Welcome to my ENVS 220 Portfolio! ENVS 220 is the methods class for the Environmental Studies major. In this class I hope to gain a variety of analytical tools that will help me complete my thesis as well as other independent research projects throughout my career. This class emphasizes analyzing environmental problems with both a top-down and a bottom-up approach. This means that we learn how to identify and analyze the intellectual theories and frameworks that influence our research choices as well as multiple methods for analyzing data, thereby approaching questions from both directions. To demonstrate how ENVS 220 is preparing me to do good research, I have prepared a few questions that highlight the skills I wish to gain in ENVS 220. The answers to these questions show how the assignments in ENVS 220 are helping me achieve these goals. How can understanding frameworks help me think critically about the kinds of questions that myself and others ask, as well as the methods we use to seek the answers? I found it fascinating that the Sciences and Humanities Faculty Panel strongly emphasized the importance of temperament and personality differences in choosing what to study. Similarly, different people are likely to favor different intellectual frameworks for analysis, which will heavily influence the way these scholars carry out research. For example, thinking about the kinds of information that were included and excluded from this Research Article helped me better understand the author's perspective.  How can I use data to support or discredit environmental theories? One thing I've learned in environmental studies is that, unfortunately, sometimes there isn't readily available data for me to prove all of the theories I'd like to. Take, for example, the disaster that was my group's GIS III lab assignment. Fortunately, ENVS 220 provides enough grounding in the basics of quantitative and qualitative data retrieval and analysis to help us utilize a variety of methods to support or discredit environmental theories.For our first, global-scale GIS lab, I researched the Extent of Global Land Degradation. While at first glance it would appear that this data discredits the theory that land degradation is a particularly serious problem in Ecuador, I found that this data used a definition of degradation that included almost all forms of agriculture. My lab partner's result, which mapped Frequency of Landslides, found that Ecuador was a hotspot for landslides, which are strongly linked soil erosion, the particular kind of land degradation we are most concerned about. For our second PDX-level GIS lab, we sought to find a connection between High-Income and Toxic Waste Facility Siting. We found data that supported the theory that there is a strong negative correlation between high-income neighborhoods and toxic waste facilities. In fact, there were no toxic waste facilities at all in any census tract in which over 40% of the households had an annual income of $100,000 or more.  For our inferential stats assignment, we compared Tolerance of Wealth Inequality in Peru vs. the United States. We found that there was more acceptance of inequality in Peru than in the United States, even though people on average are poorer than in the United States. For our Quantitative Survey design and analysis, we tried to understand how Lewis and Clark students justify their privilege and how they perceive their impacts on the rest of the world. We found significant correlations between people's perceptions of their own impacts (whether positive or negative) and their evaluations of their own privilege, and between the justification of individualism vs. universalism and evaluation of privilege. For our qualitative analysis lab, we did a Semiotic Analysis of an international news report about land reform in Bolivia, and found that the body language, visual, and verbal cues in the piece showed a bias in favor of land reform in Bolivia. The American featured in the piece was stubborn and emotional, and the camera angle shot him from below so that it always appeared that he was talking down to the viewer. In contrast, the Bolivian officials interviewed seemed calm, collected, and rational. For our Qualitative Survey design and analysis, we interviewed student in ENVS 220 to investigate why there is so little overlap between environmental studies scholars and environmental activists on campus. None of the students we interviewed described themselves as activists, and cited time and knowledge constraints as their reason for declining to participate in environmental activism. To bring this all together, my Final Essay focused on how I could utilize these tools to investigate how the closure of the coal-fired power plant in Boardman, Oregon would impact communities where the coal is mined, incinerated, and consumed as energy. In this essay I incorporated methods drawn from quantitative and qualitative survey design and analysis, narrative and content analysis, and GIS mapping. How can I determine what scales and actors are most important to finding environmental solutions? My forum post Situated Research and a Sense of Place explains why I believe focusing exclusively either on the global scale or the local scale is detrimental to finding feasible environmental solutions. The analytical tool that we are practicing in ENVS 220 is situating an environmental problem in a single place in space and time in order to gather the details necessary to make informed decisions while understanding the larger global context surrounding the problem. With many different actors at many different scales, it can be challenging to determine where we should focus on finding a solution. In my forum post, Analyzing "The Good Life" with ANT Theory, I talk about this problem and suggest that Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is a valuable rhetorical tool for overcoming these difficulties. I expand on this discussion in my Situated Research Midterm Essay by arguing that a NYTimes opinion piece does good job of capturing the complexities of geoengineering by embodying the spirit of ANT in its approach.  All semester long I've worked with a group of two other students to practice situating environmental issues. We first practiced evaluating situated research themes in the New and Existing Themes forum, and then moved on to propose our own theme. My group's theme centers around Land Degradation in the Andean Highlands. Here is a PowerPoint Presentation that includes background research, theme questions, and resources surrounding this theme. Situated research is allowing us to gather specific details on the situation in Ecuador while also relating the problem to the realities of the international political system. For example, in our Land Degradation in Ecuador ANT Concept Map, we determine that focusing on the agricultural knowledge of the farmers would be a good place for an individual or small group to start addressing this problem, while land reform would be a worthy endeavor for a group with more influence. The culmination of our efforts led to a Situated Research Proposal, presented as a poster here. In this proposal, we outline a plan to travel to the Andean highlands of Ecuador and use the skills we've gain in ENVS 220 to investigate the context in which Andean farmers make decisions as well the extent to which improving agricultural knowledge could improve the lives of farmers in that region.  As you can see, ENVS 220 has not only given me the concepts and skills to better situate and analyze environmental issues, but it has also given me plenty of opportunities to put these ideas into practice. |
