The Anthropology and the Environment Section of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) awards the Julian Steward Award for the best monograph in environmental/ecological anthropology.
To nominate a book published within the last 3 years for the award, send 4 copies to:
Glenn Davis Stone
Dept. of Anthropology
Washington University
St. Louis, MO 63130
2011 Julian Steward Award
Michael R. Dove won the 2011 Julian Steward Award for The Banana Tree at the Gate: A History of Marginal Peoples and Global Markets in Borneo (Yale University Press, 2010).
Description:
The “Hikayat Banjar,” a native court chronicle from Borneo, characterizes the irresistibility of natural resource wealth to outsiders as “the banana tree at the gate.” Michael R. Dove employs this phrase as a root metaphor to frame the history of resource relations between the indigenous peoples of Borneo and the world system. In analyzing production and trade in forest products, pepper, and especially natural rubber, Dove shows that the involvement of Borneo’s native peoples in commodity production for global markets is ancient and highly successful and that processes of globalization began millennia ago. Dove’s analysis replaces the image of the isolated tropical forest community that needs to be helped into the global system with the reality of communities that have been so successful and competitive that they have had to fight political elites to keep from being forced out.
Michael R. Dove is Margaret K. Musser Professor of Social Ecology and Director of the Tropical Resources Institute in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies; Professor in the Department of Anthropology; and Curator of Anthropology in the Peabody Museum of Natural History; Yale University.
Runner-Up for the 2011 Julian Steward Award
Thomas F. Thorton was the Runner-Up for the 2011 Julian Steward Award for Being and Place among the Tlingit (University of Washington Press, 2007).
Description:
In Being and Place among the Tlingit, anthropologist Thomas F. Thornton examines the concept of place in the language, social structure, economy, and ritual of southeast Alaska’s Tlingit Indians. Place signifies not only a specific geographical location but also reveals the ways in which individuals and social groups define themselves.
The notion of place consists of three dimensions – space, time, and experience – which are culturally and environmentally structured. Thornton examines each in detail to show how individual and collective Tlingit notions of place, being, and identity are formed. As he observes, despite cultural and environmental changes over time, particularly in the post-contact era since the late eighteenth century, Tlingits continue to bind themselves and their culture to places and landscapes in distinctive ways. He offers insight into how Tlingits in particular, and humans in general, conceptualize their relationship to the lands they inhabit, arguing for a study of place that considers all aspects of human interaction with landscape.
In Tlingit, it is difficult even to introduce oneself without referencing places in Lingit Aani (Tlingit Country). Geographic references are embedded in personal names, clan names, house names, and, most obviously, in k-waan names, which define regions of dwelling. To say one is Sheet’ka K-waan defines one as a member of the Tlingit community that inhabits Sheet’ka (Sitka).
Being and Place among the Tlingit makes a substantive contribution to the literature on the Tlingit, the Northwest Coast cultural area, Native American and indigenous studies, and to the growing social scientific and humanistic literature on space, place, and landscape.
Thomas F. Thornton is associate professor of anthropology at Portland State University in Oregon.
Thank you to the 2011 Judges: David Crawford, Julie M. Cruikshank, and J. Stephen Lansing!
The Anthropology and Environment Section of the American Anthropological Association will be inviting nominations for the 2013 Julian Steward Award for the best monograph in environmental anthropology. The award will be given to a book published within the four calendar years prior to the award date. A press will only be allowed to nominate one book from its list.
The author(s) does not have to be an anthropologist, but the monograph must employ anthropological method and theory. Edited volumes are not eligible.
Please direct questions regarding 2013 Steward Award submissions to Glenn Davis Stone.
Please join the Anthropology and the Environment Section of the AAA in making the Julian Steward Award the leading award for cutting-edge monographs in environmental/ecological anthropology.
Conflict of Interest Statement:
All A&E award committees follow NSF guidelines regarding potential conflict of interest between applicants and reviewers.
Past Julian Steward Award Winners
2009 Winner
The 2009 Julian Steward Award went to David Crawford, for his book entitled, Moroccan Households in the World Economy: Labor and Inequality in a Berber Village, published by Louisiana State University Press in 2008.
David Crawford
Departments of Sociology and Anthropology and International Studies
Fairfield University
North Benson Rd.
Fairfield, CT 06824
2008 Winner
No prize given.
2007 Winner
The fifth award went to Steven Lansing for his book, Perfect Order: Recognizing Complexity in Bali (Princeton University press, 2006).
J. Stephen Lansing
Dept. of Anthropology
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona 85721-0030
2006 Winner
The fourth award was presented to Julie M. Cruikshank for her book, Do Glaciers Listen: Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters and Social Imagination (University of Washington press, 2005).
Julie M. Cruikshank
Department of Anthropology
University of British Columbia
6303 Northwest Marine Drive,
Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z1
CANADA
2005 Winner
Dr. J. Terrence McCabe won the third annual Julian Steward Award for his book Cattle Bring Us to Our Enemies: Turkana Ecology, Politics, and Raiding in a Disequilibrium System, published by the University of Michigan Press.
J. Terrence McCabe
Professor of Anthropology &
Professional Staff: Environment and Behavior Program
Institute of Behavioral Science
Univ. of Colorado, Boulder 80309
2004 Winner
The winner of the second Julian Steward Award was Dr. Paul Nadasdy’s Hunters and Bureaucrats: Power, Knowledge, and Aboriginal-State Relations in the Southwest Yukon, published by University of British Columbia Press.
Paul Nadasdy
Department of Anthropology and the American Indian Program
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
2003 Winner
The first award of $500 was presented to Roberto González of San José State University for his book Zapotec Science: Farming and Food in the Northern Sierra of Oaxaca (University of Texas Press, 2001) at the 2003 AAA meeting in Chicago.
Roberto González
Department of Anthropology
San José State University
One Washington Square
San José State University
San José, CA 95192-0113