About Dr. West
Biography
|
Paige West received her MA in Environmental Anthropology from the University of Georgia and her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Rutgers University. She is currently Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University. Since 1996, drawing on the theories, methods, and insights of both cultural anthropology and political ecology, she has conducted fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, Australia, Germany, England, and the United States. In 2002 she received the American Anthropological Association’s Anthropology and Environment Junior Scholar award for her work. She is a cultural and environmental anthropologist with interests in the linkages between environmental conservation and international development, the material and symbolic ways in which the natural world is understood and produced, the aesthetics and poetics of human social relations with nature, and the critical analysisof the creation of commodities and practices of consumption. Dr. West has recently completed a book entitled Conservation is our government now: The politics of ecology in Papua New Guinea , published by Duke University Press and available June 1, 2006. |
|---|
Paige West, Ellen Tom and Tenepone Kalabo
She has just completed a second manuscript entitled From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: Tracking the Commodity Ecumene for Papua New Guinean Coffee. She is the author of several articles, including "Environmental NGO's and the Nature of Ethnographic Inquiry," in Social Analysis , “Ecotourism and Authenticity: Getting Away From It All?” with James G. Carrier in Current Anthropology , “The Man and The Mine: Desire, Hope and Anxiety in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea,” in The Contemporary Pacific, and "Translation, Value, and Space: Theorizing an Ethnographic and Engaged Environmental Anthropology," in American Anthropologist. Dr. West has two current research projects. The first, in collaboration with ecologists Dr. Debra Wright and Dr. Andrew Mack, is a long-term study of hunting practices in Papua New Guinea’s Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area. The second, funded by the National Geographic Society, is a study of the meaning and value of tree kangaroos, arboreal marsupials found in New Guinea.
Representative Publications:
Single Author Monographs
2006. Conservation is our Government Now: The Politics of Ecology in Papua New Guinea. Durham: Duke University Press.
n.d. From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: Tracking the Commodity Ecumene for Papua New Guinean Coffee.
Edited Volumes
2006 Melanesian Mining Modernities. Paige West and Martha Macintyre (eds). The Contemporary Pacific. 18 (2).
Forthcoming. Against the Grain: The Vayda Tradition in Human Ecology and Ecological Anthropology . (Eds.) Bradley Walters, Bonnie J. McCay, Paige West, and Susan Lees. Lantham, MD: Lexington Books.
Peer Review Journal Articles
2006 “ Some unexpected consequences of protected areas: An anthropological perspective,” Conservation Biology. With Daniel Brockington. In Press.
2006 “Parks and Peoples: The Social Effects of Protected Areas,” Annual Review of Anthropology , Volume 35, October 2006, with Daniel Brockington and James Igoe. In Press.
2006, “The Man and The Mine: Desire, Hope and Anxiety in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea,” The Contemporary Pacific. 18 (2).
2005 “Holding the Story Forever: The Aesthetics of Ethnographic Labor,” Anthropological Forum 15(3).
2001 "Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations and the Nature of Ethnographic Inquiry," Social Analysis 45(2), November 2001.
Chapters in Books
2004 “Environmental NGO’s and the nature of ethnographic inquiry” in Anthropology and Consultancy P.J. Stewart and A. Strathern (eds.), 2004, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.2004 “Local history as ‘indigenous knowledge’: Aeroplanes, conservation and development in Haia and Maimafu, Papua New Guinea,” Bicker, A., P. Sillitoe & J. Pottier. (eds.) Investigating Local Knowledge: New Directions, New Approaches . London: Ashgate Publishing.
n.d. “Conservation Actions and Events in Papua New Guinea” in Against the Grain: The Vayda Tradition in Human Ecology and Ecological Anthropology . (Eds.) Bradley Walters, Bonnie J. McCay, Paige West, and Susan Lees. Lantham, MD: Lexington Books.
Working Papers