Veronica Strang

Veronica Strang is an author and professor of social anthropology at Durham University. Her work combines cultural anthropology with environmental studies, and focuses on the relationship between human communities and their physical environments.^[1] Strang's publications include the books What Anthropologists Do , Gardening the World, and The Anthropology of Sustainability: Beyond Development and Progress.^[2]

Background[]

Strang completed her masters at Oxford between 1991 and 1994, which culminated in the publication of Uncommon Ground: cultural landscapes and environmental values (Berg 1997). Between 1994 and 1997, Strang was employed at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Pitt Rivers Museum, while continuing her studies at Oxford's Environmental Change Institute.^[2]

In 2000, Strang received an award for the Royal Anthropological Institute Fellowship in Urgent Anthropology. She moved to Australia shortly after this and worked closely with Australian and New Zealand communities, holding positions at the Auckland University of Technology and the University of Auckland. Her focus on the sociocultural understandings and use of water resources deepened during this time, and she published Gardening the World; agency, identity, and the ownership of water in 2009.^[3]

Strang has been living in the UK since 2012, and served Chair of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and the Commonwealth from 2012 to 2017.^[2]

Scholarship[]

Much of Strang's work focuses on the sociocultural value and perception of water resources. Her second major publication, The Meaning of Water, introduced this theme in 2004; she has since worked on multiple projects that examine the relationship between specific communities and nearby water bodies.^[4]

Strang's methodology is structured around her belief in interdisciplinary academia and collaborative research.^[2] Her work with UNESCO and, later, as an ally to the Maori Council may classify her as a public anthropologist. In keeping with this, her research aims for productive, applied outcomes, generally for the benefit of either the environment or for the communities she works alongside.

In her book The Anthropology of Sustainability, Strang notes her desire for anthropology to grow into a collaborative discipline that examines not only the human experience but its environmental context. She criticizes the Gaia Hypothesis for its oversimplification of the world as a self-regulating system, and for its placement of humanity in a "stewardship" position instead of as just another species whose actions exist and play out in a complex web removed from anyone's direct control.^[5]

Recognition[]

• Royal Anthropological Institute Fellowship in Urgent Anthropology, 2000
• International Water Prize, UNESCO, 2007
• HEFCE's national Interdisciplinary Advisory Panel Fellowship, 2017
• Chair of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK, 2013–2017

Selected publications[]

Authored books

• Strang, V. (2015). Water: nature and culture. Reaktion Books/University of Chicago Press.
• Strang, V. (2009). Gardening the World: agency, identity, and the ownership of water. New York & Oxford: Berghahn.
• Strang, V. (2009). What Anthropologists Do. Oxford, New York: Berg/Bloomsbury.
• Strang, V. (2004). The Meaning of Water. Oxford, New York: Berg/Bloomsbury.

Journal articles

• Strang, V., Krause, F. & Ley, L. (Forthcoming). Water, Power, Infrastructure: Ethnographic Conversations with Karl Wittfogel (Epilogue). Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space Special Issue.
• Abram, S., Acciaioli, G., Baviskar, A., Kopnina, H., Nonini, D. & Strang, V. (2016). 'Dichotomies: Yes We Need Them, But Not as Much as We Think'. Anthropological Forum CANF 1246084.
• (2016). Evaluating Interdisciplinary Research; the Elephant in the Peer-Reviewers' Room. Palgrave Communications
• Strang, V. (2016). Infrastructural Relations: water, political power and the rise of a new ‘despotic regime’. Water Alternatives, Special Issue 9(2): 292–318.
• Strang, V. (2016). Justice for All: inconvenient truths and reconciliation in human-non-human relations. Major Works in Anthropology: Environmental Anthropology
• Strang, V. (2015). On the Matter of Time. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 40(2): 101–123.
• Strang, V. (2014). Fluid consistencies. Material relationality in human engagements with water. Archaeological Dialogues 21(02): 133–150.
• Strang, V. (2014). Lording it over the Goddess: water, gender and human-environmental relations. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 30(1): 83–107.
• Strang, V. (2014). The Taniwha and the Crown: defending water rights in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews – WIREs: Water 1(1): 121–131.
• Strang, V. (2010). Water, Culture and Power: anthropological perspectives from ‘down under’. Insights, Journal of the Institute of Advanced Study 3(14): 2–26.
• Strang, V. (2006). Water Recycling: an issue of substance. Water 33(8): 6.

Media articles

• Strang, V. (2008). Owning Water. The University of Auckland News 5.
• Strang, V. (2008). Privatisation of Assets Never Cut and Dry. New Zealand Herald 13.

References[]