2019-2020 Meetings and Events
Politics of Knowledge
Our group’s focus for this academic year was the Politics of Knowledge. This was the follow up to our last year's faculty group, and especially our Spring 2019 daylong conference on this topic. In the spring, we planned to host Madonna Thunder Hawk. However, owing to covid, this event was pushed to the following academic year. Despite that we were not able to meet during the spring of 2020 owing to the stresses of the pandemic, our group put together a robust agenda for the following year.
Annual Kick-Off
October 8, 2019
Our first meeting of the year, we discussed the themes, objectives, and questions of our collaborative thinking for the year while still discussing some trends in recent scholarship.
Group Reading Discussion - “Open Veins Revisited: The New Extractivism in Latin America”
November 13, 2019
For this meeting, we joined with our colleague in the Nature, Space and Politics Group to read the above article by Nicole Fabricant and Linda Farthing about the practices and policies of new extractivism in Latin America.
A Conversation with Dr. Marisol de la Cadena
December 5, 2019
In December 2019, we invited Dr. Marisol de la Cadena, professor of anthropology at UC Davis and author of Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice Across Andean Worlds (Duke 2015), as our guest speaker. Marisol opened with some provocations to guide the group discussion, which was centered around two excerpts of Marisol's writing: Story 4 from Earth Beings, "Mariano's Archive: The Eventfulness of the Ahistorical"; and Chapter 1 from Anthropos and the Material, "Uncommoning Nature: Stories from the Anthropo-Not-Seen".
Intellectual Property Law and the Politics of Knowledge
January 17, 2020
Dr. Boatema Boateng, Professor, Communication, UC San Diego
Dr. Boatema Boateng shared her research on intellectual property, copyright, and indigenous knowledges in relation to kente cloth produced in Ghana.
The Relationship Between Indigenous Rights and Rights of Nature: Lessons from Ecuador and New Zealand
February 28, 2020
Craig Kauffman, Professor, Political Science, University of Oregon
Dr. Craig Kauffman visited campus and presented his work on the rights of nature.
Abstract of the Presentation: Over the last decade, a growing number of countries have adopted legal provisions recognizing natural ecosystems as subjects with rights. In many cases, including Ecuador, Bolivia, and New Zealand, these laws resulted from Indigenous peoples’ struggles to change the way “development” is understood and practiced in their territories. Yet, many Indigenous peoples remain skeptical and wary of the concept of “rights of Nature,” which is a foreign concept that at best represents an imperfect attempt to translate Indigenous cosmovisions into Western legal systems. While some worry that rights of nature may conflict with indigenous rights, others see these rights as potentially inter-related and complementary. Dr. Kauffman examines the tension between Indigenous rights and rights of nature, and discusses how these tensions are being resolved through the application of rights of nature laws in Ecuador and New Zealand.