenues for changing the relationship between humans and wildland fire to avert further catastrophe.
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    Engendering the Metabolic Rift: A Feminist Political Ecology of Agrofuels
    (University of Oregon, 2012) Dockstader, Sue; Dockstader, Sue; Foster, John
    This thesis analyzes the gendered impacts of plant-based alternatives to petroleum, commonly called biofuels. Synthesizing case studies, scientific research and policies papers, this theoretical work adopts the term “agrofuels” coined by the peasant organization La Vía Campesina to reflect the true nature of these commodities – one of dispossession and ecological destruction. This paper documents the falsity of the claim that the fuels are “sustainable” by presenting facts linking them to deforestation, loss and pollution of water sources, destruction of important biodiversity and the knowledge that maintains this diversity, as well as economic exploitation. Most importantly, I verify that the adoption of agrofuel expansion exacerbates gendered patterns of exclusion and, in most cases, worsens women’s positions within the communities targeted for feedstock production with regard to land tenure, household energy maintenance, independent income and physical integrity.