John R Parkins
Biographic Data
| ID | 301705 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John R Parkins |
| GIVEN NAMES | John R |
| FAMILY NAME | Parkins |
| SIGNATURE | PARKINS J R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Alberta |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8005-0934 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 359 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
What is stopping Canada from unlocking the potential of renewable energy cooperatives? Critical insights from co-op leaders
The development of renewable energy cooperatives (RECs) in Canada is inhibited by regulatory and financial challenges that limit their ability to contribute to the country’s renewable energy transition. Despite the growing importance of community-based energy resources, current policies favour large-scale, investor-owned utilities, creating barriers for smaller, community-driven projects like RECs. While existing research has examined these chall…
Reversing the gaze: Understanding how community members are negatively affected by impact assessment
This study addresses the persistent tensions in Impact Assessment (IA), which aim to balance public engagement with technical analysis. In this context, the IA process itself poses a significant risk to the individuals and communities involved in the impact assessment. The consequences of these risks, and whether they materialize, remain uncertain and depend on the specific context of each IA process. Drawing on the sociology of risk and broader …
Agricultural landowner perspectives on wind energy development in Alberta, Canada: Insights from the lens of energy justice and democracy
The political and economic landscape of Alberta, Canada, is deeply affected by fossil fuel extraction, thus limiting progress toward energy transition. Although transition is slowed by resistance to renewable energy technologies, public perspectives on these projects are diverse, with localized sensitives that are often not well understood. To improve our understanding of support and opposition to wind energy development, we draw on concepts of e…
God’s Story’ as ideological determinant in faith-based cosmopolitanism
In his 2017 book, David Hollinger argues that, historically, Protestant American missionaries acted like 'boomerangs' with the intent of changing their targeted populations through evangelism. In actuality, their work had a greater effect on the population from which they departed. This boomerang effect is the consequence of an alteration of values arising from mission work abroad that made missionaries more critical of racism, colonialism, and r…
Reimagining craft for community development
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 with the creative economy and innovation agendas. While emphasising tradition, craft can be forward-…
Towards energy security in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region: Insights from community members and local residents
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 and community-based energy projects may produce greater economic and social benefits for local peopl…
Do methods used in social impact assessment adequately capture impacts? An exploration of the research-practice gap using hydroelectricity in Canada
Climax thinking, place attachment, and utilitarian landscapes: Implications for wind energy development
Open for bioenergy business? Perspectives from Indigenous business leaders on biomass development potential in Canada
What Shapes Public Engagement in Fracking Issues
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, Canada, is just such a place, and we use survey data (N = 226) from a sample of residents in Lethbridg…
Context matters: Fracking attitudes, knowledge and trust in three communities in Alberta, Canada
Does noticing energy infrastructure influence public support for energy development? Evidence from a national survey in Canada
That’s the Way We’ve Always Done It”: A Social Practice Analysis of Farm Animal Welfare in Alberta
Leveraging Social Media to Understand Younger People’s Perceptions and Use of Hydroelectric Energy Landscapes
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, focusing on two hydroelectricity proposals in Canada: the in-progress Site C Dam in British Columbia, and …
Rethinking Effective Public Engagement in Sustainable Forest Governance
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 processes. In this context, self-reports of committee effectiveness and satisfaction are common indicators…
Almost at Home in South Sudan: International Christian Humanitarians and the Theopolitics of Recognition
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, who may seem different and unfamiliar, yet who must be met as part of religiously motivated life and…
Situating Emotions in Social Practices: Empirical Insights from Animal Husbandry in the Cow-Calf Industry
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. Drawing on a narrative inquiry method with cow-calf producers in Alberta, Canada, we seek to clarif…
Do practitioners of holistic management exhibit systems thinking
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 complexity on their farms. We used Q-methodology, a mixed method approach for identifying discourses, to understand the levels and types of systems thinking e…
An analysis of the state of impact assessment research for low carbon power production: Building a better understanding of information and knowledge gaps
Talking about time: Temporality and motivation for international Christian humanitarian actors in South Sudan
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 circumstances and to further elaborate sociological conceptions of time as experienced by people in their own l…
Small-p politics: How Pleasurable, Convivial and Pragmatic Political Ideals Influence Engagement in Eat-Local Initiatives
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 sustainability). Meanwhile, less emphasis has been placed on understanding the underlying ideals and m…
Can Distrust Enhance Public Engagement? Insights From a National Survey on Energy Issues in Canada
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 issues of public concern. This article seeks to clarify this apparent disjuncture in the trust literatu…
Digital archives, big data and image-based culturomics for social impact assessment: Opportunities and challenges
Can public engagement democratize environmental policymaking in a resource-dependent state? Comparative case studies from Alberta, Canada
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 economic context shape the democratic potential of public and stakeholder consultations, especially w…
Rural Sociologists at Work: Candid Accounts of Theory, Method, and Practice
Public Participation as Public Debate: A Deliberative Turn in Natural Resource Management
This article examines some key similarities and differences between two leading perspectives on public participation: the natural resource management literature and deliberative democratic theory. We assert that contemporary deliberative democratic theory, as proposed by Habermas and others, provides important theoretical and applied insights that are often unexamined in the natural resource literature. Specifically, deliberative democratic theor…
Resource Dependence and Community Well-Being in Rural Canada
The well-being of residents of resource dependent communities is a question of traditional interest to rural sociologists. The label 'resource dependent' obscures how this relationship may vary between particular resource industries, regions, or indicators of well-being. Few analyses have compared the relationship between well-being and resource dependence across different industries, nor tested competing theories about the relationship between r…
Linking social structure, fragmentation, and substance abuse in a resource-based community
Drawing on case-study research from a rural, resource-based community in Alberta, Canada, this paper explores the social and economic context of substance abuse. Specifically, the linkages between social structure, community fragmentation, and family dysfunction offer a way of understanding differential resistance and susceptibility to substance abuse. Five thematic areas were linked to susceptibility in this study: (1) an economy based on multip…
Assessing community vulnerability: A study of the mountain pine beetle outbreak in British Columbia, Canada
Moving towards local-level indicators of sustainability in forest-based communities: A mixed-method approach
Resource development and aboriginal culture in the Canadian north
This paper examines the relationship between resource development and aboriginal community and cultural impacts in Canada's north from the 1970s to the present. Based on a review of published literature, it is contended that northern centred scholarship can be conceptualised in two phases. These are firstly the community impacts phase (1970 to mid-1990s), a phase guided largely by a cultural politics of assimilation, a sociology of disturbance, a…
Toward a Social Theory of Resilience: Social Systems, Cultural Systems, and Collective Action in Transitioning Forest-Based Communities
Impacts from post-Fordist and poststaples economic transition in theCanadian natural resource sector have resulted in dramatic challenges to the livelihoods of many rural residents and the viability of many rural communities. This study seeks to understand community response to economic transition through a lens of social ecological resilience. This article puts forwardArcher's theory of cultural morphogenesis as an analogous model of social ecol…
Comparative Case Study as Social Impact Assessment: Possibilities and Limitations for Anticipating Social Change in the Far North
Environmental Harm and 'the Good Farmer: Conceptualizing Discourses of Environmental Sustainability in the Beef Industry
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 draw on to support their self-perceptions as stewards of the land, (2) how are these discourses used …
Does noticing energy infrastructure influence public support for energy development? Evidence from a national survey in Canada
Small-p politics: How Pleasurable, Convivial and Pragmatic Political Ideals Influence Engagement in Eat-Local Initiatives
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 sustainability). Meanwhile, less emphasis has been placed on understanding the underlying ideals and m…
Food activists, consumer strategies, and the democratic imagination: Insights from eat-local movements
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 activists in the local food movement come to diagnose and critique the conventional industrial food system?…
Situating Emotions in Social Practices: Empirical Insights from Animal Husbandry in the Cow-Calf Industry
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. Drawing on a narrative inquiry method with cow-calf producers in Alberta, Canada, we seek to clarif…
De-centering environmental governance: A short history and analysis of democratic processes in the forest sector of Alberta, Canada
Can Distrust Enhance Public Engagement? Insights From a National Survey on Energy Issues in Canada
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 issues of public concern. This article seeks to clarify this apparent disjuncture in the trust literatu…
The Problem With Trust: Insights from Advisory Committees in the Forest Sector of Alberta
Using observational and interview data from forest sector public advisory committees in Alberta, Canada, this article investigates the differential outcomes emerging from multilayered notions of trust and distrust within small-group settings. Although the applied literature on public participation and a good deal of the literature on trust and risk management demonstrate that trust contributes constructively to group outcomes, this analysis sugge…
The Challenge of Developing Social Indicators for Cumulative Effects Assessment and Land Use Planning
Mitchell, R. E., and J. R. Parkins. 2011. The challenge of developing social indicators for cumulative effects assessment and land use planning. Ecology and Society 16(2): 29. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-04148-160229
Forest Sector Dependence and Community Well-being: A Structural Equation Model for New Brunswick and British Columbia
Rural sociologists have a lengthy history of examining the relationship between natural resource dependence and community well-being. This paper contributes to the understanding of this relationship in several ways. First, census data were used to describe forest sector dependence in two Canadian provinces where levels of dependence were much higher than those commonly found in the United States. Second, instead of linear regression analysis, a s…
Context matters: Fracking attitudes, knowledge and trust in three communities in Alberta, Canada
Rethinking Effective Public Engagement in Sustainable Forest Governance
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 processes. In this context, self-reports of committee effectiveness and satisfaction are common indicators…
An analysis of the state of impact assessment research for low carbon power production: Building a better understanding of information and knowledge gaps
Learning (or living) to love the landscapes of hydroelectricity in Canada: Eliciting local perspectives on the Mactaquac Dam via headpond boat tours
Food safety risks, disruptive events and alternative beef production: A case study of agricultural transition in Alberta
Determinants of food security in Tanzania: Gendered dimensions of household headship and control of resources
Leveraging Social Media to Understand Younger People’s Perceptions and Use of Hydroelectric Energy Landscapes
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, focusing on two hydroelectricity proposals in Canada: the in-progress Site C Dam in British Columbia, and …
Moving towards local-level indicators of sustainability in forest-based communities: A mixed-method approach
Forest Management and Advisory Groups in Alberta: An Empirical Critique of an Emergent Public Sphere
The normative ideal of a public sphere, as defined by Habermas, is the realm of social life where private people come together as a public to engage in debate over the general rules that govern our lives. This debate is grounded in procedural rationality where bracketing of social difference, inclusiveness, and the force of the better argument provide the basis for mutual understanding and decision making. These ideals are used to determine the e…
Understanding the concept of representation within the context of local forest management decision making
Forest Sector Dependence and Community Well-being: A Structural Equation Model for New Brunswick and British Columbia
Rural sociologists have a lengthy history of examining the relationship between natural resource dependence and community well-being. This paper contributes to the understanding of this relationship in several ways. First, census data were used to describe forest sector dependence in two Canadian provinces where levels of dependence were much higher than those commonly found in the United States. Second, instead of linear regression analysis, a s…
Resource Dependence and Community Well-Being in Rural Canada
The well-being of residents of resource dependent communities is a question of traditional interest to rural sociologists. The label 'resource dependent' obscures how this relationship may vary between particular resource industries, regions, or indicators of well-being. Few analyses have compared the relationship between well-being and resource dependence across different industries, nor tested competing theories about the relationship between r…
Public Participation as Public Debate: A Deliberative Turn in Natural Resource Management
This article examines some key similarities and differences between two leading perspectives on public participation: the natural resource management literature and deliberative democratic theory. We assert that contemporary deliberative democratic theory, as proposed by Habermas and others, provides important theoretical and applied insights that are often unexamined in the natural resource literature. Specifically, deliberative democratic theor…
De-centering environmental governance: A short history and analysis of democratic processes in the forest sector of Alberta, Canada
Assessing community vulnerability: A study of the mountain pine beetle outbreak in British Columbia, Canada
Constructing the Public Sphere in Compromised Settings: Environmental Governance in the Alberta Forest Sector
À une époque où l'enthousiasme se manifeste pour une gouvernance environnementale plus délibérative et participative, des études critiques sur ces activités s'avèrent grandement nécessaires. Un forum très en vue sur la gouvernance, le Comité de consultation publique, en est venu à jouer un rôle d'une importance capitale dans la réglementation législative et axée sur les forces du marché des ressources forestières. L'article présente une évaluatio…
Comparative Case Study as Social Impact Assessment: Possibilities and Limitations for Anticipating Social Change in the Far North
The Problem With Trust: Insights from Advisory Committees in the Forest Sector of Alberta
Using observational and interview data from forest sector public advisory committees in Alberta, Canada, this article investigates the differential outcomes emerging from multilayered notions of trust and distrust within small-group settings. Although the applied literature on public participation and a good deal of the literature on trust and risk management demonstrate that trust contributes constructively to group outcomes, this analysis sugge…
Resource development and aboriginal culture in the Canadian north
This paper examines the relationship between resource development and aboriginal community and cultural impacts in Canada's north from the 1970s to the present. Based on a review of published literature, it is contended that northern centred scholarship can be conceptualised in two phases. These are firstly the community impacts phase (1970 to mid-1990s), a phase guided largely by a cultural politics of assimilation, a sociology of disturbance, a…
Dependence, diversity, and the well-being of rural community: Building on the Freudenburg legacy
Deliberative Democracy, Institution Building, and the Pragmatics of Cumulative Effects Assessment
Cumulative effects assessment is a process of scientific analysis, social choice, and public policy development, yet the linkages among these domains are often less than transparent. Limits to scientific and technical assessment, issues of power and control of information, and episodic forms of civic engagement represent serious challenges to meaningful understanding of cumulative effects assessment and land-use planning. In articulating these ch…
The Challenge of Developing Social Indicators for Cumulative Effects Assessment and Land Use Planning
Mitchell, R. E., and J. R. Parkins. 2011. The challenge of developing social indicators for cumulative effects assessment and land use planning. Ecology and Society 16(2): 29. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-04148-160229
Linking social structure, fragmentation, and substance abuse in a resource-based community
Drawing on case-study research from a rural, resource-based community in Alberta, Canada, this paper explores the social and economic context of substance abuse. Specifically, the linkages between social structure, community fragmentation, and family dysfunction offer a way of understanding differential resistance and susceptibility to substance abuse. Five thematic areas were linked to susceptibility in this study: (1) an economy based on multip…
Toward a Social Theory of Resilience: Social Systems, Cultural Systems, and Collective Action in Transitioning Forest-Based Communities
Impacts from post-Fordist and poststaples economic transition in theCanadian natural resource sector have resulted in dramatic challenges to the livelihoods of many rural residents and the viability of many rural communities. This study seeks to understand community response to economic transition through a lens of social ecological resilience. This article puts forwardArcher's theory of cultural morphogenesis as an analogous model of social ecol…
Mapping the cognitive environment of fifth graders: An empirical analysis for use in environmental planning
Determinants of food security in Tanzania: Gendered dimensions of household headship and control of resources
Food, Donors, and Dependency Syndrome(s) in South Sudan
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 of dependency” arose persistently from our data, alongside more conventional information about food.…
Trust and Skepticism in Dynamic Tension: Concepts and Empirical Refinements From Research on the Mountain Pine Beetle Outbreak in Alberta, Canada
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 attributes of research participants who are grouped into these four types of trust and argue that cr…
Identifying energy discourses in Canada with Q methodology: Moving beyond the environment versus economy debates
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 discourses on energy issues: (1) climate change is a primary concern, (2) maintain the energy econo…
Food safety risks, disruptive events and alternative beef production: A case study of agricultural transition in Alberta
Learning (or living) to love the landscapes of hydroelectricity in Canada: Eliciting local perspectives on the Mactaquac Dam via headpond boat tours
Food activists, consumer strategies, and the democratic imagination: Insights from eat-local movements
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 activists in the local food movement come to diagnose and critique the conventional industrial food system?…
Political science (37 works) · Sociology (29 works) · Geography (25 works) · Economics (24 works) · Law (20 works) · Engineering (19 works) · Law (18 works) · Environmental resource management (15 works) · Politics (15 works) · Social Acceptance of Renewable Energy (13 works)