After decades of expert-based modernization efforts that have had profound negative impacts on human and environmental health, Ecuador is currently pursuing a rights-based, participatory development paradigm known as sumak kawsay or "the good life". Despite its promises of inclusion and interculturality, this approach continues to rely on highly trained specialists,...
Understanding which factors motivate farmers to adopt certain practices is an important part of helping to solve many agri-environmental issues. This study uses 19 interviews with farmers along Oregon’s Willamette River, a statewide producer survey, and select interviews with organizations and agencies active in the farming community to examine the...
This study seeks to explore the relationship between social capital and well-being in the rural Western United States. Mixed methods were employed to understand the concepts from multiple angles, using both profile and process indicators. An econometric approach used profile indicators and relied on data from 414 counties in the...
The counseling field is infused with multiculturalism and social justice competencies from the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs accreditation standards of the academic institutions to the American Counseling Association Code of Ethics. Counselors are tasked with understanding multiculturalism from self-awareness to clients’ worldviews to larger implications...
What does comida rica mean? In this thesis, I explore the meanings of comida rica, sana, and de nuestra tierra through the discourses, practices, and kitchen geographies in six urban, highland households in the Ecuadorean Andes. This research, as part of a larger investigation carried out by a team of...
Limited research has analyzed how the values espoused by Western alternative food systems, such as taste and territoriality, are adopted and refashioned in post-socialist societies. Muscovites now echo the global quality turn that reconnects consumers to their food sources. This research qualitatively explores the perspectives of the cosmopolitan consumers of...
Mainstream local food systems focus on environmental and individual health, but labor is out of sight and out of mind. We begin with a story that introduces the immigrant in the room, the locavore’s blind spots, and the need to move beyond mainstream environmentalism and embrace social justice. In the...
One post-transcriptional mechanism that regulates the progression of cancer and other diseases involves small 22-23 nucleotide sequences called microRNA (miR). Early detection of small changes in concentration of these biomarkers holds potential to diagnose diseases at their earliest stages. Use of current nucleic-acid based biosensors, like molecular beacons, for in...