John R. Parkins

University of Alberta | UAlberta · Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology

In this paper we link contemporary thinking on craft and craftsmanship to concepts in community development. Craft is contrasted with popular development dogmas such as innovation, planning and the knowledge economy. Our aim is to reimagine craft as a form of production linked to traditions of trade-craft and blue-collar work, yet open to blending...

Recent commentaries on the corpus of social acceptability research around renewable energy have identified the need for critical approaches that move beyond individualist and positivist methodologies. Many energy-related behaviours, much like the landscapes in which they play out, are recursively recreated and institutionalized as they are enacted,...

In this chapter, we contextualize meaningful public participation in relation to next-generation IA, describe its key features, principles and benefits, and canvas innovative and promising approaches and tools for achieving such participation.

Indications of anti-environmentalism are pervasive throughout North America. Considering the climate crisis, for example, an article in the Calgary Herald stated that over half of Albertans disapprove of the ‘Government’s climate change strategy’ (Wood, 2016), of which wind and solar development is a key component. Furthermore, climate concern is o...

This study uses data from a vignette experiment (n = 401) of large-scale agricultural landowners in western Canada to quantify attributes that enhance acceptance of wind farms on their land or in their municipality. The analysis addresses the role of community relationships and procedural fairness in the development of wind power. Random effects mo...

Advances in public participation are stimulated by multiple drivers, including public concern for environmental degradation, conflict between forest users, Indigenous rights, and international agreements. Yet, with many notable advances, innovation has stagnated, and the quality of participatory processes in forest management is highly variable. Th...

The ongoing digital transformation that all sectors are experiencing, recently accelerated by a global pandemic, is impacting the practice of impact assessment (IA). It is impacting how we support and inform established IA practice, and it is offering new approaches to supplement established IA practice. This entry describes digital impact assessme...

This paper applies an innovative approach to monitoring social effects occurring before and during construction of two hydroelectric dams in Canada. The two studied dams, Site C and Keeyask, are under construction in Canada and underwent community-based impact assessment (CBIA). News coverage and the CBIA documents were analyzed to understand and c...

Reviewing Social impact assessment (SIA) documents is important to understand whether SIA methods and the range of issues covered have evolved as a response to legislation changes and best practices. A national study can help researchers to understand the practice of SIA under comparable regulatory requirements. This study used available hydroelect...

Energy security is a growing concern in the circumpolar Arctic. A growing number of Inuit and other Indigenous communities are seeking greater certainty in the sources of heat, electricity and fuel as well as alternatives to carbon-based energy systems. While top-down and large-scale approaches to renewable energy have been proposed, smaller-scale...

This research is focused on the social context of flood risk in Alberta, with an emphasis on understanding the evolving challenges of urban residential flooding. This interest arose from interactions with faculty members at the University of Alberta, representatives from TD Insurance and researchers at the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction,...

While shifting electricity production to renewable sources is of critical importance in addressing global climate change, the costs of such development are often felt locally. This study explores what leads to support for wind development when respondents are asked to think about three different geographic scales: general, regional and within view...

Contemporary methods of rangeland health (RH) assessment evaluate indicators designed to assess land use impacts on ecosystem function. These methods have not been tested relative to variation in specific grazing practices, including grazing period length and stocking rates during the growing season. We report on RH outcomes for three habitat types...

As renewable energy technologies evolve, how we think and talk about energy landscapes is also changing. Energy discourses shape our thinking, our reactions, and our sense of what is desirable or undesirable in the surrounding landscape. Understanding discourses as the subconscious organization of collectively held values and mental models (Lakoff,...

While GHG emissions reduction is a key motivation for renewable energy development, it is not a motivator for rural Albertan landowners. This is because rural landowners are often skeptical of the climate crisis. More than 60% of those surveyed support the claim "we still do not know if climate change is real or human caused" and scientists/ academ...

Alberta is abundant in wind resources and there is great potential for new wind farm development in the province. However, while wind farms power both urban and rural energy consumption, their impacts are felt overwhelmingly by rural communities. Compared to other energy sources, support for wind power among rural landowners in Alberta is low, and...

Many resource projects are located in regions inhabited by Indigenous people, whose livelihoods, culture, and spirituality are deeply affected by these projects. Researchers and consultants have developed numerous qualitative and quantitative Social Impact Assessment (SIA) methods to predict or verify cumulative social outcomes of those projects as...

The engagement of residents in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) debates within regions in which extraction occurs is critically important for shaping fracking policies. Such engagement may be less likely to occur in such regions, however, due to social factors associated with fossil fuel dependence, or what has been termed petro-statism. Alberta, Ca...

Researchers and advocates have long argued that on-going engagement by broad segments of the public can help make forests and forest-based communities more sustainable and decisions more enduring. In Canada, public engagement in sustainable forest management has primarily taken one of two approaches – advisory forums through forest-sector advisory...

Despite having abundant wind resources, the Province of Alberta is slow to adopt wind energy. While recent provincial government initiatives have stimulated some new wind power projects, progress is limited, and with new regulatory changes in recent months, progress on renewable energy development may slow even further. What are the barriers to ren...

Free for 50 days at https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1aoBNcUG5EeOu **** As a means of understanding responses to landscape change, the concept of climax thinking proposes that communities resist changes because individuals view their current landscape as in its optimal state. We examined perceptions of past landscape change to help predict support fo...

Canada is one of the world's top five energy producers and, within Canada's energy sector, the bioenergy economy is rapidly expanding. This research was conducted to identify perceived risks, barriers, benefits, and opportunities relating to the development of biomass energy by Indigenous business leaders and/or their communities. Eighteen Indigeno...

This report provides an updated national overview of how the public has been engaged in forest-sector advisory committees (FACs) in Canada. These committees operate across a wide range of geographic, social and political environments and the study highlights a number of important similarities and differences among the provinces and regions where FA...

The use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to extract oil and gas has generated intense debates in many countries. While the volume of empirical research on fracking attitudes internationally has grown considerably, there remains a need to focus attention on local contexts in which fracking takes place given the high degrees of variability in facto...

https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol24/iss3/art19/ --- Holistic management (HM) is a decision-making framework, first developed in grazing systems, which combines intensive, rapid rotation of grazing livestock with adaptive and holistic decision making. Holistic management's use of systems thinking concepts may help farmers cope with increasing co...

In this study, we examine the experience of international Christian humanitarian aid workers and who work in South Sudan. From interviews with thirty people in east Africa and north America, we derive a relationship between Christianity as our participants understand it, and their modalities of encountering "the other"-the people of South Sudan, wh...

With advances in renewable energy technology, decentralized and community scale energy projects are becoming more common. Rural and remote communities have unique interests in renewable energy as a source of revenue and a cost-saving measure to alleviate dependencies on more expensive alternatives. Other communities are interested in renewable ener...

Ultimately, this book accomplishes what it sets out to do, providing an analysis of Alberta’s identity as represented visually through documentary and media sources. The intended audience for this book includes those involved in environmental communication, environmental sociology, and human geography. The text provides a way of constructing comple...

Large industrial projects change communities, landscapes, and ecosystems, with significant impacts for local people. But, conventional project evaluations often underestimate wide-ranging local interests, especially those of young people. To address this gap, we collected data from Instagram, where a younger demographic dominates the medium, focusi...

Although beef and dairy production in Alberta, Canada, enjoys strong public support, there are enduring public concerns, including farm animal welfare. Evolving codes of practice and animal care councils prescribe changes and improvements to many areas of farm management, and may be seen by farmers as an appropriate response to public animal welfar...

The concept of ecosystem-based management (EBM) was widely believed to be a way forward in resolving complex challenges in natural resource management when it was popularized in the 1990’s. Despite the widespread potential of EBM in forest management, the implementation of EBM as a management approach in some jurisdictions is complicated by numerou...

A gap exists in cross-technology and large-scale research about public support for energy infrastructure, particularly the influence of exposure on attitudes. We used a national panel sample of Canadians to explore drivers of support across ten energy technologies, comparing predictors such as exposure, political views, environmental values and sec...

Addressing environmental problems through conventional expert and scientific approaches alone is largely ineffective. Therefore, Canadian forest management has evolved to include governance processes such as public advisory committees. Public participation is mandated by federal and provincial policy and is a key part of forest certification proces...

We investigate ways in which international evangelical Christian humanitarians talk about time as they engaged in humanitarian assistance and development work in South Sudan. Our focus on Christian development work is motivated by a desire to understand how and why people persevere in humanitarian work and reconcile seemingly impossible circumstanc...

The boreal zone, a vast region with abundant natural resources and related industries, has both provisioning and nonprovisioning ecosystem services that draw some people, while warding off others. It is an area that arguably affects many Canadians in different ways and represents a wide range of tangible and intangible values. Changes in demographi...

This study provides a portrait of the state of impact assessment (IA) research for four types of low carbon power production (wind, solar, small-scale hydro and small modular nuclear reactors). The emphasis is on IA research that has relevance to the Canadian policy setting. The method involved a systematized scan of the academic literature (peer r...

Meat production and consumption is hotly debated in many parts of the world, in part because of ongoing animal welfare concerns. Drawing on several contending positions about the role of human agency in social practices, coupled with a sociology of emotion, we empirically identify a range of perspectives on the role of emotions in social practices....

Public advisory committees (PACs) are a dominant form of public participation in Canada’s Crown forests, providing a venue where members of the local public can engage and influence sustainable forest management decision making. In this paper, we examine the experiences of Indigenous participants (relative to non-Indigenous participants) concerning...

Cycling as a mode of transportation (i.e. utility cycling) has been given heavy attention and investment in North America over the last decade. It is perceived as an environmentally friendly way to travel, leading to benefits for health and traffic alleviation. This study examines the determinants of utility cycling behaviour and intent, and more b...

Our aim in this chapter is to identify distinct discourses on energy development in the south-western region of Alberta and to identify areas of overlapping interest (common ground) that can serve as a focal point and a foothold for progress on participatory governance within this energy landscape.

The aim of this chapter is to identify distinct discourses on energy development in the south-western region of Alberta and to identify areas of overlapping interest (common ground) that can serve as a focal point and a foothold for progress on participatory governance within this energy landscape.

Forest-dependent communities in the tropics typically rank lower in socioeconomic status than agricultural and urban communities, and improving livelihood choices while protecting forest resources can be a difficult task. Conflicts can arise where biodiversity conservation objectives restrict resource access to forest communities. In this study, we...

Presentation and video (link below) of results from a dialogue on ecosystem based management (EBM), held in four location in Alberta during the year 2017. Using fishbowl techniques, pre- and post-dialogue survey research shows that predictors of support for EBM are affect by dialogue. We also observe changing levels of trust as an outcome of these...

Assessing the perception of key stakeholders within the forest sector is critical to evaluating their readiness to engage in adapting to climate change. Here, we report the results of the most comprehensive survey carried out in the Canadian forestry sector to date regarding perceptions of climate change. A total of 1158 individuals, representing a...

Socio-demographic information of respondents. Distribution by gender, age, education level, province, stakeholder and political view of respondents in a survey on perceptions of climate change in the Canadian forest sector. (PDF)

Survey responses by type of stakeholder. Responses by type of stakeholder for the first three sections of a survey on perceptions of climate change in the Canadian forest sector. (PDF)

Conditional inference trees. Conditional Inference (CI) classification trees for predicting perceptions of climate change and its impacts on forest ecosystems across the Canadian forest sector. (PDF)

Survey responses by province of respondent. Responses by province of origin for the first three sections of a survey on perceptions of climate change in the Canadian forest sector. (PDF)

Solar power (i.e., solar photovoltaic) accounts for about 0.3% of total electricity production in Canada. To enhance this contribution to energy supply from solar power, financial incentives and technological breakthroughs alone may not guarantee change. Drawing on a national survey of 2065 Canadian residents, we identify the determinants of techno...

This chapter situates the Alberta Climate Dialogue (ABCD) deliberations within the political and economic context of the province of Alberta. We argue that overall the Alberta context is one that is generally resistant to public participation mechanisms. When public engagement is undertaken it is often designed to secure public acceptance of policy...

Q methodology traditionally involves the sorting of stimuli such as textual phrases or images that are then analyzed with statistical software. Coupled with these quantitative techniques, Q methodology often involves in-depth interviews and interpretative methods. In spite of these mixed-methods strengths, scholars are turning to internet-based pla...

Canada's geoscape possesses more potential geothermal energy than hydrocarbon energy, but numerous challenges must be overcome if this renewable resource is to be effectively harnessed. Reservoirs of geothermal energy must be located, characterized, and modeled. The nature of the interaction between rock at reservoir sites and geothermal fluids mus...

First 50 days free here: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Vak0iZ5st7O9 Social impact assessment (SIA) is well-established but uses conventional approaches that have become less effective in recent decades, particularly in relation to declining survey response rates and a lack of youth engagement. Images from digital archives and social media source...

Landscape values indicate how humans perceive and evaluate the landscape. In our study areas, two hydroelectric proposals have the potential to alter the landscape dramatically, particularly the river (reservoir) and riparian land. An understanding of the spatial patterns of landscape values, especially the social and cultural values which are inta...

Culturomics, as commonly described, is limited to text-based ‘big data’, even for applications such as conservation where images are much closer to the phenomena under study. Conservation issues are primarily cultural problems. Conservation culturomics should be expanded to include images, as has been developing in the context of cultural ecosystem...

Non-confrontational engagement practices like ethical consumption are a popular form of everyday politics. Existing research into these practices offers positive evaluations (highlighting the value of everyday engagement in public life) and critical perspectives (questioning whether myriad small acts can address structural barriers to equity and su...

This paper explores the movements, meanings and potential movements of men and women as they seek to secure food resources. Using a gendered mobilities framework, we draw on 66 in-depth interviews in the Kongwa district of rural Tanzania, illustrating how people move, their motivations and understandings of these movements, the taboos, rituals, and...

The edited collection offers a creative approach to exploring the history of an academic discipline and the people who helped to move the discipline forward over the last 50 years. Chapter contributors are Laurence Busch, Stephen Turner, Julie Zimmerman, Michael Schulman, Anthony Winson, Linda Lobao, Cornelia and Jan Flora, and Ralph Brown, Conner...

Research examining the relationship between trust, public engagement, and natural resource management asserts that trust fosters positive behavior and enhanced cooperation. Yet some scholars are finding that certain kinds of distrust are helpful in achieving democratic outcomes by providing would-be participants with the motivation to engage in iss...

What factors shape the democratic potential of public consultation in environmental policymaking? Here, the motivations, purposes, designs, and outcomes of recent public engagement on land use planning, climate change policy, and water resource management in Alberta, Canada are reviewed in order to show how the power dynamics of the political and e...

Drawing on studies from Africa, Asia, and South America, this book provides empirical evidence and conceptual explorations of the gendered dimensions of food security. It investigates how food security and gender inequity are conceptualized within interventions, assesses the impacts and outcomes of gender-responsive programs on food security and ge...

In the fall of 2014 our research team conducted a national survey on energy literacy and energy citizenship in Canada (Comeau et al. 2015). That survey included questions covering: • energy knowledge (self-assessed and tested), engagement and activity; • exposure, support and opposition to various energy sources; and, • personal values, beliefs,...

Scholars remain divided on the possibilities (and limitations) of conceptualizing social change through a consumer-focused, “shopping for change,” lens. Drawing from framing theory and the concept of the democratic imagination, we use a case study of “eat-local” food activism to contribute to this debate. We ask two questions: first, how do activis...

Maintaining sustainability discourses in the face of evidence to the contrary is a topic of considerable interest in sociology. We approach this topic with a focus on the beef industry in Alberta, Canada. By studying the discourses of cow and calf producers this article addresses the following questions: (1) What are the discourses that producers d...

This study addresses the often chaotic and confounding implications of neoliberalism as it applies to environmental governance in the Canadian forest sector. On one hand, neoliberal governance strategies are said to enhance collaborative and partnership approaches to forest management that empower local stakeholders and communities. On the other ha...

Landscape impacts are commonly cited as barriers to new energy infrastructure, but rarely are perceptions of such impacts monitored over time. Built in the mid-1960s, the Mactaquac hydroelectric generating station in New Brunswick, Canada, is degrading, and its future is under review. We took locals on houseboats to learn how they felt about the da...

Boom and Bust: A Guide is the result of a collective effort at the University of Alberta to better understand the dramatic ups and downs which too often characterize western Canadian communities. It offers community leaders, politicians, administrators, academics, students, and all active citizens helpful techniques to analyze the current state of...

This questionnaire was used to gauge energy literacy and energy citizenship in Canada with 3,000 survey participants in the Fall of 2014. Questionnaire topics include knowledge of the energy system, preferences for energy sources, views on current and future energy use, engagement on energy issues, values related to energy development, trust in sou...

This national survey explores public perspectives on energy issues in Canada with a focus on preferences for energy sources, perceived and actual knowledge of energy systems, trust in energy-related organizations and sources of knowledge about energy issues. The survey also explores willingness to engage in energy related issues and general values...

The media play a key role in communicating risk issues and serve as a link between experts and the public. In this study, we explore experts' perspectives on the role of the media and media content with respect to a mountain pine beetle (MBP; Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) epidemic in western Canada. We collected data using an internet-based surv...

This paper examines heterogeneous impacts of gendered household headship and control of resources on food security in rural Tanzania (as measured by a World Food Programme score based on quantity and quality of food consumed in the household over a 7 day period). Analysis with minimal attention to heterogeneity in gender considerations indicates no...

This article investigates the deployment of dependency as a keyword in discussions of food security in South Sudan, on the basis of interviews and observations carried out in December 2012. Our initial intent was to estimate challenges to rural food security as the country emerged from decades of violent conflict. However, the notion of a “culture...

In the 1970s, Goldschmidt found that industrialization of swine production in Iowa resulted in declining social and economic returns to neighboring farming communities. This finding is confirmed by several more recent studies in the United States, indicating that regions dominated by family farms possess better socioeconomic conditions compared to...

Drawing inspiration from the literature on social imaginaries and cultural models, this study explores contending perspectives on energy and sustainability, moving beyond a simplistic understanding of support or opposition to specific energy developments. With a comparative study in three regions of Canada, we use Q methodology to identify five key...

A key focus for agri-food scholars today pertains to emerging “alternative food movements,” particularly their long-term viability, and their potential to induce transitions in our prevailing conventional global agri-food systems. One under-studied element in recent research on sustainability transitions more broadly is the role of disruptive event...

Drawing on published research involving public trust and environmental risk regulation, this study explores a differentiated view of trust that includes aspects of uncritical trust, critical trust, distrust and cynicism. Using survey research of residents (n = 1,303) in three mountain pine beetle affected regions of Alberta, Canada, we examine the...