Tag: NGOs

Molly Doane’s “Stealing Shining Rivers”: Transnational Conservation Meets a Mexican Forest

August 11, 2014

ENGAGEMENT Blog editor Micha Rahder recently caught up with Molly Doane to discuss her recent book, Stealing Shining Rivers: Agrarian Conflict, Market Logic, and Conservation in a Mexican Forest (2012, University of Arizona Press), and its broader contributions to debates over communal lands, forest conservation, and neoliberal policies. The book recently won “Best book on … More Molly Doane’s “Stealing Shining Rivers”: Transnational Conservation Meets a Mexican Forest

Making Peace with Nature: The Greening of the Korean Demilitarized Zone

June 25, 2013

By Eleana Kim, University of Rochester § Through my ongoing research on the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), I am engaging with broader questions about the “nature” of militarized landscapes and the production of their ecological value. In this piece, I examine how South Korean state and NGO projects configure the DMZ as a unique site … More Making Peace with Nature: The Greening of the Korean Demilitarized Zone

Gathering Divergent Forest Honeys: Collections and Commodity Flows in the Philippines

May 7, 2013

By Sarah Webb § When I began researching honey collecting in the Philippines, I never anticipated that making visual collections of objects and images associated with marketing honey was going to become a powerful way of stimulating discussion about my study.  But the clues were there all along. Collections are things brought together, in so … More Gathering Divergent Forest Honeys: Collections and Commodity Flows in the Philippines

In the Trenches: Collaborative Conservation in a Contested West

December 10, 2012

by Thomas E. Sheridan § For the last fifteen years, I’ve worked as a volunteer – a citizen anthropologist – in the collaborative conservation movement sweeping across the American West.  I co-founded the Arizona Common Ground Roundtable in 1997.  For the next five years, we (the Roundtable) sponsored forums across the state to bring ranchers, … More In the Trenches: Collaborative Conservation in a Contested West

From Conservation to Eco-Toilets to Organic Markets: The Evolution of a Chinese Environmental NGO

November 12, 2012

by Edwin Schmitt § The story of Wildgrass is one of organizational adaptation to the dynamism of present-day China’s politics and its rapidly changing social and environmental needs. After four years of working with the organization, I consider my role in Wildgrass as more of an “exchange” than an “engagement” because of our reciprocal relations. … More From Conservation to Eco-Toilets to Organic Markets: The Evolution of a Chinese Environmental NGO

Getting Goats—From Skepticism to Optimism in Northern Kenya

September 4, 2012

by Carolyn Lesorogol § In the 1990s, before I became an academic anthropologist and researcher, I worked for about seven years in community development in Northern Kenya. The bulk of my work involved facilitating participatory development processes among communities of pastoralists in Samburu district. We tried to engage a broad swath of the community in … More Getting Goats—From Skepticism to Optimism in Northern Kenya