Margaret Fitzsimmons

University of California, Santa Cruz | UCSC · Department of Environmental Studies

Crop protection approaches reflect grower priorities, consumer concerns, labour availability, technological advances and environmental conditions, which in turn vary over time and among social, cultural and economic contexts. This chapter provides a historical overview of changing plant protection approaches over the last century in the USA, using...

Ecosystem-based management requires the promotion and integration of locally relevant ecosystem services. This needs an understanding of which ecosystem services local people value and how local valuation varies with socio-cultural and market factors. We convened ten focus group discussions and performed 105 household surveys from major indigenous...

Berates radical geographers for having failed to address the issue of "social nature' - theoretical perspectives on the geographical and historical dialectic between societies and their material environments - and for instead focusing almost exclusively on the "spatial'. Discusses this matter in the context of urbanization and the urban question, a...

Alternative food initiatives are appearing in many places. Observers suggest that they share a political agenda: to oppose the structures that coordinate and globalize the current food system and to create alternative systems of food production that are environmentally sustainable, economically viable, and socially just. This paper examines the pot...

This research brief examines alternative food initiatives (AFIs) in California: their history, goals, contributions, and visions of a sustainable food system. It briefly reviews the unique aspects of California's agricultural system that gave rise to the AFIs examined in the study. Based on interviews with the organizations' leaders and participant...

Recent events in the fishery for California market squid (Loligo opalescens), especially the rapid increase in landings and participants, have raised concerns about its socioeconomic as well as its biological sustainability. As management options for the fishery are considered, it is essential to take into account the fishery's social and economic...

Studies within the theoretical framework of "the new industrial geography" have depended on manufacturing and service industries, overlooking the primary sector. When compared with manufacture, agriculture exhibits similarities and distinctions which reveal the particular historical role of natural processes and cycles in restricting the conditions...

Dominant theoretical models in geography have been drawn by analogy from theories in economics and biology. The philosophical assumptions which underlie this transfer are normally unexamined. The economic model itself rests on a mechanical analogy and on a philosophy of science which emphasizes empiricism, determination and reductionism. The ecolog...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Los Angeles--Geography, 1983. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 363-386). Photocopy.

Thesis (M.A.)--California State University, Northridge, 1975. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-91).