Environmental Anthropology (EA) Forum

Winter Quarter 2009
Monday 3:30-5:00
Denny Hall, 401

Faculty Coordinator: Stevan Harrell

Schedule

January 19

Matin Luther King Jr. Day - Holiday

Nothing Scheduled

January 26

Deb Winslow, National Science Foundation

BUDDHA AND THE BEES: RECURSIVE INNOVATIONS AND COMMUNITY SELF-FASHIONING AMONG SINHALESE POTTERS

Capital intensive technological change among petty commodity producers often is thought to increase socioeconomic and gender differentiation. But among the Sri Lankan potters I have studied for the past 30 years, this appears not to have happened. Instead, the community has harnessed the power of kinship and memory to maintain egalitarian and communitarian values and practices, and sustain a fragile but eminently practical balance between the needs of individual households and the interests of the community they comprise and on which they depend. I build on economist W.Brian Arthur's theories of origination and archaeologist Sander van der Leeuw's work on potter agency, to argue that culture and social organization comprise support systems that are as vital as capital to successful technological change. If time allows, I also may discuss implications for the perennial problem of units for data collection and analysis in anthropology.

February 2

Eunice Blavascunas (Post-doc, Program on the Environment)

February 9

Ann Anagnost (Professor, Anthropology)

February 16

President's Day Holiday

February 23

Marc Miller (Professor, Marine Affairs)

Marine Affairs and Applied Environmental Anthropology: Fisheries, Marine Protected Areas, and Tourism

March 2

Sara Breslow (PhC, Anthropology)

Conservation and the visual arts in a Spanish nature reserve (tentative title)

March 9

TBD

Title TBA