Transcript: An Ecological History of Modern China, with Stevan Harrell — Part 1
Below is a complete transcript of Part 1 of my interview with Stevan Harrell, Professor Emeritus in Anthropology at the University of Washington, recorded on May 31, 2024. Read the transcript of listen with the embedded player above.
Kaiser Kuo: Hey, folks, this week, part one of a two-part interview with the scholar Stevan Harrell, professor emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle. We’ll be talking about his fantastic book — An Ecological History of Modern China. Our interview ran to nearly three hours, so I’ve decided to divide this into two more manageable segments. Next week, part two.
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This week on Sinica, I am delighted to welcome Stevan Harrell, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Washington. In his own words, he was, during his active career, focused on “building collaborations between earth scientists and social scientists to understand better how people relate to their environments, and to using the knowledge from these collaborations to help people solve local problems. Theoretically, this meant a combination of ethnoecology and resilience theory; substantively, it meant looking at the historical relations between people and natural resources, particularly forests; and geographically, it happens mostly in Liangshan, China, but also in Taiwan and in Washington state. Implications of this interest have led me to co-found the Yangjuan Primary School in Liangshan, and the Cool Mountain Education Fund. My other interests are in building scholarly community across cultural barriers, particularly with scholars in China and in promoting international student exchange.”
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