Tag Archives: forest

A walk in the Woods

At first, I was just responding to my ‘duty’.  I’d been told to take a walk every day to reduce the likelihood of more trouble with my right hip; it had been paining me at night.  So, I’d put on … Continue reading

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Working with One Hand Tied Behind Your Back

We have all heard, perhaps, the Chinese notion that ‘women hold up half the sky’; but I had not heard the analogy comparing current development practice with ‘working with one hand tied behind your back’.  Andy White, of the Rights … Continue reading

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On my Late Discovery of the ‘Charter of the Forest’

The Magna Carta Manifesto,* a book written by Peter Linebaugh, has spurred all sorts of thoughts.  Primary among those is simply my learning that a companion volume to the Magna Carta itself exists.  The Magna Carta is a central and … Continue reading

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Integrating science, social science, and the humanities

In Cornell’s IGERT program on Food Systems and Poverty Reduction, we’ve been trying to bring budding scientists of various hues together with (a few) social scientists [IGERT stands for Integrative Graduate Education, Research and Training and such programs are funded … Continue reading

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On the Struggle to Understand and then Communicate Gender Issues in Forests

I sit at my desk, piles of books on gender and forests surrounding me, more articles and books stored more tidily in my EndNotes files, even more scattered here and there, less tidily, on my computer.  I have spent the … Continue reading

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Shifting Cultivation, Gender and REDD+

‘Shifting Cultivation, Gender and REDD+’* is the name of a meeting I attended yesterday at the office of a USAID contractor in Washington, DC.  It was a refreshing combination of GIS and remote sensing experts on the one hand, and … Continue reading

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Songs and Gender

A book arrived in the mail, from Duke University Press—unrequested, probably intended as a candidate for review in the journal Agriculture and Human Values, for which I am the book review editor.  The book, Unearthing Gender, is an ethnographic analysis … Continue reading

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On Swiddens, Swiddeners and the Passions of Those who Study Them

I stop in the midst of writing an academic treatise on swidden agriculture globally. The paper is full of rationality and reason, carefully constructed sentences, the making of valid statements, supported by believable evidence. Yet, bubbling beneath this rational superficiality … Continue reading

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