Sociology Theses and Dissertations

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Browsing Sociology Theses and Dissertations by Subject "Agricultural economics"

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    Constructing sustainable agriculture at a Northwest farmer's market: Understanding the performance of sustainability
    (University of Oregon, 2010-09) Pilgeram, Ryanne S.
    In this project I explore the commitment to "social sustainability" within sustainable agriculture. Using participant observations at a Northwest farmers' market, interviews with market consumers, and interviews as well as farm tours with sustainable farmers, I examine the construction and practice of sustainability in a particular setting. The environmental issues tied to conventional agriculture are numerous and well documented; however, "social sustainability"--the extent to which sustainable agriculture provides a food system that is accessible, inclusive, uses fair labor practices, and is economically sustainable--is often less emphasized and more ambiguously defined (despite the emphasis by scholars and practitioners of sustainable agriculture that the movement is good for social justice). My project, therefore, uses critical feminist theory to explore how the ideals of social sustainability are put into practice by consumers and farmers of sustainable food in a society where social injustices are often embedded on both a structural and individual level. Emphasizing fanners' markets as the most important social space in which the values of sustainable agriculture are constructed, I use a local case study of a Pacific Northwest farmers' market, the consumers who shop there, and the farmers who sell goods there to understand how the values of social sustainability are put into practice. After reviewing the relevant literature and outlining the methods I use, I first discuss farmers' participation in the market and sustainable agriculture more broadly, using interviews and observations at different local farms to analyze how farmers see their commitment to sustainable agriculture as tied to forms of privilege and oppressions. Next, I use participation observation at the market itself to analyze how the space mediates the demands of "social sustainability" in a farmers' market system that is ultimately entrenched within a capitalist economy. Finally, I examine consumers' perceptions of the market, why they shop there, why they think more people do not shop at the market, and their definitions of sustainability; their responses reveal the complex ways that consumers define and understand sustainable agriculture.
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    An international division of nature: The effects of structural adjustment on agricultural sustainability
    (University of Oregon, 2009-06) Mancus, Philip Michael
    Representing a distinct contribution to the tradition of comparative international research in the environment, this dissertation studies the effects of national economic restructuring programs, implemented under the administration of multilateral development institutions, on the fertilizer intensity, energy intensity, and value efficiency of national commodity agriculture for the period 1980 to 2002. Known as structural adjustment, these conditional loan agreements have been thoroughly studied with respect to various social outcomes but in terms of environment impact, sociological investigation has been limited to case studies and to preliminary quantitative analyses of deforestation. Examining the consequences of structural adjustment on soil fertility management is a unique contribution to the field. Combining empirical work with theoretical explication, I frame the object of study using agrarian systems theory and the concept of societal metabolism, examining how the problem of soil fertility in the modern era has become subsumed into industrial processes that are fossil-energy intensive. Relating this historical development to the ongoing dialectic between the forces, relations, and conditions of production, I investigate how the international division of labor, manifested in the uneven and combined development of national economies, facilitates an international division of nature and thereby reproduces the hierarchical system of appropriation that drives the ongoing global expansion of the metabolic rift. Laying out competing theoretical perspectives on the potential for rational management of agricultural modernization, in the empirical component of this project I employ cross-sectional time-series panel regression analysis of secondary data on national development indicators in order to evaluate the relative merits of these contrasting theories for the sustainable development possibilities of Third World nations. The cumulative effects of structural adjustment significantly and independently increase the negative externalities of agricultural modernization while at the same time diminishing the potential economic efficiency of intensive nutrient management.