Peggy (Peg) Petrzelka, Associate Professor, joined Utah State University in 2001. She received her M.S. in Rural Sociology and PhD in Sociology from Iowa State University. Her BA is in Political Science from College of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN. Peg’s research interests focus on the interrelationships between the physical and social environment in a number of settings. Domestically, her current work examines (1) absentee landowners of agricultural land and obstacles to their participation in conservation management on their land and (2) past and present community reactions to polluting industries. Internationally, she and colleagues have begun research on a unique guest worker program established between Spain and Morocco, where mothers of dependent children are recruited to pick strawberries in Southern Spain. The program is touted by the European Union as one to emulate throughout EU countries, thus we are involved in both evaluating the program as well as researching the gendered aspects of the program. She teaches Sociology of the Environment and Natural Resources, Methods of Social Research and the Sociology Capstone Research Seminar at the undergraduate level. At the graduate level she teaches Public Sociology: Ecological Justice and Community Action. She has spent several years in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco as a Peace Corps Volunteer and Fulbright Scholar, and speaks Moroccan Arabic (with a bit of Imazighen thrown in). She is the proud parent of 9 chickens and the proud aunt of 9 nieces and nephews, enjoys odd numbers, hiking, gardening and traveling.
Articles
The Elephant in the Room: Absentee Landowners and Conservation Management (with Zhao Marcarelli and Stephanie Malin), Land Use Policy (2013)
In this article, we provide a synthesis of the peer-reviewed literature and state and...
Absentee Landowners and Conservation Programs: Mind the Gap (with Stephanie Malin and Brian Gentry), Land Use Policy (2012)
Keeping Them in Their Place: Migrant Women Workers in Spain’s Strawberry Industry (with Susan E. Mannon, Christy M. Glass, and Claudia Radel), International Journal of the Sociology of Agriculture and Food (2012)
The idea of guest-worker migration has resurfaced in recent decades as the global agri-food industry...
Labor migration and gendered agricultural relations: The feminization of agriculture in the ejidal sector of Calakmul, Mexico (with Claudia Radel, Birgit Schmook, Jamie McEvoy, and Crisol Mendez), Journal of Agrarian Change (2012)
Attempting Community Development Among Toxic Tailings: An Interactional Case Study of Community Health and Extralocal Institutions (with Stephanie Malin), Community Development Journal (2011)
Contributions to Books
Gender, Inequality, Research Methods, Innovative Techniques for Teaching Sociological Concepts (2006)
Eighty techniques for teaching basic sociological ideas in courses throughout the curriculum, especially high school...
Social Change and Well-Being in Western Amenity-Growth Communities (with Richard S. Krannich and Joan Brehm), SSWA Faculty Publications (2006)
They Make How Much? Investigating Faculty Salaries to Examine Gender Inequalities, SSWA Faculty Publications (2006)
Tourism and Natural Amenity Development: Real Opportunities? (with Richard S. Krannich), Challenges for Rural America in the Twenty-First Century (2003)
The mountains, forests, rivers and lakes, open spaces, and scenic vistas that characterize portions of...