Conferences
Our
Newsletter
Education
Programs
Internet
Resources
Eanth-L
Mailing List
Publications
Syllabi
September 2000
Paige West, Contributing Editor
Since April of 1996 Ed Liebow has been the editor of the A and E column
here in the AAA newsletter. With his outstanding
work he has helped to keep us all abreast of section news and business,
national and international news concerning
environmental issues, and much more. He has, in a real sense,
helped to define our section. Last spring Ed decided to step
down as editor and I was asked to take over the position. I want
to thank Ed, from all of the members of A and E, for his
editorship over the past four years and say to everyone that I hope
I can continue the excellent work Ed began. This month, I
want to highlight 25 recent dissertations that will be of interest
to section members and, through the contribution of Neil Smith, a
new academic center at CUNY.
Recent dissertations involving subject material of interest to our
section:
Robbie Blinkoff, "Creating and Maintaining Access Fields in Sokamin,
Papua New Guinea," Rutgers U, 2000.
Suzanne Bott, "The Development of Psychometric Scales to Measure Sense
of Place," Colorado State U, 2000.
Barbara Ann Cellarius, "Global Priority, Local Reality: Rural Communities
and Biodiversity Conservation in Bulgaria," U of Kentucky, 1999.
Henry D. Delcore, "Localizing Development: Environment, Agriculture,
and Memory in Northern Thailand," U of
Wisconsin-Madison, 2000.
Cynthia Fowler "Natives and Exotics: The Creolization of Society and
Agriculture. Myths, Rituals, Identity, Power, and Crops
in Kodi, West Sumba (Indonesia)," U of Hawaii, 1999.
Krista M. Harper, "From Green Dissidents to Green Skeptics: Environmental
Activists and Post-socialist Political Ecology in Hungary," U of California,
Santa Cruz, 1999.
Marieke Heemskerk "Driving Forces of Small-Scale Gold Mining among
the Ndjuka Maroons: A Cross-Scale Socioeconomic Analysis of Participation
in Gold Mining in Suriname," U of Florida, 2000.
Tomas Huanca "Tsimane' Indigenous Knowledge. Swidden Fallow Management
and Conservation," U of Florida, 1999.
Palma Ingles "Dancing for Dollars: Producing Food and Entertaining
Tourists in the Peruvian Amazon," U of Florida, 2000.
Ed Koenig, "Native Fishing Conflicts on the Saugeen-Bruce Peninsula:
Perspectives on Resource Relations Past and Present,"
McMaster U, 2000.
David Kyle Latinis "Subsistence System Diversification in Southeast
Asia and the Pacific: Where Does Maluku Fit?," U of
Hawaii, 1999.
Isabel M. Sohn López-Forment, "Ecological and Socio-Cultural
Dynamics of Traditional and Legume-based Milpa Agriculture
in Southeast Mexico," Ohio State U, 2000.
Michael B. Mascia, "Institutional Emergence, Evolution, and Performance
in Complex Common Pool Resource Systems: Marine Protected Areas in the
Wider
Caribbean," Duke U, 2000.
Josh McDaniel "Indigenous Organizations and Non-Governmental Organizations:
The Politics of Conservation," U of Florida, 2000.
Heather McIlvaine-Newsad "Tied to the Land" Gender, Food Security,
and Conservation in San Miguel and Loma Linda, Ecuador," U of Florida,
2000.
Jadelyn Moniz "The Archaeology of Human Foraging and Bird Resources
on the Island of Hawaii: The Evolutionary Ecology of Avian Predation, Resource
Intensification, Extirpation and Extinction," U of Hawaii, 1999.
Bryan P. Oles, "Keeping Our Roots Strong: Place, Migration, and Corporate
Ownership of Land on Mokil Atoll," U of Pittsburgh, 1999.
Jan Åge Riseth, "Sami Reindeer Management Under Technological
change 1960 - 1990 Implications for Common-Pool Resource Use Under Various
Natural and Institutional Conditions: A Comparative Analysis of Regional
Development Paths in
West Finnmark, North Trøndelag, and South Trøndelag/Hedmark,
Norway," Agricultural U of Norway, 2000.
Jorge Rocha "Small rural agriculture producer's household demographic
composition and participation in the market economy
as factors influencing cognitive valuation and usage of natural resources
in Ancash, Peru," U of Florida, 2000.
J. Montgomery Roper, "The Political Ecology of Indigenous Self-Development
in Bolivia's Multiethnic Indigenous Territory," U
of Pittsburgh, 1999.
Amanda Stronza, "'Because it is Ours': Community-Based Ecotourism in
the Peruvian Amazon," U of Florida, 2000.
Frank R. Thomas "Optimal Foraging and Conservation: The Anthropology
of Mullusk Gathering Strategies in the Gilbert Islands Group, Kiribati,"
U of Hawaii, 1999.
Luis A. Vivanco, "Green Mountains, Greening People: Encountering Environmentalism
in Monte Verde, Costa Rica," Princeton U, 1999.
Bradley B. Walters, "Event Ecology in the Philippines: Explaining Mangrove
Cutting and Planting and Their Environmental
Effects," Rutgers U, 2000.
Paige West, "The Practices, Ideologies, and Consequences of Conservation
and Development in Papua New Guinea," Rutgers
U, 2000.
Center for Place Culture and Politics, CUNY Graduate Center
Contributed by Neil Smith
Established in February 2000, the Center for Place Culture and Politics
at the new CUNY Graduate Center is an
interdisciplinary center devoted to the intensive investigation and
analysis of issues at the nexus of "place, culture and politics."
It is guided by the conviction that many of the most vital questions
in public culture today have to do with space, place and
environment. The so-called cultural turn in intellectual circles
in recent decades has been fueled by a widespread rewriting of
culture, and the politics of culture, in a highly evocative spatial
and environmental language. The most pressing political issues
today, globalization and homelessness, environmental change and the
future of nation states, climate change and the
transnational flows of goods, people and contraband occupy precisely
this nexus.
Each year the Center appoints 14 fellows from among CUNY faculty and
advanced graduate students to work on a specific
theme. For 2000-2001, the theme is "the new internationalism."
The events dubbed the Battle in Seattle by the press brought
home to the American public what people in many other parts of the
world already knew, namely that "globalization" represents
a political contest rather than and economic fait accompli, and brings
with it deeply uneven costs and benefits. The "new
internationalism" is an umbrella term for the movements that are coming
together in response to a top-down globalization. The
outlines of this new politics are barely visible yet, but central to
the new internationalism is an integral environmental politics that
is much more diverse than the comparatively narrow focus of what has
been called establishment environmentalism.
On the one hand, this is an integral environmentalism that is built
out of local environmental and environmental justice struggles
and so conceives itself from the start in some relationship to labor
and working people, whether in Amazonian nature reserves
or Arkansas toxic waste dumps. On the other, it is an environmental
politics that is not global in the more mindless sense that everything
today is supposedly global, but rather international in the difficult sense
that to understand specific environmental
issues in specific places, distinct trans-national social relations
have to be teased out and new kinds of coalitions of social and
political interest constructed. It is an urban as much as a rural
environmentalism, theoretical as well as practical, where the
sense of a produced nature is more useful than the romanticism and
idolatry of a "savior" environmentalism which sees its task
as saving species and places in some pristine state. Like the
broader internationalism of which it is a part, this reconstructed
environmental radicalism is veined through with a sense of race and
gender difference in terms of access to environmental
resources and the social architecture of nature. The crucial
point here is to weave an environmental politics into other political
issues and vice versa. Hence the notion of an integral environmental
politics.
Several fellows will be focusing on environmental themes under the
rubric of the new internationalism. As part of the year's
activities we will also host two conferences, one in December 2000
and another in April 2001, focusing on analyses of and
alternatives to "Globalization and Inequality." We are also initiating
a book series, combining essays by fellows and visitors and
invited outside scholars.
While the primary rationale for the Center is to provide an intellectual
environment where graduate students and faculty can
make a sustained investigation of specific problems related to "Place,
Culture and Politics," we will also function as a home for
promoting and pursuing funded interdisciplinary research that emerges
from or is related to the Center's work. In addition we
are seeking funding to allow us to bring post-doctoral fellows to the
center each year and participate in the seminar. The center
is run by a director, and an interdisciplinary advisory board of distinguished
faculty. For more information, please contact Neil
Smith at nsmith@gc.cuny.edu
Paige West, Visiting Instructor Rutgers U., Department of Anthropology,
131 George Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901,
[201/434-3703] cpwest@eden.rutgers.edu