Anthropologist Sarah Ives will be at Green College at the University of British Columbia (UBC) on Mar. 16 to present her paper Blurry Lines: Race, Botany and the Anthropocene. This event will be held at The Coach House at 6:30 pm and is open to the public at no charge.
Cover of Ives’ book. | Photo courtesy of Duke University Press
Ives, a professor at City College of San Francisco, who concluded her PhD at Stanford’s Department of Anthropology. In 2017, she published Steeped in Heritage: The Racial Politics of South African Rooibos Tea. Her research is mainly focused on the racial politics of climate change in Africa, in particular, addressing the dislocation of people as an effect of the industrial exploration of botanical commodities. In her lecture, Ives will discuss how the impact of colonial settlers resulted in geographic transformations which lead to political, social, and economic injustices resulting in the dispossession of indigenous nations from the lands they had lived on for centuries. Her paper focuses on how settlers relegated First Nations to a “non-human” condition and how these perceptions were the root of many of the abuses perpetrated against indigenous peoples. Scientists who study the anthropocene period (a proposed interval of geologic time in which the collective activities of humans began to substantially alter the planet) have identified a clear line of distinction between human and non-human elements and the relations between them. Thanks to colonialism, power and social relations were incorporated by colonists to make this distinction less clear. For example, colonists tended to think First Nations people were part of nature, thus, non-human. Ives’ presentation will discuss how these “blurry lines” between human and non-human perceptions influence the cultivation and exploitation of the South African rooibos and the Australian eucalyptus and the effects upon the people who had previously occupied the area.
Ives has published her research in scientific journals such as American Ethnologist, American Anthropologist, and Gender, Place and Culture, as well as the SAGE Handbook of Intellectual Property. Besides this research on commodities and environment, Ives’ studies examine race, ethnicity and women’s and gender studies. In partnership with Ann Bartos, PhD at the University of Auckland, Ives is currently developing a study of gender bias and sexual harassment of students in higher education.
Sarah Ives, anthropologist. | Photo courtesy of Stanford University
The environmental and social consequences of a project on fracking in South Africa is her next planned project.
Green College is a graduate college at UBC which promotes interdisciplinary conversations and public lectures. According to academic program manager, Tania Astorino, this lecture is part of a series entitled Environment, Power and Justice in Southern Africa. The Professor Emeritus from UBC’s Department of Geography, Graeme Wynn, has organized this series of lectures in which scientists from different areas of knowledge such as anthropology, history and geography, discuss social and environmental issues that lead to racial, social, and economic disparities in the southern portion of the African continent. Lectures presented in this series will be included in a book after the end of the academic year.
“[The lecture] is also a good chance for the students to interact with speakers and conveners and expand their network as well”, says Astorino, as there will be time for students to ask questions and debate about the topics discussed in the lecture. Astorino advises that Environment, Power and Justice in Southern Africa is not the only series of lectures presented at Green College. Indigenous science, literacy, and early Vancouver music, are among the topics of other series of free lectures that the university will offer.
For more information, please visit: www.greencollege.ubc.ca
