James Eder
Professor
Ph.D., Sociocultural Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara
SHESC Themes: Global Dynamics and Regional Interactions; Societies and their Natural Environments
Field Specializations: Agency, Agrarian Societies, Development Anthropology, Economic Anthropology, Ethnicity, Identity and Differentiation, Land Use, Political Economy, Subsistence Adaptation, Sociocultural Anthropology
Regional Focus: Asia (Southeast)
Contact: James Eder, SHESC 272
Research:
James Eder's research interests have long concerned how the tribal and peasant peoples of Southeast Asia, and particularly those of the Philippines, have experienced development and change, broadly understood. His fieldwork in the Philippines has centered on Palawan Island, where his interests include demographic and subsistence change among the Batak, a tropical forest foraging people, and agricultural intensification and economic diversification in San Jose, a farming community on the outskirts of Puerto Princesa City.
In recent years, Eder has begun to re-cast these and other longstanding research interests around issues of natural resource management and use, while at the same time scaling up to a broader view of Palawan and of the Philippines as a whole. One current research project, Migrants to the Coasts, examines the challenges that the continued migration to Palawan of ethnically-diverse fisherfolk from elsewhere in the Philippines pose for the establishment of marine protected areas and other elements of successful community-based coastal resource management programs. Another current research project, Re-Envisioning the Upland Philippines, aims to better capture the ecological, economic and social transformations presently underway in the nation's uplands than present models allow. This latter project will involve three months of fieldwork in Palawan and a multi-national research conference at the University of San Carlos in Cebu City.
Research Projects:
Migration and Household Economic Diversification in the Palawan Fishing Economy
Re-envisioning the Upland Philippines
Select Publications:
Eder, J. (2008). Migrants to the coasts: Livelihood, resource management and global change in the Philippines. Series on Contemporary Social Issues. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage.
Austin, R. & Eder, J. (2007). Development, participation, and environmentalism on Palawan Island, Philippines. Society and Natural Resources, 20, 363-371.
Eder, J. (2006). Land use and economic change in the post-frontier upland Philippines. Land Degradation and Development, 17, 149-158.
Eder, J. F. (2006). Gender and household economic planning in the rural Philippines. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 37(3), 397-413.
Eder, J. (2004). Who are the Cuyonon? Ethnic identity in the modern Phillipines. Journal of Asian Studies, 63, 625-647.
Eder, J. & McKenna. T. (2004). Minorities in the Philippines: Ancestral lands and autonomy in theory and practice. In C. Duncan (Ed.), Civilizing the margins: Southeast Asian government policies and minority peoples in southeast Asia (pp. 56-85). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Eder, J. (1999). A generation later: Household strategies and economic change in the rural Philippines. Honolulu: University of Hawai'I Press.