IMPORTANT INFORMATION: This talk will be presented online using Zoom. Registration is required before 3:00 pm on Wednesday, April 06, 2022. Log in information for Zoom will be emailed to those who have registered with their registration confirmation as well as by 3:00 pm on Wednesday, April 06, 2022.
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Date: Wednesday, 06 April 2022
Location: Online meeting via Zoom
Time: 7:00 pm
YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/uTEnnJYKJSM
Against Efficiency: Why We Cut Trees (And What Happens When We Do)
About the talk:
Drawing on decades of experience as an anthropologist and federal land manager, David Jenkins argues against bureaucratic efficiency, focusing on timber and timber harvests. He considers the past century of forests, wildfires, and organizational change, and traces the evolution of “efficiency” from a seventeenth century technical measure to a twentieth century moral attribute. He then dips into soil science and samples policies of the atmosphere. Dr. Jenkins concludes by finding value in inefficiency, defined simply as taking the time to think.
The Speaker:
Dr. David Jenkins is a cultural anthropologist and the Assistant Director for Resources and Planning at the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Department of the Interior. Prior to joining the BLM, he held several management positions at the U.S. Forest Service and spent five years in the Office of Subsistence Management at the Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska. He has broad research and teaching experience in anthropology and coupled human and natural systems, and has worked in Peru, India, China, Japan, Canada, and the United States. His publications span a range of topics, including myth, kinship, exchange networks, environmental values, endangered species, subsistence fisheries, and the use of mathematical models in anthropology. Dr. Jenkins received a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Brandeis University in 1998. He has taught at MIT, Bates College, and the University of Southern Maine. His books include Nature and Bureaucracy: the wildness of managed landscapes (forthcoming) and the novels Love Me (2017), and Chthonia (in preparation), which he publishes as DB Jenkins. He is an active mountaineer, rock climber, ice climber, backcountry skier, and whitewater kayaker.
Organizer:
Robert Winthrop
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