Ailing Hearts, Go Home: Ethnographic Storytelling and the Levels of Experience

I visited Primary Children\u27s Medical Center on a fresh snow morning near the beginning of last winter. The hospital was not where it had been in my childhood, a quiet neighborhood in the avenues section of Salt Lake City; several years ago the hospital moved to a new location farther east on the Wasatch Mountain foothills, near the University of Utah Medical Center. The old brick building now sits sedate and empty at the top of a shaded hill. My memory of the old hospital is as a bright and oppressive place, full of the stuff of life and death. There had been a giant aquarium in the middle of the foyer back then, full of bizarre salt-water fish. Some had spiky fins and tails the color of fireworks; others were black and white, like zebras; still others were the kind that would puff up when you put your face against the glass or your finger in the water. This had occupied most of my attention; I was six years old

Epistemic Turbulence in Renewable Energy Engineering on the Chinese "Belt and Road"

Energy issues constitute a nexus of technological, political and economic challenges, particularly in light of the global climate crisis. Chinese banks and corporations, guided by a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure investment program called the "Belt and Road Initiative," now account for one-third of global investment in renewable energy. In this ethnographic study, we explore the professional knowledge and practices of Chinese, Israeli and European engineers working on a pumped-storage hydropower project in Israel with financial and technical backing from Chinese energy firms. We examine how these experts construct and maintain a set of epistemic cultural practices within transnational flows of capital, technology, materials and expertise. Situating our findings within Science and Technology Studies (STS), we use the hydrological engineering concept of "turbulence" as a metaphor for the rapid transnational movements of engineering concepts and personnel in the renewable energy sector.Peer reviewe

Industrial Pollution and Environmental Health in Rural China: Risk, Uncertainty and Individualization

After more than three decades of extremely rapid industrial growth, China faces an environmental public health crisis. In this article, I examine pollution in the rural industrial sector and its implications for community health. Drawing on recent ethnographic research in an industrial township in rural Sichuan, including interviews with government officials, environmental regulators, industrial workers and local residents, I explore how community members understand the linkages between air and water pollution from nearby factories and their health and well-being. The article has two main goals. The first is to examine the various ways in which uncertainty about pollution sources, about the severity of pollution levels and about the links between pollution and human health shapes villagers’ experiences of pollution on a day-to-day basis. The second goal is to examine the rising trend of “individualization” taking place in China today and explore how this process is related to people’s experiences of toxic exposure. I consider the implications of this trend for how social scientists should approach the study of environmental illness in contemporary China.Keywords: China, environmental health, Sichuan, scientific uncertainty, industrial pollution, individualizatio

Transdisciplinary Research in Water Sustainability: What’s in it for an Engaged Researcher-Stakeholder Community?

This study uses semi-structured interviews and an online survey to explore the structure, challenges and outcomes of a five-year National Science Foundation-funded water scarcity modelling project in the Willamette River Basin of Oregon, USA. The research team chose to facilitate broader impacts by engaging stakeholders from the study’s inception (e.g. developing grant proposal, study implementations, defining model run scenarios) through its completion and extension of findings. The team used various engagement formats (field trips, small and large group meetings) and encountered many challenges, including the lack of a shared vision, different professional languages, research complexities and project management. Through stakeholder engagement the team overcame challenges, facilitated learning, and improved and extended the research process and results. Participation in engagement events was positively correlated with beneficial broader impact outcomes. We compare these outcomes with NSF’s five broader impact criteria: advance scientific discovery and understanding, broaden participation of underrepresented groups, enhance research infrastructure, broadly disseminate results, and benefit society. We show that stakeholder engagement is one method to achieve the five original NSF criteria and suggest that a sixth criterion can be achieved through stakeholder engagement – that of developing the research community. KEYWORDS: Broader impacts, climate change, modelling, stakeholder engagement, Willamette River Valle

Community profiles for West Coast and North Pacific Fisheries : Washington, Oregon, California, and other U.S. States

This document profiles 125 fishing communities in Washington, Oregon, California and two other U.S. states with basic social and economic characteristics. Various federal statutes, including the Magnuson-Stevens fishery conservation and management act of 1976 as amended and the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 as amended and the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 as amended among others, require federal agencies to examine the social and economic impacts of policies and regulations. These profiles can serve as a consolidated source of baseline information for assessing community impacts in these states.This project could not have been completed without the generous assistance of a number of people and institutions. The Northwest Fisheries Science Center, Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC), and Southwest Fisheries Science Center provided funding, staff time, and support services for this project. The Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission provided personnel and administrative support under a cooperative agreement with AFSC. The National Marine Fisheries Service Northwest Regional Office, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska Region RAM (Restricted Access Management) Division, and Pacific Coast Fisheries Information Network provided data and advice. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the California Department of Fish and Game, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and the Alaska Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission provided an extensive amount of data through online sources and by filling special requests including advice and clarification when needed. Terry Hiatt and Patrick Marchman were instrumental in examining and organizing the data for analytical purposes, and Ron Felthoven spearheaded the Data Envelopment Analysis ultimately used in the community selection process. The University of Washington’s program in Environmental Anthropology and its School of Marine Affairs provided personnel and access to university resources. Additional personnel joined the project from anthropology departments at the University of Georgia and Oregon State University.Peer reviewe

Risk, pollution and sustainability in rural Sichuan, China

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2004In this dissertation, I illustrate how people's perceptions of risk from industrial pollution in southwest China are shaped by political, social and economic factors at work within and beyond the study community. Futian Township, located in the Panzhihua municipality in southern Sichuan province, is used as a case study for exploring this topic. It is a mixed ethnic township consisting primarily of Shuitian Yi and Han residents. In contrast to previous work on the psychological dimensions of risk perception, I use a political ecology framework to analyze how the environmental risks associated with industrial pollution were produced through political and economic processes, and how community members understand and cope with the pollution problem. The dissertation is based primarily on data gathered during fieldwork in 2002--2003. I used a variety of research methods, including ethnographic participant-observation, in-depth interviews, quantitative survey questionnaires, and scientific air quality monitoring.The results indicate that, although community members are all exposed to levels of air pollution (PM10) that far exceed standards set by the Chinese government, their perceptions of the local pollution problem are varied. In general, most community members perceive a significant threat to their health and livelihoods from industrial pollution, and this finding stands in contrast to the inherited wisdom in risk studies that poor individuals and communities tend to worry less about environmental risk. In addition, individual perceptions of local pollution are linked to one's position within the local political economy. This is in part because of structural and economic reforms in China's rural industrial sector that encourage privatization of local factories, and also because of the particularly deleterious consequences of industrial pollution for the community's agricultural households.The dissertation also documents the forced closure of local factories by officials from the State Environmental Protection Agency for failure to comply with emissions standards. This event, and its economic consequences, illustrates how state actors at different levels of the government bureaucracy understand and act upon key concepts such as "pollution" and "sustainable development.

Tilt&Gerkey-GEC-1.do

This is the data set used for the analysis in the paper "Dams and Population Displacement on China’s Upper Mekong River: Implications for Social Capital and Social-Ecological Resilience." In 2010, in collaboration with Chinese colleagues, we administered a household survey questionnaire to 729 households in more than 30 villages across Fengqing, Yun, and Lancang counties in Yunnan Province, China. Because of our specific interest in agriculture and social capital for this paper, we restricted the sample in our analysis to include only those households who reported participating in farming activities during the previous 12 months, removing 56 households. We also removed an additional 201 households who had not participated in at least some labor exchange during the previous 12 months, on the assumption that their farming practices were different, less reliant on labor exchange. Our final sample thus contained 472 households in the vicinity of four dam sites (Manwan=143, Dachaoshan=106, Xiaowan=150, Nuozhadu=73). This data set includes information on our independent variables (resettlement status, dam site), dependent variables (exchange of financial resources -- both number of households and amounts; and exchange of farm labor -- both number of households and amounts), and control variables (land holdings, ethnicity, and income)

In search of solvency: changing agricultural governance in an ethnic minority autonomous region of southwest China

During the last quarter century, China's agricultural sector has undergone a dramatic transformation from collective to private production, resulting in marked improvements in quality of life for most rural citizens. However, economic development in the countryside has been highly uneven, particularly in China's southwestern region, with its arid land, rugged topography and high concentration of ethnic minority populations. Based on recent ethnographic research, this paper discusses the innovative governance strategies used by a state-owned sugar mill in a rural township in the southwestern province of Yunnan in order to survive within a changing economic environment. We argue that, despite economic liberalisation, the state – particularly at the local level – still plays a key role in mediating between farmers and the marketplace. The implications of this shifting governance structure for agricultural development in poor, minority areas and for China's nearly 800 million peasants are discussed.agricultural governance; economic development; sugar cane; local states; minority nationalities; China; Yunnan Province; ethnic minorities; indigenous culture; autonomous regions; indigenous peoples; rural economy; peasant economy; farmers.