Research Statement

Professor Dove’s research focuses on the environmental relations of local communities in less-developed countries, especially in South and Southeast Asia. He spent two years in a tribal longhouse in Borneo studying swidden agriculture, six years as a research adviser in Java studying the formation of government resource policy, and four years in Pakistan advising its Forest Service on social forestry policies.

His most recent book is Conserving Nature in Culture: Case Studies from Southeast Asia (2005, co-edited with P. Sajise and A. Doolittle); he has in press books on the anthropogenic grasslands of Southeast Asia and the history of environmental anthropology (the latter with Carol Carpenter); and he is currently completing books on vernacular dimensions of conservation in Southeast Asia (with P. Sajise and A. Doolittle) and on the historic participation of remote Bornean tribes in global commodity production.

Another of his current research projects, in collaboration with colleagues in Indonesia, focuses on the cultural and political aspects of natural hazards and disasters in Central Java. Other research and teaching interests include biodiversity and society; human use of tropical forests and grasslands; the global circulation of environmental concepts; political dimensions of resource degradation; indigenous environmental knowledge; contemporary and historical environmental relations in South and Southeast Asia; the study of developmental and environmental institutions, discourses, and movements; and the sociology of resource-related sciences.