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ENGAGEMENT BLOG
- Designing Sacred Lands
- O-yama: Mountain Faith and Uncertainty in Late Capitalist Japan
- Making Peace with Nature: The Greening of the Korean Demilitarized Zone
- Protecting Cultural Environments in Northern Wisconsin: Anthropology’s Contribution to a Tribal Initiative
- Gathering Divergent Forest Honeys: Collections and Commodity Flows in the Philippines
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- Environmental Anthropology Engaging Ecotopia: Bioregionalism, Permaculture, And Ecovillages
- Spiritual Ecology: A Quiet Revolution
- How Will New Models Shape Our Research?
- Bring heritage breeds to holiday table
- Forest and Labor in Madagascar: From Colonial Concession to Global Biosphere
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Tag Archives: conservation
O-yama: Mountain Faith and Uncertainty in Late Capitalist Japan
Every year in July a small group of people gather on the summit of Ontake-san, a 3,067-meter volcanic mountain in the central Japanese prefecture of Nagano, to ceremoniously open it for the summer season. They do so with prayers to the gods, or kami, who dwell on the mountain. After Shinto priests have welcomed the kami with chants and offerings, representatives of several local constituencies come forward to offer prayers; included among them are employees of Japan’s national Forestry Agency and officials from local government and business offices. Continue reading
Posted in Engagement Blog
Tagged conservation, development, engagement, forestry, japan, resilience, spiritual ecology, tourism
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Making Peace with Nature: The Greening of the Korean Demilitarized Zone
Through my ongoing research on the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), I am engaging with broader questions about the “nature” of militarized landscapes and the production of their ecological value. In this piece, I examine how South Korean state and NGO projects configure the DMZ as a unique site of biodiversity that could provide the basis for sustainable development and also peace on the Korean peninsula. Continue reading
Posted in Engagement Blog
Tagged biodiversity, conservation, engagement, militarized ecologies, neoliberal nature, NGOs, South Korea
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Protecting Cultural Environments in Northern Wisconsin: Anthropology’s Contribution to a Tribal Initiative
In 2012, the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians engaged research specialists working in several different fields, including anthropology, the physical sciences, and law. Our assignment was to assemble a report to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) about air quality on the tribe’s reservation in northern Wisconsin. With this report, the tribe aims to redesignate its reservation’s air quality from Class II to Class I under the “Prevention of Significant Deterioration” provisions of the federal Clean Air Act. Continue reading
Posted in Engagement Blog
Tagged air quality, conservation, consultancy, engagement, EPA, food, indigenous people, mining, United States, wisconsin
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Cloaking, not Bleaching: the Back Story from Inside Bureaucracy
…good bureaucracies do not bleach out local context. Instead, they create big, simplified umbrellas that cloak the complex, dynamic range of local circumstances and thereby give the staff of government bureaucracies the space to address local circumstances despite changes in political direction. I base this assertion on twenty-five years’ experience working with USAID, and on the literature on good governance. Continue reading
Posted in Engagement Blog
Tagged biodiversity, bureaucracy, conservation, consultancy, development, engagement, United States, USAID
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Genese Marie Sodikoff on forest conservation, Malagasy worker-peasants and biodiversity
ENGAGEMENT editor Rebecca Garvoille recently caught up with Genese Marie Sodikoff, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University, to discuss her new book, Forest and Labor in Madagascar: From Colonial Concession to Global Biosphere (2012, Indiana University Press), and its broader contributions to forest conservation and socio-environmental justice debates in Madagascar. This interview is the fourth installment in an ENGAGEMENT series exploring how environmental-anthropological book projects inspire meaningful engagements in study sites across the globe. Continue reading
Posted in Engagement Blog
Tagged africa, biodiversity, books, colonialism, conservation, development, engagement, forestry, interview, Madagascar, socio-environmental justice, worker-peasants
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Settler Colonial Nature in the Everglades
Americans live in a settler colonial society, and this shapes how we understand and engage nature. In the vast expanse of slow-flowing water and drained agricultural lands known as the Florida Everglades, thinking about settler colonialism helps make sense of Burmese python hunts and Seminole water rights, of scientific restoration models and National Park policies. Doing so informs my own ethnographic research on the relationship between peoples’ sense of belonging and the ways that they value water in the Everglades. Continue reading
Posted in Engagement Blog
Tagged colonialism, conservation, development, engagement, Florida Everglades, indigenous people, inequality, socio-environmental justice, United States
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Andrew Mathews on forestry, bureaucracy, and engaged scholarship
ENGAGEMENT editor Rebecca Garvoille recently caught up with Andrew S. Mathews, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to discuss his recent book, Instituting Nature: Authority, Expertise, and Power in Mexican Forests (2011, MIT Press), and its broader contributions to forest policy and socio-environmental justice debates in Mexico. This interview is the third installment in an ENGAGEMENT series exploring how environmental-anthropological book projects inspire meaningful engagements in study sites across the globe. Continue reading
Posted in Engagement Blog
Tagged books, bureaucracy, conservation, engagement, forestry, interview, mexico
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In the Trenches: Collaborative Conservation in a Contested West
For the last fifteen years, I’ve worked as a volunteer – a citizen anthropologist – in the collaborative conservation movement sweeping across the American West. I co-founded the Arizona Common Ground Roundtable in 1997. For the next five years, we (the Roundtable) sponsored forums across the state to bring ranchers, environmentalists, and sportsmen together to talk about the future of Arizona’s wide-open spaces. We found our common ground by paraphrasing political analyst, James Carville: “It’s land fragmentation, stupid!” Then I chaired the Ranch Conservation Task Force of Pima County’s visionary Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan (SDCP), which seeks to conserve both biodiversity and working ranches around the Tucson metropolitan area. For the last decade, I have served on Pima County’s Conservation Acquisition Commission (CAC). The CAC provides recommendations to the Pima County Board of Supervisors on how to spend the $170 million in Open Space Bonds that voters approved in 2004 to support the SDCP. Continue reading
Posted in Engagement Blog
Tagged agriculture, conservation, engagement, NGOs, United States, US West
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From Conservation to Eco-Toilets to Organic Markets: The Evolution of a Chinese Environmental NGO
The story of Wildgrass is one of organizational adaptation to the dynamism of present-day China’s politics and its rapidly changing social and environmental needs. After four years of working with the organization, I consider my roll in Wildgrass as more of an “exchange” than an “engagement” because of our reciprocal relations. We’ve shared knowledge and influenced one another on multiple levels, providing me a unique perspective to view changes in the organization over time. Continue reading
Posted in Engagement Blog
Tagged agriculture, china, conservation, development, engagement, NGOs
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Laura Ogden engages with ‘Swamplife’
ENGAGEMENT editors recently connected with Laura Ogden, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Florida International University, to talk about her new book, Swamplife: People, Gators, and Mangroves Entangled in the Everglades (2011, University of Minnesota Press). During our conversation, Dr. Ogden explained some of the ways in which her work addresses issues of social and environmental justice beyond the confines of the academy. This interview is the second in an ENGAGEMENT series that explores how environmental-anthropological book projects have profound and important impacts on the world around us. The first interview was with Paige West. Continue reading
Posted in Engagement Blog
Tagged books, conservation, engagement, Florida Everglades, interview, United States
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