Header image courtesy Spaceworks Tacoma/ Tlingit artist Nahaan’s ‘Coastal Wombyn’s Resistance.’
ANTH 339 – HSU, Fall 2020, Online
Schedule below is subject to change with fair notice. See Canvas for details & due dates – See the syllabus for description of assignments, class policies, etc.
* Denotes assignment/participation due dates
+ Denotes optional course materials
Part I: Neocolonialism, Science, & Conservation
Anti-cholera inoculation in Calcutta in 1894.
Week 1 (08/24 to 08/28) Epistemologies & Power
Read/Watch/listen:
- Fukuzawa, Sherry. 2019. What is the role of anthropology in accepting different ways of knowing in the Academy? Teaching Anthropology.
- Robin Kimmerer Bioneers Talk – Mishkos Kenomagwen: The Teachings of Grass
- Colonial Ecology
*Attend/Complete:
- 08/27, 10 a.m. PDT. Zoom Syllabus review, Q&A, meet & greet (Optional).
- 08/30 Canvas Discussion #1: Introduction Thread (Mandatory)
+Optional material for further learning:
Week 2 (8/31 to 09/04) Conservation as Neocolonialism
Read/Watch/listen:
- The Achilles Heel of Conservation
- Mordecai Ogada, Director of Conservation Solutions Afrika – The Big Conservation Lie (Start at 44min)
- Garland, Elizabeth. 2008. The Elephant in the Room: Confronting the Colonial Character of Wildlife Conservation in Africa. African Studies Review 51(3):51-74 (Canvas Link).
*Attend/Complete:
+Optional material for further learning:
- Zaitchik 2018, How Conservation Became Colonialism
- Decolonising Conservation is About the Land, Stupid (more from Ogada)
Week 3 (09/07 to 09/11) Decolonizing Conservation
Read/Watch/listen:
- West and Aini, 2018, Decolonising Conservation
- Teju Adisa-Farrar on remapping the world (For the Wild Podcast)
- It’s time to stop lionizing Dian Fossey as a conservation hero
*Attend/Complete:
- 09/10 Zoom meeting/Canvas discussion/Reading lab #2: Decolonization
+Optional material for further learning:
- Tuck and Yang 2012, Decolonization is not a metaphor
- Whyte 2018, White Allies, Let’s Be Honest about Decolonization
- Methods of Decolonization
Week 4 (09/14 to 09/18) National Parks & Settler Colonialism
Read/Watch/listen:
- Reed, Kaitlin. 2020. “White Supremacist Roots of American Environmentalism” L4HSU talk on August 3, 2020
- Gilio-Whitaker 2019, The Story We’ve Been Told About National Parks Is Incomplete
- Rethinking the Colonial Mentality of Our National Parks
*Attend/Complete:
- 09/24 Due: Reading Assessment #2: Coloniality of National Parks
+Optional material for further learning:
- Why we must teach the ugly side of public lands history + a tool to help
- (Online book?) Spence 2000, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of National Parks
- Distribution of parks in U.S. neighborhoods reveals racial disparities
Part II Neoliberal Conservation
The Tiger King
Week 5 (09/27 to 10/04) Green Capitalism
Read/Watch/listen:
- Chapin 2004, A Challenge to Conservationists
- Adams 2017, Sleeping with the enemy? Biodiversity conservation, corporations, and the green economy
- Buscher, Brockingdon, Igoe, and Neves 2012, Towards a synthesized critique of neoliberal conservation.
*Attend/Complete:
+Optional material for further learning:
- Brockington and Duffy 2011, Capitalism and Conservation.
- Dempsey and Suarez 2015, Arrested Development? The Promises and Paradoxes of “Selling Nature to Save It”
- ‘Green’ colonialism is ruining Indigenous lives in Norway
Week 6 (10/04 to 10/10) The Spectacle: Nature Fetishism as Conservation
Read/Watch/listen:
- Music Video: Swift, Taylor. 2015. Wildest Dreams.
- Blog: West, Paige (n.d.) Part One.
- Podcast: Reshaping the Landscape of Conservation Media at Jackson Wild.
- Online article: For Chimps, Human Touch Can Hurt
- Peer-reviewed article: Duffy, Rosaleen, and Lorraine Moore. 2010. Neoliberalising Nature? Elephant‐Back Tourism in Thailand and Botswana
*Attend/Complete:
- 10/08 Zoom meeting/Canvas discussion/Reading lab #3: The Spectacle, Capitalism & Conservation
+Optional material for further learning:
- Special Report: The Amazon Is the New Frontier for Deadly Wildlife Tourism
- Human-Primate Interactions
- Painting: “The Dream” 1910 by Henri Rousseau
Part III Displacement & Green Militarization
Moses Ole Mpoe, Maasai activist, speaks at a rally in Mau Narok in November, 2010.
Week 7 (10/11 to 10/18) Displacement & Dispossession
Read/Watch/listen:
- Agrawal and Redford 2009, Conservation and Displacement: An Overview
- Maasai of Loliondo. 2015. “Olosho” Produced by Maasai about their eviction
- Mei-Singh, Laurel. 2016. Carceral Conservationism: Contested Landscapes and Technologies of Dispossession at Ka‘ena Point, Hawai‘i.
- Ecotourism is being used to displace one of East Africa’s long-standing indigenous people
*Attend/Complete:
+Optional material for further learning:
- Property and Difference in Nature Conservation. Maano Ramutsindela, Innocent Sinthumule
- Rights not ‘fortress conservation’ key to save planet, says UN expert. The Guardian.
- Tanzania ends hunting deal near Loliondo with UAE royal family; compromised government officials
- Critiques of Fortress Conservation
- Cornered By Protected Areas
Week 8 (10/19 to 10/25): Green Wars: Militarization of Conservation
Read/Watch/listen:
- Ybarra, Megan. 2017. Green Wars. Chapter 1: Introduction Conservation and Settler Logics of Elimination
- Duffy et al. 2019, Why we must question the militarisation of conservation
- Simlai 2015, Conservation ‘Wars’: Global Rise of Green Militarisation
*Attend/Complete:
- 10/25 Due: Reading Assessment #5: Green Wars
- 10/22 Zoom meeting/Canvas discussion/Reading lab #4: Displacement & Militarization seminar
+Optional material for further learning:
- Marijnen and Verweijen 2016, Selling green militarization: the discursive (re)production of militarized conservation in the Virunga National Park, Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Duffy, Rosaleen. 2017. We Need to Talk about the Militarisation of Conservation
Week 9 (10/27 to 11/02) War on Drugs & Tropical Ecologies
Read/Watch/listen:
- Kendra McSweeney: Drugs, Destruction, and Deforestation (National Geographic Live)
- Violence and conservation: Beyond unintended consequences and unfortunate coincidences. Geoforum.
- Drug Policy as Conservation Policy: Narco-Deforestation. Science. McSweeney et al. 2014.
*Attend/Complete:
- 11/02 Due: Reading Assessment #6: Drugs, War, and& Militarization
- Displacement & Green Militarization section III Canvas Discussion
+Optional material for further learning:
- The War on Drugs Is Destroying the Environment
- Counterinsurgency ecotourism in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve. Devine, Jennifer. 2014. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32: 984-1001.
Part IV Alternative Conservations
Courtesy Spaceworks Tacoma/ Tlingit artist Nahaan’s ‘Coastal Wombyn’s Resistance.’
*Note: Topics and assignments are currently ~1 week behind. Schedule revision coming shortly*
Week 10 (11/03 to 11/08) EcoFeminism & Environmental Protection
Read/Watch/listen:
- Jumawan-dadang, Raquelyn. 2015. Saving Marine Life: An Empirical Assessment of Ecofeminist Thought in Coastal Communities. Philippine Sociological Review Vol. 63 pp. 61-83.
- Why the world needs an African ecofeminist future
- Feminist Environmental Philosophy
*Attend/Complete:
- Take Care of yourself this week
+Optional material for further learning:
- Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing – A Feminist Approach to the Anthropocene: Earth Stalked by Man
Week 11 (11/09 to 11/15) Black/African-Centered Perspectives on Conservation
Read/Watch/listen:
- Why We Need More Black African Women in Conservation
- A Billion Black Anthropocenes
- Black Bodies, Green Spaces. Why is the image of an environmentally conscious African-American still hard for us to picture?
*Attend/Complete:
- 11/12 Zoom meeting: Workshop for Artifact assignment + decolonized conservation assignment, 10 a.m.
- 11/16 Due: Reading Assessment #7: Race & Conservation
+Optional material for further learning:
Week 13 (11/16 to 11/20) Environmental Personhood
Read/Watch/listen:
- A Voice for Nature. The Whanganui River in New Zealand is a legal person. National Geographic.
- Eco News Report: The Klamath River is a Person, My Friend. (with Amy Cordalis, General Counsel for the Yurok Tribe)
- Resolution of the Yurok Tribal Council
*Attend/Complete:
+Optional material for further learning
- Breaking News- Dam removal agreement (Cali Gov Newsom live stream w/ Karuk, Yurok leaders)
- Klamath Renewal (memorandum of agreement)
- Should Rivers Have Rights? A Growing Movement Says It’s About Time
- Tribe Gives Personhood To Klamath River
- Video: Wiyot Place names
-
Why lakes and rivers should have the same rights as humans | Kelsey Leonard
Week 14 (Fall Break 11/23 to 11/27) ***No Course Material Assigned***
Part V Inconclusions
Artwork by Anastasya Eliseeva
Week 15 (11/30 to 12/04) Conservation & the Anthropocene
Read/Watch/listen:
- “The Conservation Revolution” Bram Büscher on saving nature beyond the Anthropocene (discussion of book)
- What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Biodiversity Conservation in the Anthropocene? Holmes, George. 2015. Environment and Society.
- The complexities of the Anthropocene through multimedia, vampires, and pig farms
- Explore: https://www.iccaconsortium.org/
*Attend/Complete:
- 12/07 Due: Reading Assessment #9:
+Optional material for further learning:
Week 16 (12/07 to 12/11) Wrapping up People, Parks, & Power
Read/Watch/listen:
- Robin Wall Kimmerer: Greed Does Not Have to Define Our Relationship to Land
- West, P., J. Igoe, and D. Brockington, “Parks and peoples: The social impact of protected areas,” Annu. Rev. Anthropol., vol. 35, no. 2006, pp. 251–277, 2006.
- Moore and Velednitsky 2017, The Case for Ecological Reparations: A Conversation with Jason W. Moore
*Attend/Complete:
- 12/10 Due: Reading Assessment #10: Anthropocene
- 12/10 Zoom meeting/Canvas discussion/Reading lab #9+10: Inconclusions
12/15 Final Artifact Assignment Due on Canvas
12/15 Final Zoom Workshop: Artifact Show & Tell
Additional materials
- A Fictive Kinship: Making “Modernity,” “Ancient Hawaiians,” and the Telescopes on Mauna Kea
- Wet’suwet’en Strong: Who are the Indigenous artists on the front lines of the land defence and protest rallies for Wet’suwet’en?
- Video: The Seventh Generation: Youth at the Heart of the Standing Rock Protests
- Decolonizing Heritage Management in Hawai‘i
- Environmental Justice for Indigenous Hawaiians: Reclaiming Land and Resources
- Five Indigenous Conservation Organizations to Explore
- First Nations Values in Protected Area Governance: Tla-o-qui-aht Tribal Parks and Pacific Rim National Park Reserve
- Artelle et al. 2019. Indigenous-led conservation in Canada
- Supporting resurgent Indigenous-led governance: A nascent mechanism for just and effective conservation
- Podcast: ERIEL TCHEKWIE DERANGER on Solidarity with Unist’ot’en
Dr. Gordon Lewis Ulmer 