Leah Horowitz

User Profile

Name: Leah Horowitz

Member Since: December 26th, 2008

Member Name: Leah.horowitz

Biography:

Dr. Horowitz’s research, both academic and applied, focuses on the micropolitics of local residents’ understandings of environmental issues, and ways that those understandings intersect with the policies and practices of actors such as governments, corporations, and non-governmental organizations. Ultimately, her work can help to find ways for these groups to work together toward environmental conservation. She has addressed these research goals through studies of mining activities in New Caledonia, Australia, New Zealand, and Brazil; protected areas in New Caledonia, Malaysia, Madagascar, Australia, and Guatemala; and links between biodiversity and West Nile virus in the U.S. Specifically, some of her recent and forthcoming publications have examined community responses to an indigenous environmental protest group that targeted a multinational mining company, the environmental dimensions of fundamentalist Christian discourses about a mining project, and ways in which a desire to maintain cultural heritage was and was not compatible with an interest in the economic benefits of ecotourism.EducationB.A. Amherst College, 1994M.Phil. University of Cambridge, 1996Ph.D. Australian National University, 2003Research interests

Socio-cultural and politico-economic dimensions of natural resource exploitation, biodiversity conservation and climate change. Fieldwork in Africa, Asia, Australasia, Melanesia, U.S.A.

Selected publications

Horowitz, L.S. 2008. Destroying God’s creation or using what He provided?: Cultural models of a mining project in New Caledonia. Human Organization 67(3): 292-306.Horowitz, L.S. 2008. “It’s up to the clan to protect”: Cultural heritage and the micropolitical ecology of conservation in New Caledonia. The Social Science Journal 45(2): 258-278.Horowitz, L.S. 2004. Toward a viable independence? The Koniambo Project and the political economy of mining in New Caledonia. The Contemporary Pacific 16(2): 287-319. Horowitz, L.S. 2003. La micropolitique de la mine en Nouvelle-Calédonie. Journal de la Société des Océanistes 117(2): 255-271.Horowitz, L. 2002. Daily, immediate conflicts: An analysis of villagers’ arguments about a multinational nickel mining project in New Caledonia. Oceania 73(1): 35-55.

Horowitz, L.S. 2001. Perceptions of nature and responses to environmental degradation in New Caledonia. Ethnology 40(3): 237-250.

Horowitz, L.S. 1998. Integrating indigenous resource management with wildlife conservation: A case study of Batang Ai National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia. Human Ecology 26(3): 371-403.

Address:

14 College Farm Road
Department of Ecology, Evolution & Natural Resources
School of Environmental & Biological Sciences
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551

Phone: (732) 932-9383

Fax: (732) 932-8746

Email: horowitz@cook.rutgers.edu

Webpage: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~leahh