Grantee Research Project Results

Culturing Urban Ecology: Strategic Linkages of Environment and Cultural Identity in Urban River Restoration, The Upper Bagmati Basin, Kathmandu, Nepal

EPA Grant Number: U915764
Title: Culturing Urban Ecology: Strategic Linkages of Environment and Cultural Identity in Urban River Restoration, The Upper Bagmati Basin, Kathmandu, Nepal
Investigators: Rademacher, Anne M.
Institution: Yale University
EPA Project Officer: Lee, Sonja
Project Period: August 1, 2000 through August 1, 2003
Project Amount: $102,000
RFA: STAR Graduate Fellowships (2000) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Fellowship - Anthropology , Biology/Life Sciences , Academic Fellowships

Objective:

The objective of this research project is to examine the way perceptions and descriptions of environmental degradation are strategically paired with assertions about cultural degradation and cultural identity to produce distinctly "eco-cultural" discourses about a particular urban river system.

Approach:

Primarily ethnographic and discourse analysis techniques will be employed to identify and analyze competing discourses of degradation and restoration in the Bagmati-Bishnumati system. Archival, ethnographic, and interview methods will be combined; each of these will aid in constructing an analytical map of competing discourses of restoration and in exploring their content for the construction of relationships between culture and ecology.

Expected Results:

The goal of this research project is to understand the genealogy of dominant representations of the ecological and cultural significance of the riverscape while identifying competing claims about those significances. Questions that will be answered include: How does the dominant development discourse on river restoration construct the cultural value of the riverscape? What role is this cultural value said to play in the river's ecological health? What are the sociopolitical implications of the conceptual and rhetorical pairing of culture and ecology, and which social groups stand to gain and lose from resulting visions of "restoration"? In particular, the threatening implications of the development discourse for the more than 10,000 landless migrants (Sukumbasis) now settled in the riparian zone provide a striking opportunity to examine the political dimensions of an eco-cultural management strategy in a local context.

Supplemental Keywords:

Nepal, urban ecology, Bagmati, rivers, restoration., RFA, Scientific Discipline, Ecosystem Protection/Environmental Exposure & Risk, Geographic Area, Water, Restoration, Ecological Indicators, International, Anthropology, Ecosystem Protection, Aquatic Ecosystem Restoration, Ecology, Ecosystem/Assessment/Indicators, exploratory research environmental biology, Social Science, Ecological Effects - Environmental Exposure & Risk, Ecological Effects - Human Health, Sociology, Chemical Mixtures - Environmental Exposure & Risk, Ecology and Ecosystems, cultural identity, Upper Bagmati Basin, environment and culture, ecological exposure, urban ecosystems, urban river restoration, urban ecology, Kathmandu, Nepal, river

Progress and Final Reports:

The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.