RESEARCH IN HUMAN ECOLOGY AND PLANNING: AN INTERACTIVE, ADAPTIVE APPROACH

The aim is to describe an approach to research in human ecology and planning, primarily for the consideration of younger scholars. The approach is termed interactive and adaptive and is viewed as being especially useful in research on environmental, resource, land use or other topics in turbulent environments, characterized, for example, by an array of interested or concerned groups, differences in values, and frequent changes in the research context. The approach is illustrated by reference to several case studies in applied human ecology and planning in Canada.
Le but de cet article est de décrire une approche pour la recherche en écologie humaine et en planification qui bénéficie principalement aux jeunes chercheurs et chercheuses. L'approche est intéractive et adaptable. Elle est spécialement utile en recherche sur l'environnement, les ressources naturelles, l'utilisation des terres ou autres domaines touches par des environnernents troubles. Ceux-ci peuvent être caractérisés, par exemple, par une variété de groupes concernés ou intéressés, par des différences de valeurs et par des changernents fréquents du contexte de la recherche. L'approche est présentée en faisant référence à plusieurs études de cas en écologie humaine appliquée et en planification au Canada.     

Tomorrow’s Country: Practice-oriented principles for Indigenous cultural fire research in south-east Australia

First Nations peoples are revitalising diverse cultural fire practices and knowledge. Institutional and societal recognition of these practices is growing. Yet there has been little academic research on these fire practices in south-east Australia, let alone research led by Aboriginal people. We are a group of Indigenous and settler academics, practitioners, and experts focused on cultural fire management in the Victorian Loddon Mallee region. Using interviews and workshops, we facilitated knowledge sharing and discussion. In this paper, we describe three practice-oriented principles to develop and maintain collaborations across Aboriginal groups, researchers, and government in the Indigenous-led revitalisation of fire on Country: relationships (creating reciprocity and trust), Country (working with place and people), and power (acknowledging structures and values). Collaborations based on these principles will be unique to each temporal, social, cultural, and geographic context. Considering our findings, we acknowledge the challenges that exist and the opportunities that emerge to constructively hold space to grow genuinely collaborative research that creates change. We suggest that the principles we identify can be applied by anyone wanting to form genuine collaborations around the world as the need for social–ecological justice grows.     

Wandering bones: archaeology,forensic science and Moche burial practices

The focus of this study is a sample of human burials from the Precolumbian archaeological site of San José de Moro, Perú. This site is located in the coastal desert of northern Perú and this sample dates to the latter half of the Moche period (AD 450–750). Upon discovery, many of the burials from this site were found to demonstrate various degrees of disarticulation. Stratigraphic analysis demonstrates that this disturbance cannot be the product of post-depositional forces. An analysis of the distribution of the bones within the tombs, and a review of the process of corporeal decomposition suggests that the disturbance happened before the bodies were interred. The results indicate that the cadavers were wholly or partially mummified before burial, and that disarticulation occurred as the brittle, mummified body was manoeuvered into the tomb. The body was mummified either as a deliberate measure before transporting the corpse over long distances, or as a natural product of the curation of the body above ground in a dry environment, during an extended funeral ritual. This combination of archaeological and forensic analysis yields important new insights into the burial practices of the Moche. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Temporal and Narrative (Dis)junctures: Guillermo Núñez’s Aesthetics of Memory and the Museum of Memory and Human Rights (Santiago,Chile)

Focusing primarily on Guillermo Núñez’s work, this essay juxtaposes two almost-identical exhibits of his ‘exculturas’ (sic: xculptures/ex-cultures) – one at the Chilean-French Cultural Institute in 1975, which resulted in his detention and exile, the other in 2010 for the official inauguration of the Museum of Memory and Human Rights (MM) – to explore their relationships to memory production in Chile four decades after the military coup. In the first, Núñez offered a pointed critique of the repressive post-coup context through a series of caged and netted objects; the second reconstructed the first as a memory gesture, framed within the ultra-modern, state-sponsored MM, in its designated art space, at once included and physically separated from the historical narrative of the Museum. How do the politics, aesthetics and design of the MM work to complement, complicate, or contradict Núñez’s – and, perhaps, any – artistic proposal? What challenges might the aesthetic of memory in Núñez’s work pose to the Museum’s narrative frame? Examining Núñez’s ‘exculturas’ (and, briefly, Gonzalo Díaz’s reconstructed Lonquén) reveals several tensions – around politics of inclusion and exclusion, the state’s role in memorysites, and the relationships between human rights concerns and museological and artistic strategies – marking the social production of memory in Chile today.     

The Political Life of Natural Infrastructure: Water Funds and Alternative Histories of Payments for Ecosystem Services in Valle del Cauca,Colombia

This article shows the two-way relation between global norms and local conditions as they shape Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) theory and practice, through a case study of a water fund in Valle del Cauca, Colombia, the heartland of the country's sugarcane industry. Drawing on interviews, survey data and historical research, the article argues that the water fund should be understood in the context of the history of infrastructure for the sugarcane industry in the region, and that this infrastructural perspective provides a more nuanced insight into the fund's political life than the traditional PES framing. Furthermore, the article shows how the norms embedded in this locally grown programme circulated through international networks to influence PES theory and design. This case offers one example of the need to attend to the multiple and geographically specific histories of actually existing PES in order to understand its diversity in the present.