Acting globally: Eco-politics in Papua New Guinea
http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/journal/vol3no3/kirsch.html
This article, by Stuart Kirsch, Visiting Assistant Professor in Anthropology and a Fellow in Urgent Anthropology of the Royal Anthropological Institute and the University of London, covers the mining industry and its impacts on the environment and the Ok Tedi River as well as the Yonggom community that live around it. The Yonggom have become political activists in order to protect their remaining land and resources. 30,000 indigenous peoples filed a lawsuit against Broken Hill Propriety Company, Ltd. (BHP), Australia's largest corporation which owns and operates Ok Tedi Mining Ltd. Kirsch then goes on to explain the 'trend': "The Yonggom case is part of a growing trend. One of the defining features of late capitalism is the completion of a process began centuries ago: the extension of the global economic system into the unexploited regions of the Earth. In the world's remaining equatorial rain forests, indigenous communities often come into conflict with the states and transnational corporations which seek to exploit their natural resources. These conflicts may have tragic consequences when states fail to protect people from the degradation caused by logging, mining and petroleum projects." This further serves to bring the category of 'indigenous' to the forefront in world politics.
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Amazon Conservation Team
http://www.ethnobotany.org/
"The Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) was created in 1995 with the conviction that if international rainforest conservation efforts are to succeed, the active and meaningful participation of indigenous people is essential. With the guidance of tribal elders, shamans, traditional authorities, and leading western conservationists, ACT has developed a uniquely successful and cost-effective approach that we term biocultural conservation. This ACT methodology incorporates the protection of biodiversity, strengthening of traditional health systems, and cultural preservation into a unified system. ACT always implements this methodology with the indigenous communities we are privileged to have as our partners. ACT also works closely with local governments in order to ensure that our efforts are adopted and validated by local authorities." The web site gives details of the Team's officers and staff, a full statement of its goals and policies togther with information about current projects, a listing of publications and the full text of the ACT newsletter.
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Anthropological Center for Training and Research on Global Environmental Change
http://www.indiana.edu/~act/
The Anthropological Center for Training and Research on Global Environmental Change (ACT) is hosted by the University of Indiana. It is designed to be interdisciplinary and to place greater emphasis on local responses to environmental change than is the norm at global change centres. The centre's research is mostly concerned with the situation within the Amazonian forest. The site offers the possibility of acquiring publications by members of the centre but these are not directly available online.
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Anthropology and the Environment
http://www.eanth.org/
The purpose of Anthropology and the Environment, a Section, of the American Anthropological Association, is to foster research and communication on issues relating to the interface between culture and the environment (including rural, suburban and urban communities), particularly on how people interact with, respond to and bring about changes in the physical and biotic environment. The section's website is a rich source of information which, in addition to listing the byelaws and officers of the section, provides links to other Internet resources and databases and disseminates information about conferences, calls for papers and job openings via a mailing list.
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Big Volcano Ecotourism Resource Centre
http://www.bigvolcano.com.au/ercentre/ercpage.htm
This is an Australian based resource centre which provides many links and resources for responsible ecotourism. It is part of the CERRA World Heritage Information Network. The Big Volcano Ecotourism Resource Centre advertises itself as a comprehensive guide to ecotourism practice, ecologically sustainable development (ESD) and general tourism and travel best practice management sites worldwide. It provides information on ongoing projects, plus the latest articles. It lists guidelines and certification processes, as well as information on sustainable management and development.
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Billie Jean Isbell Andean collection: images from the Andes
http://isbellandes.library.cornell.edu/
The Billie Jean Isbell Andean collection forms part of Cornell digital library. It provides free access to over 1,500 photographs taken by anthropologist Professor Isbell in the southern Andean department of Ayacucho and specifically in the village of Chuschi, Peru. The materials are sub-divided into thematic sections which include: gender; rituals; folk art political protest posters ( many made by and relating to refugees in Lima, Peru, in Santiago, Chile and in Miami, Florida during the 1980s-1990s); vertical ecology of the Andes; Inka Observations of the Zenith Passage of the Sun. The site also contains the full text of selected ethnographies and articles by professor Ishbell. These include: To Defend Ourselves: Ecology and Ritual in an Andean Village. Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1985. Copyright and technical information is displayed on the website.
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Claiming the high ground : Sherpas, subsistence and environmental change in the highest Himalaya, by Stanley F. Stevens
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft8b69p1t6/
This is the full-text electronic version of the book originally published in 1993. The Khumbu Sherpas have been depicted as victims of the world's highest-altitude tourist boom. Stevens's questions this and asks whether the flow of outsiders to Mt. Everest and the heights of Nepal has in fact destroyed a stable, finely balanced relationship between the Sherpas and their environment. Stevens's use of oral history and cultural ecology suggests that tourism is not the watershed circumstance many have considered it to be. Drawing on extensive interviews and data gathered during three years of fieldwork, and with the use of numerous maps and charts, he documents the Sherpas' ingenious adaptation to high-altitude conditions, their past and present agricultural, pastoral, trade, and forest management practices, and their own perspectives on the environmental history of their homeland. The book is made available on the Web as part of the University of California Press's eScholarship Editions project.
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Cleaning up Ok Tedi: Settlement Favors Yonggom People
http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/journal/vol4no1/oktedi.html
This article by Stuart Kirsch, assistant research scientist in Anthropology and fellow in Urgent Anthropology of the Royal Anthropological Institute, is part of the online Journal of the International Institute. It is a follow-up to the article "Acting Globally:Eco- politics in Papua New Guinea" and sums up the settlement favouring the Yonggom people against the BHP, or Broken Hill Proprietary Company, Ltd., Australia's largest corporation and owner/operator of the Ok Tedi gold and copper mines. The corporation was damaging the environment by dumping 80,000 tons of tailings into the Ok Tedi River daily. On June 12, 1996 an out of court settlement was reached that forces BHP and its subsidiary, Ok Tedi Mining Ltd. to construct appropriate tailings containment facilities. The expectant costs for the corporation will then be approximately 350 millions dollars and the facilities will mark the first ever attempt by Papua New Guinea mines to not dump tailings directly into river and sea. Kirsch goes on further to explain the settlement, the events leading up to it and the involvement of the 30,000 indigenous plaintiffs, and the environmental destruction the tailings produce.
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Concepts of Indigenous Environmental Knowledge in Scientific and Development Studies Literature: a Critical Assessment by Roy F. Ellen and Holly J. Harris
http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Rainforest/SML_files/Occpap/indigknow.occpap_TOC.html
This is the full-text of a working paper by Roy Ellen and Holly Harris, both of the University of Kent. In the paper they critically assess the 'status of, and claims made for' Indigenous Knowledge (IK) in anthropological literature. The authors take for granted that IK is useful in some contexts and examine how IK may or may not play a significant role in the wider arena of 'green' arguments and scientific and political discourses. The paper is an Avenir des Peuples des Forets Tropicales (APFT) Working Paper.
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Cultural Ecology Proseminar
http://www.cwu.edu/~geograph/prosem1.html
This site, a curriculum for a course in Cultural Ecology maintained by the University of Minnesota, contains bibliographic literature on themes in cultural ecology, including frequently cited works on the subject. Topic areas include environmental perception, political economy, agricultural ecology, feminist geography, environmental risk, development ethics and environmental ethics.
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Culture and power in Banaras : community, performance, and environment, 1800-1980, edited by Sandria Freitag
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft6p3007sk/
This is the full-text e-version of the book originally published in 1989. The essays in the volume are arranged into three sections. Section One examines the performance genres that have drawn audiences from throughout the city. Section Two focuses on the areas of neighborhood, leisure, and work, examining the processes by which urban residents use a sense of identity to organize their activities and bring meaning to their lives. Section Three links these experiences within Banaras to a series of "larger worlds," ranging from language movements and political protests to disease ecology and regional environmental impact. The book is made available on the Web as part of the University of California Press's eScholarship Editions project.
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David G. Casagrande: Professional and Academic Perspectives of Ecological Anthropology
http://www.enviroeducation.com/interviews/david-casagrande/
This page of The Environmental Education Directory features an interview with the Ecological Anthropologist David Casagrande. This personal and informative interview provides a professional and academic perspective on potential careers, educational information, industry trends, and general information on the discipline of Ecological Anthropology.
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Ecological and Environmental Anthropology
http://www.uga.edu/eea/index.html
Ecological and Environmental Anthropology is an online, peer reviewed journal produced by the graduate students of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Georgia. It publishes articles and reviews by scholars in diverse fields such as anthropology, ecology, and geography, as well as practitioners who specialize in conservation, health, and other socio-natural issues. The journal's web pages include information about editorial staff and policy, guidelines for intending authors and book reviewers as well as access to published issues.
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Ecological Anthropology
http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/ecologic.htm
The Department of Anthropology at The University of Alabama
has maintained an ecological anthropology guide "prepared by students for students." Included is general information, key literature, leading figures in the discipline, sources and bibliography, principal concepts, criticisms, methodologies, and links to relevant web sites.
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Ecological Ethnobotany:Stumbling Toward New Practices and Paradigms
http://www.etfrn.org/etfrn/workshop/biodiversity/documents/hunt2.pdf
"The practice of ethnobotany has changed over the past century since the coining of the term ethnobotany by John Harshberger in 1896. This shift in practice is revealed through an examination of current definitions of ethnobotany which emphasize ethnobotany as the study of peoples interactions with plants. The influence of ethnoecology has challenged ethnobotany to adopt a more holistic and accountable perspective. An ecological ethnobotany is one possible response to these critiques. Ecological ethnobotany may be tentatively defined as the relational study of people's interactions with plants as situated in an ecological and social context. Concerns with accountability have led both ethnobotanists, and the people with whom they work, to develop codes of conduct. There is also a developing body of international law to which ethnobotanists must be attentive. These developments within the practice of ethnobotany suggest that the ethnobotany of the future will become more holistic in approach and based upon cooperative research projects developed jointly between ethnobotanists and plant harvesters." [Author's abstract.]
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Ecology and Society: A Journal of Integrative Science for Resilience and Sustainability
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/
Ecology and Society (formerly Conservation Ecology) is an online, peer reviewed journal published by the Resilience Alliance, an international multidisciplinary research group comprising ecologists, economists, mathematicians and social scientists. The journal aims to publish articles that explore '... the relationship between society and the life-supporting ecosystems on which human wellbeing ultimately depends.' Publication of the journal takes place entirely on the Internet. As articles are accepted they are published in an 'Issue-in-Progress', every six months the 'Issue-in-Progress' becomes a 'New Issue'. The website is mirrored in South Africa, Sweden, and Canada and provides (free) access to all past and current issues as well as information about the editorial board and how to submit articles.
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Forest knowledge, forest transformation : political contingency, historical ecology and the renegotiation of nature, by Roy Ellen
http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Rainforest/dalhou.html
In this paper, Ellen discusses the historical ecology and changing relationship with the forest of the Nuaulu of Seram. He places the discussion in the context of the increasing globalisation of environmental and political views. The Nuaulu have been politically involved and, both indirectly and directly, subject to variations in the spice trade since the 17th century and, more recently, increased cash cropping, logging and transmigration. Throughout there has been significant forest modification and involvement in the market. Ellen argues that the Nuaulu have continually renegotiated their perceptions of the forest in relation to social changes. At present, the Nuaulu appear to be adopting a particularly 'environmentalist' rhetoric whilst in the past they have been open to environmental change.
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Human consequences of deforestation in the Moluccas
http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Rainforest/mol_Intro.html
This paper written by Roy Ellen looks at the effects of deforestation on the lives of local people in the Moluccas, Southeast Asia. The anthropogenic impact on the island's forests is put into an historical context and the interaction between factors commonly cited as posing a threat to tropical forests i.e. swidden agriculture, plantation cropping and logging, are discussed using the Nuaulu of Seram as a case study.
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Human Ecology : An Interdisciplinary Journal
http://maxweber.hunter.cuny.edu/anthro/ecology.html
Human Ecology provides a forum for papers concerned with the complex and varied systems of interaction between people and their environment. Research papers from such diverse fields as anthropology, geography, psychology, biology, sociology, and urban planning are welcomed. The journal also has a book review section. The web site gives details of th editorial board and policy as well as guidelines for the submission of articles. A link from the site to that of the current publisher, Springer, gives access to a full contents listing for all published volumes.
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Human Ecology Review
http://www.humanecologyreview.org/
Human Ecology Review is a refereed journal published twice a year by the Society for Human Ecology. The Journal publishes peer reviewed research and theory on the interaction between humans and the environment and other links between culture and nature. It provides access to full-text articles through a Web-based search facility.
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Indigenous Knowledge of the Rainforest: Perception, Extraction and Conservation by Roy Ellen
http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Rainforest/malon.html
In this article, Ellen reviews how rainforest populations conceptualise their interactions, construct their ethnobiological knowledge and alter and maintain the character of forest through their activities. His discussion reinforces the observation that indigenous peoples have perceived, interacted with and made use of tropical rainforest in historically diverse ways, and that this diversity has sometimes been obscured by the understandable prominence given to the experiences of particular peoples. This process of globalising particular instances has resulted in an oversimplification of the relationships which people can establish with forest.
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Institute for Applied Ecology, University of Canberra, Australia
http://aerg.canberra.edu.au/
The Institute for Applied Ecology is an interdisciplinary group of academic staff, postdoctoral fellows, postgraduate students and adjunct fellows at the University of Canberra. The mission of the Institute is to put ecology to work in natural resource management. This is achieved in part by "undertaking high quality research to improve the understanding of ecology and so improve the basis for decision-making in natural resource management and sustainable development." Another focus is to provide continuing education and consultancy services in biological resource science and management, and to promote the dissemination of information on environmental management issues among the general community.
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Journal of Ecological Anthropology
http://shell.cas.usf.edu/%7ejea/
The Journal of Ecological Anthropology is an interdisciplinary forum for innovative academic exploration of the interface between humans and their sociocultural and biophysical environments. Subject areas include, but are not limited to, anthropology of conservation, historical ecology, evolution of human ecosystems, development anthropology, human population ecology, ethnobiology and comparative indigenous knowledge systems, ecology of health and nutrition,paleoecology, systems anthropology, primate socioecology, and information ecology. The journal is published by the Department of Anthropology of the University of South Florida. The full-text of the journal is available only on subscription in printed format but the journal's website gives a contents listing from the first issue in 1997 and the full-text of many articles is also available online. Other services on the site include a statement of editorial policy, guidelines for potential contributors and subscription information for the print version.
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Méga-Tchad
http://www.uni-bayreuth.de/afrikanistik/mega-tchad/index.html
This is the website of the Méga-Tchad network, a multidisciplinary and international network for research on the history and evolution of the societies in the Lake Chad basin. The site provides a list of publications from the conferences and seminars of l'ORSTOM - IRD collection, a database for membership registration, and several links to other publications on line, research centres, and different projects. Current research programs include the relations between man and environment in this part of Africa and the anthropology of food in the Lake Chad basin. The Méga-Tchad network publishes since 1986 a biannual bulletin available online. The proceedings of previous conferences and an archive of previous Bulletin's dating back to 1989 are available online in the PDF file format. Users will require Adobe Acrobat Reader software to view these.
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National Geographic Society publications index
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/resources/ngs/publications/explore.html
This site provides free access to the index of publications of the National Geographic Society which is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world. It includes references to over 30,000 journal articles, books, conference proceedings and maps published by the society since 1885. They include materials issued in National Geographic Magazine. Topics of interest include geography, conservation, environmental policy, world cuulture and history. They include popular items relating to the ethnography and study of world cultures worldwide. The database may be searched or browsed. Entries give titles and key words.
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