Research Interests

My present research, on farming in highland Cambodia, explores the connections between agriculture, memory and the environment. My work examines the ways societies manage the natural environment, and seeks to understand these practices not only as efforts to put food on the table, but also as a set of engagements with the natural world, engagements that are central to how people express who they are.  No wonder, when throughout the world people invest plants, animals, and natural phenomena with cultural meanings and ritual significance.

The history of agriculture and natural resources is thus also a history of social and cultural life, and the plants growing in our gardens and woods are documents that help us to relate that story. As an ethnographer, I have tried to learn how Jarai farmers in Cambodia understand their own history, by asking them about the plants in their gardens and forests. In my writing I try to use those historical documents as material with which to tell their story.

My research in Cambodia reflects a larger commitment to investigating processes of global change where they intersect with local political economies.  I am also particularly interested in questions of representation within the politics of environment and development, in the connections between environmental and ethnic alterity, in environmental security, and in ethnographic research method.