In Common

In this episode Hita spoke with Prof. Mahesh Rangarajan, Vice Chancellor of Krea University, India and a Professor of History and Environmental Studies at the University. They discussed what it means to be a historian, the importance of intellectual exchange and cooperation across different stages of career, and the environmental history of large charismatic mammals in south Asia. Some non-English words that occur through the episode include: 

 

• Padyatra: A journey undertaken by foot, usually with some social purpose behind it
• Pindaris: Thugs or bandits as referred to in colonial literature
• Valmiki Ramayana: An epic poem of India, revolving around the story of Rama and Sita, and composed by a sage named Valmiki
• Apharan: Kidnap
• Haathi mere saathi: (Translation: My friend, the elephant) a yesteryear Bollywood movie revolving around the friendship between an elephant and its human
• Junagadh, Bhavnagar, Baroda: Erstwhile princely states of India
• Yuvraj: Younger prince, not the heir apparent
• Bengalis: People from the eastern Indian state of Bengal
• Ghee: clarified butter
• Ser: Obsolete unit of dry volume of India, often considered equivalent to a litre

 

Mahesh’s institutional website: https://krea.edu.in/mahesh-rangarajan-phd/

References mentioned in the interview:

1. Keen, Maurice. 2000. The outlaws of medieval legend. 3rd edition. Routledge.
2. Simon Schama on libraries: https://talking-about-books.com/2016/07/06/simon-schama-on-the-london-library-financial-times/
3. Trauttman, Thomas R. 2015. Elephants and kings: an environmental history. University of Chicago Press.
4. Elvin, Mark. 2006. The retreat of the elephants: an environmental history of China. Yale University Press. 
5. Chaudhuri, Nirad Singh. 1951. Autobiography of an unknown Indian. Macmillan
6. Demuth, Bathsheba. 2020. Floating coast: an environmental history of the Bering Strait. WW Norton. 
7. Corbett, Jim. 1948. The man-eating tiger of Rudraprayag. Rupa Publications
8. Sankhala, Kailash. 1971. The story of the Indian tiger. Collins.
9. Guha, Ramachandra. 1989. The unquiet woods: ecological change and peasant resistance in the Himalaya. University of California Press. 
10. Rangarajan, M. 2013. Animals with rich histories: the case of the lions of Gir Forest, Gujarat, India. History and Theory 52:4 (109-127). 

This insight episode is from episode 041, Michael's interview with Chris Weible. 

Chris is a professor at the school of public affairs at the University of Colorado, Denver, as well as the director of his school's PhD program, and a co-director with Tanya Heikkila of the Workshop on Policy Process Research (WOPPR). 

In this insight episode, Chris talks with Michael about the evolution of the field of policy processes, and the importance of studying the policy process to better understand society and people better. 

 

Chris' website: https://publicaffairs.ucdenver.edu/people/faculty/christopher-weible 

WOPRR website: https://publicaffairs.ucdenver.edu/research-and-impact/workshop-on-policy-process-research

 

In Common Website: www.incommonpodcast.org 

Connect with us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/InCommonPod

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/incommonpodcast 

In this episode, Michael speaks with Hallie Eakin, a professor in the School of Sustainability, College of Global Futures at Arizona State University. They discuss Hallie’s research on social adaptation and vulnerability in Mexico, Latin America, and the American Southwest. 

Hallie’s website: https://sustainability-innovation.asu.edu/person/hallie-eakin/

Website for the megadapt project: http://megadapt.weebly.com/

 

References

Eakin, Hallie, et al. 2016. “Adapting to Risk and Perpetuating Poverty: Household’s Strategies for Managing Flood Risk and Water Scarcity in Mexico City.” Environmental Science & Policy 66 (December): 324–33.

Book that Michael mentions on academic norms: Berg, Maggie, and Barbara K. Seeber. 2016. The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy. University of Toronto Press.

Book by James Ferguson that Michael mentions: Ferguson, James. 1990. The Anti-Politics Machine: ’development', Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. University of Minnesota Press.

This insight episode is from episode 041, Michael and Courtney's interview with Cassandra Brooks. 

Cassandra is an assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Prior to joining CU Boulder, Cassandra was a core member of The Last Ocean, a grand-scale media project focused on the Ross Sea, and her efforts helped lead to the adoption of the world's largest marine protected area in the Ross Sea, Antarctica. 

In this insight episode, Cassandra talks with Michael and Courtney about her work to establish marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean, and the complicated nature of international geopolitics. 

 

Cassandra's homepage: https://www.colorado.edu/envs/cassandra-brooks 

A recent paper by Cassandra and colleagues on the policy development process in the Antarctic: 

Brooks, C.M., L.B. Crowder, H. Österblom, and A. L. Strong. 2020. Reaching consensus for conserving the global commons: The case of the Ross, Sea, Antarctica. Conservation Letters 13(1):289. 

 

In Common Website: www.incommonpodcast.org 

Connect with us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/InCommonPod

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/incommonpodcast 

 

In this episode, Michael talks with Mark Moritz, professor of anthropology at the Ohio State University. They discuss Mark’s work on “open” property regimes in pastoralist systems around the world, and in particular in Cameroon where Mark has conducted extensive fieldwork. Mark describes his interpretation of open property regimes as an adaptation to resource scarcity and variability in pastoralist systems. This is a unique type of property regime that is less about imposing constraints than it is guaranteeing access, working in tandem with the well-known mobility of many pastoralists.

 

Mark’s website: https://anthropology.osu.edu/people/moritz.42

 

References

Moritz, M. (2016). Open property regimes. International Journal of the Commons, 10(2), 688.

Moritz, M., et al. 2018. Emergent Sustainability in Open Property Regimes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115 (51): 12859–67.

 

This insight episode is from episode 002, Michael and Stefan's interview with Emma McKinley. 

 

Emma is a Research Fellow at Cardiff University and co-founder of the Marine Social Science Network. 

 

In this insight episode, Emma talks with Michael and Stefan about the creation of the Marine Social Science Network and the growing pains of facilitating greater interdisciplinary work. 

 

The Marine Social Science Network

www.marsocsci.net 

 

 

In Common Website

www.incommonpodcast.org 

Connect with us on Twitter

https://twitter.com/InCommonPod

Support us on Patreon

https://www.patreon.com/incommonpodcast 

In this episode, Michael spoke with Daniel Decaro, associate professor at the University of Louisville with a joint appointment in the Department of Urban and Public Affairs and the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Daniel has conducted experimental research on the effects of participation and enforcement on collective-action. Based on this work, he has developed the concept of participatory fit. This represents the idea that there is cultural variation in how people perceive their basic needs of autonomy and procedural justice being met through a participatory process, and therefore mechanisms of participatory governance must adapt to fit with this variation. What is authentically participatory for one person may not be for another. Daniel and Michael also talked about the relationship that participation has to collective-action and enforcement, based on a finding from DeCaro et al. (2015) that the effects of participating and enforcement are synergistic, producing increased cooperation when combined with each other.

 

Daniel’s website: https://louisville.edu/psychology/d-decaro

References:

DeCaro, D., and M. Stokes. 2008. “Social‐psychological Principles of Community‐based Conservation and Conservancy Motivation: Attaining Goals within an Autonomy‐supportive Environment.” Conservation Biology: The Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology.

DeCaro, Daniel A., and Michael K. Stokes. 2013. “Public Participation and Institutional Fit: A Social-Psychological Perspective.” Ecology and Society 18 (4).

DeCaro, D. A., M. A. Janssen, and A. Lee. 2015. “Synergistic Effects of Voting and Enforcement on Internalized Motivation to Cooperate in a Resource Dilemma.” Judgment and Decision Making.

DeCaro, Daniel A., Marco A. Janssen, and Allen Lee. 2021. “Motivational Foundations of Communication, Voluntary Cooperation, and Self-Governance in a Common-Pool Resource Dilemma.” Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, no. 100016 (July): 100016.

In this end-of-the-year episode, Courtney, Mike, Michael and Stefan sat down to recap the year, talking about their favorite reads and favorite listens, fieldwork done and not done, and interesting work done on non-traditional commons.

References:

Chambers, J. M., et al. (2021). Six modes of co-production for sustainability. Nature Sustainability, 4(11), 983–996.

Christakis, N. A. (2019). Blueprint: The evolutionary origins of a good society. Hachette UK.

Epstein, D. (2019). Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. Penguin Random House.

Freeth, R., and Caniglia, G. (2020). Learning to collaborate while collaborating: advancing interdisciplinary sustainability research. Sustainability Science, 15(1), 247–261.

Gorski, P. S. (2013). “What is Critical Realism? And Why Should You Care?” Contemporary Sociology, 42(5), 658–670.

Gottlieb, L. (2019). Maybe you should talk to someone. Manjul Publishing.

Kearns, F. (2021). Getting to the Heart of Science Communication: A Guide to Effective Engagement. Island Press.

Mott, J. (2021). Hell of a Book: A Novel. Penguin.

York, A. M., et al. (2021). Integrating institutional approaches and decision science to address climate change: a multi-level collective action research agenda. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 52, 19–26.

Podcasts:

Sam Harris:

https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/270-what-have-we-learned-from-the-pandemic

https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/269-deep-time

Esther Perel: https://www.estherperel.com/podcast

Wall Street Journal about uBiome: https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/what-went-wrong-at-ubiome-part-1/8b0717aa-1c66-4524-b47f-0cd3a399fcae

In this episode, Divya spoke with Aparajita Datta, a senior scientist at the Nature Conservation Foundation, a non-governmental research organization based in Bangalore, India. Aparajita is known for her work on community-based hornbill conservation in the northeastern part of India. Her main research interests include plant-animal interactions in rainforests, understanding anthropogenic effects on wildlife, and engaging with the tribal communities in conservation. In this episode, she shares her experience of trying to carry out inclusive conservation and the roles that partnerships with multiple stakeholders play in the process. Aparajita’s work is a bit unusual; she is one of those rare scholars who have been striving to translate her research on the ground. But conducting action-oriented research comes at a cost, and it is evident from Aparajita’s narrative as she shares her experience of getting emotionally attached to the tribal community she has been working with, while facing skepticism from some, and yet having the grit to keep persevering as she goes back and forth through the complex emotions of feeling both disheartened and inspired in her work. She now believes after 20 years, that doing research is more satisfying and easy than on-ground conservation, and that reconciliation between wildlife and people is not always possible. 

 

Aparajita’s bio:  https://www.ncf-india.org/author/646436/aparajita-datta

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/find-explorers/aparajita-datta

 

Selected References:

Borawake, N., Datta, A., & Naniwadekar, R. (2021). Tropical Forest Restoration in the Eastern Himalaya: Evaluating Early Survival and Growth of Native Tree Species. Ecological Restoration, 39(3), 52-63.

Sheth, C., Datta, A., and Parashuram, D. (2020). Persistent loss of biologically-rich tropical forests in the Indian Eastern Himalaya. Silva Fennica 54(3). https://doi.org/10.14214/sf.10373

Naniwadekar, R., Mishra, C., Isvaran, K., & Datta, A. (2021). Gardeners of the forest: hornbills govern the spatial distribution of large seeds. Journal of Avian Biology.

Datta, A., Naniwadekar, R., Rao, M., Sreenivasan, R., & Hiresavi, V. (2018). Hornbill Watch: A citizen science initiative for Indian hornbills. Indian Birds, 14(3), 65-70.

Teegalapalli, K., & Datta, A. (2016). Field to a forest: Patterns of forest recovery following shifting cultivation in the Eastern Himalaya. Forest Ecology and Management, 364, 173-182.

Rane, A., & Datta, A. (2015). Protecting a hornbill haven: a community-based conservation initiative in Arunachal Pradesh, northeast India. Malayan Nature Journal, 67(2), 203-218.

Datta, A. (2007). Protecting with people in Namdapha: threatened forests, forgotten people. In: Shahabuddin, G., Rangarajan, M. (Eds.), Making Conservation Work: securing biodiversity in this new century. Permanent Black, New Delhi. pp. 165 – 209.

 

In this episode, Michael spoke with Nejem Raheem. Nejem is an associate professor of economics at Emerson College. They talked about Nejem’s work on ecosystem services and how he applied this framework to the traditional acequia irrigation systems of New Mexico. They discussed several important challenges that this approach faces, such as the incommensurability of different values and the downplaying of reciprocal relationships that many humans have with the environment.

Nejem’s website: https://www.emerson.edu/faculty-staff-directory/nejem-raheem

 

References:

Raheem, N., S. Archambault, E. Arellano, M. Gonzales, D. Kopp, J. Rivera, S. Guldan, et al. 2015. “A Framework for Assessing Ecosystem Services in Acequia Irrigation Communities of the Upper Río Grande Watershed.” WIREs. Water 2 (5): 559–75. https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1091.

Raheem, Nejem, and Danielle Schwarzmann. 2021. “Making Ecosystem Services Flexible: Why a Whole New Framework Is a Bad Idea for Practitioners.” WIREs. Water 8 (6). https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1553.

Paper that Michael mentions on the “tribe of the Econ”:

Leijonhufvud, Axel. 1973. “Life among the Econ.” Economic Inquiry 11 (3): 327–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-7295.1973.tb01065.x.

Book by James Ferguson that Michael mentions

Ferguson, James. 1990. The Anti-Politics Machine:’development’, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. University of Minnesota Press.