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“The Politics of Resources and their Temporalities”
Co-chaired by Elizabeth Ferry, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University; and Mandana Limbert, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Queens College, City University of New York, October 2628, 2005.

Participants
Paul Eiss, Associate Professor
Department of History, Carnegie Mellon University
“In the Name of ‘El Pueblo’: Possessions, Politics and History in Yucatn”

Elizabeth Ferry, Assistant Professor (Co-chair)
Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University
“Paths of Glory: Mines, Collections and Their Temporalities”

Richard Handler, Professor
Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia
“The Temporal and Spatial Politics of Student ‘Diversity’ at an American University”

Mandana Limbert, Assistant Professor (Co-chair)
Department of Anthropology, Queens College, City University of New York
“Oil, Depletion and Time in Arabia”

Celia Lowe, Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology, University of Washington
“Being Species and Species-Being: State, National, and Scientific Time in Indonesians’ Biodiversity Conservation”

Erik Mueggler, Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan
“The Earth/Archive: George Forrests Rhododendron Paradise and the Vast Mountain of Shilo”

Paul Nadasdy, Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology and American Indian Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison
“Bureaucratic Time and the Administration of Wildlife Management in the Yukon”

Karen Strassler, Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology, Queens College
“Material Resources of the Historical Imagination: Documents and the Future of the Past in Post-Suharto Indonesia”

Standing from left: Paul Eiss, Karen Strassler, Celia Lowe, Erik Mueggler, Paul Nadasdy, Richard Handler
Seated from left: Mandana Limbert, Elizabeth Ferry

Summary

The Politics of Resources and their Temporalities

The relationship between resources and temporalities was examined during this three-day seminar. Participants explored the process by which substances, knowledge, and people come to be defined and understood as resources in particular historical contexts. Each paper explored a distinct resource, which ranged from oil, minerals, and flowers to history, people, and time. In addition to discussions concerning what the term “resource” meansand the implications of defining something as a resourcethe distinction between non-renewable and renewable resources as well as the temporal implications of that distinction were examined. Participants also explored the ways in which the state and nation are constituted by and through resource-making.