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？是什么原因导致跨地区和跨国保护生物多样性的努力被采纳并与当地利益联系在一起？在全球保护实践中，扩大规模和依赖社区和非政府组织的趋势有何影响？这项教师职业早期发展(CALEAR)奖将支持解决这些问题的基础研究和教育活动。将进行的研究将通过系统地研究最近社区环境组织的激增以及在新的跨国生物多样性保护努力和日益增长的中国环保运动的背景下，阐明青藏高原上的环境身份，促进对环保主义的出现以及跨国保护项目与当地参与者之间的遭遇的基本理解。更具体地说，调查员将通过宣布生物多样性热点、社区保护倡议以及动员西藏传统文化和宗教元素，特别是神圣土地，来研究跨地区和跨国努力拯救中国生物多样性的相互作用。使用民族志和其他定性方法，包括文本分析和采访，以及对四个省份的中国环保主义者、保护工作人员和基层藏族社区组织的参与观察，在五年的时间里，调查者将审查推动文化作为保护的文化和政治影响，从而通过追踪环境思想在特定时间和地点传播并与当地利益相联系的方式来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不断加强，这项研究的理论意义将适用于各种环境。这项研究将通过增进对跨国生物多样性保护努力、环境身份以及神圣景观、土著身份和环境保护之间关系的基本了解，为政治生态学的跨学科领域做出贡献。这将是对中国环保运动的第一次深入研究，深入到北京和云南的少数非政府组织和活动人士，并探讨西藏文化和自然在环保运动形成中的关键作用。此外，它还应该提供一种超越市民社会、民主化和新自由主义的标准框架来分析中国笔下的环境运动和全球化的新视角。此外，该项目还有一个重要的教育组成部分，包括一个新的本科课程，将通过学习西藏来提高学生对人类和自然-社会地理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机会，其中包括代表人数不足的少数民族，他们将与环保活动人士一起在中国参加暑期研究。该项目还将制作一部关于西藏基层环保主义的民族志电影，适用于地理和人类学课程，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，项目成果将向学术受众以及美国和中国的教育工作者和保护组织传播。

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.