Book Launch: "Hottest of the Hotspots: The Rise of Eco-Precarious Conservation Labor in Madagascar" with Benjamin Neimark

Description

The Madagascar Workshop is excited celebrate the release of Hottest of the Hotspots: The Rise of Eco-Precarious Conservation Labor in Madagascar by political ecologist Benjamin Neimark of Queen Mary University of London. Neimark will present his book in conversation with environmental anthropologist Sarah Osterhoudt of Indiana University, with time for discussion afterward. The launch event will be followed by a panel featuring Malagasy and American conservationists about mitigating risks from ecological degradation and climate change on the island with community-led responses.

According to The University of Arizona Press, which published the book: "This book details the rollout of market conservation programs, including the finding of drugs from nature—or "bioprospecting"—biodiversity offsetting, and the selling of blue carbon credits from mangroves. It documents the tensions that exist at the local level, as many of these programs incorporate populations highly dependent on the same biodiversity now turned into global commodities for purposes of saving it. Proponents of market conservation mobilize groups of ecologically precarious workers, or the local "eco-precariat," who do the hidden work of collecting and counting species, monitoring and enforcing the vital biodiversity used in everything from drug discovery to carbon sequestration and large mining company offsets. Providing a voice for those community workers many times left out of environmental policy discussions, this volume proposes critiques that aim to build better conservation interventions with perspectives of the local eco-precariat."

This event is part of the Madagascar Workshop annual conference, co-sponsored by:

• the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute
• the Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine
• the departments of Anthropology, History of Medicine, and Modern Languages and Literatures
• the Medicine, Science, Humanities program