Author Archives: Paige West

About Paige West

Paige West, the Claire Tow Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University, joined the faculty in 2001, the year after earning her Ph.D. in cultural and environmental anthropology. Dr. West’s general research interest is the relationship between society and the environment. More specifically, she has written about the linkages between environmental conservation and international development, the material and symbolic ways in which the natural world is understood and produced, the aesthetics and poetics of human social relations with nature, and the creation of commodities and practices of consumption. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Papua New Guinea (PNG), Australia, Germany, England, and the United States. Her current work focuses on climate change and epistemology and is undertaken in partnership with her long-time collaborator, John Aini.

From Reciprocity to Relationality: Anthropological Possibilities

In September 2018 the wonderful journal Cultural Anthropology published a special edition of their Hot Spots series that I edited. You can find the link to webpage for full issue here.  The issue came about when Dominic Boyer, one of the … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on September 29, 2018

Decolonizing Conservation

(John Aini and Paige West, New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, Photo by JC Salyer) Collaboration In June 2018 John Aini and Paige West presented joint keynote lectures at The International Marine Conservation Congress in Kuching, Malaysia and The POLLEN (Political … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on July 28, 2018

Women’s Scholarship in Political Ecology

On June 20th, 2018, I was honored to give one of the keynote addresses at the 2018 POLLEN conference in Oslo, Norway. The talk I gave, “Critical Approaches to Dispossession in the Melanesian Pacific: Conservation, Voice, and Collaboration” was a co-authored … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on June 21, 2018

My Year in Mansplaining

My year in Mansplaining Posted on December 31, 2013   December 29, 2013 — My year in Mansplaining Mansplain– delighting in condescending, inaccurate explanations delivered with rock solid confidence of rightness and that slimy certainty that of course he is right, because … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on December 15, 2016 | Leave a comment

That Person at your office

That person at your office Posted on May 6, 2014 As a professor who teaches and serves as a mentor to university undergraduates, MA and Ph.D. students, and junior faculty, I’m concerned with how we teach people to deal with, and respond … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on December 15, 2016 | Leave a comment

Teaching Decolonizing Methodologies

This essay first appeared on the website Savage Minds. For about a decade I have been teaching a graduate seminar in anthropology at Columbia University called “Decolonizing Methodology” which takes Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s groundbreaking book Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples as … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on August 17, 2016 | Leave a comment

Wofford College Commencement Address 2016

** On May 15, 2016, I had the honor of delivering the Commencement Address at Wofford College, the college I attended for my undergraduate degree. Here is the text for that address.** Exactly twenty-five years ago I was sitting where … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on May 17, 2016