Join us for a monthly showcase of research-in-progress by Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences faculty members. The campus-community and the general public are invited to interact with faculty in conversations about their research, gain a sense of how research practices shift as they move across disciplines and sectors, and think critically and creatively about the implications of different forms of research design.
All colloquium presentations occur in the following location:
UW Bothell, Building UW1, Room 280 (Rose Room) Directions
No RSVP is required for general attendance. A one-credit course option is available to graduate students.*
Spring 2013 Speaker Lineup
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
4:00 - 5:30 p.m.
Buying and Selling the Serengeti: Safari Tourism and the Cultural Politics of Global Land Grabbing in Tanzania
Ben Gardner
Buying and Selling the Serengeti: Safari Tourism and the Cultural Politics of the Global Land Grab is an ethnographic study of tourism, development, and land struggles in Tanzania. The book examines how tourism investment in northern Tanzania is a critical site of struggle over the meaning of markets, land rights, and culture. I examine three tourism arrangements in Loliondo, an area in northern Tanzania bordering Serengeti National Park and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area: joint ventures between expatriate owned ecotourism companies and predominately Maasai villages; a private nature refuge established by a US owned safari company on a former state owned barley farm; and the leasing of a hunting concession on village lands by the central government to a powerful foreign investor from the United Arab Emirates.
One way to understand these projects is as part of free market or neoliberal development policies and ideologies. Conservation organizations, development experts and many academics have argued that these policies create new opportunities for communities to participate in tourism and benefit from global trends in conservation. Alternatively, a group of scholars and activists have criticized the accumulation of land and resources through market mechanisms in the name of global development. They have described a number of activities including tourism as perpetuating ‘a global land grab’. I argue that Maasai people in Loliondo see contemporary land grabbing as firmly located in state claims to property and territory, despite the fundamental role of foreign investors in appropriating resources and surplus value in all of these cases. Maasai in Loliondo have come to think of the market, expressed through their direct relationships with ecotourism investors as the most promising space to legitimize and secure access to resources and citizenship rights. This book situates current land struggles within the political economy of tourism in Loliondo and shows how different articulations of market-state-community relationships become both materially and symbolically meaningful.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
4:00 - 5:30 p.m.
What Are Poetics?
Jeanne Heuving
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
4:00 - 5:30 p.m.
Contextualizing Technology Use: Communication Practices in a Local Homeless Movement
Amoshaun Toft
In this talk I will present my ethnographic work on Internet-enabled technology use in the local homeless movement. I will present four themes that characterize the strategies organizers used in communicating within and between constituents: how organizers emphasized ‘relational’ face-to-face communication, used ICTs to connect with housed allies, encouraged participants to move from the computer screen to street, and relied upon existing organizationally sponsored communications infrastructure in facilitating communication tasks. Most studies of technology use in organizing practices are focused on understanding how a narrow technological elite think, feel, and act in relation to ICTs, systematically excluded those with meager means, and those contexts in which technology is not central. This paper proposes that an analysis of communication practices broadly defined is important in understanding the role of technologies of communication more specifically, and highlights the classed dynamics that technology use reflects in organizing processes.
If you have questions regarding the research colloquium series, please contact Meredith Field: mfield@uwb.edu.
*A one-credit course option is available to graduate students (BCULST/BPOLST 591). The first class meeting of the quarter begins at 3:30pm (location TBD), with the actual colloquium presentation beginning at 4:00pm.
The University of Washington is committed to providing equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation in its services, programs, activities, education and employment for individuals with disabilities. To inquire about disability accommodations, please contact Rosa Lundborg at Disability Support Services at least ten days prior to the event at 425.352.5307, TDD 425.352.5303, FAX 425.352.5455, or email dss@uwb.edu.