Environmental Anthropology
44,772 Followers
Recent papers in Environmental Anthropology
Social scientists commonly know that time is a social construct and a tool for governing by those holding power. Yet, how exactly is time used for governing? This article examines how timescape (embodiment of approaches to time) works in... more
Infrastructural practices, made by the manipulations of pumps, pipes and hydraulic expertise, play a critical role in managing urban populations. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research in Mumbai, in this article I show how Muslim... more
Course: Contested Natures: The politics of knowing, living, developing and conserving nature “We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” Werner Heisenberg We... more
Ultimately climate change is the product of consumption; greenhouse gases are produced by making things and energy, moving things, and carrying people around. Simply put, more people are using more energy and creating and using more... more
This article examines the productivity of agriculture at the Postclassic polity of Xaltocan, Mexico. Employing multiple lines of data (remote sensing, artifactual, ecofactual, chronological, demographic, historic, ethnographic, and... more
This course takes eco-feminist and critical race studies approaches to the anthropology of gender and sexuality, taking “eco-feminism” as an identity, an object of analysis, and as a methodological approach. While “Feminism” in practice... more
This article analyzes the processes of risk visualization characterizing disaster risk reduction policies and, in particular, the digital artifacts the international world of disaster management uses in an effort to view threats to the... more
In the 1990s the Secretary General of the 1992 UN ‘Earth Summit’ and initiator of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (Maurice Strong) asserted in a series of widely quoted lectures that ‘global sustainability’ could... more
Questo articolo presenta un'analisi storica e antropologica di alcune dinamiche socio-politiche legate alla produzione del cotone nella Repubblica dell'Uzbeki-stan. L'intento ultimo è di riflettere su come lo sfruttamento del lavoro e, in... more
... a typical naive set of assumptions about "group oriented" cultures it that the participants within them are basically altruistic, self-effacing, self-sacrificing and sociable. A society of such individuals should exhibit the very best... more
Storytelling has been theorised as a performative, narrative practice, but it has not been employed often as a trope in studies of musical performance. This article outlines a theoretical context for exploring the possibilities of such a... more
Ямсков А.Н. Социальная экология и этноэкология // Антропологическая наука в высшей школе: Методические материалы к оригинальным авторским спецкурсам для специальности № 350100 – Социальная антропология. – М.: ИЭА РАН – РГГУ, 2006, с.... more
A critical response to the trends in environmental history well summarized by Paul Sutter in "TheWorld with Us: The State of American Environmental History", Journal of American History 100 (2013): 94-199. The entire forum is available... more
The use of coastal sand as building material or market commodity is a common practice on Wallis Island. Today, with the current threats posed by climate change, this practice increases the dangers associated with rising sea levels. Thus... more
We review human effects on biodiversity using archaeological and ethnographic cases with contrasting ecologies, population densities, and economies. Relevant trends include increasing human populations, settlement sizes, and permanence;... more
In this paper, I argue that frontiers are dilemmas composed of multiple dualities, be they exclusive and inclusive powers, connected space and national periphery, or modernity and primitiveness. These dilemmas, in consequence, become the... more
Ямсков А.Н., Власкина Т.Ю. Рыболовецкие сообщества и традиционное рыболовство на казачьем Юге России // Этнографическое обозрение, 2013, № 5, с. 3-13 Предваряя серию статей по истории и этнографии традиционного рыболовства... more
A timeline poster juxtaposing thousands of years of American Indian living in the Willamette Valley against the relatively recent arrival of EuroAmerican settlers.
Employing Mauss's notion of the fourth obligation, giving to the gods, this article develops a formulation of ritual exchange to examine the interactive nature of ritual practice. As a modality of interaction, ritual exchange is... more
In 2013 – the year when CO2 emissions hit the 400 ppm threshold for the first time in human history – the annual State of the World report (Worldwatch Institute 2013) was devoted to understanding whether achieving a sustainable society is... more
The paper explores the contribution of social and cultural anthropology to the study of environmental disasters and climate change as it is reflected in the literature. It then makes some suggestions how the anthropology of and in... more
This course investigates a wide variety of environmental conservation projects in Africa. We will examine efforts by colonial and post-colonial states to preserve wilderness in national parks, and how local residents have responded. We... more
This paper describes the arrival of a man-eating leopard in a small Himalayan town in India and the local state's subsequent struggle to control the big cat. By focusing on what went on within the apparatus of the state during this... more
This chapter uses historical and ethnographic research to describe ‘landfilling’ as a regime of waste treatment in the Israeli/Palestinian context; and follows the winding tensions and surprises as the regime has unfolded over time. This... more
Based on extensive fieldwork in Bogotá and the southwestern Amazonian state of Putumayo, Colombia, this book moves across laboratories, greenhouses, forests, and farms. It weaves together an ethnography of two kinds of practitioners—state... more
Review of Dilip Da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers: Alexander’s Eye and Gangas’s Descent, University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia, 2019, Environmental History, 25 (4), Oct, 2020, pp.788-91.
Dal 9 marzo scorso sono vigenti le modifiche apportate agli articoli 9 e 41 della Costituzione con la riforma introdotta dalla Legge Costituzionale n° 1 approvata in Parlamento l'11 febbraio 2022 e pubblicata nel n° 44-22/02/2022 della... more
Course Description: In this course you will learn about differences regarding how people perceive and interact within their natural & built environments. This year, the course is structured around the loose theme of “seeking... more
The articles included in this special collection examine the implementation of varied conservation agendas, seeking to integrate the strengths of a political ecology framework with insights derived from Science and Technology Studies... more
What does it mean to do violence in deep time? How is deep time evoked in our understanding of environmental harm? Environmental transformations have figured prominently in the recent history of Mongolia. Shifts in land use have been... more
The Anthropocene has been a generative concept in recent years and its influence can be felt across a wide range of fields. New Conservation and big data ecology are interrelated trends in ecology and conservation science that have been... more