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Anthropology and the Environment
November 1998
Ed Liebow, Contributing Editor
I'm getting organized for the Annual Meeting in Philadelphia in a few weeks, and I am overwhelmed by the Program's richness, especially what it offers to environmental specialists. I may need to suspend some of my concerns about the implications of human cloning to take this all in.
The Program features 104 papers reviewed by A&E, distributed among 16 sessions according to A&E Program Chair Bob Rhoades. A&E is sponsoring two invited sessions: Wednesday evening's (Dec 2) Population, Production, and Environmental Change in North Atlantic Islands, organized by Jon Ingimundarson and Daniel Vasey, and Thursday morning's (Dec 3) Malthus with a New Twist: The Challenge of Population, Diversity Loss, and Future Adaptability, organized by Leslie Sponsel and Pamela Puntenney.
Let me warn you of difficult choices ahead, however. Nearly every time slot throughout the five-day Program features sessions of related interest. Great looking panels have been assembled on urban environmentalists and the status of African Americans, environmental health, global climate change, traditional ecological knowledge, agrarian environments, fisheries and forestry management, property arrangements, a sense of place, tourism and its impacts - even a AAA Presidential Symposium on saving the rainforest. You also will want to consider sessions sponsored or reviewed by Culture and Agriculture, and the meeting of the Council on Anthropology and Education's Committee on Culture, Ecology and Education.
The A&E Business Meeting will be held on Friday evening (Dec 4) from 6:15-7:30pm. Section president-elect J. Peter Brosius and new executive committee members Ann Forbes and Tom Sheridan will be on hand along with the continuing officers. Among the matters for up for discussion will be the possibilities for a publication series, and other services the Section might provide to the membership.
Environmental Equity Coalition Chronicled
' "It's In the Air': Organizing for Environmental Equity in a Multi-Ethnic Coalition' is the title of a paper by Melissa A. Checker (NYU) that has been chosen for the 1998 Roy A. Rappaport Student Paper prize. Checker will be awarded her prize at the A&E Business Meeting in Philadelphia. Her paper is an ethnographic study of environmental justice activists in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York. For three decades, Hasidim and Latinos, the two main ethnic groups in Williamsburg, engaged in sometimes violent battles over the allocation of resources such as schools, housing, and police protection. In the early 1990s, the groups joined forces to protest poor environmental quality in the neighborhood. The paper demonstrates how activists quickly folded other social justice issues into environmental discourse and, using the air as a symbol of their common experiences as minorities, the groups were able to create and sustain a new-found unity. For these minority activists, a re-imagined environmentalism presented an alternative avenue for political opposition to urban problems and created a basis for the 'common ground' needed for powerful coalition building.
Roy A. "Skip" Rappaport Remembered, by Richard I. Ford, University of Michigan
Skip Rappaport remains in all our memories as we address the future of ecological studies in anthropology. He was a pioneer and his many theoretical ideas continue to give guidance to a new generation of ecological anthropologists.
On April 15, 1998 a celebration of Skip's life and work was sponsored at the University of Michigan by the Department of Anthropology and the Program on the Studies in Religion. As Skip would expect such an occasion to be, it was intellectual and commemorative. Michael Lambek (U Toronto) presented the invited lecture, "The Anthropology of Religion and the Quarrel between Poetry and Philosophy." University faculty members, administrators, and students provided oral remembrances of Skip as a scholar, academic leader, and mentor in the disciplines of ecology and religion, two areas he blended harmoniously and persuasively. Excerpts from letters received from more than two dozen colleagues and former students were read to provide the full scope and magnitude of Skip's life and career.
While Skip's last administrative post at Michigan was as director of the Program on Studies in Religion, his contributions to environmental studies were not forgotten. Several students recalled his encouragement of their research into problems of ecotourism and land development. Skip advocated "engaged anthropology" and his own work on off-shore nuclear waste dumping and the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility reflect his commitment to the application of ecological anthropology theory to contemporary societal issues. The audience was reminded that all our lives will be better because of Skip's commitment to environmental concerns.
Despite his fatal illness, Skip continued to write and to complete his book on religion. A pre-publication copy of The Role of Ritual in the Making of Humanity will be available at the Cambridge University Press booth during the AAA meeting in Philadelphia. A posthumous volume of his unpublished ecological anthropological essays is forthcoming.