CAREER: Culture and Conservation: Transnational Environmentalism, Sacred Lands, and Community Organizations in Tibet

这个奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。在什么条件下人们成为环保主义者？ 是什么原因使保护生物多样性的跨地方和跨国努力被采纳并与地方利益相联系？ 在全球保护实践中，扩大规模和依靠社区和非政府组织的趋势有什么影响？ 该教师职业早期发展（CAREER）奖将支持解决这些问题的基础研究和教育活动。 要追求的研究将推进环境保护主义的出现和跨国保护项目和当地的行为者之间的遭遇的基本理解，通过最近的社区环境组织和环境特性的表达在新的跨国生物多样性保护工作和日益增长的中国环境运动的背景下，在青藏高原的扩散进行系统的检查。 更具体地说，研究者将通过宣布生物多样性热点、社区保护倡议以及调动西藏传统文化和宗教元素，特别是圣地，来研究跨地区和跨国努力的相互作用，以拯救中国的生物多样性。 使用民族志和其他定性方法，包括文本分析和访谈，以及在五年内对中国环保人士，保护工作人员和四个省的基层藏族社区组织的参与观察，调查员将研究促进文化保护的文化和政治影响，从而通过追踪环境思想传播的方式以及在特定时间和地点与当地利益相结合的方式，促进对全球化的了解。随着生物多样性丧失和全球防止生物多样性丧失的努力的加强，这项研究的理论意义将对各种各样的环境有用。 该研究将有助于政治生态学的跨学科领域，通过提高跨国生物多样性保护工作，环境身份，以及神圣景观，土著身份和环境保护之间的关系的基本理解。 这将是对中国环保运动的第一次研究，深入到北京和云南的少数非政府组织和活动家之外，并考察西藏文化和自然在其形成中的关键作用。此外，它应该提供一个新的方式来分析环境运动和全球化在中国的公民社会和民主化的标准框架，一方面和新自由主义的另一方面。 此外，该项目还有一个重要的教育组成部分，包括一个新的本科班，通过了解西藏，提高学生对人类和自然社会地理学理论和辩论的知识。 该奖项还将为四名本科生提供学习和研究机会，其中包括代表性不足的少数民族，他们将与中国的环保活动家一起参加夏季研究。 该项目还将制作一部关于西藏基层环境保护主义的民族志电影，适用于地理和人类学课程，以教授自然文化和自然-社会关系的表现问题。 两名博士生将接受教育和培训，项目成果将传播给美国和中国的学术受众以及教育工作者和保护组织。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Under what conditions do people become environmentalists? What causes translocal and transnational efforts to protect biodiversity to be adopted and connected with local interests? What are the implications of trends in global conservation practice toward both scaling-up and relying on community and non-governmental organizations? This Faculty Career Early-Development (CAREER) award will support basic research and educational activities that address these questions. The research to be pursued will advance basic understanding of the emergence of environmentalism and the encounter between transnational conservation projects and locally situated actors through a systematic examination of the recent proliferation of community environmental organizations and articulations of environmental identities on the Tibetan Plateau in the context of new transnational biodiversity conservation efforts and a growing Chinese environmental movement. More specifically, the investigator will examine the interplay of translocal and transnational efforts to save China's biodiversity through the declaration of biodiversity hotspots, community-based conservation initiatives, and mobilization of elements of Tibetan traditional culture and religion, particularly sacred lands. Using ethnographic and other qualitative methods, including textual analysis and interviews and participant observation with Chinese environmentalists, conservation staff, and grassroots Tibetan community organizations across four provinces over a period of five years, the investigator will examine the cultural and political implications of promoting culture as conservation, thereby contributing to knowledge about globalization by tracing the ways in which environmental ideas travel and are adopted and articulated with local interests in particular times and places. As both biodiversity loss and global efforts to prevent it intensify, the theoretical implications of the study will be useful for a wide variety of settings. The research will contribute to the interdisciplinary field of political ecology by improving basic understanding of transnational biodiversity conservation efforts, environmental identities, and the relationship between sacred landscapes, indigenous identities, and environmental protection. It will be the first study of China's environmental movement that goes in depth beyond a handful of NGOs and activists based in Beijing and Yunnan and that examines the key role of Tibetan culture and nature in its formation. Furthermore, it should provide a new way of analyzing the environmental movement and globalization in China beyond standard framings of civil society and democratization on the one hand and neoliberalism on the other. In addition, the project has a significant educational component, including a new undergraduate class that will enhance students' knowledge about theories and debates in human and nature-society geography through learning about Tibet. The award also will provide learning and research opportunities for four undergraduates, including underrepresented minorities, who will participate in summer research with environmental activists in China. The project also will produce an ethnographic film about grassroots environmentalism in Tibet, which will be suitable for use in geography and anthropology classes for teaching about cultures of nature and issues of representation of the nature-society relationship. Two doctoral students will be educated and trained, and project results will be disseminated to scholarly audiences as well as to educators and conservation organizations in both the U.S. and China.