Paul Nadasdy

Professor

206 McGraw Hall
pn79@cornell.edu

Education

Ph.D., The Johns Hopkins University, 2001

Departments and programs

Anthropology

Affiliated Colleges

College of Arts and Sciences

Academic interests

Anthropology of Science and Technology
Environmental Anthropology
Ethnography
North America and The Caribbean
Political and Legal Anthropology

Keywords

Anthropology of North American Indians and the circumpolar North, anthropology of science and knowledge, environmental/ecological anthropology, indigenous-state relations, ethnography of the state, the politics of wildlife management, political economy/ecology, property, territoriality, citizenship, hunting/hunting societies

Overview

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 sociocultural 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.

Publications

Books

2017. Sovereignty's Entailments: First Nation State Formation in the Yukon. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
2011. (co-edited with M. Goldman and M. Turner). Knowing Nature: Conversations at the Intersection of Political Ecology and Science Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2003. Hunters and Bureaucrats: Power, Knowledge, and Aboriginal-State Relations in the Southwest Yukon. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

Articles

2021 How Many Worlds are There? Ontology, Practice and Indeterminacy. American Ethnologist 48(4).
2016. First Nations, Citizenship, and Animals, or Why Northern Indigenous People Might Not Want to Live in Zoopolis. Canadian Journal of Political Science 49(1): 1-20.
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 54(3): 499-532.
2007. The Gift in the Animal: The Ontology of Hunting and Human-Animal Sociality . American Ethnologist 34(1): 25-43. (Republished in Japanese as “Dobutsu ni Hisomu Zoyo.” In Hito to Doubutsu no Jinruigaku [Anthropology of Human and Animal]. Translated by Shiaki Kondo. K. Okuno, M. Yamaguchi and S. Kondo, eds. Pp. 291-360. Kanagawa, Japan: Shumpusha Publishing, 2012).
2005. The Anti-Politics of TEK: The Institutionalization of Co-management Discourse and Practice. Anthropologica 47(2): 215-232. (Republished in Natural Resources and Aboriginal People in Canada: Readings, Cases and Commentary. R. Bone and R. Anderson, eds. 2^nd (revised) edition. York, Ontario: Captus Press, 2009).
2005. Transcending the Debate over the Ecologically Noble Indian: Indigenous Peoples and Environmentalism. Ethnohistory 52(2): 291-331. (Republished in Religion and the Environment, vol. 2. R. Gottlieb, ed. London: Routledge, 2010).
2003. Reevaluating the Co-Management Success Story. Arctic. 56(4): 367-380.
2002. ‘Property’ and Aboriginal Land Claims in the Canadian Subarctic: Some Theoretical Considerations. American Anthropologist 104(1): 247-261.
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. 1^st and 2^nd (revised) editions. York, Ontario: Captus Press, 2003 and 2009).

Chapters in Edited Volumes

2024 What is Land? Ontology, Practice, and Indeterminacy. In The Social Lives of Land. M. Goldman, N. Peluso, W. Wolford, eds. Pp. 104-125. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
2017. Imposing Territoriality: First Nation Land Claims and the Transformation of Human-Environment Relations in the Yukon. In Ice Blink: Navigating Northern Environmental History. S. Bocking and B. Martin, eds. Pp. 333-376. Calgary: University of Calgary Press.
2011. “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 of Political Ecology and Science Studies. M. Goldman, P. Nadasdy, M. Turner, eds. Pp. 135-151. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2011. Application of Environmental Knowledge: The Politics of Constructing Society/Nature. In Knowing Nature: Conversations at the Intersection of Political Ecology and Science Studies. M. Goldman, P. Nadasdy, M. Turner, eds. Pp. 129-133. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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.
2008. 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.
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.
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.