Journal of Ethnobiology Call for Papers (deadline December 1, 2013)

CALL FOR PAPERS
Fire Ecology and Ethnobiology
Special issue of the journal of Ethnobiology

Anthropologists have been studying fire’s evolutionary and cultural significance for more than 100 years.  For several decades ethnobiologists have addressed the ways and reasons people use fire to manage resources and the effects of anthropogenic fires on resources.  Attention to fire ecology has blossomed during the previous decade within anthropology as well as in other academic disciplines and in applied fields (e.g., land management).  The burgeoning interest in fire ecology coincides with explosive growth in climate change science.  Now is a strategic time for ethnobiologists to discuss the ways our work converges with fire ecology and climate change science.

The aim of this special issue is to discuss the social, ecological, and meteorological processes that ensue when fire encounters biological organisms.  Anthropogenic and spontaneous fires link to multi-scale, multi-species processes ranging from the biographies of individual organisms, to fluxes in biological communities, and to population-level dynamics.  Contributors to this special issue will explore the ways human knowledge and behavior intersects with the biological processes that cause or are caused by fire. Theoretically, contributors will seek to explain the relationships between fire ecology and human ecology in ways that are relevant for climate policy and cultural diversity.

Authors are encouraged to reflect on such questions as: Do anthropogenic fires in small-scale communities contribute to global warming and climate change, or are their impacts minimal relative to the contributions of high-volume consumers in industrialized and post-industrialized societies? What are the consequences of fire suppression for traditional societies? What ethical issues do anthropologists consider when issues of self-determination and human rights confront issues of carbon emissions and deforestation? Does traditional peoples’ right to burn their own landscapes conflict with the conservation agenda of and conserving biodiversity and addressing human-induced global warming? How do people use and understand fire in local ecological settings?

Extended abstracts (600 words) will be accepted until December 1, 2013. Please include a prospective title and a short bio-note about yourself. All submissions should be in English. The editors will review the abstracts and invite submission of full-length papers (5,000 – 10,000 words) for peer-review. An invitation to submit a full-length paper is not a guarantee that the paper will be accepted, and all articles will undergo a peer-review process. Deadline for the submission of full-length papers: May 1, 2014.
To submit your abstract, or for any further queries regarding this special issue, please contact the issue editors directly: FowlerCT@wofford.edu or welch@ensp.fiocruz.br.

Kristina Tiedje, PhD
Maître de conférences en anthropologie (Assoc. Professor of anthropology)
Faculté de Sociologie et d’Anthropologie
Université Lumière Lyon 2, France
Email: kristina@ktiedje.com, kristina.tiedje@univ-lyon2.fr, tiedje.kristina@mayo.edu

Website: www.ktiedje.com

Researcher, Centre de Recherche et d’Etudes Anthropologiques (CREA) http://recherche.univ-lyon2.fr/crea/
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Affiliated Researcher, Creative Solutions to Sustainability, Ceres 21 (www.ceres21.org)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Secretary, International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature & Culture (www.religionandnature.com/society)
Editorial Board Member, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature & Culture
Editorial Team, Curare Journal of Medical Anthropology (http://www.agem-ethnomedizin.de/index.php/curare.html)