Neumann, Roderick
Contact Info

Overview
overview
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My research is centrally concerned with the study of culture and nature in Western thought. In framing my inquiries, I draw from a wide range of critical social theory, including the Marxist, feminist, critical race, and postcolonialist literatures and from the ecological sciences. My methods are predominantly ethnographic and historical. I have conducted fieldwork primarily at rural sites in and around protected areas, particularly national parks and forests. I have completed studies in Tanzania, Western Europe, and California. My research has been funded by NSF, NEH, SSRC and Fulbright and published in a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals including The Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Antipode, Cultural Geographies, Political Geography, and Development and Change. Much of my work falls under political ecology's big, interdisciplinary tent. In my 2005 book, Making Political Ecology, I illustrated how the interdisciplinary field links ecology and critical social theory to explain the relationships of environmental degradation and social conflict.
Most of my work develops three variably intersecting themes; the tensions between social justice and biodiversity conservation, political economy of natural resources, and the co-constitution of identity, nature, and landscape. My earliest research in Tanzania, documented in my book, Imposing Wilderness, examines the cultural politics of biodiversity conservation, focusing on conflict and violence surrounding the creation of conservation territories in colonial and postcolonial Africa. Some of this and related research in Africa, examines how international conservation discourse and practice are inflected by unexamined racial hierarchies and stereotypes. In another study, published in my 2000 book, Research in NTFP Commercialisation, I conducted a critical analysis of the so-called "Rainforest Crunch hypothesis"—that non-timber forest product commodification can simultaneously promote tropical forest conservation and economic development for rural communities. I have conducted and continue to conduct extensive historical work on the co-construction of nature and racial and national identities within British and American imperialism and colonialism. My latest research agenda incorporates insights from science and technology studies and the so-called nonhuman turn in the humanities and social sciences. My central goal is to engage nonhuman perspectives for a fresh conceptualization of human-wildlife interactions in protected areas.
research interests
- Political Ecology, Cultural Geography, Social Theory, Conservation and Development, Landscape Studies, Environmental History, Africa, U.S. West, Europe
Scholarly & Creative Works
selected publications
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Article
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2021State making through conservation: The case of post-conflict Nepal. POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY. 85.Full Text via DOI: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102327 Web of Science: 000626139800012
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2015Political ecology of scale. INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK OF POLITICAL ECOLOGY. 475-486.Web of Science: 000385216900034
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2013Churchill and Roosevelt in Africa: Performing and Writing Landscapes of Race, Empire, and Nation. ANNALS OF THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN GEOGRAPHERS. 103:1371-1388.Full Text via DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2013.770367 Web of Science: 000325789300005
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2011Political ecology III: Theorizing landscape. PROGRESS IN HUMAN GEOGRAPHY. 35:843-850.Full Text via DOI: 10.1177/0309132510390870 Web of Science: 000297422000007
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2010Political ecology II: theorizing region. PROGRESS IN HUMAN GEOGRAPHY. 34:368-374.Full Text via DOI: 10.1177/0309132509343045 Web of Science: 000278757300006
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2009Political ecology: theorizing scale. PROGRESS IN HUMAN GEOGRAPHY. 33:398-406.Full Text via DOI: 10.1177/0309132508096353 Web of Science: 000267088000007
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2008Probing the (in)compatibilities of social theory and policy relevance in Piers Blaikie's political ecology. GEOFORUM. 39:728-735.Full Text via DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2006.12.004 Web of Science: 000254925000019
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2004Moral and discursive geographies in the war for biodiversity in Africa. POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY. 23.Full Text via DOI: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2004.05.011 Web of Science: 000225422600002
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2002The postwar conservation boom in British colonial Africa. ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY. 7.Full Text via DOI: 10.2307/3985451 Web of Science: 000174457000002
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2001Africa's 'last wilderness' reordering space for political and economic control in colonial Tanzania. AFRICA. 71.Full Text via DOI: 10.2307/1161583 Web of Science: 000175446000005
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1996Dukes, earls, and ersatz Edens: Aristocratic nature preservationists in colonial Africa. ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING D-SOCIETY & SPACE. 14.Full Text via DOI: 10.1068/d140079 Web of Science: A1996UD80000005
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1995LOCAL CHALLENGES TO GLOBAL AGENDAS - CONSERVATION, ECONOMIC LIBERALIZATION AND THE PASTORALISTS RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN TANZANIA. ANTIPODE. 27.Full Text via DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.1995.tb00285.x Web of Science: A1995RY80900004
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1993Reviews: Pathways to Industrialization and Regional Development, Improving Access to Health Care. What Can the States Do?, after Modernism: Global Restructuring and the Changing Boundaries of City Life, Land and the City: Patterns and Processes of Urban Change, Cognitive and Linguistic Aspects of Geographic Space, Growth Management: The Planning Challenge of the 1990's, An Introduction to Political Geography, International Trade and the Environment, Geography's Inner Worlds: Pervasive Themes in Contemporary American GeographyFull Text via DOI: 10.1068/a251211
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Book
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2011
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2011
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2010
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2010
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Book Chapter
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2017Commoditization, Primitive Accumulation and the Spaces of Biodiversity Conservation. 111.Full Text via DOI: 10.1002/9781119184324.ch7
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2017Life Zones The Rise and Decline of a Theory of the Geographic Distribution of Species. 37-55.Web of Science: 000454829400003
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2015Nature conservation. 391-405.
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Book Review
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2009Imagining Serengeti: A History of Landscape Memory in Tanzania from Earliest Times to the Present. Ed. 52.Full Text via DOI: 10.1353/arw.0.0136 Web of Science: 000273302700035
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2007Modernizing nature: Forestry and imperial eco-development 1800-1950. Ed. 106.Full Text via DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adm053 Web of Science: 000250823300017
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2006Conservation and globalization: a study of national parks and indigenous communities from East Africa to South Dakota. Ed. 12.Full Text via DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9655.2006.00289_27.x Web of Science: 000236925200038
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2006Suffering for territory: race, place, and power in Zimbabwe. Ed. 24.Web of Science: 000243661500010
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2002Insatiable appetite: The United States and the ecological degradation of the tropical world. Ed. 28.Full Text via DOI: 10.1006/jhge.2002.0425 Web of Science: 000176294000011
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2001The poor are not us: Poverty and pastoralism. Ed. 100.Full Text via DOI: 10.1093/afraf/100.398.164 Web of Science: 000168136500016
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2000Politicians and poachers: The political economy of wildlife policy in Africa. Ed. 18.Web of Science: 000090102900013
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1998Liberation ecologies: Environment, development, social movements.. Ed. 74.Full Text via DOI: 10.2307/144283 Web of Science: 000074135500008
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1993
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Review
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1997Primitive ideas: Protected area buffer zones and the politics of land in Africa. DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE.Full Text via DOI: 10.1111/1467-7660.00054 Web of Science: A1997XQ24900006
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Works By Students
chaired theses and dissertations
- Dongol, Yogesh, Cultural Politics of Community-Based Conservation in the Buffer Zone of Chitwan National Park, Nepal 2018
- Heck, Charles L, Informal Urban Displacement in Rio de Janeiro: Ecolimits and Disaster Biopolitics in the Favela Santa Marta 2016
- Shivlani, Manoj, The Impacts of Fisheries Management on the Performance and Resiliency of the Commercial Fishing Industry and Fishing Communities in the Florida Keys (Monroe County, Florida) from 1950-2010 2014
- Ter-Ghazaryan, Diana K., Re-Imagining Yerevan in the Post-Soviet Era: Urban Symbolism and Narratives of the Nation in the Landscape of Armenia's Capital 2010
Research
principal investigator on
Contact
full name
- Roderick Neumann
visualizations
Recent publications and grants in Scholars@FIU
publication subject areas
Citation index-derived subject areas the researcher has published in