Convenor
Heather O’Leary
McMaster University
Abstract
Beyond traditional geographic and political boundaries, the world is facing natural resource insecurity in its entirety. Natural resource insecurities arise from social practices in combination with natural boundaries. They also are magnified by social disparities in some areas, while in others social systems ameliorate the human impact of insecurity. Social processes and social science are thus central to resource management — though many think it the realm of planners, politicians, engineers and scientists. Identifying common challenges and unique opportunities for developing pathways to resource security and justice both across and within different societies is inherently an anthropological question. Resource security must be attained by studying natural “boundaries to security,” but also by examining, simultaneously, the process of boundary construction.
Broadly, social scientists bring epistemological and methodological insight to the critical study of present and historically favored pathways to resource security (such as policy, science and innovative technology). Within all resource security pathways, cultural systems are at work and merit deeper study. Anthropologists have a long history of understanding social complexity and its relationship to resource allocation and broader ecologies, as they call into question methods of knowledge production, power and authority in boundary construction.
This panel invites papers that explore the power of nature and the nature of power at micro- and macro-level scales. It will underscore how anthropologists can contribute to a better understanding of the complex, interdisciplinary problems that lie at the core of natural resource security and the importance of collaboration. This panel has been designed to re-imagine the boundaries for anthropological intervention in global natural resource security. It invites papers that examine the social life of one natural resource, but also those that acknowledge spill-overs across seemingly concrete boundaries into the realm of other resources. The aim is to develop frames of analysis for a just and holistic understanding of social issues in global resource insecurity and of the socio-political and economic structures that can reduce or further exacerbate natural resource vulnerability.
panel sponsored by IUAES Commission of Anthropology and the Environment (CAE, formerly CHE)