Environment

Flood risks are a chronic concern for many coastal inhabitants, and considerable effort may be invested to mitigate those risks. In many settings, however, projected future flood risks are sufficiently great that infrastructural mitigation strategies are limited. In such settings, how do residents and other stakeholders adapt to the prospect of rapid coastal change? This dissertation research examines the social, political, and material effects of planning for flood events and climate change for coastal urban waterways.

The production of accurate and reliable information about rainforests and other difficult-to-survey environments constitutes an enduring challenge for state bureaucrats, scientists, and engineers. Yet the grounded processes through which key environmental information is produced have received little study. The research supported by this award takes up this problem through an anthropological investigation of the technical and bureaucratic practices through which state environmental information is created, transmitted, and applied.