Email Laura Rival

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The empirically grounded, theoretically oriented and policy-relevant research I have carried out over the past twenty-five years aims to renew anthropological questions about the relationship between environment and society.

Empirically, this work is grounded in ethnographic research with the Huaorani (Ecuadorian Amazon), interdisciplinary-research with the Makushi (central Guyana), and policy-oriented research with a number of Central and South American indigenous and peasant communities. Theoretically, I have engaged critically with a range of deterministic assumptions associated with modernist ideologies, as well as with anthropological theorisations that reify the nature/ cultural divide, or perpetuate dubious interpretations of indigenous livelihoods and their historical dynamics. I have also contributed to political economic analyses of development policies, as well as to discussions surrounding policy instruments aimed at reconciling human development and the conservation of biological and cultural diversity.

How have people from different cultures perceived and acted upon the material properties of the biophysical world, and how do different social groups make sense of nature? How are continuities and discontinuities between humans, living kinds and other objects in the world established? How do such differences inform values and how are these values used in the building of social institutions? How does work shape collective life and the world? What control over life processes do people hope to exercise through ritual? How does environmental change relate to the historical development of human societies? To what extent is human welfare connected to nature’s ecological functions? In what sense can it be said that indigenous people are ecologists and poor people environmentalists? These are the central questions that have informed my research on nature, society and development ever since my doctoral fieldwork among the Huaorani in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Through a grounded apprehension of the dynamics of material reality, I have addressed three central theoretical problems: (i) human adaptation and environmental determinism; (ii) the cultural construction of science and modernity; and (iii) the preponderance of orthodox analyses of political and economic realities that fail to recognise the existence of irreconcilable tensions between economic development and nature conservation. My research programme aims to advance anthropology’s contribution to sustainability science.

Valuing nature in developing countries

Valuing nature

What should the basic principles for the sustainable management of the diverse ecosystems found in Latin America be? How does urban planning and infrastructure development look like from a sustainable environment management perspective? Why and how...

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Agroecological practices and the redesign of agrifood systems

Food systems for the 21st Century

There is today a broad consensus on the multiple risks faced and injustices caused by industrial agriculture and the globalised food chain, as well as a growing agreement...

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Nature and society in native Amazonian cultures

Nature and society in native Amazonian cultures

Amazonian ‘ontologies’ have played an important role in recent anthropological theoretical efforts to reach beyond the dualisms of central tropes of Western modernity, such as nature and society, and biology and culture. They have inspired studies of...

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Anthropology &
Interdisciplinary

Anthropology and Interdisciplinary

The need to reflect collectively on the potentials of anthropological knowledge within interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary research team has never been greater. Anthropologists are increasingly carrying their research within teams that...

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