Robert Winthrop
Biographic Data
| ID | 734237 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert Winthrop |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert |
| FAMILY NAME | Winthrop |
| SIGNATURE | WINTHROP R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bureau of Land Management |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6710-948X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
A crisis in the US federal government
Explaining differential vulnerability to climate change
The varied effects of recent extreme weather events around the world exemplify the uneven impacts of climate change on populations, even within relatively small geographic regions. Differential human vulnerability to environmental hazards results from a range of social, economic, historical, and political factors, all of which operate at multiple scales. While adaptation to climate change has been the dominant focus of policy and research agendas…
The strange case of cultural services
Environment and Resources
This chapter describes the work of professional environmental anthropology: its areas of practice and the skills that contribute to success. The author describes the career arcs of seven environmental practitioners, noting career highlights and major areas of focus. The environment stands apart from human agency, an intricate web of air, water, minerals, plants, and animals which must be conserved, for it forms the precondition and context for hu…
A comparative assessment of decision-support tools for ecosystem services quantification and valuation
AAA and Its Sections Recognize Outstanding Scholars
Defining a Right to Culture, and Some Alternatives
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts that `Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community'. As this suggests, the notion of cultural rights is both intuitively appealing and analytically vague. Assertions of cultural rights have gained prominence in both national and international policy contexts. This article considers some of the conceptual challenges, including a potential bias towards reificati…
Exploring Cultural Rights
The Real World the Dilemmas of Tradition
We anthropologists often feel like interlopers in the world of public policy. Too often we discover that the seats at the table have already been taken by economists, lawyers, and political scientists. Yet there are certain areas where for better or worse anthropologists are acknowledged as the policy
The Real World
The art of persuasion is integral to politics and policy. As an experienced political pundit once said, "It is not enough to know what we ought to say; we must also say it as we ought." (The statement is Aristotle's, from his Rhetoric III, 1.) One of the many reasons that we anthropologists are so often absent without leave in policy discussions is that we are not trained to communicate our knowledge clearly and effectively to non-anthropologists…
The Real World Fools Walk In
My thoughts for this column are prompted by the economic drama unfolding in Southeast Asia and South Korea this winter: the bankruptcy of industrial combines, the collapse of banks, and the freefall decline of many Asian currencies. Frantic visits by modern-day shamans from the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury Department seeking to diagnose and cure this unfamiliar disease have thus far had very limited success. The financial deb…
The Real World
In a past column I reported on the controversy surrounding the construction of the Pangue Hydroelectric Project by the Chilean power company ENDESA, an undertaking funded by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private-sector lending arm of the World Bank Group (see Practicing Anthropology 19(4): 35-36, Fall 1997). That column focussed on the experience of anthropologist Theodore Downing, who was retained by the IFC to evaluate the Pe…
The Real World
In organizing a forum on anthropology and public policy at the 1985 American Anthropological Association meetings, Walter Goldschmidt recalled that it was quite easy to attract three responsible Washington officials to the panel (including Claiborne Pell, ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee), but that finding three anthropologists willing and able to participate proved extremely difficult. "Anthropologists," said Gol…
The Real World
Launching this column on anthropology and public policy has prompted some interesting comments from colleagues on the challenges we face in making ourselves effective and competent actors in the policy domain. In addition, the SfAA's 1997 annual meeting in Seattle included a forum on increasing our policy effectiveness, which brought together representatives from a number of the organization's policy-oriented groups, as well as other knowledgeabl…
The Real World
For anthropology to become effective in a policy context, we must offer data, analysis, and recommendations that are sound, coherent, and relevant to the issues at hand. Our ideas should offer a basis for—or at least contribute to—action, rather than merely reflection. Finally, to gain a place at the policy table there must be an anthropological
The Real World
In December 1996 Theodore Downing, a frequent consultant on development programs and a past president of the Society for Applied Anthropology, filed a human rights complaint against staff of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the first such complaint ever lodged against an organization of the World Bank Group. In brief, the IFC had retained Dr. Downing to evaluate one aspect of a hydroelectric development project in Chile. His report co…
Conflicting Perceptions
As an applied anthropologist, I work on the twin tasks of impact assessment and conflict resolution as these are necessitated by proposals for major construction projects or natural resource development. I run a consulting firm which works with American Indian tribes, federal agencies, and corporations in the Pacific Northwest regarding the design, siting, or permitting of major and often controversial facilities or resource uses: hydroelectric p…
Defining a Right to Culture, and Some Alternatives
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts that `Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community'. As this suggests, the notion of cultural rights is both intuitively appealing and analytically vague. Assertions of cultural rights have gained prominence in both national and international policy contexts. This article considers some of the conceptual challenges, including a potential bias towards reificati…
Exploring Cultural Rights
The Real World
In a past column I reported on the controversy surrounding the construction of the Pangue Hydroelectric Project by the Chilean power company ENDESA, an undertaking funded by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private-sector lending arm of the World Bank Group (see Practicing Anthropology 19(4): 35-36, Fall 1997). That column focussed on the experience of anthropologist Theodore Downing, who was retained by the IFC to evaluate the Pe…
Conflicting Perceptions
As an applied anthropologist, I work on the twin tasks of impact assessment and conflict resolution as these are necessitated by proposals for major construction projects or natural resource development. I run a consulting firm which works with American Indian tribes, federal agencies, and corporations in the Pacific Northwest regarding the design, siting, or permitting of major and often controversial facilities or resource uses: hydroelectric p…
The Real World
In organizing a forum on anthropology and public policy at the 1985 American Anthropological Association meetings, Walter Goldschmidt recalled that it was quite easy to attract three responsible Washington officials to the panel (including Claiborne Pell, ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee), but that finding three anthropologists willing and able to participate proved extremely difficult. "Anthropologists," said Gol…
The Real World
Launching this column on anthropology and public policy has prompted some interesting comments from colleagues on the challenges we face in making ourselves effective and competent actors in the policy domain. In addition, the SfAA's 1997 annual meeting in Seattle included a forum on increasing our policy effectiveness, which brought together representatives from a number of the organization's policy-oriented groups, as well as other knowledgeabl…
The Real World
For anthropology to become effective in a policy context, we must offer data, analysis, and recommendations that are sound, coherent, and relevant to the issues at hand. Our ideas should offer a basis for—or at least contribute to—action, rather than merely reflection. Finally, to gain a place at the policy table there must be an anthropological
The Real World
In December 1996 Theodore Downing, a frequent consultant on development programs and a past president of the Society for Applied Anthropology, filed a human rights complaint against staff of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the first such complaint ever lodged against an organization of the World Bank Group. In brief, the IFC had retained Dr. Downing to evaluate one aspect of a hydroelectric development project in Chile. His report co…
The Real World
The art of persuasion is integral to politics and policy. As an experienced political pundit once said, "It is not enough to know what we ought to say; we must also say it as we ought." (The statement is Aristotle's, from his Rhetoric III, 1.) One of the many reasons that we anthropologists are so often absent without leave in policy discussions is that we are not trained to communicate our knowledge clearly and effectively to non-anthropologists…
The Real World Fools Walk In
My thoughts for this column are prompted by the economic drama unfolding in Southeast Asia and South Korea this winter: the bankruptcy of industrial combines, the collapse of banks, and the freefall decline of many Asian currencies. Frantic visits by modern-day shamans from the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury Department seeking to diagnose and cure this unfamiliar disease have thus far had very limited success. The financial deb…
The Real World
In a past column I reported on the controversy surrounding the construction of the Pangue Hydroelectric Project by the Chilean power company ENDESA, an undertaking funded by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private-sector lending arm of the World Bank Group (see Practicing Anthropology 19(4): 35-36, Fall 1997). That column focussed on the experience of anthropologist Theodore Downing, who was retained by the IFC to evaluate the Pe…
The Real World the Dilemmas of Tradition
We anthropologists often feel like interlopers in the world of public policy. Too often we discover that the seats at the table have already been taken by economists, lawyers, and political scientists. Yet there are certain areas where for better or worse anthropologists are acknowledged as the policy
Defining a Right to Culture, and Some Alternatives
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts that `Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community'. As this suggests, the notion of cultural rights is both intuitively appealing and analytically vague. Assertions of cultural rights have gained prominence in both national and international policy contexts. This article considers some of the conceptual challenges, including a potential bias towards reificati…
Exploring Cultural Rights
AAA and Its Sections Recognize Outstanding Scholars
Environment and Resources
This chapter describes the work of professional environmental anthropology: its areas of practice and the skills that contribute to success. The author describes the career arcs of seven environmental practitioners, noting career highlights and major areas of focus. The environment stands apart from human agency, an intricate web of air, water, minerals, plants, and animals which must be conserved, for it forms the precondition and context for hu…
A comparative assessment of decision-support tools for ecosystem services quantification and valuation
The strange case of cultural services
Explaining differential vulnerability to climate change
The varied effects of recent extreme weather events around the world exemplify the uneven impacts of climate change on populations, even within relatively small geographic regions. Differential human vulnerability to environmental hazards results from a range of social, economic, historical, and political factors, all of which operate at multiple scales. While adaptation to climate change has been the dominant focus of policy and research agendas…
A crisis in the US federal government
Political science (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Economics (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Engineering (5 works) · Environmental ethics (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Social science (5 works)