Browsing by Author "York, Abigail M."

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Collective Action on the Western Range: Coping with External and Internal Threats
(2011) York, Abigail M.; Schoon, Michael L.
"Collaborative natural resource management institutions enable agents with diverse interests to come together to solve complex problems. These actors must overcome a series of collective action problems to create, maintain, and evolve these institutions. In addition to the challenge of heterogeneous actors, these commons social-ecological systems often face internal and external threats or disturbances. The institutional arrangements may be effective with problems that are internal to a social-ecological system ones that they are designed to handle, but how do these arrangements cope with external disturbances, especially ones caused by large-scale political and economic decisions, events, and processes. Using ethnographic and archival data we conduct an institutional analysis outlining the existing and emerging collaboratives, the important actors, and ongoing efforts to cope with the five major challenges identified by rangeland actors. We trace the evolution of institutions on the western range with a focus on their ability to cope with challenges that are largely within the system biodiversity, fire, and water management, and those that are driven externally by actors who are largely absent border militarization and violence and exurbanization."
Ethnic and Class Clustering through the Ages: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Urban Neighborhood Social Patterns
(2009) York, Abigail M.; Smith, Michael E.; Novic, Juliana; Stanley, Benjamin; Boone, Christopher; Cowgill, George; Harlan, Sharon; Stark, Barbara
From pg. 3: "In this paper we describe the initial stage of an ongoing transdisciplinary research project that attempts to forge a new approach to questions of the existence, variation, social context, and causes of social clustering within urban settings. We take a broad perspective by looking at cities from the present back to their beginnings in the Urban Revolution. Our point of departure is the notion that all cities share a set of basic social dynamics that permits comparative analysis of urban life using a wide perspective."
Navigating a Murky Adaptive Comanagement Governance Network: Agua Fria Watershed, Arizona, USA
(2013) Childs, Cameron; York, Abigail M.; White, Dave; Schoon, Michael L.; Bodner, Gitanjali S.
"Adaptive comanagement endeavors to increase knowledge and responsiveness in the face of uncertainty and complexity. However, when collaboration between agency and nonagency stakeholders is mandated, rigid institutions may hinder participation and ecological outcomes. In this case study we analyzed qualitative data to understand how participants perceive strengths and challenges within an emerging adaptive comanagement in the Agua Fria Watershed in Arizona, USA that utilizes insight and personnel from a long-enduring comanagement project, Las Cienegas. Our work demonstrates that general lessons and approaches from one project may be transferable, but particular institutions, management structures, or projects must be place-specific. As public agencies establish and expand governance networks throughout the western United States, our case study has shed light on how to maintain a shared vision and momentum within an inherently murky and shared decision-making environment."
Rangeland Collaboration: Effects of the Border Crisis on a Governance Network
(2010) York, Abigail M.; Schoon, Michael L.
"In the southern Arizona borderlands, natural resource managers come together to solve complex environmental issues associated with water, fire, threats to biodiversity, and exurbanization creating a diverse set of formal and informal institutional arrangements between public and private actors. Ranchers and range issues are central to governance in this system, yet ranchers and public range agencies do not operate in a vacuum, so we explore collaboration on range from a governance network perspective. We seek to understand how a challenging and potentially divisive issue affects collective action among interconnected managers and institutions. This natural resource community faces a contentious issue affecting daily life and management activities: the border crisis. We examine collaboratives and governance network’s ability to continue to deal with environmental problems in the face of four border issues: militarization, smuggling, increased migration, and construction of the border fence/wall and road. This study contributes to the collective action literature through its exploration of how natural resource management governance networks withstand complex challenges, such as the border. Border security places a heavy burden on public and private land mangers, especially ranchers, affecting a way of life and limiting managers’ ability to collectively act to deal with environmental issues, yet we also find innovative solutions and emergence of new collaboratives in the face of this challenge."