Department of Anthropology

Paul Nadasdy
Associate Professor

Ph.D., The Johns Hopkins University, 2001

pnadasdy@cornell.edu
607-255-4040
McGraw Hall 229

Research Interests: Anthropology of North American Indians and the circumpolar North, the anthropology of science and knowledge, environmental/ecological anthropology, the relationship between indigenous peoples and the State, ethnography of the State, the politics of wildlife management, political economy, property and ownership, and the study of hunting societies

I have been conducting ethnographic research in Canada’s Yukon Territory since 1995, principally with the people of Kluane First Nation, the indigenous inhabitants of the southwest Yukon. My research has focused on the politics surrounding the production and use of environmental knowledge in wildlife management, land claim negotiations, and other political arenas. Currently, I am conducting a socio-cultural analysis of land claim negotiations among the governments of Canada, the Yukon Territory, and the Kluane First Nation. By examining the different cultural assumptions that various participants bring to the negotiating table, the resulting cross-cultural interactions, and how these articulate with the broader political, historical and legal contexts in which the negotiations are embedded, I hope to understand and describe the micro-level mechanisms through which unequal power relations are realized, reinforced, and at times subverted.

 Selected Books

2011

• (co-edited with M. Turner and M. Goldman) Knowing Nature: Conversations at the Intersection of Political Ecology and Science Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Link to publisher

2003

• Hunters and Bureaucrats: Power, Knowledge, and Aboriginal-State Relations in the Southwest Yukon. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press (winner of the Julian Steward Prize). Link to publisher

Selected Articles

2012

• Boundaries among Kin: Sovereignty, the Modern Treaty Process, and the Rise of Ethno-territorial Nationalism among Yukon First Nations.  Comparative Studies in Society and History. Download PDF

2007     

• The Gift in the Animal: The Ontology of Hunting and Human-Animal Sociality. American Ethnologist 34(1): 25-43. Download PDF

2005    

• Transcending the Debate over the Ecologically Noble Indian: Indigenous Peoples and Environmentalism. Ethnohistory 52(2): 291-331 (winner of the A&E Junior Scholar Award). Download PDF    
• The Anti-Politics of TEK: The Institutionalization of Co-management Discourse and Practice. Anthropologica 47(2): 215-232. Download PDF

2003     

• Reevaluating the Co-Management Success Story. Arctic. 56(4): 367-380. Download PDF

2002     

• ‘Property’ and Aboriginal Land Claims in the Canadian Subarctic: Some Theoretical Considerations. American Anthropologist 104(1): 247-261. Download PDF

1999     

• The Politics of TEK: Power and the ‘Integration’ of Knowledge.” Arctic Anthropology 36(1-2): 1- 18 (Republished in Natural Resources and Aboriginal People in Canada: Readings, Cases and Commentary. R. Bone and R. Anderson, eds. York, Ontario: Captus Press, 2003). Download PDF

Selected Chapters

Forthcoming

• Imposing Territoriality: First Nation Land Claims and the Transformation of Human-Environment Relations in the Yukon.  In Perspectives on the Environmental History of Northern Canada. S. Bocking and B. Martin, eds. Calgary: University of Calgary Press.

2011

• Applying Environmental Knowledge: The Politics of Constructing Society/Nature. In Knowing Nature: Conversations at the Intersection between Political Ecology and Science Studies.  M. Goldman, P. Nadasdy, M. Turner, eds. Pp. 129-133. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Download PDF
• “We Don’t Harvest Animals; We Kill Them:” Agricultural Metaphors and the Politics of Wildlife Management in the Yukon. In Knowing Nature: Conversations at the Intersection between Political Ecology and Science Studies.  M. Goldman, P. Nadasdy, M. Turner, eds. Pp. 135-151. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Download PDF

2008     

• Wildlife as Renewable Resource: Competing Conceptions of Wildlife, Time, and Management in the Yukon. In Timely Assets: The Politics of Resources and their Temporalities. E. Ferry and M. Limbert, eds. Pp. 75-106. Santa Fe, NM: School of Advanced Research Press. Download PDF
• The Antithesis of Restitution? A Note on the Dynamics of Land Negotiations in the Yukon, Canada. In The Rights and Wrongs of Land Restitution: Restoring What was Ours. D. Fay and D. James, eds. Pp. 85-97. London: Routledge. Download PDF

2007     

• Adaptive Co-Management and the Gospel of Resilience. In Adaptive Co-Management: Collaboration, Learning, and Multilevel Governance. D. Armitage, F. Berkes, N. Doubleday, eds. Pp. 208-227. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Download PDF

2006     

• The Case of the Missing Sheep: Time, Space, and the Politics of “Trust” in Co-Management Practice. In Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Natural Resource Management. C. Menzies, ed. Pp. 127-151. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Download PDF