Objectives: Anthropology (Linkages)

Imagine a stack of interdisciplinary studies, humanistic and scientific, in which anthropological studies of linkages are embedded:

Civilizations (hybrid of a dozen or so independent startups), world-, or planetary systems, as networks unfolding and interacting historically with a center-periphery and regional structure, and a fluctuating world economy (trade) and political units and conflicts
Cultures (mostly hybrids in the long run), within centers, regions, peripheries and margins of civilizations, interacting locally and with ecosystemic and civilizational networks.
Local communities
Activity streams, as networks within communities, cultures, ecologies and civilizations, and between them, and including both material and symbolic flows of action.
Individuals, their networks, cognitions, emotions and actions.

How do we turn local community studies from ethnographic snapshots into long-term understanding of what it takes to make community and outside "development" practices contribute to self-sustaining economies and ecosystems?

The goal of the linkages projects is to create a network of long-term studies that contribute knowledge needed for local community participation to be effective in self-regulation and governance of projects and activity streams that affect their lives and the sustainability of their ecologies. Such knowledge is essential for legislation at the state and international level to regulate outside agencies whose activities affect or claim to effect local development. This is the goal of Linkages, a network of researchers concerned with long-term assessment of populations studied by anthropologists in developing and developed countries to assess the impacts of development and social change and the sustainability of economies and ecosystems on which communities are dependent.

Linkages affiliated sites
This page has been accessed times since March '99.