Doctoral Dissertation Research: Enviroculturalism: Savage Disobedience on the High Seas

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY

Investigators

Abstract

This project uses contemporary whaling as a case study for the "natureculture" framework, a term used in anthropology to refer to lifeways particularly marked by inseparable binding between nature and culture. Such binding is an obvious description for the Makah, a native American group in which whaling is an ancient and culturally central practice. But could the same claim for a cultural right to whaling apply to a modern Japanese whale harvest? What about environmentalists who see their cultural identity formed around whale defense? Just as cognitive dissonance describes the discomfort and resulting behaviors that occur when one holds two or more psychologically incompatible ideas, natureculture dissonance describes the discomfort and resulting behaviors when there is a clash between incompatible naturecultures. Intellectual merit This project investigates how each of 3 groups (Makah, Japanese, and Environmentalist) mobilizes resources (ranging from rhetorical resources to harpoons to cultural capital) in response to this dissonance, using ethnographic methods. Rather than reduce the conflict to a simplistic ethical calculus (for example the claim that animal rights universally trump human need), this project emphasizes the complex synthesis that each natureculture represents. Broader Impact The project goal is to use these fuller, more dynamic portraits to develop an "enviroculturalist" framework that can encompass the value of cultural diversity as well as that of biodiversity, and produce a more nuanced understanding of transcultural environmental conflicts, leading to improved management of environmental systems.