This co-written research paper on Alberta's conservation land trusts was a long time coming, but should be of interest to Albertan's, or those interested in the role of private land conservation, conservation land trusts, and the idea of landscape level thinking in protecting ecosystems.
Published in Human Ecology. November 2013. Reproduced with permission as post publication bookshelf copy. Many thanks to Lori and Sean for all the hard work.
Link to paper
Find Me at Synergia Cooperative Institute https://synergiainstitute.org/mooc-overview/
Monday, November 11, 2013
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Scaling Innovations In Sustainability - Athabasca Symposium October 5-8th 2013
I am honored and pleased to announce that some 25 research colleagues from across Canada, U.S. and UK will be in Athabasca this weekend, attending a four-day SSHRC funded Partnership Development Workshop to advance our discussions on Scaling Innovations in Sustainability.
We held a series of excellent Webinars on the topic of scaling innovations in sustainability over the last few months. Check the BC Alberta Social Economy SIS website for those ( on diffusion, on local capital, on carbon reduction, and local food) and much more.
Contact me if you would like to keep in touch. If you are a AU student, email to get involved in this research.
We held a series of excellent Webinars on the topic of scaling innovations in sustainability over the last few months. Check the BC Alberta Social Economy SIS website for those ( on diffusion, on local capital, on carbon reduction, and local food) and much more.
Contact me if you would like to keep in touch. If you are a AU student, email to get involved in this research.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
BC Alberta Social Economy Partnership Development: Scaling Innovation for Sustainability
I am the Academic lead for the Micro, Meso, Macro Research Cluster. To start discussions, I put together a reflection paper drawing from BALTA's research into the green social economy combined with the literature on multiple level perspectives, social innovation theory, and transition studies.
Here is the MMM discussion paper.
Feel free to post comments on the blog about this broad set of topics.
Research Cluster 1 - Micro, Meso, Macro
Academic lead: Mike Gismondi, Athabasca University
Practitioner lead: John Restakis of the BC Cooperative Society
Canadian members: Debra
Davidson University of Alberta
Josh
Evans Athabasca University
Julie MacArthur Simon Fraser University
Byron Miller University of Calgary
Byron Miller University of Calgary
Mike Toye CCEDNET Canadian Community Development Network
Seth Leon Alberta Community and Cooperative AssociationCCA
Laure Waridel Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland
Laure Waridel Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland
UK members: Pat Conaty The New Economics Foundation (macro-modelling nef piece only)
Angela
Espinosa Hull University
Tim
Jenkins New Economics Foundation (macro-modelling nef piece only)
Ed Mayo Co-operatives UK
Robin
Murray LSE and Co-operatives UK
Jon Walker
Monday, September 24, 2012
Tar Sands in Language and Images
Some more Tar Sands / Oil sands learning materials from Davidson / Gismondi collaboration
See our chapter on power and discourses in the oil sands from Samuelson and Antony, Power and Resistance in Canada. "Ecology, Climate Change and the Politics of Sustainability: The Case of the Alberta Tar Sands." Debra Davidson & Mike Gismondi
Go to Fernwood Publishing
Check out the Special Issue on Petrocultures - Sighting Oil
And finally, a Utube video where we talk about historical Images of Tar Sands
Visualizing the Tar Sands
See our chapter on power and discourses in the oil sands from Samuelson and Antony, Power and Resistance in Canada. "Ecology, Climate Change and the Politics of Sustainability: The Case of the Alberta Tar Sands." Debra Davidson & Mike Gismondi
Go to Fernwood Publishing
Check out the Special Issue on Petrocultures - Sighting Oil
Lots of great articles here dealing with imagining the global oil culture, including our more historical appreciation of the Alberta tar sands:
By Mike Gismondi and Debra J. Davidson
And finally, a Utube video where we talk about historical Images of Tar Sands
Visualizing the Tar Sands
Monday, July 9, 2012
Nicaraguan Research
Keeping your research interests alive in a remote rural university requires flexibility. As the only faculty member at AU writing about Latin America for many years, I talked to myself alot.
But over the years a good sum of my time remained dedicated to continued research into Nicaraguan social history. I was able to maintain a few long distance research networks. And to cultivate opportunities. For example, as a graduate student researcher, I thought I could capture the popular religious forces at play in the Nicaraguan Revolution. I delved into university, National and Sandinista archives ( later the IHCA), as well as hemerotecas in Nicaragua. I also interviewed local religious folks about religion and revolutionary politics.
But over the years a good sum of my time remained dedicated to continued research into Nicaraguan social history. I was able to maintain a few long distance research networks. And to cultivate opportunities. For example, as a graduate student researcher, I thought I could capture the popular religious forces at play in the Nicaraguan Revolution. I delved into university, National and Sandinista archives ( later the IHCA), as well as hemerotecas in Nicaragua. I also interviewed local religious folks about religion and revolutionary politics.
Quite incidentally, I started to keep track of empirical materials about North Americans in Nicaragua in the 1890s to 1970s time periods, including many Canadians. That material quickly filled my filing cabinets and hard drives. Back in Canada, in casual discussion with my friend, Jeremy Mouat, a gold mining historian, I mentioned the La Luz y Los Angeles gold mine. Sandino had destroyed the mine in Siuna, Nicaragua in the late 1920s.
A week later Jeremy dropped by my office with a large folder of engineering reports about the mine, correspondence, descriptions about transport challenges to reach the region, labour force issues, local and national politics, observations on ecology, opinions on the scale of the ore body, its worth, and potential to attract London financiers.
A week later Jeremy dropped by my office with a large folder of engineering reports about the mine, correspondence, descriptions about transport challenges to reach the region, labour force issues, local and national politics, observations on ecology, opinions on the scale of the ore body, its worth, and potential to attract London financiers.
Basically, Jeremy introduced me to a whole new world of sources for the study of global financial and industrial imperialism in LA related to mining history, that could be read obliquely to grasp international relations between US, Britain and Nicaragua, attitudes of foreigners towards local political elites, and social and political controversies surrounding foreign ownership of natural resource concessions, especially on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua.
We began to work together. We combined Spanish language materials about foreigners and foreign concessions in Nicaragua that I gathered from my visits to archives in Managua, Granada, Bluefields, and Bilwi, and triangulating that work with Jeremy's work in archival collections in North America and Britain that held mining sources. Together we then worked the US State Department Archives and varios collections in Washington. D.C. as well as the Library of Congress and Presidential papers.
The first paper that we wrote together was Merchants, Mining, and Concessions on Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast: Reassessing the American Presence, 1893–1912, in Journal of Latin American Studies. Here we used a great run of U.S. State Department papers on Nicaragua, materials that we recovered at the old State Department Archives in downtown Washington D.C..
And then a second paper The Emery Claim in Nicaragua and American Foreign Policy, c. 1880-1910 in which we offer a nuanced theoretical and empirically detailed investigation into imperialism and internal Nicaraguan politics.
In both papers we engage the dominant North American and European historiography of Nicaragua and Central America, offering a counter-reading of area studies.
So serendipity can be important, alongside thorough, investigative research work.
We began to work together. We combined Spanish language materials about foreigners and foreign concessions in Nicaragua that I gathered from my visits to archives in Managua, Granada, Bluefields, and Bilwi, and triangulating that work with Jeremy's work in archival collections in North America and Britain that held mining sources. Together we then worked the US State Department Archives and varios collections in Washington. D.C. as well as the Library of Congress and Presidential papers.
The first paper that we wrote together was Merchants, Mining, and Concessions on Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast: Reassessing the American Presence, 1893–1912, in Journal of Latin American Studies. Here we used a great run of U.S. State Department papers on Nicaragua, materials that we recovered at the old State Department Archives in downtown Washington D.C..
And then a second paper The Emery Claim in Nicaragua and American Foreign Policy, c. 1880-1910 in which we offer a nuanced theoretical and empirically detailed investigation into imperialism and internal Nicaraguan politics.
In both papers we engage the dominant North American and European historiography of Nicaragua and Central America, offering a counter-reading of area studies.
So serendipity can be important, alongside thorough, investigative research work.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Energy Calamity and the Tar Sands - Reviews
Reviewer Comments
“Drs. Debra J. Davidson (Associate Professor, University of Alberta) and Michael Gismondi (Professor, Athabasca University) newest book, Challenging Legitimacy at the Precipice of Energy Calamity, is one of the few social scientific analyses of the Alberta tar sands-an enterprise warranting much closer scrutiny from academe than it has received to date. The authors do two things in this book. First, they take a good hard look at the tar sands from the broader context of peak oil and climate change, and conclude without much trouble that this form of development just doesn’t add up. Second, they analyze the frames, images and narratives that are used to legitimize this enterprise and the potential sources of weakness in those frames, and also the frames and narratives that are used to oppose it, and their potential to unseat legitimacy. They conclude that the legitimacy of the tar sands (and its state and industrial proponents) is fragile, but concerned citizens and organizations making up the resistance may not be capitalizing on those sources of fragility as well as they might. They situate this political moment in a complex systems framework, drawing on contemporary theory and critical perspectives on complexity/mobility, political ecology, human geography, legitimacy, citizenship, environmental sociology and discourse analysis.” (University of Alberta: Augustana Campus News)
“Drs. Debra J. Davidson (Associate Professor, University of Alberta) and Michael Gismondi (Professor, Athabasca University) newest book, Challenging Legitimacy at the Precipice of Energy Calamity, is one of the few social scientific analyses of the Alberta tar sands-an enterprise warranting much closer scrutiny from academe than it has received to date. The authors do two things in this book. First, they take a good hard look at the tar sands from the broader context of peak oil and climate change, and conclude without much trouble that this form of development just doesn’t add up. Second, they analyze the frames, images and narratives that are used to legitimize this enterprise and the potential sources of weakness in those frames, and also the frames and narratives that are used to oppose it, and their potential to unseat legitimacy. They conclude that the legitimacy of the tar sands (and its state and industrial proponents) is fragile, but concerned citizens and organizations making up the resistance may not be capitalizing on those sources of fragility as well as they might. They situate this political moment in a complex systems framework, drawing on contemporary theory and critical perspectives on complexity/mobility, political ecology, human geography, legitimacy, citizenship, environmental sociology and discourse analysis.” (University of Alberta: Augustana Campus News)
“The book stands to make an important contribution not only to our understanding of tar sands development in Alberta politics ( a topic increasingly of global significance, as the authors note) but also to broader more “theoretical” issues of state legitimacy and contestation …The authors bring theoretically sophisticated tools to bear…” Springer Press Reviewer
“The Canadian tar sands are becoming globally known and debated as an energy, natural resource, mining and climate issue. It is no longer just a local or regional or even a national issue but is part of global debates on how to sustainably manage the earth resources, defended and offended in different way by different groups. It has become an example…for many other major challenges of the present time…. In the way the issue is approached and dealt with, I can see interests coming from scholars in sociology, environmental studies, geography, economics, political sciences, anthropology, energy studies. Professionals in the field of energy, climate change, various mining business, governmental sectors, NGOs would be interested.” Springer Press Reviewer
Researchers and students can order an ebook copy from SpringerLink.
Energy Calamity and the Tar Sands - Teaching Videos
These video clips provide useful teaching points developed by Debra J. Davidson (Associate Professor, University of Alberta) and Michael Gismondi (Professor, Athabasca University) who explain aspects of their newest book, Challenging Legitimacy at the Precipice of Energy Calamity, one of the few social scientific analyses of the Alberta tar sands.
- Deb - Introduction
Talks about what motivated us to write the book. Short term corporate profits and jobs or long term visions.
- Deb - Lift Our heads Up Out of the Sands
Questions why tar sands and what else?
- Deb - Legitimacy
Alberta tar sands expansions are at the epicenter of a larger global debate about energy, peak oil, and climate change issues.
- Mike - Rescuing Voices
Why are so many good ideas about alternative directions and futures heard, but not publicly deliberated or acted upon?
- Deb- Hearings: A Question of Democracy
The limitations of public hearings.
- Mike – History
Discusses the long history of public financing and state support for the tar sands industry from early 1900s to Suncor in 1967, and how pride in emergence of industry in 1960s is now an obstacle to contemporary change.
- Deb – Bitumen
Struggle over the words tar sands and oil sands. They have become politicized and used to label and reject critics.
- Deb – Discourses
How do pro tar sands narratives and storylines work on belief systems.
- Mike - Language and Power
Language can erase or language can frame and guide our understanding of tar sands issues. Discusses claim by government that tar sands is a knowledge economy.
- Mike- Visualizing the Tar Sands
How photographs and images of tar sands landscapes and tar sands industry become part of civic history and a civic virtue.
- Deb – EROI
Discusses falling Energy Return on Investment in the energy industry in general, and as it applies to tar sands extraction.
- Deb – Keystone
Situated Keystone pipeline as both material and symbolic issue, used to legitimate the global flows of capital, oil and power.
- Deb- Jobs
Discusses pros and cons of jobs created by a boom – bust industry.
- Deb - Imagining Other Futures
Advances the idea of an alternative to the industry.
- Mike - Entrenched Ideas
Talks about how hard it is to change the directions of the oil economy.
- Deb- No Place for Denial
Argues that trends in climate change and uncertainty of declining energy supply are happening, whether we like it or not. Calls for alternatives.
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