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Faculty

Peter Brosius

Professor
Ph.D. Anthropology, University of Michigan, 1992
pbrosius@uga.edu

Both my research and teaching is premised on the belief that anthropology has an important role to play not only in contributing to our understanding of the human impact on the physical and biotic environment, but also in showing how that environment is constructed, represented, claimed, and contested.

PAST RESEARCH

I have a long-standing interest in the human ecology of Southeast Asia, particularly with respect to issues of environmental degradation. In 1990 I published a monograph entitled After Duwagan: Deforestation, Succession, and Adaptation in Upland Luzon, Philippines, which examined the historical ecology of deforestation in the Mt. Pinatubo region of the Philippines. My primary concern was to use succession theory to develop a general model for assessing the long-term impact of the primary forms of anthropogenic disturbance in the area.

Since joining the anthropology faculty at UGA in 1992, my research has focused on the international campaign against logging in the East Malaysian state of Sarawak, on the island of Borneo. In the 1980s logging companies in Sarawak moved into areas occupied by Penan hunter-gatherers. In response the Penan resisted the activities of these companies by erecting blockades, thereby becoming the focus of a broad-based transnational environmental and indigenous rights campaign which has persisted, albeit somewhat diminished, up to the present. Their story has received broad international media coverage and scores of celebrities, from Al Gore and Jerry Garcia to Prince Charles, have spoken out on their behalf. The attention that the Penan have received is deeply resented by the Malaysian government, which has mounted a vigorous response. In the process, Malaysia has come to play an increasingly visible role as a critic of what it regards as neocolonialist attempts at control over environmental affairs in the South. My research focuses on the history of the Sarawak campaign; a campaign which has been transformed from a singular focus on the imperative to stop the progress of bulldozers, to one forced to contend with the Uruguay round of GATT, Post-UNCED conventions, ITTO criteria and indicators of sustainability, Eco-labeling, and the North-South debate.

This research is significant not only because of what it reveals about the contemporary politics of nature, but also because it is an example of what anthropologist George Marcus has termed "multi-sited ethnography". The Sarawak campaign consists not merely of a set of blockades in a remote part of Borneo, but is also manifested in environmentalist direct actions in Los Angeles and Sydney, decisions by the Austrian Parliament, U.S. congressional resolutions condemning the use of Malaysian timber, high-profile Malaysian government delegations to Europe, strategizing meetings, press conferences, benefit concerts, letter-writing campaigns, newspaper articles, faxes, e-mail messages, and more. In my attempts to understand what links all of these, I have carried out "field" research at a diverse number of sites: encampments of nomadic Penan, the Ministry of Primary Industries in Kuala Lumpur, Rainforest Action Network headquarters in San Francisco, WWF International headquarters near Geneva, the Parliament building in Vienna, the offices of the International Tropical Timber Organization in Yokohama, and in London, Copenhagen, Munich, Basel, Sydney, Penang and elsewhere.

I am in the process of bringing this project to an end, with a view toward developing several new projects (see below). In the meantime, I am currently writing two books based on this research: Melted Earth: The Politics and Poetics of Dispossession in Sarawak (under review) and Arresting Images: The Sarawak Rainforest Campaign and Transnational Environmental Politics.

CURRENT RESEARCH: LINKING ANTHROPOLOGY AND CONSERVATION

In June 1997 Anna Tsing (UC Santa Cruz), Charles Zerner (Sarah Lawrence College) and I co-organized a conference with funding from the Ford Foundation entitled Representing Communities: Histories and Politics of Community-Based Resource Management. The purpose of this project -- both the conference and the forthcoming edited volume -- was to examine the history of community-based natural resource management, and to address both some of the tensions and possibilities that emerged out of efforts to reconcile the goals of conservation and social justice.

This project was a precursor of my present research and teaching trajectory which, in recent years, has shifted increasingly toward an engagement with contemporary conservation issues. The broader context of this engagement is described on the website of the Conservation and Community Lab. I am currently developing two new research projects.

Conservation Planning and Implementation in Pulong Tau National Park, Sarawak
The Sarawak State Government has recently decided to gazette a large portion of the Tama Abu mountain range, extending to the Kalimantan border, as Pulong Tau National Park. This highland area of approximately 100,000 hectares on the central spine of Borneo, encompasses the Kelabit highlands and is adjacent to Kayan Mentarang National Park in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. It is inhabited both by intensive rice cultivating Kelabit and settled Penan foragers.

The research project I am presently developing will focus on protected area planning and implementation in Pulong Tau National Park. It is premised on recognition that protected area planning in Sarawak must be viewed in the broader context of other state landscape planning and environmental management agendas, specifically related to timber concessions and plantation development. I am especially interested in understanding how widely accepted international conservation planning and management practices are implemented in the Sarawak context. How do specific government departments (or individuals within those departments) become convinced that particular forms of conservation planning and implementation do, or do not, fit the Sarawak context, and in what ways are these practices altered to fit local priorities? What debates or critiques shape the ways conservation planning and implementation are manifested in Sarawak? To what degree, or in what ways, does this initiative become entangled with other governmental administrative and regulatory apparatuses?

Ecoregional Conservation
I am also developing a new research project focused on emerging technologies of visualization in contemporary conservation. In recent years we have witnessed a shift away from community-based approaches to conservation and toward ecoregional conservation planning and other priority-setting approaches. Such models, promulgated by major conservation organizations, are based upon of visualization methods designed to make natural and cultural communities "legible." Examples include WWF's Global 200, TNC's Conservation by Design, and CI's Biodiversity Hotspots.

My research will examine a series of ecoregional approaches as they are applied in specific conservation initiatives. I am especially interested in understanding the consequences of visualizing biodiversity at different scales. I am also interested in how such methodologies produce images of local communities as threats and how they lay the groundwork for various forms of environmental governance. I am in the process of developing a collaborative proposal for a comparative project focused on elucidating the links between the process of ecoregional conservation planning as it is envisaged from the center -- that is, from headquarters offices in Washington, D.C. and Gland, Switzerland (where the headquarters of both IUCN and WWF International are located) - and the process of implementation at particular conservation sites in Africa, Asia, South America and the Pacific.

GRADUATE STUDENTS

I presently serve on thirteen graduate student committees as major advisor. The research projects of students with whom I work are focused on a broad range of environmental topics. Descriptions of their individual research projects will soon be posted on this site.

Rebecca Austin (raustin@uga.edu) is a recent Ph.D. whose dissertation research focused on community-based coastal resources management on Palawan, Philippines, in the context of transnational, national, regional, and local environmental justice movements to protect and regenerate coastal resources.

Sandra Crismon (scrismon@uga.edu) is using border theory to analyze the relationship between the Americans and the Marshallese on Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, site of a US missile testing base.

Meredith Welch Devine (mwdevine@uga.edu) is currently developing a dissertation research project that will examine the impact of Natura 2000, a planned Pan-European ecological network, on the Souletine Basque common property sheparding system in France. She will focus on the changing nature of this local institution and on the politics of scale as manifested in the development of this conservation initiative.

Eial Dujovny (dujovny@uga.edu) is presently conducting dissertation research on the coast of Orissa, India. His research focuses on the social and environmental repercussions of the introduction of aquaculture in Chilika Lake, India's largest brackish water lagoon.

Adam Henne (ahenne@uga.edu) is conducting research on forestry politics in Chile. He is looking at how traditional ecological knowledge, scientific authority, and transnational social movements intersect in constructing sustainable forestry.

Dave Himmelfarb (daveh@uga.edu) is interested in studying community-based conservation and the political ecology of resource use in Mt. Elgon, Uganda. He will be working with a group of former hunter-gatherers, the Benet (sometimes referred to as Ndorobo), who recently regained access to resources in Mt. Elgon National Park

Sarah Hitchner (slhitchn@uga.edu) plans to conduct dissertation research in the Kelabit Highlands of Sarawak, focusing on the link between conservation and agrobiodiversity. Her research in the vicinity of Pulong Tau National Park will seek to promote a participatory proactive model for incorporating Kelabit agroforestry practices into protected area planning.

Sarah Hunt (sarhunt@uga.edu) joins the fields of environmental decision making and science and technology studies in her research on constructed wetlands. She is interested in how people's environmental interests not only cause people to be reactive against technologies, but leads some to be proactive in the innovation and adoption of technologies.

Geoff Kelley (gmkelley@uga.edu) is developing a dissertation research project focused on the link between conservation and the historical ecology of communal agrarian communities in Northern Mexico.

Josh Lockyer (jlockyer@uga.edu) is conducting dissertation research on the the historical development of two sister intentional communities, Celo Community in North Carolina, US, and Mitraniketan in Kerala, India. His research focuses on how people use community to act on their cultural critiques of society by contributing to processes of democratization and sustainable resource use.

Beth Harvey Lovern (eharvey@uga.edu) is writing a dissertation focused on the local impacts of the Santee Cooper Hydroelectric Project, which was constructed in South Carolina from 1938 to 1941. Her research combines a cultural models approach with environmental history to analyze how people conceptualized changes in both landscape and community.

Shannon McBride (hands4sg@bellsouth.net) is studying the contested ideas and practices of traditional wild plant harvesters, wildcrafters, and public land managers in a small county in Western, North Carolina in order to better understand conflicts that have arisen regarding conservation, access to resources, and economic development.

Cheryl McClary (mcclaryc@uga.edu) is planning to conduct dissertation research on the political ecology of water in Mobile Bay, Alabama. Her research will compare access to potable water in two communities, an upper-middle class predominately White community experiencing pressure from rapid growth, and a predominately African-American community with a depressed economy.

Jacob McGrew (jacobm@uga.edu), from the Conservation and Sustainable Development Program, is focusing his research on factors affecting tree density and diversity across the landscape matrix in Meru District, Kenya and on community based strategies for augmenting biodiversity.

Rebecca Witter (mariposa@uga.edu) is currently developing a dissertation research project on customary resource rights, local land use, and park development in the Limpopo National Park, Mozambique. In the meantime, she is taking courses and writing an ethnographic landscape history of Southeast Clarke Park, Athens.

TEACHING

Since coming to the University of Georgia in 1992 I have dedicated my teaching efforts to meeting the programmatic needs of the department at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

At the undergraduate level, I teach Cultural Anthropology (ANTH 4050/6050) on an annual basis, generally during the spring semester. This course is designed to provide undergraduate majors with a comprehensive overview of the history of anthropology. The course syllabus can be found at here.

In 2004 I began teaching a new undergraduate course called How the World (really) Works: The Anthropology of Consumption and Globalization (ANTH 3200), which I will teach each Spring. The syllabus for this course can be found at here.

At the graduate level, I have consistently taught core courses, including History of Anthropological Theory (ANTH 6520) and Foundations of Ecological Anthropology (ANTH 6490). Additionally, I have developed and taught a number of elective courses, including Contemporary Theory in Anthropology (ANTH 4090/6090) and Environmentalism: Movements, Rhetorics, Representations (ANT 850).

At present my graduate teaching is focused mostly on Conservation and Community (ANTH 8500). This course typically attracts students both from Anthropology and from the Institute of Ecology, especially those who are pursuing certificates or degrees in the Conservation Ecology and Sustainable Development Program. Conservation and Community is a prerequisite for students interested in participating in research activities associated with the Conservation and Community Lab. A syllabus for Conservation and Community can be found at here.

Recent publications:
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