94453 - ANTHROPOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY

Academic Year 2020/2021

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Local and Global Development (cod. 9200)

Learning outcomes

The course aims to give students a grounding in anthropological approaches to sustainability. Drawing on sub-disciplines such as indigenous ethnology, environmental and economic anthropology, and political and historical ecology, it will train participants to think across established disciplines, and to challenge some basic assumptions behind mainstream approaches.

Course contents

After a general introduction to the anthropology of sustainability, the first part of the course will use lowland South American ethnography to provide a grounding in environmental and ecological anthropology. This section begins with sessions on Amazonian historical ecology, on the ecological relations of production in Amazonian ecosystems, and on the systems of ownership that help to organize the human and symbolic ecology that are associated with them. We then examine the role of shamanism in this symbolic ecology, and how and why shamans are involved in ecological struggles. Shamans ‘see’ in particular ways, but the following session considers how scientific and technical ways of seeing are involved in conservation. This offers a background against which to examine certain conservation tools’ reliance on markets, and the session on PES and REDD sets the scene for a broader discussion of the work of development actors – firstly development elites and brokers, then the influential ‘participation’ paradigm, which is discussed alongside the notion of ‘postdevelopment’. The following session explores gender perspectives in sustainability, and we then turn to attempts to introduce social and environmental ‘responsibility’ programmes into corporate practices at the extractive frontier. We then return to food production, but on different scales, and we consider how food and agriculture have spurred social movements. Building on the more global themes of the preceding sessions, we consider how sustainability is becoming financialized through notions such as ESG, before exploring anthropological contributions to the study of climate change. Developing some of the themes from this topic, we then look at how issues of environmental justice and intersectionality relate to questions of sustainability. The final session offers broader considerations on sustainable global economy and the problem of growth.

Readings/Bibliography

25 February

Introduction: Anthropology and Sustainability

Core texts:

Brightman, M. and J. Lewis 2017. The Anthropology of Sustainability: Beyond Development and Progress. New York: Palgrave

Sivaramakrishnan, Kalyanakrishnan. 2015. “Ethics of Nature in Indian Environmental History: A Review Article [https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X14000092] .” Modern Asian Studies 49, no. 4: 1261–310.

Lu Holt, F. 2005. ‘The Catch-22 of Conservation: Indigenous Peoples, Biologists, and Cultural Change’. Human Ecology 33(2): 199-215.

Zanotti et.al. Political ecology and decolonial research in Utqiaġvik. Journal of Political Ecology Vol. 27, 2020. 44.

Further reading:

Agrawal, A. 2005. Environmentality, Durham: Duke.

Biersack, Aletta and James Greenberg 2006. Reimagining political ecology

Durham: Duke University Press.

Bird Rose, Deborah. 2011. Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and Extinction. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

Dove, M. and C. Carpenter (eds) 2008 Environmental Anthropology: A Historical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.

Gudeman, S. and A. Rivera 1990. Conversations in Colombia: The Domestic Economy in Life and Text. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Martinez Alier, Joan 2002 The Environmentalism of the Poor: A study of ecological conflicts and valuation

Martinez Alier, Joan and Ramachandra Guha 1997. Varieties of Environmentalism. Essays North and South. London: Earthscan.

Tsing, A. 2006. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Durham: Duke.

West, P. 2006. Conservation is our government now: the politics of ecology in Papua New Guinea. Durham: Duke University Press.

26 February-4 March

Sustainability, Scarcity and ‘Pristine’ Environments: Lessons from Historical Ecology

Core texts:

Arroyo-Kalin, M. 2010. ‘The Amazonian Formative: Crop Domestication and Anthropogenic Soils’ Diversity 2(4), 473-504; doi:10.3390/d2040473

Balée, W. (2006). "The research program of historical ecology". Annual Review of Anthropology. Vol. 35, pp5.1-5.24.

Denevan, William. 1992. "The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492." Annals of the Association of American Geographers v. 82 n. 3 (September 1992), pp. 369-385.

Raffles, H. 1999, ‘Local Theory: nature and the making of an Amazonian place’, Cultural Anthropology 14(3), 323-360.

Rival, (2006). Amazonian historical ecologies. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 12 (S1 (Special Issue: Ethnobiology and the Science of Humankind)), S79-S94.

Beckerman, Stephen 1979. 'The abundance of protein in Amazonia: a reply to Gross'. American Anthropologist 81: 533-560.

Politis, G. (1996). "Moving to produce: Nukak mobility and settlement patterns in Amazonia." World Archaeology 27(3): 492-511.

Further reading:

Carneiro, R. 2008. ‘Slash-and-burn agriculture: a closer look at its implications for settlement patterns’. in M. Dove and C. Carpenter (eds) Environmental Anthropology: A Historical Reader. Originally published in 1960, Selected papers of the fifth international congress of anthropological and ethnological sciences.

Lathrap, D. 1968. ‘The “hunting” economies of the tropical forest zone of south America: an attempt at historical perspective’. In R. Lee and I. de Vore (eds) Man the Hunter.

Balée, W. 1993. ‘Indigenous Transformation of Amazonian Forests : An Example

from Maranhão, Brazil’. L'Homme 33(126-128). La remontée de l'Amazone. pp. 231-254.

Heckenberger, M. and E. Neves 2009. ‘Amazonian Archaeology’. Annual Review of Anthropology 38:251-266. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-anthro-091908-164310

Costa, L. 2009. ‘Worthless Movement: Agricultural regression and mobility’. Tipití 7(2).

Alexiades, M. and D. Peluso 2009. ‘Plants “of the ancestors”, plants “of the outsiders”: Ese Eja history, migration and medicinal plants’. In Alexiades (ed) Mobility and migration in indigenous Amazonia: contemporary ethnoecological perspectives.

Ellen, R. 2008. ‘Forest knowledge, forest transformation: Political contingency, historical ecology and the renegotiation of nature in Central Seram. In M. Dove and C. Carpenter (eds) Environmental Anthropology: A Historical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.

Heckenberger, M. 2005. The Ecology of Power: Culture, Place and Personhood in the Southern

Amazon, A.D. 1000-2000. (Chapter 2: ‘Culture and history: the longue durée’, and Chapter 7: ‘In the midst of others: landscapes of memory’)

Posey, D. 2008. ‘Indigenous management of tropical forest ecosystems: the case of the Kayapó Indians of the Brazilian Amazon’, in M. Dove and C. Carpenter (eds) Environmental Anthropology: A Historical Reader. Originally published in 1985, Agroforestry Systems 3: 139-158.

Rival, L. 2016. Huaorani transformations in twenty-first century Ecuador: Treks into the future of time. (Part I, ‘Among forest beings’, especially chapter 3, ‘Historical ecology in Amazonia’.)

Whitehead, N. 2003. ‘Three Patamuna trees. Landscape and history in the Guyana highlands’. In N. Whitehead (ed) History and Historicities in Amazonia.

5-11 March

Ecological relations of production: forest, garden, river

Key readings:

Carneiro da Cunha, M. 2017. ‘Traditional peoples, collectors of diversity’. In Brightman and Lewis (eds) The Anthropology of Sustainability: Beyond Development and Progress.

Heckler, S. and S. Zent 2008. ‘Piaroa Manioc Varietals: Hyperdiversity or Social Currency?’ Human Ecology 36(5). DOI: 10.1007/s10745-008-9193-2

Grotti, V. 2012. ‘Happy with the Enemy: Kinship, Pacification and Corporeal Transformations in Trio Beer Feasts, Northeastern Amazonia’, Anthropology and Humanism 37(2). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1409.2012.01128.x

Stolze Lima, T. 1999. The Two and its Many: Reflections on Perspectivism in a Tupi Cosmology. Ethnos 64/1:107-131.

Virtanen, P. 2011. ‘Guarding, Feeding, and Transforming. Palm Trees in the Amazonian Past and Present.’ In P. Fortis and I. Praet (eds) The Archeological Encounter: Anthropological Perspectives. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/1482074/Guarding_Feeding_and_Transforming._Palm_Trees_in_the_Amazonian_Past_and_Present

Further reading:

Viveiros de Castro 1996. ‘Images of nature and society in Amazonian ethnology’. Annual Review of Anthropology 25: 179-200.

Descola, P. 2006. ‘Beyond nature and culture’. Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthropology 2005, Proceedings of the British Academy 139, pp.137-155. Available at this link [http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CE0QFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdocs.com%2Fxrpis%2Fdescola-beyond-nature-and-culture.html&ei=pVpNUseOKov20gWi1YGADg&usg=AFQjCNHUUL1kR68TZSI0n3qGjecLpwkuEA&bvm=bv.53537100,d.d2k]

Blaser, M. 2009. ‘The Threat of the Yrmo: The Political Ontology of a Sustainable Hunting Program’. American Anthropologist, 111: 10–20.

Balée, W. 1993. ‘Indigenous transformation of Amazonian forests: an example from Maranhão’, Brazil. L'Homme 126-28 XXXIII (2-4): 235-258.

Kohn E. (2007) How dogs dream: Amazonian natures and the politics of transspecies engagement. American Ethnologist 34(1): 3–24.

Raffles, H. 1999, ‘Local Theory: nature and the making of an Amazonian place’, Cultural Anthropology 14(3), 323-360.

Descola, P. 1994. In the Society of Nature: A Native Ecology in Amazonia. (Part II ‘On the proper use of nature’).

Politis, G. 1996. ‘Moving to produce: Nukak mobility and settlement patterns in Amazonia’. World Archaeology 27(3): 492-511.

Uzendowski, M. 2004. ‘Manioc Beer and Meat: Value, reproduction, and cosmic substance among the Napo Runa of the Ecuadorian Amazon’. JRAI 10(4). DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9655.2004.00216.x

Hugh-Jones, C. 1979. From the Milk River: Spatial and temporal processes in Northwest Amazonia. Chapter 6: Production and Consumption.

Shepard, G. 2014. ‘Hunting in Amazonia’ Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265783714_Hunting_in_Amazonia

Costa, L. 2012. ‘Making animals into food among the Kanamari of western Amazonia’. In Brightman, Grotti and Ulturgasheva (eds) Animism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood, Animals, Plants and Things in Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia.

Manioc in the Amazon lecture by Manuela Carneiro da Cunha

https://www.college-de-france.fr/site/en-manuela-carneiro-da-cunha/course-2012-05-24-14h30.htm

12-18 March

Ownership and indigenous ontologies

Core readings:

Brightman, M. 2010. 2010 ‘Creativity and Control: Property in Guianese Amazonia’. Journal de la Société des Américanistes 96(1): 135-167.

Greene, S. 2004. ‘Indigenous People Incorporated? Culture as Politics, Culture as Property in Pharmaceutical Bioprospecting’. Current Anthropology 45(2): 211-37.

De Matos Viegas, S. 2016. ‘Temporalities of ownership: land possession and its transformations among the Tupinambá’. In Brightman, Fausto and Grotti (eds) Ownership and Nurture: studies in native Amazonian property relations.

Descola P., 2008. “Who owns nature ?”, La vie des idées, published online 21 Jan, www.laviedesidees.fr .

Strang, V. 2010 The Summoning of Dragons: Ancestral Serpents and Indigenous Water Rights in Australia and New Zealand. Anthropology News 51(2): 5

Further reading:

Descola, P. 1996. ‘Constructing natures: symbolic ecology and social practice’. In Descola and Pálsson (eds) Nature and Society: anthropological perspectives.

Århem, K. 1996. ‘The cosmic food web: human-nature relatedness in the Northwest Amazon’. In Descola and Pálsson (eds) Nature and Society: anthropological perspectives.

Bonilla, O. 2016. ‘Parasitism and Subjection: modes of Paumari predation’. In Brightman, Fausto and Grotti (eds) Ownership and Nurture: studies in native Amazonian property relations.

Kohn, E. 2007. ‘Animal masters and the ecological embedding of history among the Avila Runa of Ecuador’. In Fausto and Heckenberger (eds) Time and Memory in Indigenous Amazonia.

Anderson, D. 1998 ‘Property as a way of knowing on Evenki lands in Arctic Siberia’ in C. Hann (ed) Property relations: renewing the anthropological tradition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 64-84.

Andrello, G. 2010. ‘Origin Narratives, Transformation Routes Heritage, Knowledge And (a)Symmetries On The Uaupés River’. Vibrant 10(1): 495-528.

Fausto, C. 2012. ‘Too many owners: Mastery and ownership in Amazonia’. In M. Brightman, V. Grotti & O. Ulturgasheva (eds) Animism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood, Animals and Non-Humans in Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia. New York/ Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 29-47.

*Descola P., 2008. “Who owns nature ?”, La vie des idées, published online 21 Jan, www.laviedesidees.fr.

Hann, C. 1998 ‘Introduction’, in C.Hann (ed) Property relations: renewing the anthropological tradition. Cambrige: Cambridge University Press.

Hayden, C. 2004. ‘Prospecting’s Publics’. In K. Verdery and C. Humphrey (eds) Property in question: value transformation in the global economy. Berg, Oxford, pp. 115-39.

Kirsch, S. 2004. Property limits: debates on the body, nature and culture. In Hirsch, E. & M. Strathern 2004 (eds) Transactions and creations: property debates and the stimulus of Melanesia, Berg, Oxford.

Lewis, J. 2005. ‘Whose forest is it anyway? Mbendeje Yaka pygmies, the Ndoki forest and the wider world.’ In T. Widlok and W. Tadesse (eds) Property and equality Volume II: Encapsulation, commercialisation, discrimination. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 56-78.

Strang, V. 2010 The Summoning of Dragons: Ancestral Serpents and Indigenous Water Rights in Australia and New Zealand. Anthropology News

51(2): 5

 

19-25 March.

Forest, Plantation, Finance and Territory in Brazil (with Oiara Bonilla)

MAJER, J. D. & REXHER, H. F. “Are Eucalypts Brazil’s Friend or Foe? An Entomological Viewpoint”. An. Soc. Entomol. Brasil, 28(2): 185-200 (1999).

DA MOTA, R. S. “The Economics of Biodiversity in Brazil: The case of forest conversion”. Discussion paper / Institute for Applied Economic Research.- Brasília : Rio de Janeiro : Ipea, 1990.

SUZANO’S GREEN BONDS REPORT 2018 and

SUZANO’S ANNUAL REPORT 2019

See Virtuale for more readings

 

26 March-8 April

 

Sustainability and Diversity from Shamanism to Climate change

Glenn H. Shepard 2014. ‘Will the Real Shaman Please Stand Up? The Recent Adoption of Ayahuasca Among Indigenous Groups of the Peruvian Amazon.’ In B. Caiuby Labate and C. Cavnar (eds) Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond.

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199341191.003.0002

Virtanen, P. 2014. ‘Materializing Alliances: Ayahuasca Shamanism in and Beyond Western Amazonian Indigenous Communities’. In B. Caiuby Labate and C. Cavnar (eds) Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond. DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199341191.003.0004

Albert, B. 2005. ‘Territoriality, ethnopolitics and development: the Indian movement in the Brazilian Amazon. In A. Surrallés and P. García Hierro (eds) The Land Within: Indigenous territory and the perception of the environment. Entire book available at: https://www.iwgia.org/images/publications//0117_land_ithin.pdf [https://www.iwgia.org/images/publications/0117_land_ithin.pdf]

Conklin, B. 2002. ‘Shamans versus Pirates in the Amazonian Treasure Chest’. American Anthropologist 104(4). DOI: 10.1525/aa.2002.104.4.1050

Barbira Freedman, F. 2015. "Tobacco and Shamanic Agency in the upper Amazon: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives." In E. Rahman (ed)The Master Plant: Tobacco in Lowland South America. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781474220279.ch-004

Kopenawa, D. and B. Albert 2013. The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman.

Shepard, G. 2014. ‘The voice of the shaman’ (review of Kopenawa’s The Falling Sky). New York Review of Books, 6thNovember. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/06/davi-kopenawa-voice-shaman/ ; also available at http://ethnoground.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-kopenawa-galaxy-review-of-falling.html

Book symposium on Kopenawa and Albert’s The Falling Sky in Hau (especially Gow): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/hau/2014/4/2

Nahum-Claudel, C. Vital Diplomacy: The ritual everyday on a dammed river in Amazonia. Chapter 6.


9-15 April

Studying Developers (with Ben Eyre, University of Manchester)

This session explores anthropological approaches to development practitioners. It works through several paradigms: illustrating important interventions and responses that build on or challenge them. Development is both a global (globalizing) regime and a personal, individual endeavour. Anthropologists have approached development and humanitarianism (to which it is often linked) critically for at least 45 years, following the pioneering work of James Ferguson and Arturo Escobar. Latterly, others have rejected or nuanced that critique, extending anthropological treatment of developers in new directions. This session will engage studies of ‘aidland’, the moral turn in anthropology and critique of humanitarianism, audit culture, and challenges to depictions of development activity and passivity.

I

Escobar, A. (1991) ‘Anthropology and the Development Encounter: the Making and Marketing of Development Anthropology’, American Ethnologist, 18(4), pp. 658-682.

Ferguson, J. (1997) ‘Anthropology and Its Evil Twin: “Development” in the Constitution of a Discipline’, in Cooper, F. and Packard, R. (eds.) International Development and the Social Sciences. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp.150-175.

Green, M. (2010) ‘Doing Development and Writing Culture: Knowledge Practices in Anthropology and International Development’, Anthropological Theory, 10(1), pp. 1–23.

Yarrow, T. and Venkatesan, S. 2011. Differentiating Development: Beyond and Anthropology of Critique. Oxford: Berghahn Books

II

Mosse, D. (2011) ‘Introduction: The Anthropology of Expertise and Professionals in International Development’, in Mosse, D. (ed) Adventures in Aidland: The Anthropology of Professionals in International Development. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp.1–32.

Harrison E. (2013) Beyond the looking glass? ‘Aidland’ reconsidered. Critique of Anthropology. 2013;33(3):263-279.

Whitty, BS. (2019) Practising politics: Technical project templates and political practice in a DFID country office. Dev Policy Rev. 2019; 37: O293– O309

III

Ticktin, M. (2006) ‘Where Ethics and Politics Meet: The Violence of Humanitarianism in France’, American Ethnologist, 33(1), pp. 33–49.

Redfield, P. (2006) ‘A Less Modest Witness: Collective Advocacy and Motivated Truth in a Medical Humanitarian Movement’, American Ethnologist, 33(1), pp. 3–26.

Fassin, D. (2011). ‘Chapter Two: Pathetic Choice: Exposing the Misery of the Poor’ in Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present. University of California Press

Fechter, A-M (2016) ‘Aid work as moral labour’, Critique of Anthropology, 36(3), pp. 228–243.

Annuska Derks & Minh T. N. Nguyen (2020) Beyond the state? The moral turn of development in South East Asia, South East Asia Research, 28:1, 1-12

IV

Harper, R. 2000. ‘The social organisation of the IMF’s mission work: an examination of international auditing’. In M. Strathern (ed) Audit cultures: anthropological studies in accountability, ethics and the academy. London: Routledge.

Sampson, S. (2015), Comment the audit juggernaut. Social Anthropology, 23: 80– 82

Kevin P. Donovan (2018) The rise of the randomistas: on the experimental turn in international aid, Economy and Society, 47:1, 27-58

McLellan T. (2020) Impact, theory of change, and the horizons of scientific practice. Social Studies of Science.

V

Lewis, D. and D. Mosse (2006). ‘Introduction’, Development brokers and translators: the ethnography of aid and agencies. Bloomfield: Kumarian Pres

de Laet M, Mol A. (2000)The Zimbabwe Bush Pump: Mechanics of a Fluid Technology. Social Studies of Science, 30(2):225-263

Cross, J. (2013) ‘The 100th Object: Solar Lighting Technology and Humanitarian Goods’, The Journal of Material Culture, 18(4), pp. 367–387

Green, M. (2019), Scripting development through formalization: accounting for the diffusion of village savings and loans associations in Tanzania. J R Anthropol Inst, 25: 103-122

 

16-22 April

Being Sustainable in Sustainable Finance: Making Sense of Scales of Sustainability in Finance. (With Aneil Tripathy)

Archer, Matthew. 2019. "Sustainable Finance." In Oxford Bibliographies: Environmental Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Caradonna, Jeremy L. 2014. Sustainability: A history (Oxford University Press).

Limbert, Michael, and E. Summerson Carr (ed.). 2016. Scale: Discourse and Dimensions of Social Life.

Maltais, Aaron, and Björn Nykvist. 2020. 'Understanding the role of green bonds in advancing sustainability', Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment: 1-20.

Robinson, Thomas Derek, and Jessica Andrea Chelekis. 2016. 'Dying to Consume: Marketing and the Existentialization of Sustainability.' in, Consumer Culture Theory (Emerald Group Publishing Limited).

23-29 April

Protestantism, Islam and spirit of capitalism

Moghul, U.F. and Safar-Aly, S.H. 2014. Green Sukuk: The introduction of Islam’s environmental ethics to contemporary Islamic finance. Georgetown International Environmental Law Review 27(1): 1-60.

Rudnyckyj, D. 2013. From Wall Street to “Halal” Street: Malaysia and the globalization of Islamic finance. The Journal of Asian Studies, 72(4): 831-848.

2017. “Subjects of Debt: Financial Subjectification and Collaborative Risk in Malaysian Islamic Finance.” American Anthropologist. 119(2): 269-283. [web [https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/aman.12861] ]

2016. “Islamizing Finance: From Magical Capitalism to a Spiritual Economy.” Anthropology Today. 32(6): 8-12. [web [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8322.12310/full] ]

2014. “Regimes of Self-Improvement: Globalization and the Will to Work.” Social Text. 32(3): 109-127. [web [http://socialtext.dukejournals.org/content/32/3_120/109.abstract] ]

2014. “Economy in Practice: Islamic Finance and the Problem of Market Reason.” American Ethnologist. 41(1):110-127. [web [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/amet.12063/abstract] ]

2014. “Islamic Finance and the Afterlives of Development in Malaysia.” Political and Legal Anthropology Review. 37(1):69-88. [web [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/plar.12051/abstract] ]

Pitluck, Aaron Z. 2013. “Islamic Banking and Finance: Alternative or Façade?” in Karin Knorr Cetina and Alex Preda, The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Finance, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bornstein E. 2002. Developing faith: theologies of economic development in Zimbabwe. Journal of Religion in Africa 32(1):4–31 .

Haynes, N. 2012. ‘Pentecostalism and the morality of money: prosperity, inequality, and religious sociality on the Zambian copperbelt’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute(N.S.) 18: 123-39.

Keane, W. 2002. Sincerity, ‘Modernity,’ and the Protestants. [http://sitemaker.umich.edu/webbkeane/files/sincerity_modernity_prots.pdf] In Cultural Anthropology vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 65-92.

Buyandelgeriyn, M. (2007), Dealing with uncertainty: Shamans, marginal capitalism, and the remaking of history in postsocialist Mongolia. American Ethnologist, 34: 127-147. doi:10.1525/ae.2007.34.1.127 [https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.2007.34.1.127]

Wright, R. 2009. ‘The Art of Being Crente: The Baniwa Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Sustainable Development’. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 16: 202–226.

Further reading:

Weber, M. The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Various editions.

Beidelman TO. 1982. Colonial Evangelism: A Socio-Historical Study of an East African Mission at the Grassroots. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press

Bornstein, E. The Spirit of Development: Protestant NGOs, Morality, and Economics in Zimbabwe. Stanford UP.

Comaroff JL, Comaroff J. 1997. Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa, Vol. 1. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press

Deneulin, S. [http://opus.bath.ac.uk/15954/] and Rakodi, C., 2011. Revisiting religion: development studies thirty years on. World Development, 39 (1), pp. 45-54.

Freeman, D. ‘Introduction: The Pentecostal ethic and the spirit of development’, in D. Freeman (ed) 2012. Pentecostalism and Development: Churches, NGOs and Social Change in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan.

Hearn J. 2002. The ‘invisible’ NGO: US evangelical missions in Kenya. Journal of Religion in Africa. 32(1):32–60

Jacka J. K. (2005), Emplacement and Millennial Expectations in an Era of Development and Globalization: Heaven and the Appeal of Christianity for the Ipili. American Anthropologist, 107: 643–653.

Stambach A. 2010. Faith in Schools: Religion, Education, and American Evangelicals in East Africa. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press

Daromir Rudnyckyj Beyond Debt: Islamic Experiments in Global Finance (University of Chicago Press)

Ong, Aihwa 1988 ‘The Production of Possession: Spirits and the Multinational Corporation in Malaysia’. American Ethnologist 15(1): 28-42

Maurer, B. 2005. Mutual life, limited: Islamic banking, alternative currencies, lateral reason. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

_________2008 ‘Re-socialising finance? Or dressing it in Mufti? Calculating alternatives for cultural economies’. Journal of Cultural Economy 1(1):65-78.

30 April-6 May

Anthropocene, Climate Change, and the Anthropology of Science

Ulturgasheva, O., & Bodenhorn, B. (2017). Climate Strategies: Thinking through Arctic Examples. Royal Society of London. Proceedings A. Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 375(20160363), 1-13. [375: 20160363]. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2016.0363

Callison, Candis. 2014. How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts. Durham: Duke University Press.

Hughes, David McDermont. 2013. Climate Change and the Victim Slot: From Oil to Innocence. American Anthropologist 115(4): 570-581

Susan A. Crate and Mark Nuttal 2009. Anthropology & Climate Change: From Encounters to Actions. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.

Contribution of anthropology to the study of climate change

Barnes, Jessica, Michael Dove, Myanna Lahsen, Andrew Mathews, Pamela McElwee, Roderick McIntosh, Frances Moore, Jessica O'Reilly, Ben Orlove, Rajindra Puri, Harvey Weiss & Karina Yager 2013. Contribution of anthropology to the study of climate change. Nature Climate Change 3: 541–544. DOI: 10.1038/nclimate1775

Cometti, Geremia, 2015. Lorsque le brouillard a cessé de nous écouter. Changement climatique et migrations chez les Q’eros des Andes péruviennes. Peter Lang.

Crate, Susan and Mark Nuttall 2016[2009]. Anthropology and Climate Change: From Actions to Transformations. CRC Press.

Chua, L. & H. Fair. 2019. Anthropocene. In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology

Latour, Bruno 2017. Anthropology at the Time of the Anthropocene - a personal view of what is to be studied . In M Brightman and J Lewis (eds) The Anthropology of Sustianability: Beyond Development and Progress. Palgrave.

Anthropocene Primer http://anthropoceneprimer.org

*Igoe, J. 2010 The Spectacle of Nature in the Global Economy of Appearances: Anthropological Engagements with the Spectacular Mediations of Transnational Conservation (2010). Critique of Anthropology 30(4).

*Ingold, T. 2008. ‘Globes and spheres: The topology of environmentalism’. In M. Dove and C. Carpenter (eds) Environmental Anthropology: A Historical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.

*Aporta, C. and E. Higgs 2005. Satellite culture: global positioning systems, Inuit wayfinding, and the need for a new account of technology. Current Anthropology 46, 729-53.

*Brightman, M. 2012 ‘Maps and Clocks in Amazonia: the Things of Conversion and Conservation’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 18(3): 554-71.

Brosius, P. 1997. ‘Endangered Forest, Endangered People: Environmentalist Representations of Indigenous Knowledge’. Human Ecology 25(1): 47-69.

*Cabral de Oliveira, J. 2012 “Vocês Sabem Porque Vocês Viram!”: Reflexão Sobre Modos De Autoridade Do Conhecimento”. Revista de Antropologia 55(1)

Leys Stepan, Nancy 2001. Picturing tropical nature. London: Reaktion Books.

*Turner, T. 1991. Representing, Resisting, Rethinking: Historical Transformations of Kayapo Culture and Anthropological Consciousness. In Colonial Situations: Essays on the Contextualization of Ethnographic Knowledge(ed.) G. Stocking. History of Anthropology. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Further reading

Adger, W.N., Benjaminsen, T.A., Brown, K., and Svarstad, H., 2001. Advancing a Political Ecology of Global Environmental Discourses. Development and Change 32, 681-715.

Baker, L., M. Dove, D. Graef, A. Keleman, D. Kneas, S. Osterhoudt and J. Stoike 2013. ‘Whose diversity counts? The politics and paradoxes of modern diversity’. Sustainability 5: 2495-2518, www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability

*Bravo, M. 1999. Ethnographic navigation and the geographical gift, in Geography and enlightenment (eds) D. Livingstone and C. Withers Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Conklin, B. 1997. ‘Body Paint, Feathers and VCRs: Aesthetics and Authenticity in Amazonian Activism’. American Ethnologist 24(4): 711-37.

*Peluso, N. L. (1995) 'Whose Woods are These? Counter-Mapping Forest Territories in Kalimantan, Indonesia' Antipode 27(4): 383-406

*Tsing, A. Lowenhaupt 2008. ‘Becoming a tribal elder, and other green dvelopment fantasies’. In M. Dove and C. Carpenter (eds) Environmental Anthropology: A Historical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.

Århem, K. 1998. Powers of place: landscape, territory and local belonging in Northwest Amazonia. In Locality and belonging (ed.) N. Lovell, 75-98. London: Routledge.

Carneiro da Cunha, M. 2009. “Relações e dissensões entre os saberes tradicionais e os saberes científicos”. In: Cultura com aspas. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify. Pp. 301-310.

*Cepek, M. 2012. A future for Amazonia: Randy Borman and Cofán environmental politics. Austin: University of Texas Press. (chapter 5).

Chapin, M., Lamb, Z., & Threlkeld, B. (2005) 'Mapping Indigenous Lands' Annual Review of Anthropology 34: 619-638

Davidov, V. 2013 Amazonia as pharmacopia. Critique of Anthropology 33 (3): 243-262

*Gell, A. 1985. How to read a map: remarks on the practical logic of navigation. Man (n.s.) 20, 271-86.

Gow, P. 1995. Land, people and paper in Western Amazonia. In The anthropology of landscape: perspectives on place and space, (ed.) E. Hirsch and M. O’Hanlon, 43-62. Oxford: Clarendon.

*Guyer, J. and Eric Lambin (eds.) Time and African Land Use. Ethnography and Remote Sensing. 2007. Special issue of Human Ecology, 35,1

Hill, J. 1989. Ritual production of environmental history among the Arawakan Wakuénai of Venezuela. Human ecology 17, 1-25.

Graham, L. 2005. ‘Image and Instrumentality in a Xavante Politics of Existential Recognition: The Public Outreach Work of Ehénhiritipa Pimental Barbosa’. American Ethnologist 32(4): 622-41.

Harley, J. B. (1988) 'Maps, knowledge, and power' in The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments D. Cosgrove, S. Daniels (eds.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 277-312

Harmsworth, G. (1998) 'Indigenous Values and GIS: a Method and a Framework' Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor 6(3): 1-7

Latour, B. 1987. ‘Les “vues” de l’esprit: une introduction à l’anthropologie des sciences et des techniques’. Réseaux5(27): 79-96.

Leach, J. 2012. Constituting aesthetics and utility: Copyright, patent and the purification of knowledge objects in an art and science collaboration [http://www.haujournal.org/index.php/hau/article/view/23] . Hau 2(1): 213-45.

Lewis, M. (ed) 1998. Cartographic Encounters: Perspectives on Native American Mapmaking and Map Use. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lohmann L. 1993. ‘Green Orientalism’. The Ecologist 23(6): 202-4.

Lynch, M. and S. Edgerton 1988. ‘Aesthetics and digital image processing: representational craft in contemporary astronomy’. In G. Fyfe and J. Law 1988 Picturing power: Visual depiction and social relations. London: Routledge.

Lynch, M. and Woolgar 1988 Introduction: Sociological orientations to representational practices in science. Human Studies 11: 99-116.

Orlove, Ben. 1993. ‘The Ethnography of Maps: The cultural and Social Contexts of Cartographic Representation in Peru’. Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization. Vol 30(1), pp. 29 – 46.

Pacheco de Oliveira, J. 2010. Narrativas e imagens sobre povos indígenas e

Amazonia: uma perspectiva processual da fronteira. Indiana 27: 19-46.

Rudwick, M. 1976. The Emergence of a Visual Language for Geological Science [http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=rudwick%201976%20visual%20language&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CD4QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philoscience.unibe.ch%2Fdocuments%2Feducational_materials%2FRudwick1976%2FRudwick1976.pdf&ei=vDyAUYv9N4nD0QXXpYCgDw&usg=AFQjCNEHLLg-vQ0pndcbKkQGUBcnJO4E9g&sig2=2F7NzwS7aVNxg3oHHZeDzA&bvm=bv.45645796,d.d2k] 1760-1840 , History of Science, 14:3=25, p.149 -195

Pereira, E. 2012. Ciborgues indígenas.br e a aldeia global. São Paulo: USP

Santos-Granero, F. 1998. Writing history into the landscape: space, myth, and ritual in contemporary Amazonia. American Ethnologist 25, 128-148.

Scott, J. C. (1998) Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Sletto, B. (2012) [http://blogs.utexas.edu/participatory-mapping/files/2012/12/Portal_Participatory-Mapping_2012.pdf]

Strathern, M. 2013. Learning to see in Melanesia. Hau Masterclass series 2. Available at: http://www.haujournal.org/index.php/masterclass/issue/current/showToc

Turnbull, David. 1993 [1989]. Maps are territories, science is an atlas. A portfolio of exhibits. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Vidal, S. 2003. The Arawak-speaking groups of northwestern Amazonia: Amerindian cartography as a way of preserving and interpreting the past. In Histories and historicities in Amazonia (ed.) N. Whitehead, 33-58. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Whitehead, N. 1998. Indigenous cartography in lowland South America and the Caribbean. In The history of cartography, vol. 2: Cartography in the traditional African, American, Arctic, Australian and Pacific societies, (ed.) D. Woodward and G.M. Lewis, bk. 3, 301-326. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Counting Differently Seminar: Will Stahl-Timmins on ‘Visualising Health and Environment Data: http://stsoxford.wordpress.com/tag/counting-differently/

7 May Final student presentations

Prepare presentations on a subject of your choice, with slides, in preparation for your essay.

Teaching methods

The course will be taught through the discussion of ethnographic case studies. Sessions will alternate between lectures, and student-led seminars. All students must read at least three of the texts for each session in advance of the seminar, and prepare notes and a set of points for discussion. In the final session each student must give  a class presentation based on wider engagement with course materials and themes, on subjects of their own choice, accompanied by slides, lasting between 8 and 10 minutes. This material will form the basis of an open discussion to delve more deeply into the themes that emerge.

Assessment methods

Assessment will be through oral examination, during which students must discuss an essay of c. 3000 words, on a theme based on the course, to be agreed with Prof. Brightman, which they must submit at least one week before the examination. Students should demonstrate initiative and are strongly encouraged to explore readings beyond the course bibliography, and to draw on their own experience, fieldwork etc. The argument of the essay must engage with anthropological theory, and points must be substantiated with ethnographic evidence.

Students are also recommended to familiarise themselves with one or two detailed (i.e. book length) ethnographic case studies, which they can use to illustrate ideas discussed during the course. The reading list provided is intended as a guide, and students are urged to explore work published in major anthropology journals, such as Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, Cultural Anthropology, Social Anthropology, Current Anthropology, L'Homme (in French) or Mana (in Portuguese).

Office hours

See the website of Marc Andrew Brightman

SDGs

Good health and well-being Gender equality Reduced inequalities Life on land

This teaching activity contributes to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda.