Type of Credit: Elective
Credit(s)
Number of Students
The Cultural Ecology of Forests in Southeast Asia: Green Development, Conservation, and Climate Change
東南亞的文化生態研究專題: 森林的綠色發展，保育和氣候變遷
Course Description
What exactly is a forest and from whose perspective is a forest defined? How are forests used, by whom, and with what effects? To answer these questions, we will examine case studies from Southeast Asia to understand forests in multiple registers and from the perspective of many different users, including the forest itself. We will study the institutional frameworks of Green Development, Conservation, and Climate Change, and use empirical examples from Southeast Asia to contextualize them in practice. Examples will include case studies about the history of forest management and the ways that development, conservation, and climate change interact with forest resources and communities that live in and around forests. The objective of the course is to introduce the historical trajectory of forest use and management from the colonial era to the present in the Southeast Asian context. Also to teach students how to think critically about different resource-use practices, social systems, and technologies. Through the examination of stories, documents, and policies, we will discuss the many possible ways to use forest resources and the effects of those different strategies. Through this examination, we will come to understand the beliefs, values, and structures that underlie different practices and how these shift over time and across groups. To explore this dynamic and transformative interaction, we excavate the concepts above, attending to their structures, interchanges, and contradictions. Through primary source materials, ethnographic and historical studies, and theories that attend to the world-making power of culture, this course will provide more questions than answers. The objective is to trace how people not only use resources and develop policies toward that end, but also to make visible the boundaries and divisions that these various projects ignite. Our collective challenge will be to look through these boundaries to find transformative pathways.
能力項目說明
Learning Objectives
Understand the dynamics between policy and practice
Understand classic and emerging trends in sustainable development practice
Understand forest ecologies
Goals
Students will be prepared to engage with living ecological processes that include institutional actors, activities of daily human lives, and activities of living environments
Students will have a broad knowledge of policy processes with regard to forest conservation and development
Course Schedule
Week 1- 2/24
Introduction - Contradictions and Complications
Course Basics and expectations
Opening Theoretical Framework
In-class Read:
Berliner, D., M. Lambek, R. Shweder, R. Irvine, and A. Piette. 2016.
Anthropology and the Study of Contradictions. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic
Theory 6 (1):1–6.
In-class discussion
What are the central Arguments of this essay? What conversation does it enter? How does it speak to the interlocutors?
Week 2: 3/3 The Web of Life
Read:
Kirksey, Eben. (2015). Emergent Ecologies. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Introduction and Chapter 1
Castree, Noel. Making sense of nature. Routledge, 2013.
Chapter 2: Representing Nature
In-class video:
Prey Lang Watershed video- Alan Michaud
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRNo70enWPM&index=16&list=PL9CX_QcOMssnXVq1FWwV4-Cd3nhZd_ymk
Week 3: 3/10 Forests as Ecosystems
Critique these two websites
http://www.greenfacts.org/en/biodiversity/l-3/1-define-biodiversity.htm
http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/biodiversity/?src=footer
Read:
Gorzelak, M., Pickles, B.J., Asay, A.K., Simard, S.W. (2015). Inter-plant communication through mycorrhizal networks mediates complex adaptive behaviour in plant communities. Annals of Botany Plants 7: plv050.
Stamets, S. Mycelium Running. Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2005. (Part 1)
Ellison, D., M. N. Futter, and K. Bishop. 2012. ‘On the forest cover-water yield debate: From demand- to supply-side thinking’. Global Change Biology 18 (3):806–820.
In-class exercise
Artful Amoeba
http://www.radiolab.org/story/from-tree-to-shining-tree/
In-class discussion
Under what Authority do each of this week’s authors (including web sites) make the claims they make? What are the main claims from each of our readings, audio, and web presentations?
Taken together, what conversation emerges from this week’s materials?
Week 4 -5: Climate Change Facts and Cultures
Week 4- 3/17
Review these websites
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data
https://www.climatecommunication.org/climate/the-problem/ http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/mlo.html#mlo
Read:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2016/apr/26/abandon-hype-in-climate-models
Rayner, Steve
2016 ‘What Might Evans-Pritchard Have Made of Two Degrees?’ Anthropology Today 32(4): 1–2.
Lindisfarne, Nancy, and Steve Rayner
2016 ‘Climate Change’. Anthropology Today 32(5): 27.
In-class viewing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEgcu27-kjk
In-class discussion:
Group Work- Break into small groups with each group addressing one of our Essential Tools for Critical Reading and Writing
Week 5: 3/24
Read:
Soon, W., and S. L. Baliunas. 2003. ‘Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years’. Climate Research 23, 89-110 23 (2001):89–110.
Kinne, O. 2003. Climate Research: an article unleashed worldwide storms. Climate Research 24:197–198.
Frank Fischer (2019) Knowledge politics and post-truth in climate denial: on the social construction of alternative facts, Critical Policy Studies, 13:2, 133-152, DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2019.1602067
Making sense of the spectrum of climate denial. Kari Marie Norgaard CRITICAL POLICY STUDIES 2019, VOL. 13, NO. 4, 437–441 https://doi.org/10.1080/19460171.2019.1671208 [US centered]
http://tos.org/oceanography/assets/docs/5-2_munk.pdf
Handley, G. B. 2015. ‘Climate Change, Cosmology, and Poetry: The case of Derek Walcott’s Omeros’. In Global Ecologies and the Environmental Humanities: Postcolonial Approaches, eds. E. DeLoughrey, J. Didur, and A. Carrigan. New York and London: Routledge.
In-class discussion:
Evidence and Authority: What evidence is marshalled in support of the author’s arguments? What is the authority of the author?
Week 6, 8, and 9: Forests, Climate Change, and Development in Southeast
Asia
Week 6- 3/31: Theory
Fairhead, J., Leach, M., & Scoones, I. (2012). Green Grabbing: a new appropriation of nature? The Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(2), 237–261.
Tsing, A. L. 2001. Inside the Economy of Appearances. In Globalization, 155–88. Durhan: Duke University Press.
First take-home exam: Due 3/27 5pm
Answer these two questions:
Week 7- 4/7: USAID Sustainable Forests and Biodiversity Project: Cambodia
Read:
Project documents, project reports, and evaluations: Case study Cambodia
https://www.climatelinks.org/resources/usaid-cambodia-sfb-project-supporting-forests-enriching-lives (2014 webinar, 4min).
2016- Mid-term report
2018- Final Report
Milne, S. 2015. ‘Cambodia’s Unofficial Regime of Extraction: Illicit Logging in the Shadow of Transnational Governance and Investment’. Critical Asian Studies. 47 (2):200–228.
In-class discussion: Group Work- each group answer one question and present
What is the purpose of this project (Conversation)?
What are the objectives of this project (Argument)?
Through which activities will those objectives be met (Authority)?
Why do they choose these activities (Evidence)?
In-class exercise:
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/court-plans-probe-mondulkiri-logging-claims
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/men-charged-case-monkey-poaching
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/soldiers-home-hiding-luxury-wood-officials
Week 8- 4/14: UN-REDD: Laos
Read :
Project documents – PDF project evaluation
https://www.unredd.net/about/what-is-redd-plus.html
Ingalls, M. L., and M. B. Dwyer. 2016. ‘Missing the forest for the trees? Navigating the trade-offs between mitigation and adaptation under REDD’. Climatic Change. online.
Week 9- 4/21: Midterm Exam (Essay Due 4/17, 5pm)- No Class
Discuss question 1 with a maximum of 1500 words in answer.
Extra Credit answer question 2 in 500 words
Week 10, 11, and 12: Forest Governance: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, and Cambodia
Week 10- 4/28
Theory
Scott, J. C. 1998. Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. First. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Introduction and Chapter 1
Historical Antecedents
Peluso, N. L. 1992. Rich forests, poor people: Resource control and resistance in Java. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Introduction and Part 2
Week 11- 5/5
Maps, Boundaries, and Appropriate Use
Wood, Denis. Rethinking the power of maps. Guilford Press, 2010.
Chapter 1: Maps Blossom in the Springtime of the State
Cooke, F. M. 2003. ‘Maps and Counter-Maps: Globalized Imaginings and Local Realities of Sarawak’s Plantation Agriculture’. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34 (May 2001):265–284.
Week 12- 5/12
Laws, Access, and Exclusion
Ribot, J. C., and N. L. Peluso. 2009. ‘A Theory of Access*’. Rural Sociology. 68 (2):153–181.
Montefrio, M. J. F., and W. H. Dressler. 2016. ‘The Green Economy and Constructions of the “Idle” and “Unproductive” Uplands in the Philippines’. World Development 79:114–126.
Work, C., and A. Beban. 2016. ‘Mapping the Srok: The Mimeses of Land Title in Cambodia’. Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 31 (1):37–80.
Week 13 and 14: Forests and People in Southeast Asia
Week 13- 5/19
Theory: Thinking with Forests and People
Read:
Kohn, E. 2013. How forests think: Toward an anthropology beyond the human.
(Intro and Chapter 5)
Padwe, Jonathan. 2020. Disturbed Forests, Fragmented Memories: Jarai and Other Lives in the Cambodian Highlands. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Sanga, G., &Ortalli, G. (2003). Nature Knowledge. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. (Selections)
Week 14- 5/26
Forest economies
Read:
Peluso, N. L. 1992. Rich forests, poor people: Resource control and resistance in Java. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Chapter 4: Organized forest violence; Reorganized forest access, 1942-66.
Tsing, A. 2012. Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species. Environmental Humanities 1:141–154.
In-class video
A Forest of Fortune
https://vimeo.com/channels/thesourceproject/71439102
Week 15, 16, and 17: Thinking into the Future
Week 15- 6/2: The Anthropocene and the more than human world to come
In-class viewing
What explains the rise of humans? https://www.ted.com/talks/yuval_noah_harari_what_explains_the_rise_of_humans
Read:
Dove, M., P. E. Sajise, and A. A. Doolittle eds. 2011. “The Wild and the Tame in Protected-Areas Management in Peninsular Malaysia”. In, Beyond the Sacred Forest:
Complicating Conservation in Southeast Asia. Chapel Hill: Duke University
Press.
Descola, P. 2009. Human natures. Social Anthropology 17 (2):145–157.
Latour, B. 2014. Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene. New Literary History 45 (1):1–18.
Week 16- 6/09: Resourcefulness
Read:
MacKinnon, D., and K. D. Derickson. 2013. From resilience to resourcefulness: A critique of resilience policy and activism. Progress in Human Geography 37 (2):253–270.
Lockyer, Joshua, and James R. Veteto. 2013. Environmental anthropology engaging ecotopia: bioregionalism, permaculture, and ecovillages. New York: Berghahn Books.
(Introduction)
Review:
http://permaculturenews.org/what-is-permaculture/
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKX7uaOkWqFBEzplOqzh5h1BJQGOUZP_h
Week 17- 6/16: Living with Change
Read:
Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Early States. New Haven: Yale University Press. Agroecology of the Early State (116-124), and Praising Collapse (209-218).
Parker, Ingrid M. 2017. “Remembering our Amnesia, Seeing in our Blindness”. In, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet. Ed, Tsing, Anna, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt. University of Minnesota Press, pp. M155-M167.
Sagan, Dorion. 2017. “Beautiful Monsters: Terra in the Cyanocene”. In, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet. Ed, Tsing, Anna, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt. University of Minnesota Press, pp. M169-M174.
Week 18- No Class
Final Take-home Short Answer Exam: Due June 24 5pm
Write 1500-2000 words answering one of the following questions:
Note: you may write on your own question with instructor approval
Take-Home Short Answer Exam (3) 75%
Class Participation 25%
Pop Quiz 4 (extra credit for exams) (25%)
Castree, Noel. 2013 Making sense of nature. New York and London: Routledge.
DeLoughrey, E., J. Didur, and A. Carrigan. 2015. Global Ecologies and the Environmental Humanities: Postcolonial Approaches. New York and London: Routledge.
Kohn, Eduardo. 2013. How forests think: Toward an anthropology beyond the human. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lockyer, Joshua, and James R. Veteto. 2013. Environmental anthropology engaging ecotopia: bioregionalism, permaculture, and ecovillages. New York: Berghahn Books.
Peluso, Nancy Lee. 1992. Rich forests, poor people: Resource control and resistance in Java. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Scott, J. C. 1998. Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.
[All course readings will be supplied electronically. Excerpts from these excellent texts will be used and students are encouraged to own them]