Thomas F Thornton
Biographic Data
| ID | 475085 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas F Thornton |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas F |
| FAMILY NAME | Thornton |
| SIGNATURE | THORNTON T F |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1065-5495 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 57 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 331 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 55 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1807 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Lost in Other-than-Human Worlds: Exploring Disorientation and Displacement in Siberian and Northwest Coast American Shamanic Topographies
This paper explores how disorientation and displacement in the shamanic topography of the Evenki lead to the establishment of novel relationships between humans and nonhuman beings. Examining human experiences of disorientation demonstrates how these spatial disruptions can convey geographical and sociocultural information about nonhuman ontologies and topographies. Ethnographic research with the Evenki in Siberia reveals that disorientation, alt…
Displacement Ecologies: An alternative conceptual framework for navigating how to reorient to a changing world
Tlingit geographies of hope: Clan, corporation, and sustainable economies of place
The essay argues that geographies of hope for Tlingit communities in Southeast Alaska begin with a strong sense of place, both social and geographic. In Tlingit, the matrilineal clan-the repository of heritage, identity, and property-constitutes the collective, animate source of resilience, hope, and renewal. We examine the ways in which clans continue to operate as institutions of hope and destiny, especially through the memorial ku.éex' or "pot…
Effective climate change adaptation means supporting community autonomy
Meals in the melting-pot: Immigration and dietary change in diversifying cities
Changes in diets and food practices have implications for personal and planetary health. As these implications have become more apparent, dietary change interventions that seek to promote healthy and sustainable transitions have proliferated, and the processes and drivers of dietary change have come under increasing scrutiny. In particular, dietary acculturation has been recognised as a driver of dietary change in the context of immigration to ex…
The multiperspectival nature of place names: Ewenki mobility, river naming, and relationships with animals, spirits, and landscapes
The article examines the process of production and change of place names based on data collected in 2017 among the Okhotsk Ewenki, the easternmost Indigenous community in Siberia, Russia. Through ethnographic and semiotic analysis, we show that Ewenki place names are not simply reproduced, but rather generated and transformed through empathic contact and engagement within a semiotic circle of shared knowledge and praxis among humans and other bei…
The three logics of sustainability-oriented hybrid organisations: A multi-disciplinary review
Given current limitations of global and national governance arrangements in redirecting economic globalisation towards a climate-safe and sustainable world, it is crucial to understand how organisations that aim to tackle social and environmental problems using market mechanisms can contribute to fostering sustainability transformations. This review identified 60 different terms or concepts for hybrid organisations aiming to solve social and ecol…
The role of sustainability-oriented hybrid organisations in the development of transformative capacities: The case of Barcelona
The Routledge Handbook of Indigenous Environmental Knowledge
"This volume provides an overview of key themes in Indigenous Environmental Knowledge (IEK) and anchors them with brief but well-grounded empirical case studies of relevance for each of these themes, drawn from bioculturally diverse areas around the world. It provides an incisive, cutting-edge overview of the conceptual and philosophical issues, while providing constructive examples of how IEK studies have been implemented to beneficial effect in…
Routledge Handbook of Indigenous Environmental Knowledge
Farming along desire lines: Collective action and food systems adaptation to climate change
We examine collective action in the food system of the Canadian Maritimes to determine its effect on the resilience and adaptive capacity of food producers, distributors, retailers and governance institutions. Our data suggest that beyond their immediate benefits for their participants, expressions of collective action generate higher‐level impacts which often translate into drivers of adaptive capacity. Drawing on a metaphor from urban design, w…
Are we taking farmers seriously? A review of the literature on farmer perceptions and climate change, 2007–2018
Indigenous uses of wild and tended plant biodiversity maintain ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes of the Terai Plains of Nepal
Background Despite a rapidly accumulating evidence base quantifying ecosystem services, the role of biodiversity in the maintenance of ecosystem services in shared human-nature environments is still understudied, as is how indigenous and agriculturally dependent communities perceive, use, and manage biodiversity. The present study aims to document traditional ethnobotanical knowledge of the ecosystem service benefits derived from wild and tended …
A Song Remembered in Place: Tlingit Composer Mary Sheakley (Loo) and Huna Tlingits in Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska
Songs among the Tlingit of Alaska and Canada are important means for communicating and aligning relationships, knowledges, and emotions among humans, non-human persons, and ancestral lands. As potent expressions of individual and collective identity, heritage, and destiny, songs encapsulate ethnobiological, social, and geographic knowledges in a melodious, interspecific lingua franca. A particular ancestral or communal context, such as a potlatch…
Tracing country commitment to Indigenous peoples in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
Human adaptation to biodiversity change: An adaptation process approach applied to a case study from southern India
Adaptation to environmental change, including biodiversity change, is both a new imperative in the face of global climate change and the oldest problem in human history. Humans have evolved a wide range of adaptation strategies in response to localised environmental changes, which have contributed strongly to both biological and cultural diversity. The evolving set of locally driven, ‘bottom-up’ responses to environmental change is collectively t…
Using traditional ecological knowledge to understand and adapt to climate and biodiversity change on the Pacific coast of North America
We investigate the perceptions and impacts of climate change on 11 Indigenous communities in Northern British Columbia and Southeast Alaska. This coastal region constitutes an extremely dynamic and resilient social-ecological system where Indigenous Peoples have been adjusting to changing climate and biodiversity for millennia. The region is a bellwether for biodiversity changes in coastal, forest, and montane environments that link the arctic to…
‘The track is never the same’: The fluidity of geographic terminology and conceptualisation of space among Ewenki
This paper analyses landscape terminology in Ewenki, one of the Tungusic languages spoken by indigenous hunters and reindeer herders in Siberia, using examples of three key conceptual categories: ‘
Ties that bind: Local networks, communities and adaptive capacity in rural Ghana
Pipelines, Petitions, and Protests in the Internet Age: Exploring the Human Geographies of Online Petitions Challenging Proposed Transcontinental Alberta Oil Sands Pipelines
Since the mid-2000s, millions of spatiotemporally disparate and demographically heterogeneous North Americans have signed online petitions challenging proposed transcontinental Alberta oil sands export pipelines. This phenomenon typifies bottom-up, self-organized, and ostensibly extemporaneous cyberactivism. These dynamics contradict traditional theoretical assumptions about rational choice and social pressures in collective action, birthing quer…
The Idea of Climate Change as a Belief System: Why Climate Activism Resembles a Religious Movement
The idea of climate change has been enforced by its similarities with belief systems. It may come as a surprise to scientists, the media and climate activists participating in climate change discussions that they are unconsciously following models rooted in belief systems. These models include an emphasis on existential anxiety and the public expression of commitments. The discussions around the severity of climate change and individual sacrifice…
Emerging meta-organisations and adaptation to global climate change: Evidence from implementing adaptation in Nepal, Pakistan and Ghana
Global environmental change: Local Perceptions, Understandings, and Explanations
Global environmental change (GEC) is an increasingly discussed phenomenon in the scientific literature as evidence of its presence and impacts continues to grow. Yet, while the documentation of GEC is becoming more readily available, local perceptions of GEC- particularly in small-scale societies-and preferences about how to deal with it, are still largely overlooked. Local knowledge and perceptions of GEC are important in that agents make decisi…
The Trickster in the Anthropocene
A mischievous figure from traditional cultures around the world can contribute an alternative narrative for humanity in the Anthropocene
Aboriginal Tourism as Sustainable Social-Environmental Enterprise (SSEE): A Tlingit Case Study from Southeast Alaska
The Tlingit Aboriginal tourism enterprise named Icy Strait Point in Hoonah, Southeast Alaska is used as a case study to develop the new concept of Sustainable Social-Environmental Enterprise (SSEE). SSEE is defined as an innovative enterprise that has dynamic operational strategies while still maintaining its corporate core values and integrating social, environmental, cultural, economic and political (SECEP) sustainabilities in its operations. T…
Huna Tlingit Traditional Environmental Knowledge, Conservation, and the Management of a "Wilderness" Park
A study of Huna Tlingit traditional gullegg harvests in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska, indicates that local traditional environmental knowledge includes a sophisticated appreciation of glaucouswinged gull (Larus glaucescens) nesting biology and behaviorin particular, an understanding of this gull as an indeterminate layer with a modal clutch size of three. The community has applied knowledge to the design of sustainable eggharves…
Ecosystem services or services to ecosystems? Valuing cultivation and reciprocal relationships between humans and ecosystems
The concept of Ecosystem Services (ES), widely understood as the “benefits that humans receive from the natural functioning of healthy ecosystems” (Jeffers et al., 2015), depicts a one-way flow of services from ecosystems to people. We argue that this conceptualisation is overly simplistic and largely inaccurate, neglecting the reality that humans often contribute to the maintenance and enhancement of ecosystems, as often evidenced (but not exclu…
Adaptation-Genuine and Spurious: Demystifying Adaptation Processes in Relation to Climate Change
In climate change discourse and policy, adaptation has become a critical byword and frame of reference. An implicit assumption in much of the strategizing is the notion that adaptation can be rationally planned, funded, and governed largely through existing frameworks. But can adaptation really be managed or engineered, especially given the significant unpredictability and severe impacts that are forecast in a range of climate scenarios? Over mil…
Anthropological Studies of Native American Place Naming
ion in place naming was cultural index to some degree with more evolved cultures displaying a higher level of abstraction (1922:182). Although his arguments on this point are sketchy and unconvincing, they represent an early attempt to develop a cross-cultural theory of place-naming. In addition to examining what features of the landscape were named, Waterman also offered insightful commentary on the semantic references contained within Indian pl…
Autonomous adaptation to global environmental change in peri-urban settlements: Evidence of a growing culture of innovation and revitalisation in Mathare Valley Slums, Nairobi
Cultivation of Salmon and other Marine Resources on the Northwest Coast of North America
The fisherly imagination: The promise of geographical approaches to marine management
Traditional Ecological Knowledge of Swiss Alpine Farmers and their Resilience to Socioecological Change
Ties that bind: Local networks, communities and adaptive capacity in rural Ghana
Global environmental change: Local Perceptions, Understandings, and Explanations
Global environmental change (GEC) is an increasingly discussed phenomenon in the scientific literature as evidence of its presence and impacts continues to grow. Yet, while the documentation of GEC is becoming more readily available, local perceptions of GEC- particularly in small-scale societies-and preferences about how to deal with it, are still largely overlooked. Local knowledge and perceptions of GEC are important in that agents make decisi…
Exploring farmer preference shaping in international agricultural climate change adaptation regimes
Emerging meta-organisations and adaptation to global climate change: Evidence from implementing adaptation in Nepal, Pakistan and Ghana
The Mutable, the Mythical, and the Managerial: Raven Narratives and the Anthropocene
The Anthropocene is rooted in the proposition that human activity has disrupted earth systems to the extent that it has caused us to enter a new geological age. We identify three popular discourses of what the Anthropocene means for humanity's future: the Moral Jeremiad admonishes the transgression of planetary boundaries and advocates reductions to live sustainably within Earth's limits; the Technofix Earth Engineer approach depicts the Age of H…
Local and Traditional Knowledge and the Historical Ecologyof Pacific Herring in Alaska
Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) have long been a critical resource in the marine food web of the Gulf of Alaska. While the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 wreaked havoc on Prince William Sound herring populations in the northern Gulf, the southern Gulf also has been impacted, if less severely, by commercial fishing, habitat degradation, and environmental changes over the past century. Just how much Southeast Alaska’s herring have been affected i…
Know Your Place: The Organization of Tlingit Geographic Knowledge
Tlingit geographic knowledge is organized along two principal axes: social structure and subsistence production. Using the place-name inventory of an 83-year-old Tlingit elder, this essay analyzes how geographic names form an essential part of Tlingit social being and integrate physical and sociological landscapes in practical ways. As potent, mnemonic symbols, Tlingit toponyms reference important social and environmental knowledge and, when stra…
Tracing country commitment to Indigenous peoples in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
Using traditional ecological knowledge to understand and adapt to climate and biodiversity change on the Pacific coast of North America
We investigate the perceptions and impacts of climate change on 11 Indigenous communities in Northern British Columbia and Southeast Alaska. This coastal region constitutes an extremely dynamic and resilient social-ecological system where Indigenous Peoples have been adjusting to changing climate and biodiversity for millennia. The region is a bellwether for biodiversity changes in coastal, forest, and montane environments that link the arctic to…
Indigenous uses of wild and tended plant biodiversity maintain ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes of the Terai Plains of Nepal
Background Despite a rapidly accumulating evidence base quantifying ecosystem services, the role of biodiversity in the maintenance of ecosystem services in shared human-nature environments is still understudied, as is how indigenous and agriculturally dependent communities perceive, use, and manage biodiversity. The present study aims to document traditional ethnobotanical knowledge of the ecosystem service benefits derived from wild and tended …
The Ideology and Practice of Pacific Herring Cultivation among the Tlingit and Haida
The Land Is Ours
The Land Is Ours. 1997. 56 minutes. video produced by Laurence A. Goldin. For more information contact University of California Extension Center for Media and Independent Learning, 2000 Center Street, Fourth Floor, Berkeley, CA 94704
Meals in the melting-pot: Immigration and dietary change in diversifying cities
Changes in diets and food practices have implications for personal and planetary health. As these implications have become more apparent, dietary change interventions that seek to promote healthy and sustainable transitions have proliferated, and the processes and drivers of dietary change have come under increasing scrutiny. In particular, dietary acculturation has been recognised as a driver of dietary change in the context of immigration to ex…
The role of sustainability-oriented hybrid organisations in the development of transformative capacities: The case of Barcelona
Pipelines, Petitions, and Protests in the Internet Age: Exploring the Human Geographies of Online Petitions Challenging Proposed Transcontinental Alberta Oil Sands Pipelines
Since the mid-2000s, millions of spatiotemporally disparate and demographically heterogeneous North Americans have signed online petitions challenging proposed transcontinental Alberta oil sands export pipelines. This phenomenon typifies bottom-up, self-organized, and ostensibly extemporaneous cyberactivism. These dynamics contradict traditional theoretical assumptions about rational choice and social pressures in collective action, birthing quer…
Introduction to the Special Section on Marine Cultivation among Indigenous Peoples of the Northwest Coast
The multiperspectival nature of place names: Ewenki mobility, river naming, and relationships with animals, spirits, and landscapes
The article examines the process of production and change of place names based on data collected in 2017 among the Okhotsk Ewenki, the easternmost Indigenous community in Siberia, Russia. Through ethnographic and semiotic analysis, we show that Ewenki place names are not simply reproduced, but rather generated and transformed through empathic contact and engagement within a semiotic circle of shared knowledge and praxis among humans and other bei…
The present state of Turkey: Or, a description of the political, civil, and religious constitution, government, and laws, of the Ottoman Empire, the finances, military and naval establishments, the st…
First edition of an account of the Ottoman Empire by the Levant Company merchant Thomas Thornton. A second edition (ARC_8159) appeared in two volumes in 1809; German and French translations followed in 1808 and 1823. Thornton opens with a general introduction of the Ottoman manners, arts, and govern
Anthropological Studies of Native American Place Naming
ion in place naming was cultural index to some degree with more evolved cultures displaying a higher level of abstraction (1922:182). Although his arguments on this point are sketchy and unconvincing, they represent an early attempt to develop a cross-cultural theory of place-naming. In addition to examining what features of the landscape were named, Waterman also offered insightful commentary on the semantic references contained within Indian pl…
Know Your Place: The Organization of Tlingit Geographic Knowledge
Tlingit geographic knowledge is organized along two principal axes: social structure and subsistence production. Using the place-name inventory of an 83-year-old Tlingit elder, this essay analyzes how geographic names form an essential part of Tlingit social being and integrate physical and sociological landscapes in practical ways. As potent, mnemonic symbols, Tlingit toponyms reference important social and environmental knowledge and, when stra…
The Land Is Ours
The Land Is Ours. 1997. 56 minutes. video produced by Laurence A. Goldin. For more information contact University of California Extension Center for Media and Independent Learning, 2000 Center Street, Fourth Floor, Berkeley, CA 94704
Haa Aani, Our Land: Tlingit and Haida Land Rights and Use
Picturing a People: George Johnston, Tlingit Photographer
Picturing. People: George Johnston, Tlingit Photographer. 1997. 50 minutes. video directed by Carol Geddes and produced by Sally Bochner and George Hargrove. For more information contact the National Film Board of Canada, P.O. Box 6100, Station Centre-Ville, Montreal, Quebec H3C 3H5
Huna Tlingit Traditional Environmental Knowledge, Conservation, and the Management of a "Wilderness" Park
A study of Huna Tlingit traditional gullegg harvests in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska, indicates that local traditional environmental knowledge includes a sophisticated appreciation of glaucouswinged gull (Larus glaucescens) nesting biology and behaviorin particular, an understanding of this gull as an indeterminate layer with a modal clutch size of three. The community has applied knowledge to the design of sustainable eggharves…
Shem Pete's Alaska: The Territory of the Upper Cook Inlet Dena'ina . James Kari , James A. Fall
Material Culture and Sacred Landscape: The Anthropology of Siberian Khanty. Peter Jordan
Huna Tlingit Gull Egg Harvests in Glacier Bay National Park
Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Eugene Hunn, Darryll Johnson, Priscilla Russell, Thomas Thornton; Huna Tlingit Gull Egg Harvests in Glacier Bay National Park. Practicing Anthropology 1 January 2005; 27 (1): 6–10. doi: https://doi.org/10.17730/praa.27.1.436151564u57v588…
Constructing Cultures Then and Now: Celebrating Franz Boas and the Jesup North Pacific Expedition
Book Review| January 01 2005 Constructing Cultures Then and Now: Celebrating Franz Boas and the Jesup North Pacific Expedition Contributions to Circumpolar Anthropology, 4. Edited by Laurel Kendall and Igor Krupnik. (Washington, DC: Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, 2003. xviii + 364 pp., introduction,tables, illustrations, bibliography. $22.50 paper.) Thomas F. Thornton Thomas F. Thornton Search …
Against Culture: Development, Politics, and Religion in Indian Alaska
Book Review| April 01 2005 Against Culture: Development, Politics, and Religion in Indian Alaska By Kirk Dombrowski. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. 247 pp.,index. $60.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.) Thomas F. Thornton Thomas F. Thornton Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Ethnohistory (2005) 52 (2): 481–483. https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-52-2-481 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Per…
Development and Local Knowledge: New Approaches to Issues in Natural Resources Management, Conservation, and Agriculture. Alan Bicker , Paul Sillitoe , Johan Pottier
Sustainability and Communities of Place
Alaska Native Corporations and Subsistence: Paradoxical Forces in the Making of Sustainable Communities
So Close Yet So Far Away: American Academics on the Similarities and Differences Between the United States and Canada Following the International Canadian Studies Institute
Faculty members who participated in the International Canadian Studies Institute, an intensive thirteen-day multidisciplinary excursion into western Canada, make sense of their experiences and reflect on how the fellowship will affect their teaching and scholarship. The participants, faculty at universities and colleges in the Pacific Northwest, represent diverse disciplines ranging from anthropology to creative writing to criminal studies. As ex…
A Tale of Three Parks: Tlingit Conservation, Representation, and Repatriation in Southeast Alaska's National Parks
Why have Southeast Alaska Natives enjoyed success in gaining governing authority over cultural resource economies but limited success in gaining co-management over natural resource economies in the region's national parks? This paper hypothesizes that the most successful co-management regimes in the natural resource economy will be those that are constructed according to an emerging cultural resource paradigm, which emphasizes the circulation and…
Local and Traditional Knowledge and the Historical Ecologyof Pacific Herring in Alaska
Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) have long been a critical resource in the marine food web of the Gulf of Alaska. While the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 wreaked havoc on Prince William Sound herring populations in the northern Gulf, the southern Gulf also has been impacted, if less severely, by commercial fishing, habitat degradation, and environmental changes over the past century. Just how much Southeast Alaska’s herring have been affected i…
Adaptation-Genuine and Spurious: Demystifying Adaptation Processes in Relation to Climate Change
In climate change discourse and policy, adaptation has become a critical byword and frame of reference. An implicit assumption in much of the strategizing is the notion that adaptation can be rationally planned, funded, and governed largely through existing frameworks. But can adaptation really be managed or engineered, especially given the significant unpredictability and severe impacts that are forecast in a range of climate scenarios? Over mil…
Traditional Ecological Knowledge of Swiss Alpine Farmers and their Resilience to Socioecological Change
Collaborative Engagement of Local and Traditional Knowledge and Science in Marine Environments: A Review
Thornton, T. F., and A. Maciejewski Scheer. 2012. Collaborative engagement of local and traditional knowledge and science in marine environments: a review. Ecology and Society 17(3): 8. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-04714-170308
Walter Rochs Goldschmidt (1913-2010)
Sustainable Biomass Energy and Indigenous Cultural Models of Well-being in an Alaska Forest Ecosystem
Sikka, M., T. F. Thornton, and R. Worl. 2013. Sustainable biomass energy and indigenous cultural models of well-being in an Alaska forest ecosystem. Ecology and Society 18(3): 38. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-05763-180338
“Our Tears Never Left this Ground”: An Appreciation of Tlingit Ritual Oratory
This paper offers an appreciative enquiry into contemporary oratory and orators among the Tlingit of Alaska through analysis of two speeches made by elder Clarence Jackson at memorial rituals. The first is a condolence speech delivered at a funerary memorial held for a prominent Tlingit leader of the (opposite) Raven moiety in May 2011. The second oration was delivered in response to condolence speeches made for the removal of grief at the memori…
Aboriginal Tourism as Sustainable Social-Environmental Enterprise (SSEE): A Tlingit Case Study from Southeast Alaska
The Tlingit Aboriginal tourism enterprise named Icy Strait Point in Hoonah, Southeast Alaska is used as a case study to develop the new concept of Sustainable Social-Environmental Enterprise (SSEE). SSEE is defined as an innovative enterprise that has dynamic operational strategies while still maintaining its corporate core values and integrating social, environmental, cultural, economic and political (SECEP) sustainabilities in its operations. T…
Geography (33 works) · Ecology (27 works) · Political science (25 works) · Sociology (25 works) · Environmental resource management (20 works) · Indigenous Studies and Ecology (19 works) · Archaeology (17 works) · Indigenous (16 works) · History (15 works) · Business (14 works)