Forests & Oceans for the Future Discussion and News

We are pleased to announce the publsihing of Dr. Iain Davidson-Hunt’s talk, Mobilizing Local Knowledge.

The presentation can be viewed by clicking the following link:

http://www.ecoknow.ca/podcasts/davidson_hunt.html

Fishing communities around the globe find themselves locked paradoxically between intensely local expressions of community and increasingly liberalized economic regimes. Commonly referred to as globalization, these trans-national processes are having a direct and often destabilizing effect on fishing communities. However, the changes are neither preordained nor uniform across different local settings. Furthermore, local level processes also play a critical role in shaping the interaction between the global and the local. New developments in information technology combine with increasingly liberal international trade regulations to make the job of any study of the local obsolete or, at best inadequate, if such a study does not take into account the implications of globalizing processes. This project, funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, is designed to build upon emerging and developing approaches to anthropological research in such a way as to incorporate and to highlight the complex interconnections between the local and the global. This is accomplished through a methodological approach that combines traditional locality-based field research with research located in the virtual spaces of transatlantic networks of social solidarity (between fishers organizations), trade (fish, fish products, and capital) and information (variously captured in electronic communications and web sites).

This project will identify and analyze the economic and cultural implications of both longterm and emerging TransAtlantic connections: how fishing communities are increasingly integrated into global markets and how this integration is shaped and mediated by local history and social relations. Ethnographic investigation of local perceptions of, and responses to, globalization will illuminate how global processes transform and reinforce local experience, and how local culture is articulated with global phenomena.

Conducted over three years this project involves ethnographic research in four fishing communities and three ‘virtual’ field sites. Standard anthropological participant observation methods are combined with participatory video production in which community members and university-based researchers collaborate in the production of ethnographic videos. Ultimately, this multi-sited research programme sets as its objective an empirical case study of globalization as experienced and expressed within four fishing communities along the shores of the North Atlantic.

Principal Investigator – Charles Menzies
Research Collaborators – Caroline Butler, Kim Brown, Rene-Pierre Chever, Madaleine Hall-Arber

You are cordially invited to a UBC applied anthropology (RMES500Q /ANTH 409A) student research project presentation (project descriptions below).

These presentations will take place Wednesday, April 5 2006 from 6:30 – 9:30. Each project presentation will last from 20-25 minutes with an opportunity for discussion, questions, and feedback and then a short break to transition to the next project presentation.

Light refreshments will be served from 6:15 pm.

Presentations in room 205 of the Anthropology/Sociology Building, 6303 NW Marine Drive. Parking is available in the metered lot in front of the AnSo Building and the Museum of Anthropology or across the street in the rose Garden Parkade.

For more information email charles.menzies@ubc.ca. RSVPs appreciated

Presentation Order:

6:30 pm. Urban seed histories. Partnered with Farm Folk/City Folk.
In collaboration with FarmFolk/CityFolk­a local non-profit organization committed to environmentally beneficial agricultural practices­students will investigate the propagation of seeds in urban gardens.

7:15 pm. Social impact assessment of fisheries quota management systems. Partnered with T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation. The objective of this project is to identify the social impact of fisheries quota systems on small-scale commercial fishermen and their communities. Conducted in collaboration with the T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation, the student researchers will interview small-scale fishermen to identify their concerns with respect to fisheries quota management systems.

8:00 Grade ten exams and graduation rates. Partnered with BC Society for Public Education. The aim of the project is to examine the effect of BC’s new Grade 10 provincial examinations on secondary school enrollment and completion. Research will include reference to data provided by Statistics Canada on graduation rates; research undertaken in other jurisdictions about factors affecting graduation rates; Grade 10 exam results provided by BC’s Ministry of Education; information obtained through interviews with secondary school guidance counselors; and if feasible, interviews with secondary school drop-outs who are over the age of 19. The researchers will make a particular effort to determine whether provincial examinations, including the new Grade 10 provincial examinations, are having, or are likely to have, a disproportionate effect on the enrollment and graduation rates of aboriginal students or other at-risk group of students.

8:45 pm. Gobalization and teaching in public schools. Partnered with BC Teachers Federation.
Working in cooperation with the B.C.T.F. student researchers aim to explore the impact of globalization on elementary school teachers and classroom settings. The students will participating in and observing groups of teachers discussing the issue of globalization. Students will also conduct interviews with interested elementary level teachers