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

该项目将为11位美国地理学家提供部分资金，让他们参加2000年7月在华沙举行的第50届国际美国学家大会（ICA）上的美洲土著文化生态专题讨论会。由来自欧洲、北美洲、中美洲和南美洲的30至40名专家组成的多国跨学科小组将在该研讨会上合作，目的是综合、重新评价和重新定位关于可持续发展与现在和过去土著人民的生态知识和实践之间关系的理论和应用努力。关于过去和现在的本地生态的学术研究都很先进，并取得了许多重要的见解。但是，如果没有将这些不同的分支在理论上整合成一个有意义的整体，跨越过去和现在的研究，以参与当代社会、自然、空间的理论化，以及它们在发展和保护挑战中的交集，那么经验细节将在没有重要的总体理解的情况下堆积起来。理解可持续发展与土著人民的生态知识和实践之间的关系在智力和社会上仍然很重要，因为它仍然存在争议和不明确。“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。这两种现象在多个尺度上以复杂的方式联系在一起，并且随着全球化的增加，它们将更加交织在一起。这次特别研讨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本地生态有关的各种问题的理解。

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.