Space, place, knowledge & power
Research by faculty working within this theme attends to political economy, global connections and assemblages, flows and governmentality. Our work attends to power and its manifestations through examination of land rights, human rights, finance, formal and informal economies, science and technology, migration and mobility, the legacies of colonialism, conservation and development. We are concerned with the situatedness and positionality of diverse knowledge systems, and the ethics and politics of knowledge production and circulation. The broad conceptual terrain of ‘space’ - which is inclusive of notions of ‘place’, belonging, socio-cultural and linguistic landscapes, displacement, borders, land tenure, and built environments -- grounds much of the research executed within the theme. Our research engages with a wide range of ethnographic, historic, and archaeological contexts, from collaborative partnerships with Indigenous communities and disenfranchised populations to critical engagement with political and economic elites in diverse global and geographic contexts.
Faculty researchers
Recent publications
2020 - Stahl, Ann B. Assembling ‘effective archaeologies’ towards equitable futures. American Anthropologist 122(1): 37-50.
2020 - Thom, Brian. Addressing the challenge of overlapping claims in implementing the Vancouver Island (Douglas) treaties. Anthropologica. 62(1).
2020 - Thom, Brian. Encountering Indigenous legal orders in Canada. Invited contribution to Oxford Handbook of Law and Anthropology. Marie-Claire Foblets, editor. London: Oxford University Press.
2020 – Morales, Sarah and Thom, Brian. The principle of sharing and the hadow of Canadian property law. Pp. 120-162 in Creating Indigenous Property: Power, Rights, and Relationships, edited by Angela Cameron, Sari Graben and Val Napoleon. Toronto, University of Toronto Press.
2019 - Thom, Brian. Leveraging international power: private property and the human rights of Indigenous Peoples in Canada. Pp. 184-203 in Scales of Governance and Indigenous Peoples' Rights, edited by Jennifer Hays and Irène Bellier. Law and the Postcolonial: Ethics, Politics, and Economy Series, Routledge, London.
2019 - Thom, Brian. Tirer parti du droit international: la propriété privée et les droits des peuples autochtones au Canada. Pp. 195-216 dans Les échelles de la gouvernance et des droits des peuples autochtones, Sous la direction de Irène Bellier et Jennifer Hays. Paris, L'Harmattan.
2019 - Rudnyckyj, Daromir. Beyond Debt: Islamic Experiments in Global Finance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2018 - Salomon, A.K., K. Lertzman, K. Brown, B.J. Wilson (Kii7iljuus), D. Secord and Iain McKechnie. Democratizing conservation science and practice. Ecology and Society 23(1).
2018 - Colombi, Benedict, Brian Thom and Tatiana Degai. Googling Indigenous Kamchatka: mapping new collaborations. Pp. 195-203 in Indigenous Justice: New Tools, Approache, and Spaces. Edited by Hendry, J., Tatum, M.L., Jorgensen, M., and Howard-Wagner, D. Palgrave, Socio-Legal Studies.
2018 - Czaykowska-Higgins, Ewa, Deanna Daniels, Tim Kulchyski, Andy Paul, Brian Thom, S. Marlo Twance and Suzanne Urbanczyk. Consultation, relationship and results in community-based language research. Pp. 66-93 in Bischoff, S. and C. Jany (eds.) Perspectives on Language and Linguistics: Community-Based Research. Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin/New York.
2018 - Gonlin, N. and Nowell, A. (eds.) 2018. Archaeology of the Night. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado.
2018 - Nowell, A. Paleolithic soundscapes and the emotional resonance of nighttime. In Archaeology of the Night, edited by Nancy Gonlin and April Nowell. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado. Pp. 27-44.
2018 - Ann Stahl, Market thinking: perspectives from Saharan and Atlantic West Africa. In Market as Place and Space of Economic Exchange: Perspectives from Archaeology and Anthropology, edited by Hans Peter Hahn and Geraldine Schmitz, pp. 152-179. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
2017 - Rudnyckyj, Daromir. Subjects of debt: financial subjectification and collaborative risk in Malaysian Islamic finance. American Anthropologist 119(2): 269-283
2017 - Thom, Brian. Entanglements in Coast Salish ancestral territories. In Entangled Territorialities: Indigenous Peoples from Canada and Australia in the 21st Century, edited by Françoise Dussart and Sylvie Poirier. Pp. 140-162. Anthropological Horizons Series, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.