University of Helsinki
Abstract
Since the passing of the U.S. Clean Water Act in the early 1970s, the health of many city waterways has improved. However, legislation is not enough to turn around a system that rewards polluting industries, because they promise jobs with good wages to rural areas. Since the late 1990s, local people, supported by state and federal agencies as well as nonprofit advocacy groups (Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy), have organized watershed protection groups to try to make change from the ground up, one stream at a time. In this talk I will discuss the work of two such groups in Southeastern Ohio, the Sunday Creek Association and the Friends of Scioto- Brush Creek. Both have made remarkable progress in their areas, which pose distinctive challenges. What can local activists teach us about promoting stewardship and environmental awareness in impoverished and conservative rural contexts?
Bio
Katherine Borland is Director of the Center for Folklore Studies at the Ohio State University. She is committed to developing university-community partnerships that center the needs and interests of communities. She is engaged in a multi-year, team-based, Participatory Action Research project on placemaking in rural Ohio, in which she studies grassroots environmentalism. She is currently editing a volume with John McDowell, Sue Tuohy, and Rebecca Dirksen, entitled Diverse Environmentalisms. Dr. Borland also collaborates with faculty in the OSU Theatre Department on Be the Street, a performance studies project on mobility, immobility and migration, located in the Hilltop neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio.