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- Boda, Chad
(författare)
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The Beach Beneath the Road : Sustainable coastal development beyond governance and economics
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- That Florida is in the midst of an ecological crisis is a perspective increasingly shared by academy, government, private industry and civil society. Ideas about the causes of the state’s environmental problems and how best to address them, however, are not so well aligned. While some are prone to emphasize the primacy of economic growth over environmental conservation, others argue that, like love and marriage, you cannot have one without the other. More particularly, Florida’s many densely populated barrier islands are experiencing increasingly severe critical erosion, threatening people, property and endangered species habitat. In the face of expanding urban development, rising seas and coastal squeeze, the traditional strategies for managing erosion are looking less and less appropriate and the need for a sustainable coastal development strategy is more and more apparent.To this end, this thesis has three main parts. First, I develop a plausible explanation of the origins of Florida’s environmental problems, tracing the relationship between changing systems of production and environmental impacts from pre-Columbian to modern times, developing in more concrete detail the case of Flagler County and the City of Flagler Beach. Second, by employing the method of immanent critique I provide a scientific evaluation of competing critical erosion solution options which have been historically considered in the case study area, demonstrating in particular how these competing alternatives can be organized from least to most adequate in terms of their capacity to address the problem under consideration. From this critique I turn to suggest a yet-unconsidered alternative decision making procedure which can reasonably be shown to be an advancement on the “best” idea currently on offer. Finally, I identify a promising pathway to achieving this alternative, arguing in particular that civil society, in contrast to government or the market, must provide the mechanism for realizing the necessary social change.The thesis aspires to make three main types of contribution: 1) practical contributions in the form of a variety of policy and strategy inputs in collaboration with local coastal management practitioners; 2) theoretical contributions via the critical comparison of competing solution alternatives related to coastal management in Florida’s coastal communities; and 3) methodological contributions to sustainability studies by demonstrating an approach to scientific research which I argue is more appropriate than other more dominant approaches in terms of its capacity to fulfill the field’s interdisciplinary and normative ambitions.
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| 2. |
- Engstrand, Sandra
(författare)
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State Learning and Role Playing : International environmental cooperation in the Arctic Council
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study investigates state interaction as a social learning process, where the ultimate aim is to enhance an understanding on how states learn of environmental norms. An entry into the domain on such learning processes is offered through a Constructivist approach and more specifically through the employment of a role theoretical perspective; a role here is signified as a state's repertory of behavior and its social position within a group. Attention has been devoted to states' ego- and alter expectations, which provide access to how states reflect and deliberate regarding their preferred behavior, when also taking into account those behavioral/normative prescriptions found in the social context, and in others' expectations. To enhance an understanding on how states learn of environmental norms, investigations and discussions are carried out on the links between: learning and expectations, environmental protection and fossil energy interests, and learning and role changes. Furthermore, such discussions are linked to the Arctic context, and more precisely to state interaction within the Arctic Council. This intergovernmental forum - dedicated to sustainable development and environmental protection - has eight Arctic states as founding members: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the U.S. In this study, each state's role is mapped through a text analysis, of foremost Senior Arctic Official's meeting minutes during the period 1999-2016. Two specific negotiation processes (2013-2015) are then investigated from a micro perspective, focusing on the question of how states learn. These negotiations are on oil spill prevention and the reduction of short-lived climate pollutants, respectively. Three theoretical conclusions are drawn: firstly; roles in international relations are stable but flexible, thus adaptive; secondly, the flexible dimension of roles is activated in relation to understanding - to which degree states understand their social context to contain behavioral prescriptions, and thirdly; states cannot learn in a speedier and more thorough manner than the role allows for flexing. For the progression of environmental protection, learning about such norms are thus suggested to be successive learning, connected to states' expectations of their (role) purpose within a social context. Moreover, it is suggested that conceptions of being a good cooperator is superior, why learning of environmental norms also is connected to understandings of what would constitute such an actor.
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| 3. |
- Fred, Mats
(författare)
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Projectification : The Trojan horse of local government
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis aims to conceptualize local government projectification by answering the questions of how projectification is manifested in practice, and what the consequences of the project logic are for local government organizations and their employees. An institutional ethnography is conducted in the Swedish municipality of Eslöv and its organizational and institutional surroundings. Through an institutional logic perspective informed by translation theory, local government projectification is conceptualized as a process of proliferation, transformation and adaptation, as well as organizational capacity building. Projectification as proliferation emphasizes the increasing use and diffusion of projects and project ideas. Projectification as transformation and adaptation highlights processes of transformation of “permanent” ordinary organizational activities to temporary projects, and adaptation in the surrounding organizations and structures. Projectification as organizational capacity building implies that the project logic diffuses in local government organizations, not primarily through specific projects, but through practices encouraging the project logic, which reinforces the organizational project capacity of local government. Three conclusions are drawn. First, projectification must be regarded as something more than many projects. Second, projects are not “just” vehicles carrying something forward, but techniques, tools and practices that produce specific effects of their own, independently of their stated objectives or aims ascribed to them.Third, the practical outcome of the project logic is more related to the rational and technical aspects of the project as a form than the innovative and flexible aspects of the project as a process. Hence, local government bureaucracy appears to be battle bureaucracy with more bureaucracy.
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| 4. |
- Kolben Waaranperä, Ulrika
(författare)
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Histories of land : Politicization, property and belonging in Molo, Kenya
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis aims to explore the politicization of land in a local setting in Kenya. The purpose is to study how access to land is justified through histories about relational property and belonging. The notion of deep politics is used in order to suggest that these histories of property and belonging not only transform the meanings of land but also the meanings of politics.The empirical chapters describe how the ordeals of the high politics of the state—such as the creation of settlement schemes, the provision of landed resources, or the alteration of constituency boundaries—have given rise to local histories about how property and belonging are constituted. The findings of the thesis build on extensive fieldwork. The main empirical material consists of qualitative interviews with 129 persons, undertaken primarily in Molo. The interviews are complemented with ethnographic observations and archival sources.In policy and theory alike, land is usually treated as a purely economic resource, subject to property rights regulations of a technical, universal and decontextualized nature. Such assumptions have underwritten many large-scale land privatization reforms in the Global South. In contrast to such assumptions, this dissertation contributes to the literature on access to land in Africa by suggesting that even when property rights to land are generally accepted, they are also backed up by other claims, such as various histories of belonging. The idea that property rights, decades after titling-reforms, are both accepted and complemented with other notions of what constitutes legitimate access to land is an original finding of the thesis. This adds further complexity to the notion of property as inherently relational and potentially eligible for politicization. Additional light is hereby cast on why conflicts over land might not be solved but instead reinforced by land reforms.
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