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

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。人们在什么条件下成为环保主义者？是什么原因使跨地区和跨国的保护生物多样性的努力被采纳并与当地利益联系起来？全球环境保护实践的趋势是怎样的，既要扩大规模，又要依靠社区和非政府组织？这个教师职业早期发展（Career）奖将支持解决这些问题的基础研究和教育活动。在新的跨国生物多样性保护努力和日益增长的中国环境运动的背景下，通过系统地检查最近在青藏高原社区环境组织的扩散和环境身份的表达，所进行的研究将促进对环境主义的出现和跨国保护项目与当地行动者之间相遇的基本理解。更具体地说，研究者将通过宣布生物多样性热点、社区保护倡议和调动西藏传统文化和宗教元素，特别是圣地，来研究跨地方和跨国努力在拯救中国生物多样性方面的相互作用。利用民族志和其他定性方法，包括文本分析、访谈和参与观察，与中国环保人士、保护人员和西藏基层社区组织在四个省的五年时间里，研究者将研究文化作为保护促进的文化和政治含义。因此，通过追踪环境思想在特定时间和地点的传播、采用和与当地利益相结合的方式，有助于了解全球化。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剧，该研究的理论意义将对各种各样的环境有用。该研究将通过提高对跨国生物多样性保护努力、环境认同以及神圣景观、土著认同与环境保护之间关系的基本理解，为政治生态学的跨学科领域做出贡献。这将是对中国环境运动的第一次深入研究，超越了北京和云南的少数非政府组织和活动家，并考察了西藏文化和自然在其形成过程中的关键作用。此外，它应该提供一种超越公民社会和民主化以及新自由主义的标准框架来分析中国环境运动和全球化的新方法。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，通过对西藏的了解，提高学生对人文地理学和自然社会地理学的理论和辩论的知识。该奖项还将为四名本科生提供学习和研究的机会，其中包括少数族裔，他们将与中国的环保活动人士一起参加夏季研究。该项目还将制作一部关于西藏基层环保的民族志影片，适合在地理和人类学课程中使用，用于教授自然文化和自然与社会关系的表现问题。两名博士生将接受教育和培训，项目成果将向中美两国的学者、教育工作者和保护组织发布。

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.