Supervisors: Michael Dove, K. Sivaramakrishnan, Alison Richard, and Charles Peters Address: Student Building 130
701 E. Kirkwood Ave.
Bloomington, IN 47405
The Nineveh Plain region of Northern Iraq is a site of ecological and cultural diversity. Between... more The Nineveh Plain region of Northern Iraq is a site of ecological and cultural diversity. Between 2014 and 2017, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known as Daesh, severely disrupted the region, resulting in community displacement, particularly for members of ethnic minority groups. This article highlights an ongoing multinational, multidisciplinary collaboration between botanists, ecologists, mental and public health specialists, sociologists, and anthropologists to foster cultural and ecological restoration among the Christian, Yezidi, Shabak, Turkman, and Kaka'i minority groups of the Plains. Members of these groups identified wild plant collection as an important cultural and economic practice and expressed a shared concern over the decreased access to wild plant resources. Researchers are partnering with local communities using engaged, decolonial methodologies to bring communities together around this shared interest in wild plants. Project activities include producing videos highlighting local plant knowledge, hosting workshops on using wild plants for art and textile design, offering trainings on herbal medicine, collecting recipes for a wild plant cookbook, and increasing awareness of the sustainable use of wild plants. Through collaborative knowledge production, this partnership aims to bring diverse stakeholders together around an interest in wild plants to promote cultural understanding and exchange.
Vanilla prices in Madagascar have reached historic highs. For the country's vanilla-producing smallholders, the influx of new wealth has resulted in profound affective changes-in large part owing to vanilla theft, which has become widespread. Anxiety and anger are rampant in vanilla-producing communities, and these feelings are increasingly channeled into deadly mob violence against accused thieves. Rather than random acts, these extrajudicial killings are structured by localized cultural, material, and affective forms, as people enact and embody commodity violence in intimate, often contradictory ways. Commodity violence emerges as an additional form of unwanted emotional and physical labor for smallholders. With the vanilla market, as with commodity markets more generally, it is those with the least to gain who are disproportionately exposed to violence and harm. [commodity booms, affect, structure of feeling, vigilante violence, smallholders, vanilla, Madagascar]
Niakatra be ny vidin'ny lavaný ao Madagasikara tato hoato. Nisy fiantraikany goavana amin'ireo mpamokatra lavaný madinika ao antoerana anefa izany fiakarana harena vaovao izany-indrindra nohon'ny halatra lavaný izay nirongatra be ihany tato hoato. Manjaka loatra ny tahotra sy ny hatezerana eny anivon'ny fiaraha-monin'ny mpamokatra lavaný, hany ka lasa mampihatra fitsaràm-bahoaka amin'ireo voapanga sy voatonontonona ho mpangalatra ny olona. Tsy tongatonga hoazy anefa izany fitsaràm-bahoaka izany, fa zavatra volavolain'ny olona avy amin'ny kolotsaina sy ny dinam-pokonolona eo antoerana, ampiharina amin'ireo manao herisetra aterakin'ny fiakaran'ny vidim-bokatra, izay matetika mifanohitra amin'ny fomba tokony ho izy ihany. Lasa manampy trotraka ny fahasahiranan'ny mpamokatra madinika ny fisian'ny herisetra aterakin'ny fiakaran'ny vidim-bokatra, na ara-pihetseham-pó izany, na ara-batana. Ireo mpamokatra madinika no tena iharan'ny voina sy fahavoazana, na eo amin'ny sehatry ny tsenan'ny lavaný izany, na eo
Both basmati rice in India and red rice in Madagascar have gained special export status in their ... more Both basmati rice in India and red rice in Madagascar have gained special export status in their respective countries, being more easily allowed to enter global commerce compared to other kinds of rice. Using a 'chains of meaning' framework that centers ethnographic and comparative analysis, we examine how basmati and red rice are both made 'exportable' in part through the negotiation of non-economic meanings by individuals operating in the 'in between' spaces of trade regulation. We note key differences between basmati and red rice regarding how actors situated along the commodity chain frame and negotiate the export process, especially with respect to regulatory, scalar, and material dimensions. The two case studies illustrate how the paths that seemingly similar specialty commodities pursue through global supply chains are neither linear nor interchangeable, but are rather mediated by broader cultural and social relationships. Attention to these relationships can strengthen programs in sustainable trade, as they facilitate commodity circulation across spheres of exchange.
Community conservation initiatives have long struggled to forge productive relationships with the... more Community conservation initiatives have long struggled to forge productive relationships with the people living in and around protected areas. Currently, there is enthusiasm among conservation researchers and practitioners regarding local cultural taboos, which often appear to conserve species and landscapes of ecological importance. However, in incorporating local taboos into conservation programmes, there is the risk that these culturally sophisticated institutions are used in a highly reductionist manner. Drawing from ethnographic work in Madagascar, this article highlights how the simplification of cultural taboos can exasperate already fraught relationships between communities and conservation organizations, and undermine the very environmental outcomes that groups seek to promote. This reductionist approach can also lead to the harmful appropriation of local meanings and resources. Overall, while working with local taboos may potentially offer an alternative to neoliberal models of conservation, scholars and practitioners should recognize the dynamic and interconnected processes connected with taboos, instead of regarding them as static and interchangeable products.
Our theory of 'the civilized commodity' examines 'mob violence' affecting high-value commodities,... more Our theory of 'the civilized commodity' examines 'mob violence' affecting high-value commodities, including the vanilla boom of Madagascar. We illustrate producers' labor under fraught conditions of violence and contradictory claims of 'street justice.' Specifically we ask, what counts as justice and to whom? We highlights broader arguments around 'moral hyper-proximity' of producer-consumer relations, and the strategies of state and market actors to circulate 'civilized' visions for systemic and future governance over commodity landscapes. State and market calls for 'law and order,' however, obscure the structural inequities faced by smallholders in their 'everyday' production of commodities under periodic crisis.
High-value agricultural commodities face substantial economic, environmental and social sustainability challenges. As a result, commodity industries are adopting sustainable supply- and value-chain models to make production more efficient, traceable and risk-averse. These top-down models often focus on giving higher prices to smallholder producers. While an important component of sustainability, this focus on farm-gate prices has shown mixed results in part because they are less effective in highlighting the asymmetrical power relationships and the socio-economic and ecological complexity in high-value commodity production. We use a novel method to measure and visualise changes in smallholder power in Madagascar’s northeast ‘vanilla triangle’ – home to about 80 per cent of the world’s high quality vanilla. Our results reveal the paradox that during the recent price surge an overall increase in smallholders’ multi-dimensional power to access economic benefits was accompanied by a decrease in many other equally important measures of sustainability. This illustrates how effective models for understanding global sustainable commodity chains should take a smallholder view that emphasises complexity and uncertainty, and which aims to increase power and access for producers across both high and low price points.
In considering the complex relationships between taboo, culture and landscapes, it is productive ... more In considering the complex relationships between taboo, culture and landscapes, it is productive to examine not only how people bestow taboos onto places, but also how they take them away. In this contribution, I use as a case study a 35-hectare parcel of agricultural land in Madagascar, where members of an extended family are debating whether or not to continue to follow their ancestral taboos while farming. Analyzing the debate, alternative historical, cultural and political narratives of land relationships emerge, including a fraught colonial history, ongoing battles over land tenure, shifting community demographics, and intergenerational conflicts. Overall, this stretch of land illustrates that agricultural landscapes may be rendered without taboo not because they lack meaning, but because they contain an excess of overlapping – and highly contentious – meanings. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2017.1337001
In this article, I bring together work in political ecology and environmental anthropology to exa... more In this article, I bring together work in political ecology and environmental anthropology to examine how smallholder farmers in Madagascar articulate and embody political and economic histories through the everyday interactions with the commodities cultivated in their fields and forests. I ask: how does the work of cultivating land connect with the art of cultivating memory? In considering this question, I draw from ethnographic research in the agrarian village of Imorona, located in Northeastern Madagascar. In Imorona, smallholder farmers turn towards the materials in their agroforestry fields to reference the more painful political epics of their collective pasts – memories that otherwise remain largely silent within everyday realms of Malagasy culture. I show how the stories people tell of their shifting relationships to commodities including rosewood, vanilla and cloves bring together political and economic 'histories writ large' with more personal and intimate 'histories writ small.' Overall, I argue that the analytical approach of a 'political ecology of memory' offers the productive capacity to look both outward towards others, and inwards towards self. In the process, it elucidates the ways that people render global histories personal.
Dans cet article, je rassemble le travail de l'écologie politique et l'anthropologie environnementale pour examiner la façon dont les petits exploitants agricoles à Madagascar articuler et incarner des histoires politiques et économiques à travers les interactions quotidiennes avec les produits cultivés dans les champs et les forêts. Je demande: comment le travail de cultiver la terre se connecter avec l'art de cultiver la mémoire? En examinant cette question, je me sers de mes recherches ethnographiques dans le village agraire de Imorona, situé dans le nord de Madagascar. En Imorona, les petits exploitants se tournent vers les matériaux dans leurs domaines de l'agroforesterie pour référencer les épopées politiques plus douloureux de leur passé collectif-souvenirs qui restent par ailleurs largement silencieux dans les domaines du quotidien de la culture malgache. Je montre comment les histoires que les gens racontent leurs relations changeantes à des produits, y compris le bois de rose, de vanille et de girofle réunir un histoire politique et économique «au sens large» avec des histoires plus personnelle et intime, «bref et petit». Dans l'ensemble, je soutiens que l'approche analytique d'une «écologie politique de la mémoire» offre la capacité de regarder à la fois vers l'extérieur les autres, et vers l'intérieur vers l'auto. Dans le processus, il élucide les façons que les gens rendent des histoires mondiales personnelles.
En este artículo, utilizo la ecología política y la antropología ambiental para examinar cómo los pequeños productores en Madagascar articulado y encarno historias políticas y económicas, a través de las interacciones cotidianas con los productos que se cultivan en sus campos y bosques. Me pregunto: ¿Cómo funciona el cultivo de la tierra de conectarse con el arte de cultivar la memoria? Al considerar esta cuestión, yo uso la investigación etnográfica en el pueblo de Imorona, situada en el noreste de Madagascar. En Imorona, los pequeños agricultores utilizan materiales en sus campos agroforestales, para recordar episodios dolorosos en el pasado - los recuerdos que de otro modo permanecen en silencio dentro de la cultura malgache hoy. Muestro cómo las historias que la gente cuenta acerca de su cambio de relaciones con los productos básicos - incluyendo palo de rosa, vainilla y clavo de olor - reunir a grandes historias políticas y económicas con las historias más personales e íntimas. En general, se argumenta que el enfoque analítico de una "ecología política de la memoria" puede mirar hacia el exterior hacia los demás y hacia adentro hacia el auto. En el proceso, hace que clarifica las formas en que la gente hace las historias globales, las personales.
Disasters occupy an increasingly prominent place in our politics, current events and consciousnes... more Disasters occupy an increasingly prominent place in our politics, current events and consciousness. Disaster research concurrently plays an important role in academic and policy arenas, as groups ranging from geologists to human rights lawyers turn their respective gazes to understanding, preventing and mitigating the impacts of disasters in daily life. In this chapter, we examine the contributions that the field of political ecology has made, and can continue to make, to a more nuanced understanding of disasters. The term 'disasters' is used as shorthand here for catastrophic events with unfortunate consequences, though throughout this chapter we probe the diverse social assumptions underlying common definitions of what a disaster is. We also note how disaster research contributes to political ecology insofar as it illuminates the sheer complexity of relationships between environments and societies over space and time. We ask: what can disaster research contribute to the theoretical development of the larger field of political ecology? Overall, we argue that disasters are revelatory events that accentuate the mutually constitutive relationships among environments, cultures, politics and power – relationships that political ecology excels at unraveling (Bryant, 1998). Political ecology is particularly amenable to the study of disaster because of its attention to scale-making across time and space and its complication of nature–culture dichotomies. Political ecology elucidates the political dimensions of knowledge production and discourse, and connects environmental landscapes with conceptions of self and other. The field's attention to scale-making across time and space provides a useful perspective on disaster research. Often, disasters are considered to represent large-scale exceptional events that stand out of time and represent an aberration of life as usual. Yet, placing these events within historical context often reveals that seemingly unique disaster occurrences are, in fact, nested in larger cycles of perturbation. Rather than events in isolation, disasters are an accumulation of specific economic, political and social histories (Klinenberg, 1999). Political ecology also situates 'local' events and cultures across larger geographical scales, complicating the ubiquitous dichotomy of the 'local' versus the 'global' (Biersack, 2006; Robbins, 2003). Applying this lens to disasters illustrates that, although floods, earthquakes or fires appear to involve very specific places with clear epicenters and boundaries, their effects, the societal responses they engender and their underlying causes can often be traced across geographical and political boundaries.
potential of catastrophic future events as a means of overcoming legal, ethical, and political ba... more potential of catastrophic future events as a means of overcoming legal, ethical, and political barriers in the here and now and that is endlessly searching for new objects of concern " (19).
Dove/Carpenter Lab (Forestry & Environmental Studies, Anthropology, History, ... more Dove/Carpenter Lab (Forestry & Environmental Studies, Anthropology, History, Sociology), Yale University ... Prepared for: Sustaining Cultural and Biological Diversity in a Rapidly Changing World: Lessons for Global Policy. April 2-5, 2008. American Museum of Natural History, ...
NYBG Press Advances in Economic Botany Series, 2017
"In this remarkable blend of ethnography, landscape history, and economic botany, Sarah Osterhoud... more "In this remarkable blend of ethnography, landscape history, and economic botany, Sarah Osterhoudt invites readers to understand the 'happy landscapes' of carefully cultivated vanilla-producing agroforests in northeast Madagascar. Drawing on the author's five years in the coastal village of Imorona over a twelve-year period, this is also a unique and extended study in landscape epistemology and narration.It explores how local residents of various social positions, external conservation/development agents, a resident anthropologist, and biophysical scientists each come to know and to describe the culturally imbued land and forests of Madagascar." From book review in Journal of Political Ecology, by Laura M. Yoder
The Nineveh Plain region of Northern Iraq is a site of ecological and cultural diversity. Between... more The Nineveh Plain region of Northern Iraq is a site of ecological and cultural diversity. Between 2014 and 2017, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known as Daesh, severely disrupted the region, resulting in community displacement, particularly for members of ethnic minority groups. This article highlights an ongoing multinational, multidisciplinary collaboration between botanists, ecologists, mental and public health specialists, sociologists, and anthropologists to foster cultural and ecological restoration among the Christian, Yezidi, Shabak, Turkman, and Kaka'i minority groups of the Plains. Members of these groups identified wild plant collection as an important cultural and economic practice and expressed a shared concern over the decreased access to wild plant resources. Researchers are partnering with local communities using engaged, decolonial methodologies to bring communities together around this shared interest in wild plants. Project activities include producing videos highlighting local plant knowledge, hosting workshops on using wild plants for art and textile design, offering trainings on herbal medicine, collecting recipes for a wild plant cookbook, and increasing awareness of the sustainable use of wild plants. Through collaborative knowledge production, this partnership aims to bring diverse stakeholders together around an interest in wild plants to promote cultural understanding and exchange.
Vanilla prices in Madagascar have reached historic highs. For the country's vanilla-producing smallholders, the influx of new wealth has resulted in profound affective changes-in large part owing to vanilla theft, which has become widespread. Anxiety and anger are rampant in vanilla-producing communities, and these feelings are increasingly channeled into deadly mob violence against accused thieves. Rather than random acts, these extrajudicial killings are structured by localized cultural, material, and affective forms, as people enact and embody commodity violence in intimate, often contradictory ways. Commodity violence emerges as an additional form of unwanted emotional and physical labor for smallholders. With the vanilla market, as with commodity markets more generally, it is those with the least to gain who are disproportionately exposed to violence and harm. [commodity booms, affect, structure of feeling, vigilante violence, smallholders, vanilla, Madagascar]
Niakatra be ny vidin'ny lavaný ao Madagasikara tato hoato. Nisy fiantraikany goavana amin'ireo mpamokatra lavaný madinika ao antoerana anefa izany fiakarana harena vaovao izany-indrindra nohon'ny halatra lavaný izay nirongatra be ihany tato hoato. Manjaka loatra ny tahotra sy ny hatezerana eny anivon'ny fiaraha-monin'ny mpamokatra lavaný, hany ka lasa mampihatra fitsaràm-bahoaka amin'ireo voapanga sy voatonontonona ho mpangalatra ny olona. Tsy tongatonga hoazy anefa izany fitsaràm-bahoaka izany, fa zavatra volavolain'ny olona avy amin'ny kolotsaina sy ny dinam-pokonolona eo antoerana, ampiharina amin'ireo manao herisetra aterakin'ny fiakaran'ny vidim-bokatra, izay matetika mifanohitra amin'ny fomba tokony ho izy ihany. Lasa manampy trotraka ny fahasahiranan'ny mpamokatra madinika ny fisian'ny herisetra aterakin'ny fiakaran'ny vidim-bokatra, na ara-pihetseham-pó izany, na ara-batana. Ireo mpamokatra madinika no tena iharan'ny voina sy fahavoazana, na eo amin'ny sehatry ny tsenan'ny lavaný izany, na eo
Both basmati rice in India and red rice in Madagascar have gained special export status in their ... more Both basmati rice in India and red rice in Madagascar have gained special export status in their respective countries, being more easily allowed to enter global commerce compared to other kinds of rice. Using a 'chains of meaning' framework that centers ethnographic and comparative analysis, we examine how basmati and red rice are both made 'exportable' in part through the negotiation of non-economic meanings by individuals operating in the 'in between' spaces of trade regulation. We note key differences between basmati and red rice regarding how actors situated along the commodity chain frame and negotiate the export process, especially with respect to regulatory, scalar, and material dimensions. The two case studies illustrate how the paths that seemingly similar specialty commodities pursue through global supply chains are neither linear nor interchangeable, but are rather mediated by broader cultural and social relationships. Attention to these relationships can strengthen programs in sustainable trade, as they facilitate commodity circulation across spheres of exchange.
Community conservation initiatives have long struggled to forge productive relationships with the... more Community conservation initiatives have long struggled to forge productive relationships with the people living in and around protected areas. Currently, there is enthusiasm among conservation researchers and practitioners regarding local cultural taboos, which often appear to conserve species and landscapes of ecological importance. However, in incorporating local taboos into conservation programmes, there is the risk that these culturally sophisticated institutions are used in a highly reductionist manner. Drawing from ethnographic work in Madagascar, this article highlights how the simplification of cultural taboos can exasperate already fraught relationships between communities and conservation organizations, and undermine the very environmental outcomes that groups seek to promote. This reductionist approach can also lead to the harmful appropriation of local meanings and resources. Overall, while working with local taboos may potentially offer an alternative to neoliberal models of conservation, scholars and practitioners should recognize the dynamic and interconnected processes connected with taboos, instead of regarding them as static and interchangeable products.
Our theory of 'the civilized commodity' examines 'mob violence' affecting high-value commodities,... more Our theory of 'the civilized commodity' examines 'mob violence' affecting high-value commodities, including the vanilla boom of Madagascar. We illustrate producers' labor under fraught conditions of violence and contradictory claims of 'street justice.' Specifically we ask, what counts as justice and to whom? We highlights broader arguments around 'moral hyper-proximity' of producer-consumer relations, and the strategies of state and market actors to circulate 'civilized' visions for systemic and future governance over commodity landscapes. State and market calls for 'law and order,' however, obscure the structural inequities faced by smallholders in their 'everyday' production of commodities under periodic crisis.
High-value agricultural commodities face substantial economic, environmental and social sustainability challenges. As a result, commodity industries are adopting sustainable supply- and value-chain models to make production more efficient, traceable and risk-averse. These top-down models often focus on giving higher prices to smallholder producers. While an important component of sustainability, this focus on farm-gate prices has shown mixed results in part because they are less effective in highlighting the asymmetrical power relationships and the socio-economic and ecological complexity in high-value commodity production. We use a novel method to measure and visualise changes in smallholder power in Madagascar’s northeast ‘vanilla triangle’ – home to about 80 per cent of the world’s high quality vanilla. Our results reveal the paradox that during the recent price surge an overall increase in smallholders’ multi-dimensional power to access economic benefits was accompanied by a decrease in many other equally important measures of sustainability. This illustrates how effective models for understanding global sustainable commodity chains should take a smallholder view that emphasises complexity and uncertainty, and which aims to increase power and access for producers across both high and low price points.
In considering the complex relationships between taboo, culture and landscapes, it is productive ... more In considering the complex relationships between taboo, culture and landscapes, it is productive to examine not only how people bestow taboos onto places, but also how they take them away. In this contribution, I use as a case study a 35-hectare parcel of agricultural land in Madagascar, where members of an extended family are debating whether or not to continue to follow their ancestral taboos while farming. Analyzing the debate, alternative historical, cultural and political narratives of land relationships emerge, including a fraught colonial history, ongoing battles over land tenure, shifting community demographics, and intergenerational conflicts. Overall, this stretch of land illustrates that agricultural landscapes may be rendered without taboo not because they lack meaning, but because they contain an excess of overlapping – and highly contentious – meanings. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2017.1337001
In this article, I bring together work in political ecology and environmental anthropology to exa... more In this article, I bring together work in political ecology and environmental anthropology to examine how smallholder farmers in Madagascar articulate and embody political and economic histories through the everyday interactions with the commodities cultivated in their fields and forests. I ask: how does the work of cultivating land connect with the art of cultivating memory? In considering this question, I draw from ethnographic research in the agrarian village of Imorona, located in Northeastern Madagascar. In Imorona, smallholder farmers turn towards the materials in their agroforestry fields to reference the more painful political epics of their collective pasts – memories that otherwise remain largely silent within everyday realms of Malagasy culture. I show how the stories people tell of their shifting relationships to commodities including rosewood, vanilla and cloves bring together political and economic 'histories writ large' with more personal and intimate 'histories writ small.' Overall, I argue that the analytical approach of a 'political ecology of memory' offers the productive capacity to look both outward towards others, and inwards towards self. In the process, it elucidates the ways that people render global histories personal.
Dans cet article, je rassemble le travail de l'écologie politique et l'anthropologie environnementale pour examiner la façon dont les petits exploitants agricoles à Madagascar articuler et incarner des histoires politiques et économiques à travers les interactions quotidiennes avec les produits cultivés dans les champs et les forêts. Je demande: comment le travail de cultiver la terre se connecter avec l'art de cultiver la mémoire? En examinant cette question, je me sers de mes recherches ethnographiques dans le village agraire de Imorona, situé dans le nord de Madagascar. En Imorona, les petits exploitants se tournent vers les matériaux dans leurs domaines de l'agroforesterie pour référencer les épopées politiques plus douloureux de leur passé collectif-souvenirs qui restent par ailleurs largement silencieux dans les domaines du quotidien de la culture malgache. Je montre comment les histoires que les gens racontent leurs relations changeantes à des produits, y compris le bois de rose, de vanille et de girofle réunir un histoire politique et économique «au sens large» avec des histoires plus personnelle et intime, «bref et petit». Dans l'ensemble, je soutiens que l'approche analytique d'une «écologie politique de la mémoire» offre la capacité de regarder à la fois vers l'extérieur les autres, et vers l'intérieur vers l'auto. Dans le processus, il élucide les façons que les gens rendent des histoires mondiales personnelles.
En este artículo, utilizo la ecología política y la antropología ambiental para examinar cómo los pequeños productores en Madagascar articulado y encarno historias políticas y económicas, a través de las interacciones cotidianas con los productos que se cultivan en sus campos y bosques. Me pregunto: ¿Cómo funciona el cultivo de la tierra de conectarse con el arte de cultivar la memoria? Al considerar esta cuestión, yo uso la investigación etnográfica en el pueblo de Imorona, situada en el noreste de Madagascar. En Imorona, los pequeños agricultores utilizan materiales en sus campos agroforestales, para recordar episodios dolorosos en el pasado - los recuerdos que de otro modo permanecen en silencio dentro de la cultura malgache hoy. Muestro cómo las historias que la gente cuenta acerca de su cambio de relaciones con los productos básicos - incluyendo palo de rosa, vainilla y clavo de olor - reunir a grandes historias políticas y económicas con las historias más personales e íntimas. En general, se argumenta que el enfoque analítico de una "ecología política de la memoria" puede mirar hacia el exterior hacia los demás y hacia adentro hacia el auto. En el proceso, hace que clarifica las formas en que la gente hace las historias globales, las personales.
Disasters occupy an increasingly prominent place in our politics, current events and consciousnes... more Disasters occupy an increasingly prominent place in our politics, current events and consciousness. Disaster research concurrently plays an important role in academic and policy arenas, as groups ranging from geologists to human rights lawyers turn their respective gazes to understanding, preventing and mitigating the impacts of disasters in daily life. In this chapter, we examine the contributions that the field of political ecology has made, and can continue to make, to a more nuanced understanding of disasters. The term 'disasters' is used as shorthand here for catastrophic events with unfortunate consequences, though throughout this chapter we probe the diverse social assumptions underlying common definitions of what a disaster is. We also note how disaster research contributes to political ecology insofar as it illuminates the sheer complexity of relationships between environments and societies over space and time. We ask: what can disaster research contribute to the theoretical development of the larger field of political ecology? Overall, we argue that disasters are revelatory events that accentuate the mutually constitutive relationships among environments, cultures, politics and power – relationships that political ecology excels at unraveling (Bryant, 1998). Political ecology is particularly amenable to the study of disaster because of its attention to scale-making across time and space and its complication of nature–culture dichotomies. Political ecology elucidates the political dimensions of knowledge production and discourse, and connects environmental landscapes with conceptions of self and other. The field's attention to scale-making across time and space provides a useful perspective on disaster research. Often, disasters are considered to represent large-scale exceptional events that stand out of time and represent an aberration of life as usual. Yet, placing these events within historical context often reveals that seemingly unique disaster occurrences are, in fact, nested in larger cycles of perturbation. Rather than events in isolation, disasters are an accumulation of specific economic, political and social histories (Klinenberg, 1999). Political ecology also situates 'local' events and cultures across larger geographical scales, complicating the ubiquitous dichotomy of the 'local' versus the 'global' (Biersack, 2006; Robbins, 2003). Applying this lens to disasters illustrates that, although floods, earthquakes or fires appear to involve very specific places with clear epicenters and boundaries, their effects, the societal responses they engender and their underlying causes can often be traced across geographical and political boundaries.
potential of catastrophic future events as a means of overcoming legal, ethical, and political ba... more potential of catastrophic future events as a means of overcoming legal, ethical, and political barriers in the here and now and that is endlessly searching for new objects of concern " (19).
Dove/Carpenter Lab (Forestry & Environmental Studies, Anthropology, History, ... more Dove/Carpenter Lab (Forestry & Environmental Studies, Anthropology, History, Sociology), Yale University ... Prepared for: Sustaining Cultural and Biological Diversity in a Rapidly Changing World: Lessons for Global Policy. April 2-5, 2008. American Museum of Natural History, ...
NYBG Press Advances in Economic Botany Series, 2017
"In this remarkable blend of ethnography, landscape history, and economic botany, Sarah Osterhoud... more "In this remarkable blend of ethnography, landscape history, and economic botany, Sarah Osterhoudt invites readers to understand the 'happy landscapes' of carefully cultivated vanilla-producing agroforests in northeast Madagascar. Drawing on the author's five years in the coastal village of Imorona over a twelve-year period, this is also a unique and extended study in landscape epistemology and narration.It explores how local residents of various social positions, external conservation/development agents, a resident anthropologist, and biophysical scientists each come to know and to describe the culturally imbued land and forests of Madagascar." From book review in Journal of Political Ecology, by Laura M. Yoder
High-value agricultural commodities face substantial economic, environmental and social sustainab... more High-value agricultural commodities face substantial economic, environmental and social sustainability challenges. As a result, commodity industries are adopting sustainable supply- and value-chain models to make production more efficient, traceable and risk-averse. These top-down models often focus on giving higher prices to smallholder producers. While an important component of sustainability, this focus on farm-gate prices has shown mixed results in part because they are less effective in highlighting the asymmetrical power relationships and the socio-economic and ecological complexity in high-value commodity production. Here, we use a novel method to measure and visualise changes in smallholder power in Madagascar’s northeast ‘vanilla triangle’—home to about 80% of the world’s high quality vanilla. Our results reveal the paradox that during the recent price surge an overall increase in smallholders’ multi-dimensional power to access economic benefits was accompanied by a decreas...
In this article, I bring together work in political ecology and environmental anthropology to exa... more In this article, I bring together work in political ecology and environmental anthropology to examine how smallholder farmers in Madagascar articulate and embody political and economic histories through the everyday interactions with the commodities cultivated in their fields and forests. I ask: how does the work of cultivating land connect with the art of cultivating memory? In considering this question, I draw from ethnographic research in the agrarian village of Imorona, located in Northeastern Madagascar. In Imorona, smallholder farmers turn towards the materials in their agroforestry fields to reference the more painful political epics of their collective pasts – memories that otherwise remain largely silent within everyday realms of Malagasy culture. I show how the stories people tell of their shifting relationships to commodities including rosewood, vanilla and cloves bring together political and economic 'histories writ large' with more personal and intimate 'his...
In this chapter we examine the contributions that the field of political ecology – with its focus... more In this chapter we examine the contributions that the field of political ecology – with its focus on the mutually constitutive relationships between environments, cultures, politics and power – has made, and can continue to make, to a more nuanced understanding of disasters. Disaster research also contributes to political ecology insofar as it illuminates the complexity of relationships between environments and societies over space and time. Drawing from ethnographic examples and historical analysis, we situate epistemologies of disasters within broader analyses of scale-making, nature-culture dichotomies, the classification of disasters as “natural” or “social”, the interpretive dimensions of identity and the construction of self. The very definition of a situation as ‘disastrous’ or not varies with one’s political resources. Overall, we argue that political ecology frameworks pose new questions about the operation of power and politics in contexts of disasters, resulting in enriched understandings of the social experience of disasters. Ethnographic examples, like those presented in this chapter, illustrate the rich promise of continued work at the confluence of the fields of political ecology and disaster studies.
ABSTRACT In considering the complex relationships between taboo, culture and landscapes, it is pr... more ABSTRACT In considering the complex relationships between taboo, culture and landscapes, it is productive to examine not only how people bestow taboos onto places, but also how they take them away. In this contribution, I use as a case study a 35-hectare parcel of agricultural land in Madagascar, where members of an extended family are debating whether or not to continue to follow their ancestral taboos while farming. Analyzing the debate, alternative historical, cultural and political narratives of land relationships emerge, including a fraught colonial history, ongoing battles over land tenure, shifting community demographics, and intergenerational conflicts. Overall, this stretch of land illustrates that agricultural landscapes may be rendered without taboo not because they lack meaning, but because they contain an excess of overlapping – and highly contentious – meanings.
Both basmati rice in India and red rice in Madagascar have gained special export status in their ... more Both basmati rice in India and red rice in Madagascar have gained special export status in their respective countries, being more easily allowed to enter global commerce compared to other kinds of rice. Using a ‘chains of meaning’ framework that centers ethnographic and comparative analysis, we examine how basmati and red rice are both made ‘exportable’ in part through the negotiation of non-economic meanings by individuals operating in the ‘in between’ spaces of trade regulation. We note key differences between basmati and red rice regarding how actors situated along the commodity chain frame and negotiate the export process, especially with respect to regulatory, scalar, and material dimensions. The two case studies illustrate how the paths that seemingly similar specialty commodities pursue through global supply chains are neither linear nor interchangeable, but are rather mediated by broader cultural and social relationships. Attention to these relationships can strengthen progr...
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2021
Broadly, landscapes can be considered terrains of connectivity. Landscapes encompass wild, cultiv... more Broadly, landscapes can be considered terrains of connectivity. Landscapes encompass wild, cultivated, urban, feral, and fallow spaces, as well as the human and nonhuman entities who inhabit and shape them. Memory refers to the past as it exists in the present, bridging temporally discrete moments through the intentional or unintentional act of remembering. Memory studies, from the view of anthropology, include explorations of individual forms of remembrance, as well as the collective, heterogenous ways of marking, interpreting, and erasing the past. Taken together, landscapes and memory co-constitute one another: landscapes store, depict, and evoke memories while memories recall, revise, and shape landscapes. Knowledge and power are inevitably wrapped up in the relationship, and anthropologists have investigated the manifest ways such forces emerge through human acts of cultivation, commemoration, nostalgia, and forgetting. Because landscapes and memory appear in both physical and ...
In this article, I consider how local oral history narratives provide smallholder farmers with bo... more In this article, I consider how local oral history narratives provide smallholder farmers with both material and symbolic resources in adapting to climate change. I draw from the case study of an agrarian village in Madagascar that was struck by a destructive category 3 cyclone. In the weeks following the storm, oral history knowledge occupied an increasingly visible role within the community, as younger farmers interacted with elders to hear tales of past storms. Through these shared accounts, people discussed specific techniques on how to cope with environmental uncertainty. They also created a sense of shared history, which provided individuals across generations an entry point into the local historical record. Overall, the process of sharing oral history accounts can contribute to community resilience, with resiliency encompassing not only technical or ecological factors, but also the more affective realms of shared legacies, hope and belonging.
Community conservation initiatives have long struggled to forge productive relationships with the... more Community conservation initiatives have long struggled to forge productive relationships with the people living in and around protected areas. Currently, there is enthusiasm among conservation researchers and practitioners regarding local cultural taboos, which often appear to conserve species and landscapes of ecological importance. However, in incorporating local taboos into conservation programmes, there is the risk that these culturally sophisticated institutions are used in a highly reductionist manner. Drawing from ethnographic work in Madagascar, this article highlights how the simplification of cultural taboos can exasperate already fraught relationships between communities and conservation organizations, and undermine the very environmental outcomes that groups seek to promote. This reductionist approach can also lead to the harmful appropriation of local meanings and resources. Overall, while working with local taboos may potentially offer an alternative to neoliberal models of conservation, scholars and practitioners should recognize the dynamic and interconnected processes connected with taboos, instead of regarding them as static and interchangeable products.
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Vanilla prices in Madagascar have reached historic highs. For the country's vanilla-producing smallholders, the influx of new wealth has resulted in profound affective changes-in large part owing to vanilla theft, which has become widespread. Anxiety and anger are rampant in vanilla-producing communities, and these feelings are increasingly channeled into deadly mob violence against accused thieves. Rather than random acts, these extrajudicial killings are structured by localized cultural, material, and affective forms, as people enact and embody commodity violence in intimate, often contradictory ways. Commodity violence emerges as an additional form of unwanted emotional and physical labor for smallholders. With the vanilla market, as with commodity markets more generally, it is those with the least to gain who are disproportionately exposed to violence and harm. [commodity booms, affect, structure of feeling, vigilante violence, smallholders, vanilla, Madagascar]
Niakatra be ny vidin'ny lavaný ao Madagasikara tato hoato. Nisy fiantraikany goavana amin'ireo mpamokatra lavaný madinika ao antoerana anefa izany fiakarana harena vaovao izany-indrindra nohon'ny halatra lavaný izay nirongatra be ihany tato hoato. Manjaka loatra ny tahotra sy ny hatezerana eny anivon'ny fiaraha-monin'ny mpamokatra lavaný, hany ka lasa mampihatra fitsaràm-bahoaka amin'ireo voapanga sy voatonontonona ho mpangalatra ny olona. Tsy tongatonga hoazy anefa izany fitsaràm-bahoaka izany, fa zavatra volavolain'ny olona avy amin'ny kolotsaina sy ny dinam-pokonolona eo antoerana, ampiharina amin'ireo manao herisetra aterakin'ny fiakaran'ny vidim-bokatra, izay matetika mifanohitra amin'ny fomba tokony ho izy ihany. Lasa manampy trotraka ny fahasahiranan'ny mpamokatra madinika ny fisian'ny herisetra aterakin'ny fiakaran'ny vidim-bokatra, na ara-pihetseham-pó izany, na ara-batana. Ireo mpamokatra madinika no tena iharan'ny voina sy fahavoazana, na eo amin'ny sehatry ny tsenan'ny lavaný izany, na eo
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-018-0199-0
Abstract
High-value agricultural commodities face substantial economic, environmental and social sustainability challenges. As a result, commodity industries are adopting sustainable supply- and value-chain models to make production more efficient, traceable and risk-averse. These top-down models often focus on giving higher prices to smallholder producers. While an important component of sustainability, this focus on farm-gate prices has shown mixed results in part because they are less effective in highlighting the asymmetrical power relationships and the socio-economic and ecological complexity in high-value commodity production. We use a novel method to measure and visualise changes in smallholder power in Madagascar’s northeast ‘vanilla triangle’ – home to about 80 per cent of the world’s high quality vanilla. Our results reveal the paradox that during the recent price surge an overall increase in smallholders’ multi-dimensional power to access economic benefits was accompanied by a decrease in many other equally important measures of sustainability. This illustrates how effective models for understanding global sustainable commodity chains should take a smallholder view that emphasises complexity and uncertainty, and which aims to increase power and access for producers across both high and low price points.
Dans cet article, je rassemble le travail de l'écologie politique et l'anthropologie environnementale pour examiner la façon dont les petits exploitants agricoles à Madagascar articuler et incarner des histoires politiques et économiques à travers les interactions quotidiennes avec les produits cultivés dans les champs et les forêts. Je demande: comment le travail de cultiver la terre se connecter avec l'art de cultiver la mémoire? En examinant cette question, je me sers de mes recherches ethnographiques dans le village agraire de Imorona, situé dans le nord de Madagascar. En Imorona, les petits exploitants se tournent vers les matériaux dans leurs domaines de l'agroforesterie pour référencer les épopées politiques plus douloureux de leur passé collectif-souvenirs qui restent par ailleurs largement silencieux dans les domaines du quotidien de la culture malgache. Je montre comment les histoires que les gens racontent leurs relations changeantes à des produits, y compris le bois de rose, de vanille et de girofle réunir un histoire politique et économique «au sens large» avec des histoires plus personnelle et intime, «bref et petit». Dans l'ensemble, je soutiens que l'approche analytique d'une «écologie politique de la mémoire» offre la capacité de regarder à la fois vers l'extérieur les autres, et vers l'intérieur vers l'auto. Dans le processus, il élucide les façons que les gens rendent des histoires mondiales personnelles.
En este artículo, utilizo la ecología política y la antropología ambiental para examinar cómo los pequeños productores en Madagascar articulado y encarno historias políticas y económicas, a través de las interacciones cotidianas con los productos que se cultivan en sus campos y bosques. Me pregunto: ¿Cómo funciona el cultivo de la tierra de conectarse con el arte de cultivar la memoria? Al considerar esta cuestión, yo uso la investigación etnográfica en el pueblo de Imorona, situada en el noreste de Madagascar. En Imorona, los pequeños agricultores utilizan materiales en sus campos agroforestales, para recordar episodios dolorosos en el pasado - los recuerdos que de otro modo permanecen en silencio dentro de la cultura malgache hoy. Muestro cómo las historias que la gente cuenta acerca de su cambio de relaciones con los productos básicos - incluyendo palo de rosa, vainilla y clavo de olor - reunir a grandes historias políticas y económicas con las historias más personales e íntimas. En general, se argumenta que el enfoque analítico de una "ecología política de la memoria" puede mirar hacia el exterior hacia los demás y hacia adentro hacia el auto. En el proceso, hace que clarifica las formas en que la gente hace las historias globales, las personales.
Vanilla prices in Madagascar have reached historic highs. For the country's vanilla-producing smallholders, the influx of new wealth has resulted in profound affective changes-in large part owing to vanilla theft, which has become widespread. Anxiety and anger are rampant in vanilla-producing communities, and these feelings are increasingly channeled into deadly mob violence against accused thieves. Rather than random acts, these extrajudicial killings are structured by localized cultural, material, and affective forms, as people enact and embody commodity violence in intimate, often contradictory ways. Commodity violence emerges as an additional form of unwanted emotional and physical labor for smallholders. With the vanilla market, as with commodity markets more generally, it is those with the least to gain who are disproportionately exposed to violence and harm. [commodity booms, affect, structure of feeling, vigilante violence, smallholders, vanilla, Madagascar]
Niakatra be ny vidin'ny lavaný ao Madagasikara tato hoato. Nisy fiantraikany goavana amin'ireo mpamokatra lavaný madinika ao antoerana anefa izany fiakarana harena vaovao izany-indrindra nohon'ny halatra lavaný izay nirongatra be ihany tato hoato. Manjaka loatra ny tahotra sy ny hatezerana eny anivon'ny fiaraha-monin'ny mpamokatra lavaný, hany ka lasa mampihatra fitsaràm-bahoaka amin'ireo voapanga sy voatonontonona ho mpangalatra ny olona. Tsy tongatonga hoazy anefa izany fitsaràm-bahoaka izany, fa zavatra volavolain'ny olona avy amin'ny kolotsaina sy ny dinam-pokonolona eo antoerana, ampiharina amin'ireo manao herisetra aterakin'ny fiakaran'ny vidim-bokatra, izay matetika mifanohitra amin'ny fomba tokony ho izy ihany. Lasa manampy trotraka ny fahasahiranan'ny mpamokatra madinika ny fisian'ny herisetra aterakin'ny fiakaran'ny vidim-bokatra, na ara-pihetseham-pó izany, na ara-batana. Ireo mpamokatra madinika no tena iharan'ny voina sy fahavoazana, na eo amin'ny sehatry ny tsenan'ny lavaný izany, na eo
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-018-0199-0
Abstract
High-value agricultural commodities face substantial economic, environmental and social sustainability challenges. As a result, commodity industries are adopting sustainable supply- and value-chain models to make production more efficient, traceable and risk-averse. These top-down models often focus on giving higher prices to smallholder producers. While an important component of sustainability, this focus on farm-gate prices has shown mixed results in part because they are less effective in highlighting the asymmetrical power relationships and the socio-economic and ecological complexity in high-value commodity production. We use a novel method to measure and visualise changes in smallholder power in Madagascar’s northeast ‘vanilla triangle’ – home to about 80 per cent of the world’s high quality vanilla. Our results reveal the paradox that during the recent price surge an overall increase in smallholders’ multi-dimensional power to access economic benefits was accompanied by a decrease in many other equally important measures of sustainability. This illustrates how effective models for understanding global sustainable commodity chains should take a smallholder view that emphasises complexity and uncertainty, and which aims to increase power and access for producers across both high and low price points.
Dans cet article, je rassemble le travail de l'écologie politique et l'anthropologie environnementale pour examiner la façon dont les petits exploitants agricoles à Madagascar articuler et incarner des histoires politiques et économiques à travers les interactions quotidiennes avec les produits cultivés dans les champs et les forêts. Je demande: comment le travail de cultiver la terre se connecter avec l'art de cultiver la mémoire? En examinant cette question, je me sers de mes recherches ethnographiques dans le village agraire de Imorona, situé dans le nord de Madagascar. En Imorona, les petits exploitants se tournent vers les matériaux dans leurs domaines de l'agroforesterie pour référencer les épopées politiques plus douloureux de leur passé collectif-souvenirs qui restent par ailleurs largement silencieux dans les domaines du quotidien de la culture malgache. Je montre comment les histoires que les gens racontent leurs relations changeantes à des produits, y compris le bois de rose, de vanille et de girofle réunir un histoire politique et économique «au sens large» avec des histoires plus personnelle et intime, «bref et petit». Dans l'ensemble, je soutiens que l'approche analytique d'une «écologie politique de la mémoire» offre la capacité de regarder à la fois vers l'extérieur les autres, et vers l'intérieur vers l'auto. Dans le processus, il élucide les façons que les gens rendent des histoires mondiales personnelles.
En este artículo, utilizo la ecología política y la antropología ambiental para examinar cómo los pequeños productores en Madagascar articulado y encarno historias políticas y económicas, a través de las interacciones cotidianas con los productos que se cultivan en sus campos y bosques. Me pregunto: ¿Cómo funciona el cultivo de la tierra de conectarse con el arte de cultivar la memoria? Al considerar esta cuestión, yo uso la investigación etnográfica en el pueblo de Imorona, situada en el noreste de Madagascar. En Imorona, los pequeños agricultores utilizan materiales en sus campos agroforestales, para recordar episodios dolorosos en el pasado - los recuerdos que de otro modo permanecen en silencio dentro de la cultura malgache hoy. Muestro cómo las historias que la gente cuenta acerca de su cambio de relaciones con los productos básicos - incluyendo palo de rosa, vainilla y clavo de olor - reunir a grandes historias políticas y económicas con las historias más personales e íntimas. En general, se argumenta que el enfoque analítico de una "ecología política de la memoria" puede mirar hacia el exterior hacia los demás y hacia adentro hacia el auto. En el proceso, hace que clarifica las formas en que la gente hace las historias globales, las personales.