Native American Ecologies and Sustainable Development: Group Travel for a Symposium of the 50th International Congress of Americanists, Summer 2000

该项目旨在为11位美国地理学家提供部分资金，帮助他们参加2000年7月在华沙举行的第50届国际美国人大会(ICA)的美洲原住民文化生态研讨会。由来自欧洲、北美、中美和南美的30至40名专家组成的多国跨学科小组将在这次研讨会上合作，他们打算综合、重新评估和调整有关可持续发展与土著人民现在和过去的生态知识和实践之间的关系的理论和应用努力。关于过去和现在的本土生态的学术都很先进，并取得了许多重要的见解。但是，如果不从理论上将这些不同的方面整合成一个有意义的整体，跨越过去和现在的研究，参与当代对社会、自然、空间及其在发展和保护挑战中的交叉的理论化，经验细节将在没有重大普遍理解的情况下增加。对可持续发展与土著人民的生态知识和实践之间的关系的理解仍然具有智力和社会重要性，因为它仍然存在争议和不清楚。“可持续发展”的概念是解决我们这个时代的两大挑战--全球贫困和环境退化--的核心。这两种现象在多个规模上以复杂的方式联系在一起，随着全球化的日益加剧，它们将变得更加交织在一起。该专题讨论会将加强国际合作网络，并有助于增进我们对与可持续发展和当地生态有关的各种问题的了解。

This project is to provide partial funding for eleven U.S. geographers to participate in the symposium on Native American Cultural Ecologies at the 50th International Congress of Americanists (ICA) in Warsaw in July 2000. The multinational interdisciplinary group of between thirty and forty experts from Europe, North, Middle, and South America who will collaborate in that symposium intend to synthesize, reevaluate, and redirect theoretical and applied efforts regarding the relationship between sustainable development and the ecological knowledges and practices of native peoples in the present and the past. Scholarship on both past and present native ecologies is well advanced and has achieved many significant insights. But without theoretical integration of those different strands into a meaningful whole that cuts across study of the past and the present to engage contemporary theorization of society, nature, space, and their intersection in development and conservation challenges, the empirical detail will mount without significant general understanding.Understanding of the relationship between sustainable development and the ecological knowledges and practices of native peoples remains as intellectually and societally important as it remains controversial and unclear. The notion of "sustainable development" sits at the core of addressing the two great challenges of our time -- global poverty and environmental degradation. Those two phenomena are linked in complex ways at multiple scales and with increasing globalization will become ever more interwoven. The special symposium will strengthen an international network of collaboration and help increase our understanding of the various issues associated with sustainable development and native ecologies.