Joseph G. Champ

Stakeholder Understandings of Wildfire Mitigation: A Case of Shared and Contested Meanings

This article identifies and compares meanings of wildfire risk mitigation for stakeholders in the Front Range of Colorado, USA. We examine the case of a collaborative partnership sponsored by government agencies and directed to decrease hazardous fuels in interface areas. Data were collected by way of key informant interviews and focus groups. The analysis is guided by the Circuit of Culture model in communication research. We found both shared and differing meanings between members of this partnership (the “producers”) and other stakeholders not formally in the partnership (the “consumers”). We conclude that those promoting the partnership’s project to mitigate risk are primarily aligned with a discourse of scientific management. Stakeholders outside the partnership follow a discourse of community. We argue that failure to recognize and account for differences in the way risk mitigation is framed and related power dynamics could hamper the communicational efforts of the collaborative partnership and impact goals for fuels reduction. We recommend ways that both groups can capitalize on shared meanings and how agency managers and decision makers can build better working relationships with interface communities and other external stakeholders.

An On-line Narrative of Colorado Wilderness: Self-in-“Cybernetic Space”

The authors consider a new frontier for the study of wilderness recreation experience, an increasingly common form of blog known as online trip reports. Analysis and discussion in this article is the result of collecting and reflecting upon more than 300 trip reports focused on wilderness areas in the state of Colorado. The authors present a case study of one trip report that demonstrates the intersection of self, narrative, wilderness, and new media technology. While the practice of trip reporting is rather uniform across the cases, the analysis of a single exemplary case reveals that the narrative performance can provide a very personal statement of self and the relationship to wilderness. As Internet presence grows exponentially, online trip reports are expected to play a greater and greater role in the experience of wilderness in cybernetic space.

The Circuit of Culture: A Strategy for Understanding the Evolving Human Dimensions of Wildland Fire

In this conceptual article, the authors explore the possibilities of another approach to examining the human dimensions of wildland fire. They argue that our understanding of this issue could be enhanced by considering a cultural studies construct known as the “circuit of culture.” This cross-disciplinary perspective provides increased analytic power by accounting for the meaningful role of 5 cultural processes in terms of their location and interrelation within social experience. The authors compare the circuit of culture approach with a body of recent literature focused on wildland fire. The authors make the case that this research has moved in a positive direction since wildland fire first ignited social scientific interest in the 1980s, but it is still missing key cultural processes. Ultimately, following the circuit allows us to make more nuanced statements about meaning, something much needed in the face of the wicked problem of wildland fire.

Wildland Fire and Organic Discourse: Negotiating Place and Leisure Identity in a Changing Wildland Urban Interface

A lack of research on the conceptual intersection of leisure, place and wildland fire and its role in identity prompted this exploratory study. The purpose of this research was to gather evidence regarding how people negotiate identities under the threat of wildland fire. Qualitative interviews with 16 homeowners and recreationists who value leisure activities in undeveloped places in Colorados Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest were conducted. Results show that wildland fire plays a varied role in the identities of many of the research participants. Three dominant discourses of nature (i.e., humanist, protectionist and organic) helped explain these identity-related reactions to wildland fire. An understanding of the multidimensional aspects of place and leisure identity highlighted in this research could help land managers particularly related to the organic discourse.

Testing the Convergent Validity of Videotape Survey Administration and Phone Interviews in Contingent Valuation

ABSTRACT We tested the convergent validity of responses obtained via videotape survey administration and obtained by a phone interview using a survey booklet. The announcer on the videotape verbally presented the text and questions that were read to respondents in the phone interview. There was no statistical difference between video and phone–booklet survey response rates or reasons for refusing to pay for the program. Median willingness to pay (WTP) for the prescribed burning program using the mail booklet–phone interview was

Mediated Spectacular Nature: “God-centered” and “Nature-centered” Consumption of a Genre

508 per household and

Performing Leisure, Making Place: Wilderness Identity and Representation in Online Trip Reports

583 per household from the video survey. The confidence intervals for these two estimates overlap, indicating they are not statistically different. The videotape survey offers the potential for cost savings in large samples where phone interviews would become expensive, and for valuing public programs that are too complex to realistically display with still photos and figures.

Good Grubbin': Impact of a TV Cooking Show for College Students Living off Campus.

In this article, the author considers the meaningful way people are using what he calls “mediated spectacular nature.” This term loosely represents the expanding collection of TV shows, movies, magazines, and Web sites devoted to representing information and stories about the natural world, particularly wildlife. Critics have questioned the informational and ideological authenticity of mediated spectacular nature. Utilizing open-ended qualitative interviews, the author found people who are using these sorts of texts in ways that ground them in a popular religious sense. The author makes the case that mediated spectacular nature may function to serve seemingly opposing “God-centered” and “Nature-centered” worldviews. This supports the idea of an ever-evolving intersection of media, religion, and nature.

INTEGRATING SOCIAL SCIENCE INTO FORESTRY IN THE WILDLAND/URBAN INTERFACE

Efforts to understand leisure as a spatial practice are surprisingly recent. It is only in the past decade or two that leisure studies has devoted much attention to the vital role of place and spatial practices for understanding how leisure is performed and experienced, how leisure related identities are constructed and affirmed, and ultimately how through these performances leisure places are made and remade (Crouch, 1999). A quick glance through the indexes of major theoretical works on leisure from the early 1990s (e.g., Rojek, 1993), show a remarkable absence of spatial terms. Prior to the mid-1990s what little work being conducted on leisure, identity and place was largely centered on identifying place attachment and place meanings associated with leisure settings. This work followed a cognitive-attitudinal approach in which place meanings and affinities were treated as already formed mental entities (Van Patten & Williams, 2008). Similarly, work examining leisure as an identity affirming practice has relied heavily on cognitive approaches to characterizing leisure as an arena for cultivating and expressing identity (Haggard & Williams, 1992).