Doctoral Dissertation Research: Enviroculturalism: Savage Disobedience on the High Seas

该项目将当代捕鲸作为“自然文化”框架的案例研究，“自然文化”是人类学中使用的一个术语，指的是以自然与文化之间不可分割的联系为特征的生活方式。这种束缚显然是对马卡人的描述，这是一个美洲原住民群体，捕鲸是他们古老的文化中心活动。但是，同样的捕鲸文化权利主张是否也适用于现代日本的捕鲸活动呢？那些认为自己的文化认同是围绕保护鲸鱼而形成的环保主义者呢？正如认知失调描述的是当一个人持有两种或两种以上心理上不相容的想法时所产生的不适和由此产生的行为，自然文化失调描述的是当不相容的自然文化之间发生冲突时所产生的不适和由此产生的行为。本项目研究了三个群体（马卡人、日本人和环保主义者）如何利用资源（从修辞资源到鱼叉到文化资本）来应对这种不和谐，使用民族志方法。该项目并没有将冲突简化为简单的伦理计算（例如声称动物权利普遍高于人类需求），而是强调每种自然文化所代表的复杂综合。更广泛的影响该项目的目标是利用这些更全面、更有活力的描述来建立一个“环境文化主义”框架，该框架可以涵盖文化多样性和生物多样性的价值，并对跨文化环境冲突产生更细致的理解，从而改善环境系统的管理。

This project uses contemporary whaling as a case study for the"natureculture" framework, a term used in anthropology to refer tolifeways particularly marked by inseparable binding between nature andculture. Such binding is an obvious description for the Makah, a nativeAmerican group in which whaling is an ancient and culturally centralpractice. But could the same claim for a cultural right to whaling applyto a modern Japanese whale harvest? What about environmentalists who seetheir cultural identity formed around whale defense? Just as cognitivedissonance describes the discomfort and resulting behaviors that occurwhen one holds two or more psychologically incompatible ideas,natureculture dissonance describes the discomfort and resultingbehaviors when there is a clash between incompatible naturecultures.Intellectual meritThis project investigates how each of 3 groups (Makah, Japanese, andEnvironmentalist) mobilizes resources (ranging from rhetorical resourcesto harpoons to cultural capital) in response to this dissonance, using ethnographic methods. Rather than reduce the conflict to a simplistic ethical calculus (for example the claim that animal rights universally trump human need), this project emphasizes the complex synthesis that each natureculture represents. Broader ImpactThe project goal is to use these fuller, more dynamic portraits to develop an "enviroculturalist" framework that can encompass the value of cultural diversity as well as that of biodiversity, and produce a more nuanced understanding of transcultural environmental conflicts, leading to improved management of environmental systems.