Mary Mostafanezhad
I am a human geographer broadly interested in socio-environmental change and development in Southeast Asia.
My work draws on political ecology framings that account for the range of political and economic drivers of ecological degradation and socio-ecological movements. I focus on how these processes materialize in the contexts of air pollution, forest degradation, and agrarian transitions. Development geographies encompasses the range of socio-economic activity that unevenly affects people’s livelihoods and wellbeing. My scholarship engages with these themes through the analysis of tourism, agriculture, and infrastructure development. Published in eight authored and co-edited books and more than 75 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters (see Google Scholar for a complete list of my publications), my work collectively asks, how is everyday experience mediated by broader regional and global processes and with what socio-environmental implications? I seek answers to this question through ethnographic fieldwork and in popular culture and other textual representations, as well as collaboratively with GIS and remote sensing specialists. When I am not writing about the environment and development, you can find me surfing Diamond Head, hiking the Kalalau Trail, or eating spicy poke bowls on Kaimana Beach.
My current research examines the political ecology of seasonal air pollution in northern Thailand. Air pollution now affects 92 percent of the global population and is responsible for one out of every nine deaths on the planet, nearly two-thirds of which occur in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific. This project employs mixed ethnographic, quantitative, and geospatial methods to investigate the question: What are the socio-ecological drivers and consequences of seasonal air pollution crises? As anthropogenic environmental change intensifies globally, my work advances understandings of how such change registers as a crisis (or not) and has significant implications for environmental policy, politics and practice. Supported by a National Science Foundation Cultural Anthropology Senior Research Award, I document this work in a range of publications (see Google Scholar) and in my book manuscript, “(Un)natural air: Pollution out of place in northern Thailand.”
This work dovetails with my forthcoming collaborative project on Transboundary Air Pollution and the Socio-Ecological Impact of China’s Belt-Road Initiative in Myanmar and Thailand. Spanning 65 countries which collectively account for one-third of the global GDP and 60 percent of the world’s population, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the world’s largest infrastructure development scheme ever conceived. This project brings an integrated ethnographic and geospatial lens to current debates by comparatively investigating the socio-ecological implications of BRI in Myanmar and Thailand. This project is supported by a collaborative USD $1,000,000 Luce Initiative on Southeast Asia grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.
These projects are being carried out in collaboration with the Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development and the School of Public Policy at Chiang Mai University.
My work draws on political ecology framings that account for the range of political and economic drivers of ecological degradation and socio-ecological movements. I focus on how these processes materialize in the contexts of air pollution, forest degradation, and agrarian transitions. Development geographies encompasses the range of socio-economic activity that unevenly affects people’s livelihoods and wellbeing. My scholarship engages with these themes through the analysis of tourism, agriculture, and infrastructure development. Published in eight authored and co-edited books and more than 75 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters (see Google Scholar for a complete list of my publications), my work collectively asks, how is everyday experience mediated by broader regional and global processes and with what socio-environmental implications? I seek answers to this question through ethnographic fieldwork and in popular culture and other textual representations, as well as collaboratively with GIS and remote sensing specialists. When I am not writing about the environment and development, you can find me surfing Diamond Head, hiking the Kalalau Trail, or eating spicy poke bowls on Kaimana Beach.
My current research examines the political ecology of seasonal air pollution in northern Thailand. Air pollution now affects 92 percent of the global population and is responsible for one out of every nine deaths on the planet, nearly two-thirds of which occur in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific. This project employs mixed ethnographic, quantitative, and geospatial methods to investigate the question: What are the socio-ecological drivers and consequences of seasonal air pollution crises? As anthropogenic environmental change intensifies globally, my work advances understandings of how such change registers as a crisis (or not) and has significant implications for environmental policy, politics and practice. Supported by a National Science Foundation Cultural Anthropology Senior Research Award, I document this work in a range of publications (see Google Scholar) and in my book manuscript, “(Un)natural air: Pollution out of place in northern Thailand.”
This work dovetails with my forthcoming collaborative project on Transboundary Air Pollution and the Socio-Ecological Impact of China’s Belt-Road Initiative in Myanmar and Thailand. Spanning 65 countries which collectively account for one-third of the global GDP and 60 percent of the world’s population, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the world’s largest infrastructure development scheme ever conceived. This project brings an integrated ethnographic and geospatial lens to current debates by comparatively investigating the socio-ecological implications of BRI in Myanmar and Thailand. This project is supported by a collaborative USD $1,000,000 Luce Initiative on Southeast Asia grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.
These projects are being carried out in collaboration with the Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development and the School of Public Policy at Chiang Mai University.
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The three guiding themes of the CTS-Asia Pacific 2020 Conference address the multifaceted and paradoxical implications of doing tourism in increasingly troubled times. We welcome presentations from scholars and practitioners that employ a critical approach to tourism studies. Rather than simply being “critical of tourism”, we base our analyses in critical theory and praxis, and recognize the need and desire for tourism as both an industry and social practice. We anticipate the participation of practitioners, travel writers and tourism-focused scholars from across a range of disciplines such as anthropology, geography, sociology, political science, and cultural, environmental, women’s, area, and tourism studies. The conference is organized around three themes: Responsibility, Resistance, and Resurgence.
Confirmed Keynotes speakers.
Tony Wheeler (Author and co-founder of the travel publisher The Lonely Planet).
Christine R. Yano (Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawai`i).
Dr. Tazim Jamal (Professor in the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences at Texas A&M University).
Shinji Yamashita (Emeritus Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tokyo).
Hideki Endo (Professor of Tourism Studies in Faculty of Letters, Ritsumeikan University).
Kumi Kato (Professor of Tourism, Wakayama University).
For further enquiries regarding conference fees and program, recommended accommodation, conference excursion options, and the registration form, please visit the following website: https://www.criticaltourismstudies.com
Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
4-6, March, 2018
http://www.criticaltourismstudies.com/call-for-papers.html
The Asia Pacific is one of the fastest growing regions in the world for both international and domestic tourism. The growth of this region has radically altered the global tourism landscape and contributed to new modes of tourism practice, while engendering a decentering of Anglo-Western centrism in tourism theory.
In this inaugural conference of the Critical Tourism Studies Asia Pacific network (CTS-AP), we seek to draw attention to the multiple modalities and recenterings of critical tourism scholarship. See CFP http://www.criticaltourismstudies.com/call-for-papers.html
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Kathleen Adams (Loyola University Chicago, USA), Michael Mel, Stroma Cole (University of the West of England, UK), Chris Gibson (University of Wollongong, Australia),Tim Edensor (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK), Wiendu Nuryanti (Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia), Ploysri Porananond (Chiang Mai University, Thailand), Regina Scheyvens (Massey University, New Zealand).
Additionally, several workshops will be offered (e.g. travel writing by Lonely Planet authors) and tourism related films will be shown at the conference.
One of our key aims is to ensure registration for this conference is affordable (Early bird rates: students $US60, ASEAN participants $US110, Non-ASEAN $180).
Register and submit your abstract – don’t wait!
Critical Tourism Studies Asia Pacific, 4 to 6 March, 2018.
The Asia Pacific is one of the fastest growing regions in the world for both international and domestic tourism. The growth of this region has radically altered the global tourism landscape and contributed to new modes of tourism practice, while engendering a decentering of Anglo-Western centrism in tourism theory. In this inaugural conference of the Critical Tourism Studies Asia Pacific network (CTS-AP), we seek to draw attention to the multiple modalities and recenterings of critical tourism scholarship.
Abstracts due October 15. http://www.criticaltourismstudies.com