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"Harrell, Stevan"
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An Ecological History of Modern China
Is environmental degradation an inevitable result of economic
development? Can ecosystems be restored once government officials
and the public are committed to doing so? These questions are at
the heart of An Ecological History of Modern China , a
comprehensive account of China's transformation since the founding
of the People's Republic from the perspective not of the economy
but of the biophysical world. Examples throughout illustrate how
agricultural, industrial, and urban development have affected the
resilience of China's ecosystems-their ability to withstand
disturbances and additional growth-and what this means for the
country's future.
Drawing on decades of research, Stevan Harrell demonstrates the
local and global impacts of China's miraculous rise. In clear and
accessible prose, An Ecological History of Modern China
untangles the paradoxes of development and questions the
possibility of a future that is both prosperous and sustainable. It
is a critical resource for students, scholars, and general readers
interested in environmental change, Chinese history, and
sustainable development.
eBook
Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China
Open-access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295804071Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted in the 1980s and 1990s in southern Sichuan, this pathbreaking study examines the nature of ethnic consciousness and ethnic relations among local communities, focusing on the Nuosu (classified as Yi by the Chinese government), Prmi, Naze, and Han. It argues that even within the same regional social system, ethnic identity is formulated, perceived, and promoted differently by different communities at different times.Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China exemplifies a model in which ethnic consciousness and ethnic relations consist of drawing boundaries between one’s own group and others, crossing those boundaries, and promoting internal unity within a group. Leaders and members of ethnic groups use commonalties and differences in history, culture, and kinship to promote internal unity and to strengthen or cross external boundaries. Superimposed on the structure of competing and cooperating local groups is a state system of ethnic classification and administration; members and leaders of local groups incorporate this system into their own ethnic consciousness, co-opting or resisting it situationally.The heart of the book consists of detailed case studies of three Nuosu village communities, along with studies of Prmi and Naze communities, smaller groups such as the Yala and Nasu, and Han Chinese who live in minority areas. These are followed by a synthesis that compares different configurations of ethnic identity in different communities and discusses the implications of these examples for our understanding of ethnicity and for the near future of China. This lively description and analysis of the region’s complex ethnic identities and relationships constitutes an original and important contribution to the study of ethnic identity.Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China will be of interest to social scientists concerned with issues of ethnicity and state-building.
eBook
The Four Horsemen of the Ecopocalypse
China’s Great Leap Forward of 1958–60, an attempt to increase agricultural production through increased labor inputs, resulted in the greatest famine in world history from 1959 to 1961. Most histories emphasize the political mistakes of this period, which were disastrous. But to understand how the political mistakes led to the famine, here I concentrate on the ecosystem mismanagement that led to drastic drops in food production. To explain these effects, I use the concept of the “Four Horsemen of the Ecopocalypse:” over-emphasis on single variables, cross-scale mismatches, top-down panaceas, and ignorance of system feedbacks, all of which eliminated the resilience of agro-ecosystems to both internal contradictions and external disturbances.
Journal Article
Prometheus brings water: Development and fix-fixing in China
Nowhere is the Chinese Party-State's Promethean thinking more vividly apparent than in its continuous proclivity to build more and bigger water projects. And where these projects create problems, the solution is not to remove the projects but to build further projects, to construct 'fixes to fix the fixes'. From Yellow River conservancy in the first years of the People's Republic of China to ever-expanding water projects in the early twenty-first century, storing, releasing, and moving water have brought Chinese social-ecological systems to a condition of severe technological lock-in, decreasing the resilience of these systems to extreme weather, extreme policy, and other 'natural' disasters.
Journal Article
Reforestation Programs in Southwest China： Reported Success, Observed Failure, and the Reasons Why
Ever since the disastrous floods of 1998, the Chinese government has used the Natural Forest Protection and Sloping Land Conversion Programs to promote afforestation and reforestation as means to reduce runoff, control erosion, and stabilize local livelihoods. These two ambitious programs have been reported as large-scale successes, contributing to an overall increase in China＇s forest cover and to the stated goals of environmental stabilization. A small-scale field study at the project level of the implementation of these two programs in Baiwu Township, Yanyuan County, Sichuan, casts doubt upon the accuracy and reliability of these claims of success; ground observations revealed utter failure in some sites and only marginal success in others. Reasons for this discrepancy are posited as involving ecological, economic, and bureaucratic factors. Further research is suggested to determine whether these discrepancies are merely local aberrations or represent larger-scale failures in reforestation programs.
Journal Article
Fieldwork Connections
Fieldwork Connections tells the story of the intertwined research histories of three anthropologists working in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China in the late twentieth century. Chapters are written alternately by a male American anthropologist, a male researcher raised in a village in Liangshan, and a highly educated woman from an elite Nuosu/Chinese family. As decades of mutual ethnographic research unfold, the authors enter one another's narratives and challenge the reader to ponder the nature of ethnographic truth.
The book begins with short accounts of the process by which each of the authors became involved in anthropological field research. It then proceeds to describe the research itself, and the stories begin to connect as they become active collaborators. The scene shifts in the course of the narrative from China to America, and the relationship between the authors shifts from distant, wary, and somewhat hierarchical to close, egalitarian, and reciprocal.
The authors share their histories through personal stories, not technical analyses; their aim is to entertain while addressing the process of ethnography and the dynamics of international and intercultural communication.
eBook
Ploughshare Village
This anthropological study of a workers village in North Taiwan makes an important contribution to the comparative literature on Chinese and Taiwanese social organization. Based on fieldwork conducted in 1973 and 1978, the study is exceptional not only because of its excellent data but also because the village itself was unique. Unlike villages previously studied and written about, Ploughshare was neither an agricultural nor a fishing village, but rather one whose inhabitants earned their living mostly from coal mining, knitting, and other non-agrarian activities. Culture and environmental context thus shaped social organization there differently than in other Taiwanese villages. This ethnography links local data to surrounding socioeconomic spheres: it shows the village s relationship to its region, to Taiwan as a whole, and to the international economy. It also captures an important point in time, as Taiwan was undergoing the economic miracle that brought it into the ranks of developed countries. Stevan Harrell s new preface highlights changes not only in the village over the last several decades, but also in the ways that anthropologists think about culture and Taiwan.
Ploughshare Village, with its rich descriptions and analyses, will be of value to anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and China specialists.
eBook