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186More connection and less prediction please: Applying a relationship focus in protected area planning and managementJournal of Park and Recreation Administration 31 (3): 5-22. 2013.Integrating the concept of place meanings into protected area management has been difficult. Across a diverse body of social science literature, challenges in the conceptualization and application of place meanings continue to exist. However, focusing on relationships in the context of participatory planning and management allows protected area managers to bring place meanings into professional judgment and practice. This paper builds on work that has outlined objectives and recommendations f…Read more
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1615Fusion of Horizons: Realizing a Meaningful Understanding in Qualitative ResearchQualitative Research 23 (4): 940-961. 2021.This paper explores a case example of qualitative research that applied productive hermeneutics and the central concept, fusion of horizons. Interpretation of meaning is a fusing of the researchers’ and subjects’ perspectives and serves to expand understanding. The purpose is to illustrate an exemplar of qualitative research without establishing a rigid recipe of methodology. The illustration is based on in-depth observational and textual data from an applied anthropological study conducted in w…Read more
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14More Connection and Less Prediction Please: Applying a Relationship Focus in Protected Area Planning and ManagementJournal of Park and Recreation Administration 31 (3): 5-22. 2013.Integrating the concept of place meanings into protected area management has been difficult. Across a diverse body of social science literature, challenges in the conceptualization and application of place meanings continue to exist. However, focusing on relationships in the context of participatory planning and management allows protected area managers to bring place meanings into professional judgment and practice. This paper builds on work that has outlined objectives and recommendations for …Read more
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258Stakeholder understandings of wildfire mitigation: A case of shared and contested meaningsEnvironmental Management 50 (4): 581-597. 2012.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 part…Read more
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261The Circuit of Culture: A strategy for understanding the evolving human dimensions of wildland fireSociety and Natural Resources 23 (6): 573-582. 2010.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 …Read more
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323Understanding the wicked nature of “unmanaged recreation” in Colorado’s Front RangeEnvironmental Management 38 (5): 784-798. 2006.Unmanaged recreation presents a challenge to both researchers and managers of outdoor recreation in the United States because it is shrouded in uncertainty resulting from disagreement over the definition of the problem, the strategies for resolving the problem, and the outcomes of management. Incomplete knowledge about recreation visitors’ values and relationships with one another, other stakeholders, and the land further complicate the problem. Uncertainty and social complexity make the unmanag…Read more
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261What is a meaningful role? Accounting for culture in fish and wildlife management in rural AlaskaHuman Ecology 44 (5): 517-531. 2016.The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 requires federal agencies to provide a meaningful role for rural subsistence harvesters in management of fish and wildlife in Alaska. We constructed an interpretive analysis of qualitative interviews with residents of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Stakeholders' perceptions of their roles and motivations to participate in collaborative management are linked to unseen and often ignored cultural features and differing worldviews that influenc…Read more
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192Relationship-scale ConservationWildlife Society Bulletin 39 (1): 147-158. 2015.Conservation can occur anywhere regardless of scale, political jurisdiction, or landownership. We present a framework to help managers at protected areas practice conservation at the scale of relationships. We focus on relationships between stakeholders and protected areas and between managers and other stakeholders. We provide a synthesis of key natural resources literature and present a case example to support our premise and recommendations. The purpose is 4-fold: 1) discuss challenges and th…Read more
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300Achieving Goals and Making Meanings: Toward a Unified Model of Recreational ExperienceJournal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism 23 16-25. 2018.Understanding recreational experiences is a longstanding research tradition and key to effective management. Given the complexities of human experience, many approaches have been applied to study recreational experience. Two such approaches are the experiential approach (based in a positivistic paradigm) and emergent experience (based in an interpretive paradigm). While viewed as being complementary, researchers have not offered guidance for incorporating the approaches into a common model of re…Read more
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130The Canoe Trip: Confluence of Leisure Experience and the SelfJournal of Unconventional Park, Tourism, and Recreation Research 7 (1): 22-29. 2017.Constitutive reflexivity, stories, and personal narrative were used to interpret leisure experience and provide insights for understanding leisure identity. I present a personal narrative of an annual canoe camping trip on a forested backcountry river. Stories are told in first person by the author about his trip of twenty years on a river with a small group of men. The author illustrates how personal narrative allows opportunities for understanding and interpreting meanings and changing leisure…Read more
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620Continued wilderness participation: Experience and identity as long-term relational phenomenaIn David N. Cole (ed.), Wilderness visitor experiences: Progress in research and management; April 4-7, 2011 (pp. 21-36); Missoula, MT. Proceedings RMRS-P-66. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station., Usda Forest Service. pp. 21-36. 2012.Understanding the relationship between wilderness outings and the resulting experience has been a central theme in resource-based, outdoor recreation research for nearly 50 years. The authors provide a review and synthesis of literature that examines how people, over time, build relationships with wilderness places and express their identities as consequences of multiple, ongoing wilderness engagements (i.e., continued participation). The paper reviews studies of everyday places and those specif…Read more
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69Place as Relationship Partner: An Alternative Metaphor for Understanding the Quality of Visitor Experience in a Backcountry SettingLeisure Science: An Interdisciplinary Journal 28 (4): 331-349. 2006.This article presents empirical evidence to address how some visitors build relationships with a wildland place over time. Insights are drawn from qualitative interviews of recreation visitors to the backcountry at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. The article describes relationship to place as the active construction and accumulation of place meanings. The analysis is organized around three themes that describe how people develop relationships to place: time and experience accrued in pl…Read more
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169Claimed Identities, Personal Projects, and Relationship to Place: A Hermeneutic Interpretation of the Backcountry/Wilderness Experience at Rocky Mountain National ParkDissertation, Colorado State University. 2003.Captured in narrative textual form through open-ended and tape-recorded interview conversations, visitor experience was interpreted to construct a description of visitors' relationships to place while at the same time providing insights for those who manage the national park. Humans are conceived of as meaning-makers, and outdoor recreation is viewed as emergent experience that can enrich peoples' lives rather than a predictable outcome of processing information encountered in the setting. This …Read more
Jeffrey Brooks
U.S. Department of The Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
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U.S. Department of The Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy ManagementOther
Colorado State University
PhD, 2003
Areas of Specialization
2 more
Social Sciences |
Anthropology |
Sociology |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Philosophy, Misc |
Social Sciences, Misc |
Other Academic Areas |