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Anthropology and the Environment
January 1997
Charles J. Stevens, Contributing Editor
A Word on the San Francisco Meetings
The excitement was palpable in the overcrowded Anthropology and Environment Invited Session, "Human Dimensions of Environmental Change: Anthropology Engages the Issues", and the atmosphere served as stark contrast to the contention and dissention which has characterized some of our wider disciplinary discourse over the last decade. At least at our initial stages of re-integrating ecological concerns into American anthropology, the unity of interest and commitment to multi-disciplinary and integrative approaches to studying human/resource relations was apparent among our membership and gave credence to the belief that disciplinary fragmentation may be stemmed, in part, in our multi-vocal focus on environmental issues. Some of the founders of cultural ecology may see here the opportunity to re-integrate "scientific" approaches in anthropology, but the presented papers brimmed with cautionary tales of privileging theoretical foci, advocated self-critical circumspection in our research, and warned against "essentializing" indigenous resource management. The influence of interpretive and post-modern criticisms of status quo scholarship was evident.
Representatives from archaeology, linguistics, physical anthropology, and cultural anthropologists, wearing as many hats as Bartholemew (Seuss 1964), outlined our theoretical and political concerns. Variety of perspective coupled with unity of commitment were particularly evident in the closing arguments of the session's discussants, David Maybury-Lewis (Harvard) and Laura Nader (UC-Berkeley), who provided eloquent and deeply insightful commentary in dramatically different tones. In addition to the single invited session and five reviewed sessions of the environment section, there were a host of other sessions dealing with anthropology and the environment, curiously scheduled at conflicting times, and sponsored by a half-dozen other sections in the association.
The first meeting of the A&E section board meeting was held on Thursday evening and the new officers discussed plans to research possible affiliations with other organizations, for example, the American Society of Environmental Historians, the Political Ecology Society, and the AAAS, to co-ordinate joint projects, publications, and presentations. Organization of elections for future section officers, the establishment of an A&E web site organized by Alx Dark, finding a program director for the 1997 AAA meetings in Washington, D.C., and the organization of A&E's extra-meeting activities in Washington, were discussed.
In the open forum on the following evening, these topics were discussed among the section's membership and there were renewed calls for organizing sessions in 1997 that continued to focus on interdisciplinary discourse. Tad Park encouraged membership in PESO and reminded the A&E membership to peruse their web site at <http://dizzy.library.arizona.edu/ej/jpe web.htm>. Plans are underway to finish the A&E's own web site and expand the directory started by Tom Able to include indexing the interests of the membership to allow easier communication between members with similar interests. The web site should be up and running in a few months.
Plans for the 1997 Annual Meeting
The environment section has been allotted one invited session again for the 1997 meetings and we hope to hold our session a larger meeting room, given the overflowing crowds at our first invited session. Proposals for sessions for the 1997 meetings should be sent NOW to any of the following: Emilio Moran (boaz@anthro.arizona.edu), Carol Crumley (crumley@unc.edu), or Charlie Stevens (stevens@demog.berkeley.edu). Your ideas will be forwarded to the program director for consideration. Remember that session and paper abstracts must be received by the AAA HQ by April 1st! The theme for the 1997 meeting is particularly appropriate for those with a focus on and a concern for the environment; "Toward an Anthropology of the 21st Century". Sessions which focus on interdisciplinary interaction in environmental research in anthropology are particularly encouraged to apply (call it a disciplinary affirmative action).
Section News (Repeated) Calls for Submissions
The A&E section has discussed the organization of correspondence that the section can facilitate and several mediums of information exchange exist, such as the section news in the AN, and are in the process of being created, such as the web site and the A&E directory. None of these mediums scan be effective without involvement of the membership in both organization and submission of information. Certain types of information will be better expressed in different forms of communication available to the A&E and the role of the newsletter and of the contributing editor is very likely to undergo some alteration. As contributing editor, I will continue to focus on presenting the interests and research foci of section members in addition to presenting the more mundane information like paper deadlines and scheduled conferences. Some of the later tasks may be appropriated by the web site. I will continue to present information which demonstrates the interdisciplinary concerns of the section. The informal but underlying theme of the 1996 AAA meetings was the need for communication among environmental anthropologist, from a host of different sub-fields and theoretical perspectives, and between anthropologists and other disciplines; history, geography, ecology, economics, and demography. I suspect that case evidence of this integration may be what the section news is most fit to present. This is not a task that I can accomplish without your submitting descriptions and findings of ongoing research projects. Abstracts of submitted grant proposals identifying the role of anthropology in multi-disciplinary research, the results of individual or team research projects, and the organization of interdisciplinary seminars and conferences is all valuable information that will enhance integrative research and interdisciplinary discourse. Please send them to me at <stevens@demog.berkeley.edu> or call 510-642-3206.
Alx Dark, who is organizing the A&E web site, does research which analyzes the impact of environmental conflict, particularly political activism, over clear-cut logging near the small town of Tofino. Tofino is a one time fishing village which lies at the heart of Clayoquot Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Anthropologist know the west coast of Vancouver Island best as the rugged home of the Nootka (now properly known as the Nuu-chah-nulth). The study differs from community based ethnographies by looking at the different social groups within Tofino and how they interact with multiple social spheres at the regional, national and international levels. Essential, Alx argues that, as political activists draw on social distinctions to define themselves and the identity of their political organizations, they create a local context for reevaluating the fundamental premises of community, political authority, and the meaning of the natural world itself.
Two critical factors guided the development of an environmental movement in this region - the different class backgrounds of Tofino residence and the issue of aboriginal land rights. During the 1970's , many immigrants to the area had urban backgrounds which distinguished from those residents who live in the area to work in logging, fishing or aquaculture. Many of these urban immigrants derive their livelihood from nature tourism in the Sound, and they form the basis for Torino's small but effective environmental organization during the 1980's. By 1993, through ties with international environmental organizations, local activists have made the Sound's rainforests an internationally prominent environmental cause. In one of the largest acts of civil disobedience in Canada's history, people from all over Canada came to the Sound to blockade logging roads and confront logging crews on their way o logging operations.
This international attention distinctly altered the cultural and economic status quo of the region in the 1990's. Timber companies have responded by organizing and funding volunteer organization known as "Share Groups", essentially a Canadian adaptation of the Wise Use movement's strategies and politics. Because of their funding, environmentalists and urban observers dismiss Share Groups as corporate propaganda fronts. However, Alx finds that these organizations are run by sincere volunteers who were generally concerned about the future of rural communities. Although reactionary in their intent, these organizations reject the vision of urban politicians and environmentalists for their area as a future "playground of the city" and some of the volunteers seem to have an increased sense of political empowerment and control over the future of their communities through participation in the movement.
The third group, equally important in the eventual land management regime of Clayoquot Sound, are the Nuu-chah-nulth themselves. During the 1980's they successfully obtained an injunction against logging in part of the Sound since native title to the land had not been extinguished through a treaty. At the time, native band councils and local environmentalists formed a very effective alliance to stop logging, but the relationship had been volatile. When a local environmentalist burned a logging bridge in 1993, native leaders began distancing themselves from environmental activities and, at times, the relationship has been strained between the two groups. Native political leaders find themselves in the unenviable position of being a middle concern between environmentalists and local logging interests. With considerable diplomacy, they have attempted to redefine the terms of debate through treaty negotiation and other public forums towards a model of sustainable forestry that will meet the particular needs of their communities.
Regarding doing ethnographic research in this setting, Alx Dark says, "Navigating between these three groups during my research to discuss deeply felt issues was often tricky, but ultimately rewarding. I had the opportunity to see how similar issues in the history of the conflict were contextualized by each group and how individual activists made sense of other organizations and other activists in their historical narratives." In addition to the relationship of political activism to cultural identity and the definition of community, political authority and the environment, Dark's research also addresses the nature of the public sphere and local-global relations in environmental conflicts. Each new development in the environmental politics of the region tends to articulate one or another segment of the local population with a new, translocal public sphere, through institutions such as government bureaucracies, environmental organizations, or corporations, through new forms of mediated communication, or new ways of enacting political authority and power. These public spheres provide distinct means for evaluating and transforming the definitions through which local political struggles are organized. Says, Dark, "the definition of the environment, a symbolic mirror of the social and cultural transformations being wrought through political activism, has ultimately changed as well."
In addition to this research, Alx has served at the Center for World Indigenous Studies, and he has managed a web site on Native Americans and the Environment (http://conbio.rice.edu/nae). Alx can be contacted at <anthenv@altavista.net>