Philip Loring
Biographic Data
| ID | 630379 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Philip Loring |
| GIVEN NAMES | Philip |
| FAMILY NAME | Loring |
| SIGNATURE | LORING P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Guelph |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6039-2331 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 83 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Toward a Political Ecology of Mind: Reconciling the Role of Individuals and Systems in Social Change
The question of what motivates human behavior is at the heart of efforts to move communities and societies toward more sustainable, equitable, and just relations. Yet, theories of human behavior remain fragmented, contested, and often fail to fully explain why people do what they do. Here, I develop a “political ecology of mind”: an interdisciplinary framework for understanding human cognition and behavior that situates the mind as a terrain of p…
Exploring the inter-connections between Alternative Agrifood and Seafood Networks for building food systems resilience
In the context of intensifying threats to food systems and a growing need for resilience, Alternative Agrifood Networks (AANs) and Alternative Seafood Networks (ASNs) have emerged as notable bright spots across North America. Collectively, AANs and ASNs comprise Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) - the micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises which are important, but often overlooked, actors in food systems. However, a critical limitation for foo…
From greedy grocers to carbon taxes and everything in between: What do we think we know about food prices in Canada and how strong is the evidence
In Canada, the task of explaining food prices falls to a handful of grey literature reports that shape media coverage and public understanding and carry significant political and policy influence. We performed an in-depth analysis of fifty-one of these influential reports, including thirty-nine reports by Statistics Canada (including Consumer Price Index reports and other studies) and twelve reports from the Canada Food Price Report (CFPR) series…
From greedy grocers to carbon taxes and everything in between: What do we think we know about food prices in Canada and how strong is the evidence
In Canada, the task of explaining food prices falls to a handful of grey literature reports that shape media coverage and public understanding and carry significant political and policy influence. We performed an in-depth analysis of fifty-one of these influential reports, including thirty-nine reports by Statistics Canada (including Consumer Price Index reports and other studies) and twelve reports from the Canada Food Price Report (CFPR) series…
Advancing basic income as a policy tool for food systems sustainability
How academic podcasting can change academia and its relationship with society: A conversation and guide
In this paper we explore the potential of academic podcasting to effect positive change within academia and between academia and society. Building on the concept of “epistemic living spaces,” we consider how podcasting can change how we evaluate what is legitimate knowledge and methods for knowledge production, who has access to what privileges and power, the nature of our connections within academia and with other partners, and how we experience…
A vernacular for living systems: Alternative framings for the future of food
Industrialized nations face the imminent need to transform our food systems in service to climate, biodiversity, and humanity, and inroads to such transformation are arguably already being made in pockets of innovation and activism around the world. However, debates rage over the various technologies and values that ought to drive those transformations. In this essay I argue that we are in the midst of a paradigm shift in how we think about and d…
PubCasts: Putting Voice in Scholarly Work and Science Communication
This commentary explores the emergence and potential of PubCasts—abridged and annotated audiobook-style recordings of scholarly work. PubCasts aim to make scholarly work more accessible, engaging, and easily understood by broad audiences. We highlight our motivation for creating PubCasts and discuss our experiences in making and sharing them. We further reflect on the potential of PubCasts to combat misinformation by offering a more intimate and …
Covid-19 and small-scale fisheries in Africa: Impacts on livelihoods and the fish value chain in Cameroon and Liberia
Local Experts’ Observations, Interpretations, and Responses to Human-Polar Bear Interactions in Churchill, Manitoba
Since interactions and conflicts between polar bears (Ursus maritimus) and people are reportedly increasing across the Arctic, there is a pressing need to better understand how such conflicts can be prevented or their outcomes ameliorated. A great deal of knowledge about what strategies work for both preventing and mitigating human-polar bear conflicts lies with local experts, yet this knowledge has often remained relatively inaccessible to conte…
The imperative to transform global food systems
Never before, perhaps, has there been greater consensus that our food systems need to be radically reimagined and transformed. However, there is also much contention among those working to advance these transformations over the solutions and futures that ought to be pursued. So, while there is great opportunity to enact truly radical actions that reduce hunger, rebuild and steward biodiversity, and redress the many harms and dispossessions of col…
Indigenous food sovereignty and tourism: The Chakra Route in the Amazon region of Ecuador
This research applies the concept of food sovereignty as a framework to explore the impacts of tourism on Indigenous food systems in the Chakra Chocolate and Tourism Route (referred to as the “Chakra Route” in the paper), a tourist destination in the Amazon region of Ecuador that aims to improve the livelihoods of Kichwa people. Using a qualitative and collaborative research approach, we examine how Kichwa and non-Kichwa people in this destinatio…
Traditional food or biocultural threat? Concerns about the use of tilapia fish in Indigenous cuisine in the Amazonia of Ecuador
This article contributes to streams of knowledge related to biocultural diversity, food tourism and the cultural impacts of introduced species. Specifically, it explores the concerns that arise from the promotion of tilapia fish Oreochromis niloticus in Indigenous cuisine along a touristic route in the Amazon region of Ecuador. Although the environmental impacts of tilapia in the Amazon ecosystem have been largely documented, reports of cultural …
Applying the food–energy–water nexus concept at the local scale
Science, Data, and the Struggle for Standing in Environmental Governance
Here, we explore how people entangled in natural resource conflicts employ and discuss data. We draw on ethnographic research with two cases of conflict: salmon fisheries in Alaska, USA, and agricultural water management in Saskatchewan, Canada. Both cases illustrate how data, through the scientization of environmental governance, can become a means of empowerment and disempowerment: empowering those with access and influence over data and disemp…
Regenerative food systems and the conservation of change
“They're All Really Important, But…”: Unpacking How People Prioritize Values for the Marine Environment in Haida Gwaii, British Columbia
How small communities respond to environmental change: Patterns From Tropical to Polar Ecosystems
Huntington, H. P., A. Begossi, S. Fox Gearheard, B. Kersey, P. A. Loring, T. Mustonen, P. K. Paudel, R. A. M. Silvano, and R. Vave. 2017. How small communities respond to environmental change: patterns from tropical to polar ecosystems. Ecology and Society 22(3):9. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-09171-220309
Seasons of Stress: Understanding the Dynamic Nature of People’s Ability to Respond to Change and Surprise
Climate change is impacting coastal communities in rural Alaska in multiple direct and indirect ways. Here, findings are reported from ethnographic research done with municipal workers, community leaders, and other local experts in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska, where it is found that climate change is interacting with local social and environmental circumstances in ways more nuanced than are generally captured by frameworks for vulnerability …
Toward a Theory of Coexistence in Shared Social-Ecological Systems: The Case of Cook Inlet Salmon Fisheries
Coexistence theory (CT) in community ecology provides a functional perspective on how multiple competing species coexist. Here, I explore CT's usefulness for understanding conflict and coexistence among human groups with diverse livelihood interests in shared resources such as fisheries. I add three concepts from social science research on coexistence: adaptability, pluralism, and equity and apply this expanded theoretical framework to the case o…
“Community Work” in a Climate of Adaptation: Responding to Change in Rural Alaska
Defining energy security in the rural North—Historical and contemporary perspectives from Alaska
Climigration? Population and climate change in Arctic Alaska
Residents of towns and villages in Arctic Alaska live on "the front line of climate change." Some communities face immediate threats from erosion and flooding associated with thawing permafrost, increasing river flows, and reduced sea ice protection of shorelines. The term climigration , referring to migration caused by climate change, originally was coined for these places. Although initial applications emphasized the need for government relocat…
Searching for Progress on Food Security in the North American North: A Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis of the Peer-Reviewed Literature + Supplementary Appendix (See Article Tools)
Food security is a global societal challenge, and one geographic region where food insecurity is increasing is the North American Arctic and Subarctic. In this paper we synthesize research on food security in this region; important precursors and early work include reports on the impacts of land claims, the cumulative effects of industrial development and environmental change, and the health impacts of the nutrition transition among Indigenous pe…
The research journey: Travels Across the Idiomatic and Axiomatic Toward a Better Understanding of Complexity
McGowan, K. A., F. Westley, E. D. G. Fraser, P. A. Loring, K. C. Weathers, F. Avelino, J. Sendzimir, R. Roy Chowdhury, and M.-L. Moore. 2014. The research journey: travels across the idiomatic and axiomatic toward a better understanding of complexity. Ecology and Society 19(3): 37. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-06518-190337
Food, culture, and human health in Alaska: An integrative health approach to food security
How small communities respond to environmental change: Patterns From Tropical to Polar Ecosystems
Huntington, H. P., A. Begossi, S. Fox Gearheard, B. Kersey, P. A. Loring, T. Mustonen, P. K. Paudel, R. A. M. Silvano, and R. Vave. 2017. How small communities respond to environmental change: patterns from tropical to polar ecosystems. Ecology and Society 22(3):9. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-09171-220309
Climigration? Population and climate change in Arctic Alaska
Residents of towns and villages in Arctic Alaska live on "the front line of climate change." Some communities face immediate threats from erosion and flooding associated with thawing permafrost, increasing river flows, and reduced sea ice protection of shorelines. The term climigration , referring to migration caused by climate change, originally was coined for these places. Although initial applications emphasized the need for government relocat…
Defining energy security in the rural North—Historical and contemporary perspectives from Alaska
Outpost Gardening in Interior Alaska: Food System Innovation and the Alaska Native Gardens of the 1930s Through the 1970s
For over a century, various forms of crop cultivation, including family, community, and school gardens were a component of the foodways of many Alaska Native communities. This paper describes the history of these cropping practices in Athabascan communities of the Tanana and Yukon Flats regions of Alaska, and reveals a distinct agricultural tradition with roots that reach back as far as the late 1800s. Though American colonists, bureaucrats, and …
From Crisis to Cumulative Effects: Food Security Challenges in Alaska
Recent increases in the price of fuel in rural Alaska, coupled with high prices of grocery store foods and decreased efficacy of hunting and fishing have led to a food crisis in many regions of rural Alaska. In the summer of 2008 it was predicted that these events would lead to an upswing in the number of individuals migrating to urban areas of Alaska, putting additional stress on the already dwindling resources of food assistance providers. Thro…
Regenerative food systems and the conservation of change
The Most Resilient Show on Earth: The Circus as a Model for Viewing Identity, Change, and Chaos
Resilience, adaptability, and transformability are all tightly linked to the notion of change, whether in respect to coping with, adapting to, or harnessing it. But in order to understand these forces of change, we first need to recognize its counterpart: identity. Identity of a social-ecological system is not merely a static set of quantifiable feedbacks or indicators, but a more qualitative characterization of what results from the overlap of t…
Applying the food–energy–water nexus concept at the local scale
Science, Data, and the Struggle for Standing in Environmental Governance
Here, we explore how people entangled in natural resource conflicts employ and discuss data. We draw on ethnographic research with two cases of conflict: salmon fisheries in Alaska, USA, and agricultural water management in Saskatchewan, Canada. Both cases illustrate how data, through the scientization of environmental governance, can become a means of empowerment and disempowerment: empowering those with access and influence over data and disemp…
Larger Than Life: The Emergent Nature of Conflict in Alaska’s Upper Cook Inlet Salmon Fisheries
Conflicts over natural resources are often misunderstood as being driven primarily by economic concerns or failings of human nature. However, human dimensions research has shown that conflicts are more often driven by problems and shortcomings in institutions for governance and management. In this article, we explore long-standing conflicts over the salmon fisheries of the Kenai River and Upper Cook Inlet region of Southcentral Alaska, fisheries …
Local Perceptions of the Sustainability of Alaska’s Highly Contested Cook Inlet Salmon Fisheries
Using a mixed set of ethnographic methods including interviews and a structured survey, we evaluate local perceptions about the sustainability of salmon fisheries among fishers of the Cook Inlet region of Alaska. A majority of residents report participating in these fisheries, but we find significant disagreement about their sustainability. Household income and the types of fishing practiced both influence people's responses, and many implicated …
A vernacular for living systems: Alternative framings for the future of food
Industrialized nations face the imminent need to transform our food systems in service to climate, biodiversity, and humanity, and inroads to such transformation are arguably already being made in pockets of innovation and activism around the world. However, debates rage over the various technologies and values that ought to drive those transformations. In this essay I argue that we are in the midst of a paradigm shift in how we think about and d…
PubCasts: Putting Voice in Scholarly Work and Science Communication
This commentary explores the emergence and potential of PubCasts—abridged and annotated audiobook-style recordings of scholarly work. PubCasts aim to make scholarly work more accessible, engaging, and easily understood by broad audiences. We highlight our motivation for creating PubCasts and discuss our experiences in making and sharing them. We further reflect on the potential of PubCasts to combat misinformation by offering a more intimate and …
The research journey: Travels Across the Idiomatic and Axiomatic Toward a Better Understanding of Complexity
McGowan, K. A., F. Westley, E. D. G. Fraser, P. A. Loring, K. C. Weathers, F. Avelino, J. Sendzimir, R. Roy Chowdhury, and M.-L. Moore. 2014. The research journey: travels across the idiomatic and axiomatic toward a better understanding of complexity. Ecology and Society 19(3): 37. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-06518-190337
Food and water security in a changing arctic climate
In the Arctic, permafrost extends up to 500 m below the ground surface, and it is generally just the top metre that thaws in summer. Lakes, rivers, and wetlands on the arctic landscape are normally not connected with groundwater in the same way that they are in temperate regions. When the surface is frozen in winter, only lakes deeper than 2 m and rivers with significant flow retain liquid water. Surface water is largely abundant in summer, when …
The Most Resilient Show on Earth: The Circus as a Model for Viewing Identity, Change, and Chaos
Resilience, adaptability, and transformability are all tightly linked to the notion of change, whether in respect to coping with, adapting to, or harnessing it. But in order to understand these forces of change, we first need to recognize its counterpart: identity. Identity of a social-ecological system is not merely a static set of quantifiable feedbacks or indicators, but a more qualitative characterization of what results from the overlap of t…
Food, culture, and human health in Alaska: An integrative health approach to food security
From Crisis to Cumulative Effects: Food Security Challenges in Alaska
Recent increases in the price of fuel in rural Alaska, coupled with high prices of grocery store foods and decreased efficacy of hunting and fishing have led to a food crisis in many regions of rural Alaska. In the summer of 2008 it was predicted that these events would lead to an upswing in the number of individuals migrating to urban areas of Alaska, putting additional stress on the already dwindling resources of food assistance providers. Thro…
Outpost Gardening in Interior Alaska: Food System Innovation and the Alaska Native Gardens of the 1930s Through the 1970s
For over a century, various forms of crop cultivation, including family, community, and school gardens were a component of the foodways of many Alaska Native communities. This paper describes the history of these cropping practices in Athabascan communities of the Tanana and Yukon Flats regions of Alaska, and reveals a distinct agricultural tradition with roots that reach back as far as the late 1800s. Though American colonists, bureaucrats, and …
Ways to Help and Ways to Hinder: Governance for Effective Adaptation to an Uncertain Climate
This paper compares two case studies in Alaska, one on commercial fishers of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands region and the other on moose hunters of Interior Alaska, to identify how governance arrangements and management strategies enhance or limit people’s ability to respond effectively to changing climatic and environmental conditions. The two groups face similar challenges regarding the impacts of a changing climate on wild fish and game,…
Selected plasma fatty acid levels in subsistence fed sled dogs along the Yukon River: A pilot study for biomonitoring
The introduction of the ‘western diet’ marked a decline in omega–3 fatty acids rich foods and a concurrent increase in saturated and omega–6 fatty acids that persists today. Historically, circumpolar people have had a low incidence of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease and this has been largely attributed to polyphenolic compounds and omega–3 fatty acids offered from subsistence foods. In this report, we studied sled dogs as an Arctic s…
Local Perceptions of the Sustainability of Alaska’s Highly Contested Cook Inlet Salmon Fisheries
Using a mixed set of ethnographic methods including interviews and a structured survey, we evaluate local perceptions about the sustainability of salmon fisheries among fishers of the Cook Inlet region of Alaska. A majority of residents report participating in these fisheries, but we find significant disagreement about their sustainability. Household income and the types of fishing practiced both influence people's responses, and many implicated …
The research journey: Travels Across the Idiomatic and Axiomatic Toward a Better Understanding of Complexity
McGowan, K. A., F. Westley, E. D. G. Fraser, P. A. Loring, K. C. Weathers, F. Avelino, J. Sendzimir, R. Roy Chowdhury, and M.-L. Moore. 2014. The research journey: travels across the idiomatic and axiomatic toward a better understanding of complexity. Ecology and Society 19(3): 37. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-06518-190337
Larger Than Life: The Emergent Nature of Conflict in Alaska’s Upper Cook Inlet Salmon Fisheries
Conflicts over natural resources are often misunderstood as being driven primarily by economic concerns or failings of human nature. However, human dimensions research has shown that conflicts are more often driven by problems and shortcomings in institutions for governance and management. In this article, we explore long-standing conflicts over the salmon fisheries of the Kenai River and Upper Cook Inlet region of Southcentral Alaska, fisheries …
Searching for Progress on Food Security in the North American North: A Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis of the Peer-Reviewed Literature + Supplementary Appendix (See Article Tools)
Food security is a global societal challenge, and one geographic region where food insecurity is increasing is the North American Arctic and Subarctic. In this paper we synthesize research on food security in this region; important precursors and early work include reports on the impacts of land claims, the cumulative effects of industrial development and environmental change, and the health impacts of the nutrition transition among Indigenous pe…
Seasons of Stress: Understanding the Dynamic Nature of People’s Ability to Respond to Change and Surprise
Climate change is impacting coastal communities in rural Alaska in multiple direct and indirect ways. Here, findings are reported from ethnographic research done with municipal workers, community leaders, and other local experts in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska, where it is found that climate change is interacting with local social and environmental circumstances in ways more nuanced than are generally captured by frameworks for vulnerability …
Toward a Theory of Coexistence in Shared Social-Ecological Systems: The Case of Cook Inlet Salmon Fisheries
Coexistence theory (CT) in community ecology provides a functional perspective on how multiple competing species coexist. Here, I explore CT's usefulness for understanding conflict and coexistence among human groups with diverse livelihood interests in shared resources such as fisheries. I add three concepts from social science research on coexistence: adaptability, pluralism, and equity and apply this expanded theoretical framework to the case o…
“Community Work” in a Climate of Adaptation: Responding to Change in Rural Alaska
Defining energy security in the rural North—Historical and contemporary perspectives from Alaska
Climigration? Population and climate change in Arctic Alaska
Residents of towns and villages in Arctic Alaska live on "the front line of climate change." Some communities face immediate threats from erosion and flooding associated with thawing permafrost, increasing river flows, and reduced sea ice protection of shorelines. The term climigration , referring to migration caused by climate change, originally was coined for these places. Although initial applications emphasized the need for government relocat…
How small communities respond to environmental change: Patterns From Tropical to Polar Ecosystems
Huntington, H. P., A. Begossi, S. Fox Gearheard, B. Kersey, P. A. Loring, T. Mustonen, P. K. Paudel, R. A. M. Silvano, and R. Vave. 2017. How small communities respond to environmental change: patterns from tropical to polar ecosystems. Ecology and Society 22(3):9. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-09171-220309
“They're All Really Important, But…”: Unpacking How People Prioritize Values for the Marine Environment in Haida Gwaii, British Columbia
The imperative to transform global food systems
Never before, perhaps, has there been greater consensus that our food systems need to be radically reimagined and transformed. However, there is also much contention among those working to advance these transformations over the solutions and futures that ought to be pursued. So, while there is great opportunity to enact truly radical actions that reduce hunger, rebuild and steward biodiversity, and redress the many harms and dispossessions of col…
Indigenous food sovereignty and tourism: The Chakra Route in the Amazon region of Ecuador
This research applies the concept of food sovereignty as a framework to explore the impacts of tourism on Indigenous food systems in the Chakra Chocolate and Tourism Route (referred to as the “Chakra Route” in the paper), a tourist destination in the Amazon region of Ecuador that aims to improve the livelihoods of Kichwa people. Using a qualitative and collaborative research approach, we examine how Kichwa and non-Kichwa people in this destinatio…
Traditional food or biocultural threat? Concerns about the use of tilapia fish in Indigenous cuisine in the Amazonia of Ecuador
This article contributes to streams of knowledge related to biocultural diversity, food tourism and the cultural impacts of introduced species. Specifically, it explores the concerns that arise from the promotion of tilapia fish Oreochromis niloticus in Indigenous cuisine along a touristic route in the Amazon region of Ecuador. Although the environmental impacts of tilapia in the Amazon ecosystem have been largely documented, reports of cultural …
Applying the food–energy–water nexus concept at the local scale
Science, Data, and the Struggle for Standing in Environmental Governance
Here, we explore how people entangled in natural resource conflicts employ and discuss data. We draw on ethnographic research with two cases of conflict: salmon fisheries in Alaska, USA, and agricultural water management in Saskatchewan, Canada. Both cases illustrate how data, through the scientization of environmental governance, can become a means of empowerment and disempowerment: empowering those with access and influence over data and disemp…
Regenerative food systems and the conservation of change
Covid-19 and small-scale fisheries in Africa: Impacts on livelihoods and the fish value chain in Cameroon and Liberia
Ecology (22 works) · Geography (22 works) · Political science (20 works) · Economics (17 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Agriculture (16 works) · Environmental resource management (16 works) · Indigenous Studies and Ecology (15 works) · Business (13 works) · Food security (12 works)