Noah Theriault
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, History
Bio
As a sociocultural anthropologist, I study the different ways in which human societies meet their needs, settle their disputes, and make meaning of the world. As a political ecologist, I work to understand the ‘more-than-human’ nature of societies as well as the sociopolitical nature of ecosystems. My research on environmental politics is not just about struggles over resources, but also about encounters among different knowledge systems, cosmologies, and ways of being in the world. I employ both ethnographic and historical methods to trace how these encounters unfold at the local level, how they interact with global forces, and how they reverberate outward. My work asks, for example: whose beliefs and aspirations serve as the default for transnational conservation projects and how does this affect the communities whose lands are targeted for conservation? How, in turn, do these communities—including the other-than-human beings with whom they share the environment—intervene in and shape the practice of conservation?
My empirical research focuses primarily on the Philippines, where I have conducted approximately three years of fieldwork since 2006. A long-term project examines the micropolitics of indigeneity and environmental regulation on Palawan Island, a UNESCO “Biosphere Reserve” undergoing rapid social and ecological change due to settler colonization, agricultural intensification, bureaucratization, and capitalist expansion. My writing highlights the creativity and endurance of Palawan’s Indigenous communities as they navigate and intervene in these powerful forces of dispossession and change. In 2016, I connected this work with the Creatures Collective, an international collaboration of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, artists, and activists, who have come together in an effort to contest the colonial amnesia of contemporary ‘mass extinction’ narratives and to support the resurgence of more-than-human collectives in response thereto.
More recently, I have initiated a new, collaborative study of how Manila’s ‘traffic crisis’ interacts with social inequality, technocratic authority, and political subjectivity. By connecting urban political ecology, environmental history, and the anthropology of infrastructure, this project aims to offer ethnographic insights into a problem that permeates all aspects of life in this fast-growing mega-city. This project is part of a larger effort to promote collaborative and community-based methods in urban political ecology. With funding from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Alex Nading (Cornell University) and I are preparing to host a workshop at CMU on “Collaborative Ecologies: Anthropologies of (and for) Survival in the More-Than-Human City.”
Motivating all of these engagements is a commitment to: collaboratively producing knowledge that is accountable to the concerns of structurally marginalized communities; engaging with a wide range of scholars, practitioners, and activists; and contributing to broader efforts on behalf of social, environmental, and ecological justice. At CMU, I offer courses and mentor student research on Political Ecology, Environmental Justice, Climate Change and Climate Justice, Southeast Asia, Indigenous Rights, Globalization, Social Movements, Disasters, and related topics.