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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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- AAA 2012 – Anthropology and Environment Society Invited Sessions & Events
- Climate Change Task Force
- 2011 AAA Convention, Montreal
NEW & NOTABLE
- 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: development
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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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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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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Getting Goats—From skepticism to optimism in Northern Kenya
In the 1990s, before I became an academic anthropologist and researcher, I worked for about seven years in community development in Northern Kenya. The bulk of my work involved facilitating participatory development processes among communities of pastoralists in Samburu district. We tried to engage a broad swath of the community in self-analysis, identification of priority issues, planning and the implementation of interventions to improve their situation. The guiding principle was that local knowledge should be prioritized. We believed that the herding communities knew best about their own context and that their ideas should be used as the basis for community-led development projects. Continue reading
Posted in Engagement Blog
Tagged africa, agriculture, development, engagement, kenya, NGOs, pastoralism
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