rebecca hardin | University of Michigan (original) (raw)
Papers by rebecca hardin
ABSTRACT This report presents results from a series of work sessions held in Bayanga, southwester... more ABSTRACT This report presents results from a series of work sessions held in Bayanga, southwestern Central African Republic C.A.R. during the last days of July, 1997. Our analysis of preliminary data, and the dynamics of information exchange initiated during these meetings testify to the feasibility of the original idea. But none of our ideas could have been implemented without the support of the World-Wide Fund for Nature-U.S. and the government of the C.A.R., longtime partners in the management of the Dzanga Sangha and Dzanga Ndoki protected areas. They were indispensable from start to finish and we praise their willingness to better define "participation" by actors at various levels of the intertwined research, conservation and development process. We would also like to thank the personnel of Doli Lodge, who so quickly transformed their tourism operation into a conference center for our visitors. They encountered many obstacles, but remained flexible, despite our much higher levels of attendance than originally anticipated! Our collaboration with them constitutes an interesting example concerning the compatibility of tourism infrastructures and staffs with the needs of an international scientific research community in integrated conservation projects. Remarkable, really: the Dzanga Reserve management was willing to submit their efforts in three separate but interconnected domains (research, tourism and conservation) to a sort of experimental collective scrutiny. This was not a consultant's evaluation; not one expert's assessment, reflected in a report that might either be read or languish in project archives or government offices. On the contrary, it was an analysis carried out by representatives from layered local communities, field researchers from several different projects and countries, and local, regional and national level C.A.R. government officials. All were invited to speak frankly and to learn, through investigating the ten-year old experiment of integrated conservation management at Dzanga Sangha.
International Forestry Review, 2017
Forest concessions have been used by governments as a development instrument of remote and landlo... more Forest concessions have been used by governments as a development instrument of remote and landlocked areas. Currently, in Africa, concessions are caught between the increase in population density in rural areas and agribusiness investors seeking land. They remain a controversial forest resource management instrument, although certification has been instrumental for improving management practices, in spite of contexts of poor governance. Relevance of traditional forest concessions is lowering in some places but innovations from both private and public actors create new opportunities of co-management of several "layers" of economic activity by different stakeholders sharing a common area.
World Development Perspectives, 2016
The challenges of sustainability and sustainable development are multifaceted and complex. Addres... more The challenges of sustainability and sustainable development are multifaceted and complex. Addressing them in the long run requires a revolution in the training of future generations of learners so that they can devise solutions for sustainability dilemmas in environments characterized by uncertainty, information deficits, and asymmetric power relationships. Such a revolution is under way in many disciplines. Within the field of sustainability studies, there is much promise in a problem-driven, solution-focused approach that emphasizes experiential learning in the best tradition of case-based teaching. The Michigan Sustainability Cases initiative builds on the familiar case-based approach by adapting it in three ways to support active, engaged learning: integration of audiovisual elements into the conventional textbased case narratives; strong partnerships among students, faculty, and practitioners to flip the curriculum; and a digital platform for enhanced flexibility to configure case-based curriculum design. A competitive funding mechanism and writeshops for case development teams promise to open the case-based approach through imaginative appropriation for sustainability learners in diverse educational and organizational contexts globally.
World Development Perspectives, 2016
This innovative sustainability case on Ethiopia's National Adaptation Programme of Action was cre... more This innovative sustainability case on Ethiopia's National Adaptation Programme of Action was created through collaboration among professionals, scholars, students and media design professionals under the auspices of the Michigan Sustainability Case (MSC) initiative. It comprises a terse narrative about a decision maker, multimedia sources including a podcast that link to and enrich the text, and an engaged learning exercise that walks users through the potential and constraints of emerging cost-benefit analysis methods for climate adaptation planning. It challenges learners to address the emerging impacts of climate change by systematically analyzing the challenges faced by Ethiopia's central government in allocating limited financial, technical and administrative resources to mitigate these impacts on its most vulnerable communities. The case not only introduces audiences to climate change risks and vulnerabilities in Ethiopia, but also interweaves those contextual factors with broader technical information, to strengthen understanding of the specific governance challenge at hand. The case thus demonstrates MSC's pedagogical commitment to making ecological, economic, cultural and political context clearer in the development of effective environmental policies. Likewise, the MSC approach deliberately demonstrates to students the challenges of decision-making with imperfect information.
Politics, Groups, and Identities, 2015
This article identifies the top 40 most influential environmental conflict cases in the US while ... more This article identifies the top 40 most influential environmental conflict cases in the US while also showcasing innovative mixed methods for more rigorous participatory collaborative work on environmental conflicts. University of Michigan students and faculty collaborated with Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade (EJOLT), a European Union mapping initiative, to identify US cases for their wider study. We began with an intensive scholarly and media literature review, combined with results from 31 semi-structured interviews with informants from a broad database of US environmental justice (EJ) departments, initiatives, and symposia. We then wrote short descriptions of 90 EJ conflict cases in US history, incorporating them into a detailed participatory online survey to garner expert and public input on which of them have been the most influential in shaping US popular opinion, policy, and political will on EJ issues. Seeking to provide a rigorous basis for the EJOLT mapping exercise, but also to instill an ethic of knowledge co-creation within the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s mechanisms for assessing EJ issues, we distributed the survey widely and posted it on the EPA's EJ Blog. It received over 1000 hits in the first two weeks. Our surveys remained active for about three weeks, for a total of 350 responses (101 from respondents who self-identified as EJ experts, and 249 from those identifying as members of the wider public). After eliminating incomplete or duplicate responses, we weighted to correct for that imbalance in the numbers, considering a total of 165 in our analysis. These responses comprise the list of 40 cases (unranked) we launched on the atlas in March 2014, and describe in this paper; the top five including multiple oil- or petroleum-based cases, one clean water case, one climate change case, and one confined animal feeding operation case.
Environmental Research Letters, 2015
To complement a recent flush of research on transnational environmental justice movements, we sou... more To complement a recent flush of research on transnational environmental justice movements, we sought a deeper organizational history of what we understand as the contemporary environmental justice movement in the United States. We thus conducted in-depth interviews with 31 prominent environmental justice activists, scholars, and community leaders across the US. Today's environmental justice groups have transitioned from specific local efforts to broader national and global mandates, and more sophisticated political, technological, and activist strategies. One of the most significant transformations has been the number of groups adopting formal legal status, and emerging as registered environmental justice organizations (REJOs) within complex partnerships. This article focuses on the emergence of REJOs, and describes the respondents' views about the implications of this for more local grassroots groups. It reveals a central irony animating work across groups in today's movement: legal formalization of many environmental justice organizations has made the movement increasingly internally differentiated, dynamic, and networked, even as the passage of actual national laws on environmental justice has proven elusive.
Publication View. 45249101. Translating the forest : tourism, trophy hunting, and the transformat... more Publication View. 45249101. Translating the forest : tourism, trophy hunting, and the transformation of forest use in southwestern Central African Republic (CAR) / (2000). Hardin, Rebecca (Rebecca Doyle). Abstract. Typescript.. "May 2000.". Thesis (Ph. D.)--Yale University, 2000. ...
This paper deals with the main sociocultural criteria that conservation programs in tropical rain... more This paper deals with the main sociocultural criteria that conservation programs in tropical rainforests ought to take into account. These criteria are specific to the forest economies of central Africa. The author tackles issues of customary lands, subsistence production, and political power at the village level. She also contemplates the socioeconomic changes brought about by management in protected areas. The paper is illustrated by case studies from projects supported by the ECOFAC program. For those rural communities whose economies depend primarily on forest resources, the issue of access to land is fundamental.
... zones, offering an analytical model that takes into account the cultural and historical compo... more ... zones, offering an analytical model that takes into account the cultural and historical components of current shifts in the theory and practice ... will focus here on the timber trade, since it is the one at this time most tightly intertwined with conservation in the western Congo basin. ...
The ethnographic methods that anthropologists first developed to study other cultures fieldwork, ... more The ethnographic methods that anthropologists first developed to study other cultures fieldwork, participant observation, dialogue are now being adapted for a broad array of applications, such as business, conflict resolution and demobilization, wildlife conservation, education, and biomedicine. In "Transforming Ethnographic Knowledge," anthropologists trace the changes they have seen in ethnography as a method and as an intellectual approach, and they offer examples of ethnography s role in social change and its capacity to transform its practitioners. Senior scholars Mary Catherine Bateson, Sidney Mintz, and J. Lorand Matory look back at how thinking ethnographically shaped both their work and their lives, and George Marcus suggests that the methods for teaching and training anthropologists need rethinking and updating. The second part of the volume features anthropologists working in sectors where ethnography is finding or claiming new relevance: Kamari Maxine Clarke lo...
Human Ecology
Rural, natural resource dependent communities are especially vulnerable to climate change, and th... more Rural, natural resource dependent communities are especially vulnerable to climate change, and their input is critical in developing solutions, but the study of risk perception within and among vulnerable communities remains underdeveloped. Our multidisciplinary research team used a mixed-methods approach to document, analyze, and conceptualize the interacting factors that shape vulnerability and to explore community members' perceptions of the role and relative importance of climate change compared to other factors in three rural communities in Ecuador. Economic instability, lack of access to basic services, and environmental degradation are perceived as greater threats to community well being than increasing seasonal variability and flooding. Programs and policies directed at climate change adaptation should integrate climate and non-climate related stressors. Our findings also point to a greater need for collaboration across public health, poverty alleviation, and environmental management fields through practical research targeting assistance to vulnerable populations.
Elem Sci Anth, Mar 24, 2020
ventional biomedicine as "integrative medicine" (National Research Council, 2001). But that term ... more ventional biomedicine as "integrative medicine" (National Research Council, 2001). But that term also describes the braiding together in biomedicine of distinct methodological or analytical approaches in an era of big data, digital archives, and other innovation (Gligorijević et al., 2016). While in a different scientific field, our project also illustrates two meanings of "integrative": that of alternative
Zoonoses and Public Health
Coxiella burnetii, the causative agent of Query fever (Q fever), is among the most highly infecti... more Coxiella burnetii, the causative agent of Query fever (Q fever), is among the most highly infectious zoonotic pathogens transmitted among livestock, with chronic effects challenging to veterinary and medical detection and care systems. Transmission among domestic livestock species can vary regionally due to herd management practices that determine which livestock species are raised, whether or not livestock are in contact with wildlife, and the susceptibility of these livestock to infection. To explore how different livestock management practices are associated with the risk of infection in multispecies environments, we carried out a comparative study of three types of herd management systems in the central Kenyan county of Laikipia: agro‐commercial, mixed conservancy/commercial, and smallholder ranches. We tested C. burnetii antibody seroprevalence in four common livestock species. Across all management types, the highest seroprevalence was in camels (20%), followed by goats (18%), sheep (13%), and cattle (6%). We observed a lower odds of testing seropositive for young compared to adult animals (adjusted OR = 0.44 [95% CI 0.24, 0.76]), and for males compared to females (adjusted OR = 0.52 [95% CI 0.33, 0.80]). Animals from mixed conservancy/commercial and smallholder operations had a higher odds of testing seropositive compared to animals from agro‐commercial ranches (adjusted OR = 5.17 [95% CI 2.71, 10.44] and adjusted OR = 2.21 [95% CI 1.17, 4.43] respectively). These data suggest that herd management practices might affect the transmission dynamics of C. burnetiiin arid African ecosystems like those seen in Kenya where several transmission modes are possible, risk of drought has promoted new livestock species such as camels, and multiple wildlife species may co‐occur with livestock on the landscape. Further longitudinal studies are needed to disentangle the mechanisms underlying these patterns, and further explore transmission patterns between wildlife, domestic animal, and human populations.
Proceedings of the Water Environment Federation
Anthropologie Et Societes, 2005
Current Anthropology a World Journal of the Sciences of Man, 2011
ABSTRACT This report presents results from a series of work sessions held in Bayanga, southwester... more ABSTRACT This report presents results from a series of work sessions held in Bayanga, southwestern Central African Republic C.A.R. during the last days of July, 1997. Our analysis of preliminary data, and the dynamics of information exchange initiated during these meetings testify to the feasibility of the original idea. But none of our ideas could have been implemented without the support of the World-Wide Fund for Nature-U.S. and the government of the C.A.R., longtime partners in the management of the Dzanga Sangha and Dzanga Ndoki protected areas. They were indispensable from start to finish and we praise their willingness to better define "participation" by actors at various levels of the intertwined research, conservation and development process. We would also like to thank the personnel of Doli Lodge, who so quickly transformed their tourism operation into a conference center for our visitors. They encountered many obstacles, but remained flexible, despite our much higher levels of attendance than originally anticipated! Our collaboration with them constitutes an interesting example concerning the compatibility of tourism infrastructures and staffs with the needs of an international scientific research community in integrated conservation projects. Remarkable, really: the Dzanga Reserve management was willing to submit their efforts in three separate but interconnected domains (research, tourism and conservation) to a sort of experimental collective scrutiny. This was not a consultant's evaluation; not one expert's assessment, reflected in a report that might either be read or languish in project archives or government offices. On the contrary, it was an analysis carried out by representatives from layered local communities, field researchers from several different projects and countries, and local, regional and national level C.A.R. government officials. All were invited to speak frankly and to learn, through investigating the ten-year old experiment of integrated conservation management at Dzanga Sangha.
International Forestry Review, 2017
Forest concessions have been used by governments as a development instrument of remote and landlo... more Forest concessions have been used by governments as a development instrument of remote and landlocked areas. Currently, in Africa, concessions are caught between the increase in population density in rural areas and agribusiness investors seeking land. They remain a controversial forest resource management instrument, although certification has been instrumental for improving management practices, in spite of contexts of poor governance. Relevance of traditional forest concessions is lowering in some places but innovations from both private and public actors create new opportunities of co-management of several "layers" of economic activity by different stakeholders sharing a common area.
World Development Perspectives, 2016
The challenges of sustainability and sustainable development are multifaceted and complex. Addres... more The challenges of sustainability and sustainable development are multifaceted and complex. Addressing them in the long run requires a revolution in the training of future generations of learners so that they can devise solutions for sustainability dilemmas in environments characterized by uncertainty, information deficits, and asymmetric power relationships. Such a revolution is under way in many disciplines. Within the field of sustainability studies, there is much promise in a problem-driven, solution-focused approach that emphasizes experiential learning in the best tradition of case-based teaching. The Michigan Sustainability Cases initiative builds on the familiar case-based approach by adapting it in three ways to support active, engaged learning: integration of audiovisual elements into the conventional textbased case narratives; strong partnerships among students, faculty, and practitioners to flip the curriculum; and a digital platform for enhanced flexibility to configure case-based curriculum design. A competitive funding mechanism and writeshops for case development teams promise to open the case-based approach through imaginative appropriation for sustainability learners in diverse educational and organizational contexts globally.
World Development Perspectives, 2016
This innovative sustainability case on Ethiopia's National Adaptation Programme of Action was cre... more This innovative sustainability case on Ethiopia's National Adaptation Programme of Action was created through collaboration among professionals, scholars, students and media design professionals under the auspices of the Michigan Sustainability Case (MSC) initiative. It comprises a terse narrative about a decision maker, multimedia sources including a podcast that link to and enrich the text, and an engaged learning exercise that walks users through the potential and constraints of emerging cost-benefit analysis methods for climate adaptation planning. It challenges learners to address the emerging impacts of climate change by systematically analyzing the challenges faced by Ethiopia's central government in allocating limited financial, technical and administrative resources to mitigate these impacts on its most vulnerable communities. The case not only introduces audiences to climate change risks and vulnerabilities in Ethiopia, but also interweaves those contextual factors with broader technical information, to strengthen understanding of the specific governance challenge at hand. The case thus demonstrates MSC's pedagogical commitment to making ecological, economic, cultural and political context clearer in the development of effective environmental policies. Likewise, the MSC approach deliberately demonstrates to students the challenges of decision-making with imperfect information.
Politics, Groups, and Identities, 2015
This article identifies the top 40 most influential environmental conflict cases in the US while ... more This article identifies the top 40 most influential environmental conflict cases in the US while also showcasing innovative mixed methods for more rigorous participatory collaborative work on environmental conflicts. University of Michigan students and faculty collaborated with Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade (EJOLT), a European Union mapping initiative, to identify US cases for their wider study. We began with an intensive scholarly and media literature review, combined with results from 31 semi-structured interviews with informants from a broad database of US environmental justice (EJ) departments, initiatives, and symposia. We then wrote short descriptions of 90 EJ conflict cases in US history, incorporating them into a detailed participatory online survey to garner expert and public input on which of them have been the most influential in shaping US popular opinion, policy, and political will on EJ issues. Seeking to provide a rigorous basis for the EJOLT mapping exercise, but also to instill an ethic of knowledge co-creation within the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s mechanisms for assessing EJ issues, we distributed the survey widely and posted it on the EPA's EJ Blog. It received over 1000 hits in the first two weeks. Our surveys remained active for about three weeks, for a total of 350 responses (101 from respondents who self-identified as EJ experts, and 249 from those identifying as members of the wider public). After eliminating incomplete or duplicate responses, we weighted to correct for that imbalance in the numbers, considering a total of 165 in our analysis. These responses comprise the list of 40 cases (unranked) we launched on the atlas in March 2014, and describe in this paper; the top five including multiple oil- or petroleum-based cases, one clean water case, one climate change case, and one confined animal feeding operation case.
Environmental Research Letters, 2015
To complement a recent flush of research on transnational environmental justice movements, we sou... more To complement a recent flush of research on transnational environmental justice movements, we sought a deeper organizational history of what we understand as the contemporary environmental justice movement in the United States. We thus conducted in-depth interviews with 31 prominent environmental justice activists, scholars, and community leaders across the US. Today's environmental justice groups have transitioned from specific local efforts to broader national and global mandates, and more sophisticated political, technological, and activist strategies. One of the most significant transformations has been the number of groups adopting formal legal status, and emerging as registered environmental justice organizations (REJOs) within complex partnerships. This article focuses on the emergence of REJOs, and describes the respondents' views about the implications of this for more local grassroots groups. It reveals a central irony animating work across groups in today's movement: legal formalization of many environmental justice organizations has made the movement increasingly internally differentiated, dynamic, and networked, even as the passage of actual national laws on environmental justice has proven elusive.
Publication View. 45249101. Translating the forest : tourism, trophy hunting, and the transformat... more Publication View. 45249101. Translating the forest : tourism, trophy hunting, and the transformation of forest use in southwestern Central African Republic (CAR) / (2000). Hardin, Rebecca (Rebecca Doyle). Abstract. Typescript.. "May 2000.". Thesis (Ph. D.)--Yale University, 2000. ...
This paper deals with the main sociocultural criteria that conservation programs in tropical rain... more This paper deals with the main sociocultural criteria that conservation programs in tropical rainforests ought to take into account. These criteria are specific to the forest economies of central Africa. The author tackles issues of customary lands, subsistence production, and political power at the village level. She also contemplates the socioeconomic changes brought about by management in protected areas. The paper is illustrated by case studies from projects supported by the ECOFAC program. For those rural communities whose economies depend primarily on forest resources, the issue of access to land is fundamental.
... zones, offering an analytical model that takes into account the cultural and historical compo... more ... zones, offering an analytical model that takes into account the cultural and historical components of current shifts in the theory and practice ... will focus here on the timber trade, since it is the one at this time most tightly intertwined with conservation in the western Congo basin. ...
The ethnographic methods that anthropologists first developed to study other cultures fieldwork, ... more The ethnographic methods that anthropologists first developed to study other cultures fieldwork, participant observation, dialogue are now being adapted for a broad array of applications, such as business, conflict resolution and demobilization, wildlife conservation, education, and biomedicine. In "Transforming Ethnographic Knowledge," anthropologists trace the changes they have seen in ethnography as a method and as an intellectual approach, and they offer examples of ethnography s role in social change and its capacity to transform its practitioners. Senior scholars Mary Catherine Bateson, Sidney Mintz, and J. Lorand Matory look back at how thinking ethnographically shaped both their work and their lives, and George Marcus suggests that the methods for teaching and training anthropologists need rethinking and updating. The second part of the volume features anthropologists working in sectors where ethnography is finding or claiming new relevance: Kamari Maxine Clarke lo...
Human Ecology
Rural, natural resource dependent communities are especially vulnerable to climate change, and th... more Rural, natural resource dependent communities are especially vulnerable to climate change, and their input is critical in developing solutions, but the study of risk perception within and among vulnerable communities remains underdeveloped. Our multidisciplinary research team used a mixed-methods approach to document, analyze, and conceptualize the interacting factors that shape vulnerability and to explore community members' perceptions of the role and relative importance of climate change compared to other factors in three rural communities in Ecuador. Economic instability, lack of access to basic services, and environmental degradation are perceived as greater threats to community well being than increasing seasonal variability and flooding. Programs and policies directed at climate change adaptation should integrate climate and non-climate related stressors. Our findings also point to a greater need for collaboration across public health, poverty alleviation, and environmental management fields through practical research targeting assistance to vulnerable populations.
Elem Sci Anth, Mar 24, 2020
ventional biomedicine as "integrative medicine" (National Research Council, 2001). But that term ... more ventional biomedicine as "integrative medicine" (National Research Council, 2001). But that term also describes the braiding together in biomedicine of distinct methodological or analytical approaches in an era of big data, digital archives, and other innovation (Gligorijević et al., 2016). While in a different scientific field, our project also illustrates two meanings of "integrative": that of alternative
Zoonoses and Public Health
Coxiella burnetii, the causative agent of Query fever (Q fever), is among the most highly infecti... more Coxiella burnetii, the causative agent of Query fever (Q fever), is among the most highly infectious zoonotic pathogens transmitted among livestock, with chronic effects challenging to veterinary and medical detection and care systems. Transmission among domestic livestock species can vary regionally due to herd management practices that determine which livestock species are raised, whether or not livestock are in contact with wildlife, and the susceptibility of these livestock to infection. To explore how different livestock management practices are associated with the risk of infection in multispecies environments, we carried out a comparative study of three types of herd management systems in the central Kenyan county of Laikipia: agro‐commercial, mixed conservancy/commercial, and smallholder ranches. We tested C. burnetii antibody seroprevalence in four common livestock species. Across all management types, the highest seroprevalence was in camels (20%), followed by goats (18%), sheep (13%), and cattle (6%). We observed a lower odds of testing seropositive for young compared to adult animals (adjusted OR = 0.44 [95% CI 0.24, 0.76]), and for males compared to females (adjusted OR = 0.52 [95% CI 0.33, 0.80]). Animals from mixed conservancy/commercial and smallholder operations had a higher odds of testing seropositive compared to animals from agro‐commercial ranches (adjusted OR = 5.17 [95% CI 2.71, 10.44] and adjusted OR = 2.21 [95% CI 1.17, 4.43] respectively). These data suggest that herd management practices might affect the transmission dynamics of C. burnetiiin arid African ecosystems like those seen in Kenya where several transmission modes are possible, risk of drought has promoted new livestock species such as camels, and multiple wildlife species may co‐occur with livestock on the landscape. Further longitudinal studies are needed to disentangle the mechanisms underlying these patterns, and further explore transmission patterns between wildlife, domestic animal, and human populations.
Proceedings of the Water Environment Federation
Anthropologie Et Societes, 2005
Current Anthropology a World Journal of the Sciences of Man, 2011
—Engineering student involvement in community-based global humanitarian development has increased... more —Engineering student involvement in community-based global humanitarian development has increased in recent decades. While engineers are trained problem-solvers, it has been argued that that more traditional engineering problem solving is not sufficient for tackling the " wicked " types of problems common to community-based development projects. The ways in which problems are defined has been identified as having significant impact on design outcomes when facing wicked problems. Initial literature review demonstrated a need to examine existing empirically based global humanitarian development cases published in the literature to better understand currently practiced ways of defining problems. This study, therefore, analyzed the problem definition processes across a set of water-related global development project cases published in the literature. Qualitative data analysis utilized a problem-scoping framework from design literature as well as the main author's personal experiences in similar projects to enhance the analysis. These preliminary findings demonstrated that while student design teams are achieving considerable breadth in their problem scoping efforts, there are still important aspects of problems that do not seem to be considered. This may be contributing to under-informed solution creation in the examined projects and ultimately may be affecting design outcomes. Limitations of the study and future work are also discussed. Keywords—design process, design problems, engineering and sustainable community development, global humanitarian development, literature review analysis, problem scoping, qualitative methods