Krista Harper

The Genius of the Nation versus the Gene-Tech of the Nation: Science, Identity, and GMO Debates in Hungary

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International Environmental Justice: Building the Natural Assets of the World’s Poor

In recent years, vibrant social movements have emerged across the world to fight for environmental justice –- for more equitable access to natural resources and environmental quality, including clean air and water. In seeking to build community rights to natural assets, these initiatives seek to advance simultaneously the goals of environmental protection and poverty reduction. This paper sketches the contours of struggles for environmental justice within and among countries, and illustrates with examples primarily drawn from countries of the global South and the former Soviet bloc.

Ethnographic Apps/Apps as Ethnography

Today, people nearly everywhere are experiencing multiple events through the medium of mobile apps: Social networking platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, are now accessed through smartphones by most users; popular service apps like Yelp are used for finding restaurants and services; geolocation apps for way finding, such as Google Maps, plot drives, commutes by public transportation and even walks around the block; and there are tons of personal health and fitness trackers that count everything from steps to calorie intake. For anthropologists, mobile apps provide the opportunity for an enhanced methodological approach that provides new possibilities to engage with the people they study, heighten their reflexive capacities and link to new forms of data. While many approach these possibilities with trepidation, our collective sentiment is that these new forms of communication provide more promise than pitfalls for anthropology. The use of apps is transforming human experience. Mobile apps are part of everyday life around the world, including the lives and livelihoods of anthropologists. Anthropologists aren’t just “using” apps; they’re also being “used” by them, in that the structures of app platforms affect what anthropologists know and how they know it. Just as the individuals that anthropologists study are producing the digital labor and content that drives apps, anthropologists, in turn, are supplying the same amount of material and utilization. In this sense, when it comes to mobile apps, we are part of the same public sphere as the populations with whom we work. Apps can also provide many anthropological insights. Each mobile app platform tells researchers not only what people who use them think is important, but also the way different media and different functions are expected to link together in user practice. In other words, apps can tell users and developers how they should be moving around in the world and what they should pay attention to and capture as media, and simultaneously provide conduits for sharing all of this information and collective experience. Increasingly, anthropologists are returning from field research with diverse media: recordings, notes, photos, digital records and all sorts of cultural items. Mobile apps suggest ways of integrating the work anthropologists do to communicate with other anthropologists with this material from field research. They also provide a possible way for anthropological research to become increasingly relevant and accessible to wider publics. Anthropologists can and should use their knowledge,

Food justice youth development: using Photovoice to study urban school food systems*

ABSTRACT How do youth learn through participation in efforts to study and change the school food system? Through our participatory youth action research (YPAR) project, we move beyond the “youth as consumer” frame to a food justice youth development (FJYD) approach. We track how a group of youth learned about food and the public policy process through their efforts to transform their own school food systems by conducting a participatory evaluation of farm-to-school efforts in collaboration with university and community partners. We used the Photovoice research method, placing cameras in the hands of young people so that they themselves could document and discuss their concerns and perspectives. The research was designed to gain insight about youths’ knowledge of food, health, and community food systems. Drawing upon the youth group’s insights, we build a framework for building critical consciousness through FJYD.