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

该项目使用当代捕鲸作为“自然文化”框架的案例研究，这是人类学中使用的一个术语，指的是特别以自然和文化之间不可分割的联系为标志的生活方式。这样的约束是对Makah的一个明显的描述，Makah是一个美国本土群体，在这个群体中，捕鲸是一种古老的文化中心做法。但是，同样的捕鲸文化权利的主张是否也适用于现代日本的鲸鱼收获呢？那些认为自己的文化身份是围绕着鲸鱼防御而形成的环保主义者呢？正如认知不和谐描述了当一个人持有两个或更多心理上不相容的想法时发生的不适和导致的行为一样，自然文化不和谐描述了当不相容的自然文化之间发生冲突时的不适和导致的行为。这个项目使用民族志方法调查了三个群体(Makah，日本人和环保主义者)是如何动员资源(从修辞资源到鱼叉到文化资本)来应对这种不和谐的。这个项目没有将冲突简化为简单的伦理演算(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完整、更有活力的肖像来开发一个能够涵盖文化多样性和生物多样性的价值的“环境保护主义者”框架，并对跨文化环境冲突产生更微妙的理解，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.