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"To promote scholarly activities on the cultural, demographic,
economic, and political dimensions of resource use and ecological change,
focusing on these issues and their linkages at and across multiple spatial and
temporal scales."
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The Cultural and Political Ecology
Specialty Group (CAPE) is a sub-group of scholars within the Association of
American Geographers (AAG). CAPE was originally organized as the Cultural Ecology
Specialty Group (CESG) in 1980 with the aim "To promote and conduct
scholarly activities on cultural ecological topics ranging from pre-history
to third world development, and from environmental to economic problems."
The tradition of cultural ecology as scholarship is characterized by efforts
to integrate the theories and methodologies of biologists, anthropologists,
and geographers through the practical study of peoples in place.
In 2002 members voted to include the
term "Political" in the specialty group title to reflect the
growing intersection of research interests among those working in cultural
ecology and the burgeoning field of political ecology. Political ecological
scholarship seeks to explicitly integrate and contrast the theories and
methodologies of economics, cultural studies, and political science into the
traditional modes of thought comprised by cultural ecology. The change of
title explicitly acknowledges the growing importance of new methodologies and
paradigms in human environment research as characterized by the CAPE mission statement (printed at the top
of the page).
Topics of special
interest to members of CAPE include but are
not limited to:
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- Agriculture and
Agricultural Development
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- Capitalization of Life and
Nature
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- Ecosystem Change
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- Ecosystem Services
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- Ecoterrorism
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- Ecotourism
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- Environmental Activism
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- Environmental Degradation
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- Environmental Discourse
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- Environmental Management
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- Environmental Racism
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- Functional Materialism
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- Hazards Research
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- Historical Ecology
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- Indigenous land mapping
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- Land Use, Land Cover, Land
Change
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- Land Tenure and Common
Property
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- Migration
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- Nature Conservation and
Social Justice
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- Nature and Ethnic Politics
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- Nature Privatization and
the State
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- Non-Governmental
Organizations (NGOs)
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- Neoliberalism
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- Political Economics
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- Protected Area Policy and
Management
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- Pastoral Communities
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- Subjectivity in Best Use
Practice
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- Sustainability and
Vulnerability
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- Sustainability Metrics
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- Third-world Development
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- Urban Ecology
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- Urban Pollution and
Remediation
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- Water Management
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- Wildlife Conservation
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The CAPE
Web Environment
The links to the left are found on all the CAPE
website pages and serve as direct connections to topics of primary concern to
members. The newsletter provides current information on upcoming conferences,
member milestones, publications of interest, job postings, and other
announcements. Contact information for each of the specialty group
administrators is provided through the "Officers" link.
CAPE distributes several student awards at the annual
meeting of the Association of American Geographers. Awards for student papers
presented at the national meeting serve as an important milestone for many
junior professional geographers. Field Study Awards provided research funds
for the early stages of thesis or dissertation fieldwork. For information on
application and a list of past recipients please visit the Awards link.
Honors for noteworthy achievement are
given when Cape
Officers feel
recognition for meritorious achievement is warranted. This generally occurs
on an annual basis. Testimonials are presented for each of the honorees.
National conferences of the AAG are
held each spring. For details visit the AAG meeting website where a
calendar of events will be available.
A long line of
webmasters/newsletter editors have contributed to the current manifestation
of this site. Robert Kuhlken at Central
Washington University,
who served as an editor of the Cultural Ecology Newsletter (CEN) from
1994-1998, authored the first webpage for what was then known as the Cultural
Ecology Specialty Group. This was later modified by Simon Batterbury between
1998 and 2004 (late of U of Arizona, now at Univ.
of Melbourne), and by Eric Perramond
between 2004 and 2005 (Colorado
College). The
responsibilities of CAPE newsletter editor and webmaster continue to be
folded into a single position currently held by Tony Abbott (Stetson University).
The CAPE Listserv
The listserv is the
real-time-communication organ of the specialty group. Through it members can
debate ideas, exchange news, organize paper sessions, post calls for papers,
and request information from colleagues as long as content conforms to listerv policy of collegiality. If you would like to subscribe to the
listserv go to the following link and follow the instructions provided there.
If you encounter problems with your subscription, please contact the listserv
manager, James McCarthy. jpm23@psu.edu
http://lists.psu.edu/archives/aag-cesg-l.html
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