Skip to main content
eScholarship
Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (23 results)

  • Article
  • Peer Reviewed
UC Davis Previously Published Works (2020)
Landfills are linked to major forms of environmental harms, such as water contamination, production of greenhouse gases, and accumulation of toxins in human and natural systems. The presence of hazardous waste landfills has been shown to be co-located in rural communities, particularly in poor communities of color. This analysis examines the key relationships between the presence of 93% of all landfills other than hazardous—construction and demolotion (C&D), industrial, and municipal—and social inequality, a question as yet unexamined in the academic literature. Analyzing secondary data compiled into a unique dataset, the author examines associations among ruralness, race, class, gender, disaster occurrences, and the presence of a non-hazardous waste landfill across the 48 contiguous United States. Findings suggest that similar to research on hazardous waste landfills, non-hazardous waste landfills are more likely to occur in counties with higher percentages of poverty and people of color. Furthermore, using the USDA Rural-Urban Continuum, more urban areas have a ten times greater likelihood of hosting a hazardous waste landfill compared to the most rural areas. Results further indicate that counties with a greater percentage of single female-headed households in poverty have greater odds that a landfill will be present. Findings indicate the importance of investigating multiple landfill types.
    Cover page: Examining Rural Environmental Injustice: An Analysis of Ruralness, Class, Race, and Gender On the Presence of Landfills Across the United States
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    UC Davis Previously Published Works (2020)
    Increasingly, funders (i.e., national, public funders, such as the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation in the U.S.) and scholars agree that single disciplines are ill equipped to study the pressing social, health, and environmental problems we face alone, particularly environmental exposures, increasing health disparities, and climate change. To better understand these pressing social problems, funders and scholars have advocated for transdisciplinary approaches in order to harness the analytical power of diverse and multiple disciplines to tackle these problems and improve our understanding. However, few studies look into how to conduct such research. To this end, this article provides a review of transdisciplinary science, particularly as it relates to environmental research and public health. To further the field, this article provides in-depth information on how to conduct transdisciplinary research. Using the case of a transdisciplinary, community-based, participatory action, environmental health disparities study in California's Central Valley provides an in-depth look at how to do transdisciplinary research. Working with researchers from the fields of social sciences, public health, biological engineering, and land, air, and water resources, this study aims to answer community residents' questions related to the health disparities they face due to environmental exposure. Through this case study, I articulate not only the logistics of how to conduct transdisciplinary research but also the logics. The implications for transdisciplinary methodologies in health disparity research are further discussed, particularly in the context of team science and convergence science.
      Cover page: Towards Convergence: How to Do Transdisciplinary Environmental Health Disparities Research
      • Article
      • Peer Reviewed
      UC Davis Previously Published Works (2021)
      Landfills are environmental hazards linked to harms, such as the production of greenhouse gases and the accumulation of toxins in natural and human systems. Although environmental justice research has established such unwanted land uses as hazardous waste sites occur in poor communities and communities of color, less is known about the relationship between landfills and gender. As a driver of global climate change, there is also limited research into the relationships among disasters, landfills, and climate-related risks. To fill this gap, the current study uses an intersectional approach to theorize and empirically analyze relationships among landfills, disasters, race, class, and gender. We employ negative binomial regression to analyze a unique U.S. dataset of landfill counts, total number of disasters, and socio-demographic characteristics, including the use of two-way interactions among race, sex, and socioeconomic status variables, and number of federally-declared disasters that influence landfill counts. Findings suggest that intersecting axes of social location (specifically gender and race) are not multiplicative when it comes to landfills or the environmental risks they pose, but we argue may be entangled—that is related in non-linear and complicated ways. Using intersectionality theory, we interpret the findings to indicate that women of color are agents of resistance enacting their own forms of power against dominant structural arrangements that produce and maintain environmental injustices. Conclusions and implications for environmental justice, intersectionality, and climate risks are further discussed.
        Cover page: Intersectional and Entangled Risks: An Empirical Analysis of Disasters and Landfills
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        UC Davis Previously Published Works (2024)
        Environmental justice research has focused on the distribution of environmental inequalities, such as proximity to landfills, across the U.S. and globally.

        Background

        Public health research and environmental health research, specifically, have focused on toxic exposure-encompassing individuals or communities that are disproportionately exposed to contaminants that are harmful or potentially harmful to them. Yet, little research has applied critical environmental justice theory-characterized by the idea that marginalized communities need to be treated as indispensable rather than disposable-to the study of toxic exposure. To fill this gap, the current paper offers a case study approach applying critical environmental justice theory to the study of disproportionate and unequal exposure to toxic contaminants.

        Methods

        This case study is of Kettleman City, a rural, unincorporated community in the heart of California's Central Valley (USA). This community experiences the co-location of environmental hazards, including residing at the intersection of two major highways and hosting a class I hazardous-waste landfill, which is one of the few licensed to accept PCBs. PCBs are a contaminant that has been linked with several adverse health outcomes, including cancers and low birthweight. Residents may also experience poor air quality from proximity to the highways.

        Results

        This case highlights the uneven distribution of pollution and environmental degradation that may be shouldered by the community, along with their experiences of adverse health and social impacts. This analysis reveals the importance of incorporating a critical environmental justice perspective to unpack experiences of not only disproportionate exposure but also disproportionate procedural and recognitional inequality.

        Conclusions

        This research highlights the untapped potential of environmental justice to catalyze exposure science in challenging the unequal distribution of contaminants.
          Cover page: Critical Environmental Injustice: A Case Study Approach to Understanding Disproportionate Exposure to Toxic Emissions
          • Thesis
          • Peer Reviewed
          UC Davis Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2021)

          This project examines the effect of family separation on people who have loved ones incarcerated in California state prisons. Using survey data collected by Initiate Justice, a Los Angeles-based community organization that seeks to end mass incarceration by harnessing the power of those “inside,” my research examines barriers to accessing those loved ones and asks, “What is the effect of family separation on loved ones left behind?” I frame my research with an abolitionist lens and incorporate the theory of racial capitalism in my study. My research views incarcerated people as important family and community members and finds that their absence from these spaces impacts their families and communities negatively. Combining qualitative and quantitative survey analysis with a review of the literature, I offer a vision of a system that does not need police and prisons, and prioritizes health and healing as community priorities, instead.

            Cover page: The Impact of Family Separation for the Loved Ones of California's Incarcerated Population
            • Article
            • Peer Reviewed
            UC Davis Previously Published Works (2014)
            Violence against indigenous women and girls is endemic, yet the absence of research on the consequences of this violence from the perspectives of women presents a profound barrier to the development of knowledge, along with violence prevention and mitigation. Although family is central to many indigenous communities, existing research typically examines the consequences of intimate partner violence (IPV) on women or children in isolation, rather than examining its consequences holistically. The purpose of this article is to identify US indigenous women's perspectives about the impact of IPV on women, children, and families. Data were collected with 29 indigenous women affected by violence from a Southeastern tribe in the United States. As part of a larger critical ethnography, pragmatic horizon analysis of life history interviews revealed the consequences of IPV across multiple levels. Women reported profound psychological consequences resulting from IPV. The majority of women had witnessed IPV in their childhood, providing support for an intergenerational cycle of violence. Women reported psychological consequences on children, which paralleled those reported by women, leaving deep impressions on children across their life course. Consequences on children and whole families were extensive, indicating the negative ramifications of IPV transcended personal boundaries and affected children and families across multiple generations. Given the tight-knit nature of indigenous families and communities, the consequences across individuals and families were noteworthy. However, a dearth in research examining consequences of IPV across levels fails to capture the interconnections of consequences for women, children, and families. Given the centrality of family in many indigenous communities, examining IPV from a holistic perspective that incorporates multiple levels is recommended for IPV research and intervention development.
              Cover page: “It will always continue unless we can change something”: consequences of intimate partner violence for indigenous women, children, and familiesCreative Commons 'BY-NC-ND' version 4.0 license
              • Article
              • Peer Reviewed
              UC Davis Previously Published Works (2015)
              In this article, we apply three theoretical frameworks, poststructural feminism, queer, and sociology of gender to the issue of intimate partner violence (IPV) in order to better account for heterosexual female perpetration and same-sex IPV. Although the traditional feminist paradigm-that assumes men use violence as an extension of patriarchy against their female victims-has been useful in explaining some instances of IPV, it does not adequately frame instances of heterosexual female perpetration and IPV in same-sex relationships. Therefore, in this article we seek to add to existing literature by re-theorizing IPV using poststructural feminism, queer, and sociology of gender perspectives, and their attendant understanding of power as dynamic, fluid, and relational and gender as both interactional and structural, in order to open up new ways of framing IPV and encourage new lines of empirical research resulting in better policy proscriptions and treatment interventions.
                Cover page: Re-Theorizing Intimate Partner Violence through Post-Structural Feminism, Queer Theory, and the Sociology of GenderCreative Commons 'BY-NC-ND' version 4.0 license
                • Article
                • Peer Reviewed
                UC Davis Previously Published Works (2015)
                One underexplored area of great concern is the relationship between disasters and disposition of the waste they generate, which often amounts to the equivalent of 5 to 15 years of garbage that the same community would create under normal conditions. This paper develops a theoretical framework to analyze the factors that influence the distribution of landfills by integrating insights gained from the environmental inequality and human ecology traditions. The synthesis informs the quantitative analysis of the distribution of landfills across counties in the southeastern region of the United States by examining crucial associated variables, disasters, and other relevant factors gleaned from prior research. Findings suggest that natural disasters have indirect relationships with other communities that process waste. Results also point to the disproportionate concentration of landfills in counties with greater minority populations. The conclusions and implications of the findings are discussed in addition to a range of potential applications for future research.
                  Cover page: A Human Ecology Approach to Environmental Inequality: A County-Level Analysis of Natural Disasters and the Distribution of Landfills in the Southeastern United StatesCreative Commons 'BY-NC-ND' version 4.0 license
                  • Thesis
                  • Peer Reviewed
                  UC Davis Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2024)

                  ABSTRACTBy Mitchell P Snyder “The Fire Keeps Burning:” Understanding the impacts of wildfires on households and across communities. (Under the guidance of Clare Cannon)

                  This dissertation work studies the long-term impacts of wildfires by bringing together the bodies of literature on disaster recovery, place attachment, and post-disaster displacement, to better understand the impacts of wildfires on households and across communities. Wildfires pose a growing threat to human health through mental and physical health impacts, and longer-term impacts such as contamination or pollution. While much of the current wildfire scholarship contributes exceptional work on how wildfires impact communities and households in the acute phase following a wildfire, there remains work to be done to identify how post-wildfire needs vary by demographics like race and class, and how post-fire needs change over time in the months to years following a wildfire. Where many quantitative studies more narrowly focus on wildfire incidence and potential future exposure as a measurement of inequality, this dissertation advances the field in three key ways.

                  First, by including qualitative data from over 4,000 households, this research contributes to wildfire social science by exploring mixed-methods hypotheses derived from disaster theories to understand dynamics of wildfire-household interactions. Second, this study explores the factors that contribute to need duration following a wildfire—necessities like food, water, and shelter, as well as other needs including internet access, cell phone service, and transportation. By studying the households that have persistent needs, this research contributes to wildfire recovery literature by identifying specific high-risk subgroups for post-wildfire interventions. Wildfires affect entire communities, not just individual households – and understanding the factors that influence the social vulnerability of these communities is vital. Third, this research explores the factors that influence post-wildfire Quality of Life, highlighting the disproportionate impact of the 2018 Camp Fire on locally displaced households, which represent a population of theoretical and practical significance for wildfire recovery.

                  Findings suggest that longitudinal monitoring and evaluation efforts are needed to continue to meet the needs of vulnerable households affected by wildfires and other disasters. Results indicate that qualitive variables, and the hypotheses derived from them, offer insight into different facets of recovery in a largely quantitatively validated field. Future research should focus on specific regional dynamics of identified socio-environmental interactions by including historical and qualitative data to measure relative risk, recovery, and resilience.

                    Cover page: “The Fire Keeps Burning” Understanding the Impacts of Wildfires on Households and Across Communities
                    • Article
                    • Peer Reviewed
                    UC Davis Previously Published Works (2017)
                    Objective: The purpose of the study was to investigate the differences between intimate partner violence (IPV) and parenting attitudes by race by comparing demographic, parenting, and IPV indicators for African American and White men. Method: The study employed a nonequivalent, control group design in a secondary analysis of 111 men. Results: Analyses indicated that (1) African American men had more children; (2) chi-square tests revealed no statistically significant differences between African American and Caucasian men with respect to IPV perpetration and parenting attitudes; and (3) a logistic regression model indicated that the number of children and a higher risk category for parenting attitudes were significant predictors of race group membership. Conclusion: These findings reveal that having more children is related to a higher level of stress on intimate partner relationships, and these stressors are not evenly distributed across racial groups. Batterer intervention programs should include parenting skills to help perpetrators better cope with such stresses.
                      Cover page: Male Batterer Parenting AttitudesCreative Commons 'BY-NC-ND' version 4.0 license
                      Top