Cultural Ecology Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers

Cultural Ecology Newsletter

(CEN #38 -- Fall 2001)

Last Updated: 30 Apr 2002

Announcements

Notes from Chair
Netting Award
Blaut Award
Sponsored sessions, AAG 2002
Developments in London
Marvin Harris 1927-2001
Robert West 1913-2001

Calls: Conferences, meetings, publications

Urban Sustainability, Tucson AZ, Jan 2001
AAA meetings, Washington DC, Nov 2001
African Studies Association, Nov 2001
Conservation Ecology- call for papers

Jobs/scholarships

Meeting Reports

Members' News

Bill Denevan admitted to AAAS
David Preston
DART, Colorado
Hires

Book Reviews & Notes

Batterbury on Baker
New Books

Announcements

Notes from the Chair - Fall 2001

By my count we are sponsoring about two dozen sessions at the 2002 national meeting in Los Angeles. That might go up when the final program comes out but is clearly down from the thirty-eight or so at last year’s meeting. The sponsored sessions nonetheless look equally as interesting as last year’s, and I trust we all appreciate the commendable efforts of the organizers. A list of the sessions appears in this issue of CEN. They include many long-standing themes as well as emerging ones, such as “First World” political ecology and a more concerted consideration of scale issues.

Many thanks to Mike Steinberg for taking over operation of our Listserv (see above).

Remember to send in your entries for the 2002 Student Paper and Field Study Awards. You can find details on this website. Applicants for the paper award need to notify the Board before the meetings, even though the papers are not due until afterward, so that we can be sure to attend your session.

 

Remember to send the Board your nominations for the 2002 Netting Award. The Board struggles with this difficult decision, and a supporting statement in addition to a name will help. The CESG website provides the award’s terms of reference to assist in preparing such a statement.

 

On the agenda for the 2002 Business Meeting:

• Approving the 2001 minutes; you can find them in the Spring 2001 CEN.
• The proposed James Blaut award; see it below.
• Election of a new Board: Chair; Secretary/Treasurer; Eastern, Central, and Western Regional Representatives; and Student Representative.

 

Send Simon Batterbury your news items and book reviews for CEN. Send me agenda items for the business meeting. And continue to visit the CESG website for further information on those and other items.

Andrew Sluyter, CESG Chair

Netting Award

Whitmore on B.L. Turner, 2001 winner.

Blaut Award

The following is a draft of the James M. Blaut Award, as discussed at the New York business meeting. My hope is that we can vote at the Los Angeles business meeting on whether to implement the award. Final implementation, of course, would mean clearing this with Jim Blaut's family and with the AAG. Thanks. Andrew

"The James M. Blaut Innovative Publication Award.  On 11 November 2000, cultural and political ecologists lost one of their most committed colleagues. Dr. James M. Blaut, Professor of Geography and Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, succumbed to cancer. His professional career spans half a century and is characterized by, among other qualities, innovative research on tropical agriculture, development, and colonialism. In honor and memory of his seminal contributions, the Cultural Ecology Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers has established an award made to that person who publishes a book or journal article that best embodies the creativity and rigor of Jim Blaut's own publications. The award is named "The (year) James M. Blaut Award in recognition of innovative scholarship in cultural and political ecology, as demonstrated by publication of (article or book title)." The award is made for a single publication that is clearly innovative and has the potential to be seminal in areas of research that are important to the members of the Cultural Ecology Specialty Group. The intent is to recognize authors at any stage in their careers who demonstrate leadership through broadly influential, critical, innovative thinking. Jim Blaut's publications on diffusionism and the colonizer's model of the world provide models for judging such accomplishment. The publication can be a journal article or a book but must be sole-authored. The award is normally made annually, but an award need not be made in any one year if a deserving candidate cannot be identified. Under no circumstances is more than one award made annually. The book or article must have been published within the two calendar years preceding the year of award. On the basis of nominations by the general membership of the Cultural Ecology Specialty Group, members of its Board will select the awardee through a process agreed upon by themselves. Nominations must be accompanied by full publication details and a rationale for making the award on the basis of that publication. Nominees need not be academics, geographers, members of the Cultural Ecology Specialty Group, or members of the Association of American Geographers. The award, in the form of a plaque or certificate, is presented by the Chair of the Cultural Ecology Specialty Group or her or his designate at the awards ceremonies at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers."

Sponsored sessions for the Los Angeles meetings of the Association of American Geographers, March 2002

Water and society: power, scale and boundaries, Chris Sneddon, Dartmouth College.
California: the most perfect capitalist agriculture in the world, Keith Warner, UC Santa Cruz.
Rural political ecology in the First World, Peter Walker, University of Oregon.
Changing modes of governance and their local impacts--tracing the links (I), Simon Batterbury, University of Arizona.
Changing modes of governance and their local impacts--tracing the links (II), Simon Batterbury, University of Arizona.
Changing modes of governance and their local impacts--tracing the links (III), Simon Batterbury, University of Arizona.
Changing modes of governance and their local impacts--tracing the links (VI), Simon Batterbury, University of Arizona.
The anthropogenic Amazon and its implications, Antoinette WinklerPrins, Michigan State University.
(Urban) Homegardens: Identities, Products, and Aesthetics, Antoinette WinklerPrins, Michigan State University.
Environmental history in Mexico, Peter Klepeis, Colgate University.
Gender and the environment, Firooza Pavri, Emporia State University.
Changing forests, changing landscapes: cultural ecology and biogeography in Latin America, Martha Works, Portland State University.
Local response to environmental change: longitudinal evidence from Latin America and Africa, Oliver Coomes, McGill and Kendra McSweeney, Ohio State University.
Revisiting the Poverty -Environment Debate from a Political Ecology Perspective I: Biodiversity and Forestry Issues, Leslie Gray, Santa Clara University, and William Moseley, Northern Illinois University.
Revisiting the Poverty -Environment Debate from a Political Ecology Perspective II: Agricultural Livelihoods, Leslie Gray, Santa Clara University, and William Moseley, Northern Illinois University.
Revisiting the Poverty -Environment Debate from a Political Ecology Perspective III: Livelihood Vulnerability and Public Policy, Leslie Gray, Santa Clara University, and William Moseley, Northern Illinois University.
Political Ecology and the Politics of Scale, Garth Andrew Myers, J. Christopher Brown, University of Kansas, and Mark Purcell.
Urban Political Ecology, Justice and Scale in Advanced Capitalist Countries, Erik Swyngedouw, Oxford University and Nik Heynen, Indiana University.
Urban Political Ecology, Justice and Scale in Advanced Capitalist Countries II Erik Swyngedouw, Oxford University and Nik Heynen, Indiana University.
Ethics in Political Ecology: Politicized Moralities as Research Problem, Raymond Bryant (King's College London), Lucy Jarosz (University of Washington).
Ethics in Political Ecology: Research Strategies as Ethical Practice, Raymond Bryant (King's College London), Lucy Jarosz (University of Washington).
Ethics in Political Ecology: Research Implications and Activist Agendas, Raymond Bryant (King's College London), Lucy Jarosz (University of Washington).
Ethics in Political Ecology: Ethics, Reflexity and the Future of Political Ecology, Raymond Bryant (King's College London), Lucy Jarosz (University of Washington).
 (???) Karl Zimmerer and Tom Bassett

The Departments of Geography at the School of Oriental and African Studies and King's College - both part of the University of London federated system - have merged. A new Department of 31 staff will, effectively, be based at the King's Strand site from Aug. 2001. Click here  Aside from bringing together undergraduate and one-year masters programs in Environment and Development and related fields, the new Department now has on its staff Drs. Kathy Baker (see book review below), Sian Sullivan (until 2002), David Demeritt, Ray Bryant, and Profs. Mike Redclift, Tony Allan, and Linda Newson. This new grouping provides a real, new center of expertize in nature-society research from different angles. The absence of a freestanding Geography Department at SOAS is troubling, however - many North American readers will know how much the loss of Geography at a major institution can impact the discipline. Other Departments to close in Britain in recent years - citing declining undergraduate enrolments - have included the University of Wales at Lampeter, Luton, Kingston, and the University of North London. Several others are presently at risk of closure or are now in merger discussions, including a major Department in the south-east.

Two research groupings in London of particular interest to cultural ecologists are the Environment and Culture group at the Institute for Archaeology, UCL (David Harriss et al) and the Biological Anthropology section, incorporating Human Ecology, in the Department of Anthropology at UCL (Kath Homewood, Phil Burnham, Ruth Mace et. al.). Situated outside London, but forming part of the University of London's Imperial College, is the small Agroecology research group at Wye (Graham Woodgate, Remi Gaultier et.al.) although this group has been the victim of mergers, and will soon graduate its last students.

 Simon Batterbury

Marvin Harris, theoretician of culture and a leading figure in American anthropology, died October 25, 2001, in Gainesville, Florida from complications following pneumonia. He was aged 74. Most recently he was Graduate Research Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida, retiring in 2000. His elaboration of cultural materialism appealed greatly to cultural ecologists. This  theoretical paradigm, in his words, "is based on the simple premise that human social life is a response to the practical problems of earthly existence" and which has the goal of providing causal explanations for the differences and similarities in cultural behavior among human populations. He authored 18 books including Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches; Cannibals and Kings; and Culture, People, Nature. Biographical statements on Marvin Harris may be found here and here.

Robert C. West, Boyd Professor Emeritus of geography and anthropology at LSU, died Monday morning, May 14, 2001, in Baton Rouge. A graduate of Berkeley under Carl Sauer, he was 87. West's interests included aboriginal agriculture, plant geography, ethnogeography, land use, and mining in Latin America. He was fluent in Spanish, German, French and Portuguese and published 20 books and numerous articles in an illustrious career. An LSU obituary is published here.

The South-Siberian and Mongolian Reindeer Herding Complex: Endangered Lands, Languages, and Livelihoods in Comparative Perspective; The History of Politics in the Humanized Landscape: Combining Political and Historical Ecological Approaches in Anthropology; Meaning in Ecology: Toward an Integration of Humanistic and Scientific Concerns; Film Screening: Environmental Issues; Policy Makers and Policy Breakers: Ethnographers in the Public Domain; Ecology, Religion, and the Transformation of Values: Place-based Analyses and Globalization; Coastal Anthropology: New Areas of Inquiry in the Transformation of Anthropology; Beyond Rhetoric and Reproach: New Directions in Anthropology and Conservation; Economy and Environment in Agriculture - Poster Session; Weather, Climate, Culture: Building Anthropological Bridges from Past to Future; Intellectual Property Rights, Bioprospecting and Local Knowledge: The Making and UnMaking of Anthropological Objects; Environmental Conflict in the Americas - Poster Session; Ecosystems and Complex Systems in Anthropology; New World Disorders: Exploring the Intersections of Medical and Environmental Anthropology; Power, Decentralization and New Environmental Institutions; Macro-Perspectives on Environment, Technology, and Inequality in the; World-System: Linking Political Ecology and Political Economy; Interface between Local Management and Ecology - Poster Session; Curbing our Consumption of the Environment: A Panel Discussion; Unsettling Marriage? The Compatibility of Environment and Community in a Global Context; Local Resources, Transnational Capital and the State; Change and Continuity in Property Regimes: Alternative Histories and Theories of the Commons.

Ecological research and teaching is well-established within anthropology. How has it transformed anthropology during the last 100 years? How have ecological approaches themselves been transformed in the 20th century including by changes in anthropology as a whole? What are the achievements and limitations of the various ecological approaches within anthropology? What are the foreseeable needs and priorities for ecological research in the 21st century, especially given growing demographic and economic pressures, diminishing resources, and environmental changes? These and related questions will be explored in this session through two sets of papers, each followed by a panel of discussants in the form of a round table and then open discussion among all panelists and the audience. Panelists include cultural anthropologists, biological anthropologists, and archaeologists representing a broad diversity of topical and regional specializations. Specific topics, problems, and issues will be considered ranging within cultural ecology to ecological anthropology, historical ecology, environmental anthropology, political ecology, landscape ecology, behavioral ecology, and critical and postmodernist approaches. The session will also acknowledge and celebrate the contributions of pioneers such as Julian Steward, Roy Rappaport, and Robert Netting.

Clark L. Erickson - The Archaeology of Landscapes as Long-term Historical Ecology. Since the 1960s, archaeologists have employed ecological concepts to interpret the past. Concepts such as adaptation, optimal foraging strategies, carrying capacity, and ecosystems are used to understand subsistence strategies, the origins of agriculture, settlement patterns, and the rise and fall of complex societies. In traditional approaches, the environment is perceived as an external and independent force determining local and regional cultural formations. In extreme cases, archaeologists have employed neo-environmental determinism as an explanation of important cultural changes. In these models, humans adapt or respond to local environments. In reaction to the limitations of these approaches, some archaeologists adopt the insights from historical ecology and the new ecology. The archaeology of landscapes highlights the cultural, anthropogenic, or built environment--- in this case human modification and transformation of the "natural" landscape. The concern is to understand how and why human actors consciously modified and created the cultural landscape through their activities. The perspective uses landscape as a frame to understand human land use over the long term at multiple geographic scales. The approach assumes that landscapes have dynamic, complex histories and are in a sense, continually under construction. Features can be examined in terms of the "social logic" or patterning of cultural space that can provide insights into indigenous structures such as measurement systems, land tenure, social organization, cosmology, calendrics, astronomy, sacred geography, cognition, and ritual practices. In this paper, I will briefly highlight the central role of archaeology in documenting long-term historical ecology and potential contribution to the conservation of biodiversity, development of models for sustainable landuse, establishment of indigenous territories, and promotion of local cultural heritage in the Bolivian Amazon.

Richard O. Clemmer - Toward a Useful Socio-cultural Analysis of Ecological Adaptation and Maladaptation. Is ecological anthropology at its best when it sticks to the "nuts-and-bolts" paradigms of cultural ecology, systems ecology, and social impact assessment? Or can we unite cultural ecological concepts such as subsistence strategies, site locations, energy expenditures, resource availability and depletion, surplus production, diffusion of technology, input-output analysis, adaptation and maladaptation, species invasion, ecotones, symbiotic communities, and the like, with concepts from social anthropology such as sacredness, class symbols, ethnonationalism (or just plain nationalism), cultural capital, anthropological advocacy, and so forth? I would like to try. I will demonstrate how the use of concepts from social anthropology can be combined with standard data categories of "nuts-and-bolts" ecological paradigms to urge a more adaptive ecological anthropology in terms of its usefulness for the future. I will do this by taking two of my own studies--- one on the changes in the uses of resources on Black Mesa in the Hopi and Navajo country (from 1970) and the other an ethnohistorical study of the changing uses of the Tosawihi quarry and Rock Creek area of north-central Nevada, in Shoshoni country (from 1989) and more or less "rephrasing" them in terms of some basic analytical tools of social anthropology and anthropological advocacy.

Ben Orlove - Grounding Environmental Anthropology: The Place of Soil in Anthropological Studies. Early work in cultural ecology considered soil as a resource, and discussed the social and cultural causes and consequences of spatial and temporal variation in soil fertility. This early work also emphasized the importance of location and distance in human social life. Somewhat later, ethnoscientists examined local systems of classification of soil. More recent work in environmental anthropology has included new perspectives on soil. Political ecologists, interested in the importance of ideology, have noted the symbolic importance of soil. It can serve as a metonym of the nationhood that links rural and urban residents, and also of the distinctiveness of rural populations, opposed to urban residents by their occupations or by their greater proximity to nature. It is central to the "land tiller" programs that have directed agrarian reform programs in the post-colonial world, which at one time drew broad support from anthropologists but now are often criticized as arrogantly modernist, as inherently unsustainable, or as overly narrow in focus. Several new images of soil within environmental anthropology are discussed, including the nature of earth as a part of "the global" and "the local"; the importance of spatial fixity in the defintion of indigenous knowledge and indigeneity at large; and the notion of "ground-truthing" in the use of remote-sensing.

R. Brooke Thomas and Jose Edwardo Martinez - From Environmental Stress to a Critical Anthropo-geography: Changing Ecological Models. The paper serves as a testament to the flexibility and robusticity of human ecological models employed over the past three decades. Examples are drawn from past work in the high Andes and our ongoing research on the Yucatan Peninsula. In reviewing the chronicity of these models it is noted how their formulation has been influenced by paradigm shifts within the discipline as well as broader societal concerns. In general, as the human ecological perspective matured models became more complex both in terms of the range of biocultural variables incorporated and the variety of anthropological theory accomodated. If models are abstractions of reality designed to focus on "significant" interactions, then over time they have become increasingly realistic and more relevant in assessing an array of human-environmental connections. Furthermore, it is pointed out that important advances have been the result of challenges to the ecological perspective by other paradigms. We begin with models borrowed from environmental physiology where biobehavioral responses to harsh conditions were sought and their adaptive suitability assessed. Single stress models gave rise to more complex interactions between multiple stressors, and both complementary and contradictory responses. Energy flow models derived from community ecology studies showed how human biology and activity could be linked in a common currency, and how cultural forms directed and distributed scarce resources. Such currency could be applied to individuals where monetary exchange was insufficient to track expenditures, production and consumption. Also, the empirical base derived from the measurement of flows permitted simulation modeling of environmental and economic perturbations unobserved in the field. Generalities as to broad adaptive patterns of groups living under similar conditions served as useful guides as to what people were doing right in the face of change. But, alas, as we observed the erosion of these patterns in the face of development one had to suspect that a localized and essentialized environment was an insufficient prime mover. Attention shifted to political economic explanations. And these, in turn, were eventually brought into a complementary political ecology perspective. In its multiplicity of forms political ecology allowed diverse perspectives, sub-fields, and disciplines to participate in human-environmental inquiry. Post structuralism served as a further challenge to the generalities and ways by which environmental anthropology has come to construct "reality." In doing so it shifted attention to how social relations take place in spaces and across landscapes to which people attach various meanings, and how a sense of place and alternative constructions of nature are multiple, contested, and differentially embedded notions historically, geographically, socially and culturally constituted.

Bruce Winterhalder - Advancing Steward's Project a Half Century Later: The Place of Behavioral Ecology in Cultural Ecology. Human behavioral ecology (HBE) studies the micro-foundations of behavior through the localized analysis of decisions about adaptive problems such as resource and habitat use, intra-group resource transfers, and mating and fertility. It continues and refines the work of the early Julian Steward, by applying contemporary analytical tools from evolutionary ecology to the long-standing problems of ethnographic, cultural ecology. As it develops, the field is beginning to examine the impacts of individual-level processes on landscape, group and population level phenomena. In this increase in scale, HBE parallels both Steward's personal career and recent disciplinary trends in environmental anthropology. Two brief examples will illustrate these developments: (1) simulation analysis of the population ecology consequences of foraging decisions illuminates the economics of resource exploitation and conservation, and (2) risk-sensitive analysis of fertility decisions enhances our understanding of agricultural intensification and demographic transitions. Our goal as environmental anthropologists should be to find and integrate the complementary stengths of micro- and macro-scale approaches, a challenge that Steward would enjoy.

Andrew P. Vayda - The Turn to Causal Histories of Events. The work of some ecological anthropologists, including myself, has increasingly been directed not so much towards developing or testing general theories, or even some broad propositions about environment-related behavior in particular regions or societies or types of societies, as towards empirically answering questions about why things have occurred. This work, as will be illustrated by the studies of a number of ecological anthropologists, has consisted of (1) making such events as concrete human actions and the concrete environmental changes brought about by them our primary objects of study and (2) tracing (with whatever guidance we can get from exisitng theories and models) the threads of causal influence upon these events outward in space and backward in time. The turn in ecological anthropology to causal histories of events diverges from some postmodern anthropologists' preoccupation with discourse and their indifference to questions of evidence and methodology. The turn is, however, in line with postmodern skepticism towards "generalizing projects," postmodern "incredulity toward metanarratives," and postmodern rejection of the notion that the ethnographer's task is to study and describe whole cultures or whole societies. It is in line also with the view that philosophers of science increasingly hold about explanation: that it is not so much a matter of identifying and citing laws or generalizations to subsume the phenomena being explained as it is a matter of citing causes of events or pragmatically answering one or another of various possible questions about why events have occurred.

Patricia Townsend - Medical Anthropology in Ecological Perspective; Or, Doing Fieldwork in Unhealthy Places. In his 1983 review of medical anthropology, David Landy wrote that an ecological perspective had achieved a kind of hegemony in medical anthropology. If that was the case in 1983, it is no longer so. The history of medical anthropology is one of intermittent infusions of ecological concepts and missed opportunities. Beginning with the work of Allexander Alland and others who brought cultural adaptation into medical anthropology, this paper looks at the fate of ecological ideas in medical anthropology in each of the past four decades. It concludes by sketching a distinctively anthropological approach to the health issues raised by hazardous waste.

Barbara Johnston - Ecological theories and ecologically concerned practice have played an enormous role in 20th century American Anthropology. What affect has this work had in broader environmental realms? This paper outlines some of the significant ecopolitical impacts of anthropological work in cultural ecology, human adaptation, traditional systems of resource management, and other endeavors that focus on the human environmental intersect. I outline examples where anthropological ideas and actions influenced the issues and concerns of the 1970s environmental movement and an emerging interdisciplinary environmental social science; shaped the policy, management structures, and regulatory actions of natural resource management; supported efforts to implement, critique, and remedy human environmental problems emerging from national and international development agendas; and contributed to the formation of the environmental quality/social justice movements of the 1990s. I briefly review two contrasting cases where anthropological ideas and actions influenced biomedical efforts to identify and interpret human adaptive mechanisms and responses to environmental contaminants, and produced distinct ecopolitical outcomes. These experiences have also fundamentally "marked" the discipline with a sense of responsibility, a legacy of painful learning experiences, and a growing commitment towards problem-focused, public-service anthropology.

Job at Texas The University of Texas at Austin. The Department of Geography invites applicants for an anticipated Assistant Professor position in Latin American Population Geography, beginning Fall 2002. Will participate in a new interdepartmental research program on Urbanization and Migration in Developing Countries funded by the Mellon Foundation and located in the University's Population Research Center (PRC). Click here for the full ad.

Job at McGill. Applications are invited for a tenure-track position at the Assistant Professor level in Development Geography, beginning in September 1, 2002. Applicants must possess a PhD or expect to graduate by summer, 2002, have demonstrated research excellence and excellent teaching and communication skills. The successful candidate should have an interest in research on social and institutional dimensions of development processes in areas such as Africa, Asia, Latin America or the Caribbean. He or she will be expected to teach at the undergraduate and graduate levels and to develop a vigorous research program, embracing graduate student supervision. There are excellent opportunities for collaboration within the Department and other units, such as the School of Environment and the Centre for Developing Area Studies. Information on McGill and the Department of Geography can be found at www.mcgill.ca  and www.geog.mcgill.ca . Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience.  The Department encourages applications from qualified women and men, members of visible and non-visible minorities, aboriginal people, and persons with disabilities. In accordance with Canadian immigration requirements, this advertisement is directed in the first instance to Canadian citizens and permanent residents of Canada. McGill University is committed to equity in employment. Candidates should ensure their curriculum vitae, statements of teaching specializations and research interests, up to three reprints and three confidential letters of recommendation sent under separate cover by the candidate’s referees are received before January 15, 2002 by: Dr. Tim Moore, Chair, Department of Geography, McGill University, 805 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal, Quebec Canada, H3A 2K6 phone: 514 398-4112 fax: 514 398-7437 chair@geog.mcgill.ca

Job at Michigan. Post Doctoral Fellowship - Agent-Based Modeling of Land Use and Cover Change. School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE) and Center for the Study of Complex Systems (CSCS), The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Beginning as early as January 2002, focusing on developing, studying, and applying agent-based models of land use and land cover dynamics at the urban fringe. The position is part of a multi-year project funded by the NSF's Biocomplexity and the Environment program to develop agent-based models of land use change, compare them with empirical observations from both survey research and historical landscape data (including plat maps, aerial photographs, and satellite images), and generate and test policy scenarios. The successful candidate for this position will have expertise and interests in agent-based modeling and geographic information science. Additional areas of expertise could include a social science, ecology of human-dominated systems, remote sensing, or survey research. The person in this position will be expected to collaborate with project investigators and other researchers and play a coordinating role for the project. A PhD is required by Sept 2002. Applicants should submit a statement of research interests, a resume, a representative example of their scholarly work, and the names, addresses (including e-mail), and telephone numbers of three references to: Prof. Dan Brown or Prof. Joan Nassauer, School of Natural Resources & Environment, University of Michigan, Dana Building, 430 East University, Ann Arbor MI 48109-1115, danbrown@umich.edu or nassauer@umich.edu

Job at Arizona. Latin American Studies. The Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona invites applicants for a tenure-track Assistant Professor or tenured Associate Professor in Latin American Studies to begin August 2002 or January 2003. Appointment level is dependent on qualifications and experience. Successful candidate will develop a strong personal research program and help coordinate institutional research and outreach programs relating to Latin America; assist with the general advising and committee work of the Center; and teach two interdisciplinary core curriculum courses in Latin American Studies each year at the undergraduate and/or graduate level plus one upper level or graduate course in a specialty area of Latin American Studies. Required qualifications include a PhD and published research that demonstrates a commitment to outstanding and ongoing scholarship that focuses on Latin America, and a record of interdisciplinary collaboration and ability to write research proposals. For more info. on the Center, see http://las.arizona.edu . To apply, please submit a cover letter, resume, the names and contact information for three references, and a sample of recent scholarship to Search Committee, Center for Latin American Studies, The University of Arizona, Douglass 103, PO Box 210028, Tucson, AZ 85721-0028, USA. Application materials must be received by 1/15/02. The University of Arizona is an EEO/AA Employer - M/W/D/V.

Job at Arizona. Chair and Professor, Department of Geography and Regional Development, University of Arizona Here. Review of materials will begin 30 Jan 2002.

Job at Florida Assistant/Associate Professor, Ecological Anthropology, University of Florida. Here

Job at Clark. Clark University. Human-Environment Scientist. Rank Open, tenure track beginning Fall 2002. The Graduate School of Geography seeks an outstanding scholar working at the interface between nature and society. All research specialties within this field are welcome, but connection to the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change research arena is desirable. The successful candidate will help craft the next generation of risk-hazards-vulnerability research at Clark, working closely with related researchers in the School and the George Perkins Marsh Institute (a university wide, interdisciplinary research program where most of the externally supported human-environment research at Clark is conducted). Strong undergraduate and graduate teaching, advising, and graduate mentoring are a requisite in the “liberal arts college” tradition of Clark and the doctoral traditions of the School, respectively. The position requires sustaining significant research funding, preferably involving interdisciplinary team-based activities. The successful candidate joins a large cadre of human-environment researchers within Geography and the Marsh Institute. Applications may be sent by mail, fax or email to Ronald Eastman, Director, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University 950 Main Street, Worcester, MA 01610, USA  Tel: +1-508-793-7336. Email: geography@clarku.edu Applications should include a letter with a statement of teaching and research interests, curriculum vitae, and the names of three references. Review of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. AA/EOE Women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply.

Job at Penn State. The Pennsylvania State University. Tenure track Assistant Professor position in Nature-Society or Environmental Geography, starting August 2002. Ph.D. required by time of appointment. The Department of Geography is seeking an exceptional candidate to strengthen our teaching and research in human- environment interactions. We are particularly interested in an individual having an internationally-based research program. Applicants are expected to demonstrate competence in appropriate methodologies (e.g., field, laboratory and/or modeling) and close familiarity with conceptual frameworks that hold promise for productive research and guidance of graduate students. Potential for excellence in teaching, research, and service and development of an extramurally funded research program are expected. There is excellent opportunity for linkages to the Penn State Environmental Consortium and its many environmental research centers, as well as with the Children, Youth, and Families initiative, and African and African-American studies. Applicants should submit a letter describing interests and possible contributions to our program, a complete curriculum vita, a maximum of five sample reprints, and the names and addresses (including e-mail and fax) of three to five referees. We will begin reviewing applications on December 1, however, applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Penn State is committed to affirmative action, equal opportunity and the diversity of its workforce. Apply: Dr. Andrew. M. Carleton, Chair, Nature-Society Search Committee, Department of Geography, 302 Walker Building, UNIVERSITY PARK, PENNSYLVANIA16802, USA. Phone: (814) 865-3433; Fax: (814) 863-7943; E-mail: carleton@essc.psu.edu

William M. Denevan, Emeritus Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on October 13, 2001.  Denevan's election follows from his seminal contributions to the study of historical and contemporary human-environment relationships in South America, focused on the Andean realm.  He has been central in demonstrating the large-scale use of wetlands in South America in pre-Hispanic times, changing the way that the linked indigenous economies are viewed.  He has undertaken exhaustive synthesis of the indigenous populations of the Americas at the time of European contact, influencing historical demography and archaeology.  These works have triggered interdisciplinary reassessment of the degree of environmental modification and transformation undertaken in the pre-European Americas. Denevan has demonstrated the nature of contemporary slash-and-burn cultivation in South America and provided novel analogues from this research for addressing prehistoric landscape change. Denevan joins B. Berry, K. Butzer, S. Hanson, C. Harris, R.W. Kates, B.L.Turner II, G. White, D. Ward, and M. Wolman as the geographers currently in the AAAS. Congratulations! (to sbden@saber.net). He has also published a new book - see below.

Recently Published:

Bassett, Thomas J. 2001. The Peasant Cotton Revolution in West Africa: Côte d'Ivoire, 1880-1995. Cambridge University Press. 0-521-78313-5  $64.95

Denevan, William M. 2000. Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and the Andes.  Oxford Geographical and Environmental Studies Series. Oxford University Press. Hardback $125.00. paper 0199250715 (avail. 2002) $45.00 A sample