CV

AFFILIATION:

International Development, Community and the Environment, Clark University; CLACLS, UMass

CONTACT:

kiranasher10@gmail.com

TEL: (413) 283-3077

FAX: (508) 793-8820

  I am seeking collaborators for two projects. One explores Afro-Colombian organizing in the context of massive displacement and involuntary migration, especially among regional and grassroots communities and Afro-Colombian women’s groups on the Pacific coast.

    The second seeks to compare environmental conservation policies – and their raced and gendered dimensions in multiple locations I am by nature a comparativitist, motivated by the desire for more, and better, ‘south-south’ analyses of social and environmental movements.  To this end the environmental study aims to compare Colombia, Belize, and India (where I will spend Spring 2009 through a Fulbright) and seek collaborators for other locations.  My research is framed by two questions: first, how do international accords (such as the Convention on Biological Diversity) actually work on the ground?  How do state and non-governmental entities put biodiversity conservation strategies into action?  And second, how do marginalized communities (such as women and peasants) appropriate or resist conservation policies that threaten their livelihoods?  My hypothesis is that biodiversity is increasingly managed by treating it as a commodity, and that subaltern social groups resist this change by interpreting concepts like ‘biodiversity’ and ‘common good’ in ways that increase their political room for maneuver.  In addition to the consortium themes, this project aims to reconceptualize human-nature relations by drawing on political-economic and feminist approaches in a postcolonial frame.