A Planetary Place: Popular Press Constructions of the Global Environment

In this dissertation, I explore the concept of "global environment" as it is constructed in a set of 164 popular magazines collected between June 2011 and December 2012. Employing a humanistic geographical lens, I examine the text and images of these magazines through iterative readings and grounded theory coding methods, in order to better understand how the planet may be (or become) a place and how the Earth itself may be known or experienced as home. While we may traditionally define home by intimate terms, we must also recognize the world as a whole as a home to humanity: so that we might realize and address environmental issues of global importance. By emphasizing and embracing perspective, personal experience, and the value of meaning as they relate to place and place-making, we are better able to make our planet into a place, and to conceive of the Earth as a home in a just and meaningful way.