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Professor Stuart Smith Featured in Undark Magazine
Professor Stuart Smith's archaelogical project at Tombos has been featured in an article about Nubian archaeology in the online magazine Undark. It has also been reprinted in The Atlantic.
Read more about his project at Tombos here: https://undark.org/article/nubia-sudan-amara-west-archaeology/
Continue Reading Professor Stuart Smith Featured in Undark Magazine
Workshop: Understanding Harmful Cultural Practices
Recent years have witnessed increased international commitments to eliminate cultural practices deemed harmful to women, particularly female genital cutting, child marriage and intimate partner violence. Addressing an urgent need to share insights across disciplines, this two-day workshop brings together evolutionary and cultural anthropologists, demographers, sociologists, political scientists and economists, working to understand the origins and drivers of so-called ‘harmful cultural practices’. Invited speakers will share their recent work questioning and informing current efforts of the international development sector, and government and multilateral agencies seeking to discourage harmful behaviors and promote female empowerment. Discussion sessions will focus on cross-cutting issues such as context-dependency in the evidence for harm, the motivations and interactions of multiple actors that maintain ostensibly harmful practices, methodological considerations when working with sensitive research topics, and the evaluation and design of behavior change initiatives.
The workshop is generously funded by the UCSB College of Letters and Science and the Broom Center for Demography. Image: Taken from a poster advertising the dangers of early marriage in Mwanza, Tanzania.
Please see the following link for more details: https://davidwlawson.wordpress.com/2018workshop/
Continue Reading Workshop: Understanding Harmful Cultural PracticesUCSB Library Exhibit: "Garimpeiros"
The UCSB Library presents an exhibition of photographs of illegal gold mines in the Brazilian Amazon. Curated by Jeffrey Hoelle, UCSB Associate Professor of Anthropology.
The wildcat miners who work in the small-scale and often illegal gold mining camps of the Brazilian Amazon are known as garimpeiros. Across the centuries, garimpeiros have scoured the most remote reaches of the Amazon rainforest in search of gold. The garimpeiros unearth the gold that shines across the world, but they have the dirtiest of reputations. Gold mining is responsible for an estimated 10% Amazonian deforestation, as well as mercury contamination and sedimentation of vital rivers. In international news reports, garimpeiros are presented as violent and immoral villains pillaging the forest beyond the reach of the law. This exhibition provides a deeper understanding of Amazonian garimpeiros through anthropological research conducted in the garimpos in 2014 and 2015.
Christien Tompkins, "Unbundling the Teacher"
Continue Reading Christien Tompkins, "Unbundling the Teacher"
Pacific Views Series: Jeffrey Hoelle, "The Anthropology of Rainforest Destruction"
The UCSB Library presents a talk by Jeffrey Hoelle (UCSB Anthropology) to be followed by a public reception.
The Amazon rainforest is a land of incredible biological and cultural diversity that plays a crucial role in global environment health. Yet the rainforest continues to be cut down to produce commodities, particularly cattle, soy, and gold. While we know that a combination of economic factors and governmental policies contribute to these destructive activities, on-the-ground research with groups making land-use decisions helps to better understand the socio-cultural context and logic of deforestation. Drawing on a decade of his anthropological research with cattle ranchers and gold miners in the Brazilian Amazon, Hoelle discusses the beliefs, values, and interests that contribute to destructive behaviors. His work explores the strategies that these ranchers and miners use to elude government surveillance and deforestation regulations, and sheds light on some of the ongoing challenges to more sustainable and just alternatives in Amazonia.
Jeffrey Hoelle is a cultural anthropologist and the author of Rainforest Cowboys: The Rise of Ranching and Cattle Culture in Western Amazonia. His collaborative research in the gold mines of Amazonia, funded by the National Geographic Society, is the subject of the current UCSB Library exhibition, “Garimpeiros: The Wildcat Gold Miners of the Amazon Rainforest.”
The Pacific Views: Library Speaker Series is co-sponsored by the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor.
Continue Reading Pacific Views Series: Jeffrey Hoelle, "The Anthropology of Rainforest Destruction"
Pacific Views Series: Jeffrey Hoelle, "The Anthropology of Rainforest Destruction"
The UCSB Library presents a talk by Jeffrey Hoelle (UCSB Anthropology) to be followed by a public reception.
The Amazon rainforest is a land of incredible biological and cultural diversity that plays a crucial role in global environment health. Yet the rainforest continues to be cut down to produce commodities, particularly cattle, soy, and gold. While we know that a combination of economic factors and governmental policies contribute to these destructive activities, on-the-ground research with groups making land-use decisions helps to better understand the socio-cultural context and logic of deforestation. Drawing on a decade of his anthropological research with cattle ranchers and gold miners in the Brazilian Amazon, Hoelle discusses the beliefs, values, and interests that contribute to destructive behaviors. His work explores the strategies that these ranchers and miners use to elude government surveillance and deforestation regulations, and sheds light on some of the ongoing challenges to more sustainable and just alternatives in Amazonia.
Jeffrey Hoelle is a cultural anthropologist and the author of Rainforest Cowboys: The Rise of Ranching and Cattle Culture in Western Amazonia. His collaborative research in the gold mines of Amazonia, funded by the National Geographic Society, is the subject of the current UCSB Library exhibition, “Garimpeiros: The Wildcat Gold Miners of the Amazon Rainforest.”
The Pacific Views: Library Speaker Series is co-sponsored by the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor.
Continue Reading Pacific Views Series: Jeffrey Hoelle, "The Anthropology of Rainforest Destruction"
Faculty Win Shanghai Archaeology Forum Research Awards
Award Date: November 20, 2017
Professor Emeritus Brian Fagan received the Lifetime Achievement award from the Shanghai Archaeology Forum (SAF) in December 2017. Prof. Fagan traveled to Shanghai to accept this award.
Professor Amber VanDerwarker and Associate Professor Greg Wilson's work "Warfare, Drought and Agriculture: Coping with Conflict and Food Security" was selected for the 2017 SAF Research Award. Prof. VanDerwarker traveled to Shanghai to present the work and receive the award in December 2017 as well.
Continue Reading Faculty Win Shanghai Archaeology Forum Research Awards