Recent Panels and Conference Presentations by Clate J Korsant
Transitions suggest managed change in the face of disruption, but they also create opportunities ... more Transitions suggest managed change in the face of disruption, but they also create opportunities for alternative futures. This panel explores how social collectives engage with the imaginaries and practices of transition in a context of changing capitalist relations to nature and labour.
Thesis Chapters by Clate J Korsant
Book Reviews by Clate J Korsant
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 26: 4 , 2020
Papers by Clate J Korsant
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Nov 18, 2020
Social Science Journal, Feb 15, 2022
In 1989, the first drug-treatment court was established in Florida, inaugurating an era of state-... more In 1989, the first drug-treatment court was established in Florida, inaugurating an era of state-supervised rehabilitation. Such courts have frequently been seen as a humane alternative to incarceration and the war on drugs. Enforcing Freedom offers an ethnographic account of drug courts and mandatory treatment centers as a system of coercion, demonstrating how the state uses notions of rehabilitation as a means of social regulation. Situating drug courts in a long line of state projects of race and class control, Kerwin Kaye details the ways in which the violence of the state is framed as beneficial for those subjected to it. He explores how courts decide whether to release or incarcerate participants using nominally colorblind criteria that draw on racialized imagery. Rehabilitation is defined as preparation for low-wage labor and the destruction of community ties with "bad influences," a process that turns participants against one another. At the same time, Kaye points toward the complex ways in which participants negotiate state control in relation to other forms of constraint in their lives, sometimes embracing the state's salutary violence as a means of countering their impoverishment. Simultaneously sensitive to ethnographic detail and theoretical implications, Enforcing Freedom offers a critical perspective on the punitive side of criminal-justice reform and points toward alternative paths forward.
Globalizations, Feb 23, 2022
Ecopedagogy is a viable pathway towards a pluriversal education system that attends to both globa... more Ecopedagogy is a viable pathway towards a pluriversal education system that attends to both global ecological concerns and various local expressions of interests, working towards socioenvironmental justice and a Freirean critical (eco)pedagogy. Ethnographic examples of environmental education in rural Costa Rica emerging from my case study of Samuel, the creative, music educator in La Palma, demonstrate a variety of pedagogical tactics used to generate ecological awareness and create sustainability-minded citizens. Through lively and engaging activities with young students, ecopedagogy serves as a potential pathway between pluriversal education and normative environmentalism. This ethnographic analysis of ecopedagogy in practice within Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula illuminates the tension between an imposition of values and the generation of pluriversal education through dynamic pedagogical influence, structured play, embodied practice, and decentring the human.
Streetnotes, Nov 14, 2022
Streetnotes: Ethnography, Poetry, Documentary Experience, 2022
Based upon a series of ethnographic vignettes, interviews, participant observatio... more Based upon a series of ethnographic vignettes, interviews, participant observation, and archival research, this article profiles public chess playing in Greenwich Village, New York City.I focus upon the famed public spaces for chess players like Washington Square Park and Union Square, and the atmosphere of anxiety and unrest due to the Covid-19 Pandemic and systemic racism surrounding the protests of the summer of 2020.The long artistic and revolutionary history of Greenwich Village provides an intriguing context for public chess playing and the informal economy of hustling.As the majority of the chess enthusiasts and table hosts are African American men and, given the metaphoric explanations of “chess as life,” sociopolitical context is critical.Inparticular, political artistic displays and protests against police violence and systemic racism are no mere backdrop for chess playing, but intimately felt and entangled within the sense of place and public participation in downtown Manhattan.As New York City, during 2020 and throughout the Covid-19 Pandemic era, faced multiple crises along with their sociopolitical responses; iconic staples of Greenwich Village life embodied by the area’s chess enthusiasts persist.In order to illuminate the everyday life of chess playing in public, I focus on two players: Mr. Black in Washington Square Park and Alfred in Union Square.These ethnographic vignettes reveal downtown chess playing as an activity inseparable from its urban context – uniquely and importantly a New Yorkers’ pastime and entangled within the socioeconomic, political, and artistic landscapes that color downtown New York City.
Globalizations, 2022
Ecopedagogy is a viable pathway towards a pluriversal education system that attends to both globa... more Ecopedagogy is a viable pathway towards a pluriversal education system that attends to both global ecological concerns and various local expressions of interests, working towards socioenvironmental justice and a Freirean critical (eco)pedagogy. Ethnographic examples of environmental education in rural Costa Rica emerging from my case study of Samuel, the creative, music educator in La Palma, demonstrate a variety of pedagogical tactics used to generate ecological awareness and create sustainability-minded citizens. Through lively and engaging activities with young students, ecopedagogy serves as a potential pathway between pluriversal education and normative environmentalism. This ethnographic analysis of ecopedagogy in practice within Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula illuminates the tension between an imposition of values and the generation of pluriversal education through dynamic pedagogical influence, structured play, embodied practice, and decentring the human.
This thesis examines the characteristics of Costa Rican environmentalism, focusing on biodiversit... more This thesis examines the characteristics of Costa Rican environmentalism, focusing on biodiversity conservation in the Osa Peninsula. Relatively remote and long inaccessible, the Osa Peninsula is seen as a frontier region and the most renowned biodiversity hotspot of one of the world’s most relatively biodiverse nations. Given the shift towards community-based initiatives, I explain how individuals have come to care for and interact with their surroundings, the interrelations of differing regimes of value, and tensions inherent to the politics of land use. Conservationist practice in the Osa Peninsula represents a messy, conflict-ridden, contentious, and ambiguous phenomenon, entangled with Costa Rica’s history of elite domination over the extraction and use of resources, indoctrination and the influence of external interests, and global agendas. This in-depth ethnographic study of the different manifestations of environmentalism in the Osa Peninsula, including government policies, ...
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
American Journal of Qualitative Research
Globalizations, 2022
Ecopedagogy is a viable pathway towards a pluriversal education system that attends to both globa... more Ecopedagogy is a viable pathway towards a pluriversal education system that attends to both global ecological concerns and various local expressions of interests, working towards socioenvironmental justice and a Freirean critical (eco)pedagogy. Ethnographic examples of environmental education in rural Costa Rica emerging from my case study of Samuel, the creative, music educator in La Palma, demonstrate a variety of pedagogical tactics used to generate ecological awareness and create sustainability-minded citizens. Through lively and engaging activities with young students, ecopedagogy serves as a potential pathway between pluriversal education and normative environmentalism. This ethnographic analysis of ecopedagogy in practice within Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula illuminates the tension between an imposition of values and the generation of pluriversal education through dynamic pedagogical influence, structured play, embodied practice, and decentring the human.
Teaching Documents by Clate J Korsant
New Course Syllabus, 2023
This class is about the stories we tell that concern the lives of others, and sometimes, ourselve... more This class is about the stories we tell that concern the lives of others, and sometimes, ourselves. There are various methods that are employed for telling these stories, whether through creative nonfiction, documentary and narrative filmmaking, and creative or experimental ethnographies. Students will review and explore each methodology in order to grasp how Latin American stories are told, what each method offers the author and audience, and what may be the challenges involved in landing the intended message. Although this course, covering ethnographic storytelling, subjectivity, and the visual in Latin America, deals with the questions surrounding "how" a subject is portrayed; it is not a strict methods course. We instead explore various methods in order to uncover thematic pervasive problems in Latin American studies: violence, power, history, and identity (to name the most important ones). And it should be noted that the course interrogates these four themes through creative lenses.
Students will gain an understanding of visual anthropology, documentary film, film and media theory, ethnography, sociopolitical history in Latin America, political economy, political ecology, systemic violence, sexuality, indigeneity and race, and questions of identity and belonging. Of particular interest will be – within the postcolonial and interdisciplinary world of Latin American studies – a critical look at the intersection of everyday life and the dynamics of power that help to inform the possibilities for being human.
Latin American Studies Syllabus, 2023
American iconography has conjured many images and narratives surrounding the natural world since ... more American iconography has conjured many images and narratives surrounding the natural world since colonial encounter. These have served various functions, producing the "pristine," the "primitive," a "state of nature," a "scary wilderness" to be tamed or avoided, a vessel for indigenous knowledge, and an admired place of natural wonder. This course interrogates the question of nature, the politics of environmentalism, and the dissemination of images and ideas that we (people and scholars) face when discussing the natural. From resource exploitation to everyday sustenance, to global conservation movements, different strategies are formed that rely on particular understandings of what nature is, and more precisely, what it should be.
This course situates itself within environmental and visual anthropology, political ecology, media studies, and socio-environmental thought. Students will review Latin American cases, both ethnographic and historical, to illuminate how nature has been imagined and the socio-political consequences of those various treatments of nature. Through image, film, and media analysis, review of social and environmental theory, and political and ecological history in Latin America, students will lead engaged discussions and analyze forms of socio-environmental interaction in order to rethink nature as a site of conflict, controversy, wonder; and, as inherently entangled within scholarly understandings of Latin American history.
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Recent Panels and Conference Presentations by Clate J Korsant
Thesis Chapters by Clate J Korsant
Book Reviews by Clate J Korsant
Papers by Clate J Korsant
Teaching Documents by Clate J Korsant
Students will gain an understanding of visual anthropology, documentary film, film and media theory, ethnography, sociopolitical history in Latin America, political economy, political ecology, systemic violence, sexuality, indigeneity and race, and questions of identity and belonging. Of particular interest will be – within the postcolonial and interdisciplinary world of Latin American studies – a critical look at the intersection of everyday life and the dynamics of power that help to inform the possibilities for being human.
This course situates itself within environmental and visual anthropology, political ecology, media studies, and socio-environmental thought. Students will review Latin American cases, both ethnographic and historical, to illuminate how nature has been imagined and the socio-political consequences of those various treatments of nature. Through image, film, and media analysis, review of social and environmental theory, and political and ecological history in Latin America, students will lead engaged discussions and analyze forms of socio-environmental interaction in order to rethink nature as a site of conflict, controversy, wonder; and, as inherently entangled within scholarly understandings of Latin American history.
Students will gain an understanding of visual anthropology, documentary film, film and media theory, ethnography, sociopolitical history in Latin America, political economy, political ecology, systemic violence, sexuality, indigeneity and race, and questions of identity and belonging. Of particular interest will be – within the postcolonial and interdisciplinary world of Latin American studies – a critical look at the intersection of everyday life and the dynamics of power that help to inform the possibilities for being human.
This course situates itself within environmental and visual anthropology, political ecology, media studies, and socio-environmental thought. Students will review Latin American cases, both ethnographic and historical, to illuminate how nature has been imagined and the socio-political consequences of those various treatments of nature. Through image, film, and media analysis, review of social and environmental theory, and political and ecological history in Latin America, students will lead engaged discussions and analyze forms of socio-environmental interaction in order to rethink nature as a site of conflict, controversy, wonder; and, as inherently entangled within scholarly understandings of Latin American history.