Faculty Publications (Social Sciences)

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Visual surveys provide baseline data on small vessel traffic and waterbirds in a coastal protected area
(PLoS ONE, 2023) Blight, Louise K.; Bertram, Douglas F.; O'Hara, Patrick D.
The coastal waters of southern British Columbia, Canada, encompass habitat of international conservation significance to coastal and marine birds, including sizeable areas designated in the early 1900s as Migratory Bird Sanctuaries (MBS) to protect overwintering waterfowl from hunting near urban centres. Two of these, Shoal Harbour (SHMBS) and Victoria Harbour (VHMBS), have seen significant marine infrastructure development in recent decades and experience considerable vessel traffic. Vessel-related stressors are known to affect waterbirds, but traffic characteristics in coastal urban areas are poorly understood for the smaller vessels not tracked by Automatic Identification Systems (AIS). We conducted a pilot study using shore-based observers to develop small-vessel baselines for the winter months, when regional waterbird numbers are highest. During our surveys we recorded considerable inter-site variability in vessel traffic characteristics, with one site (SHMBS) a source of nearly twice as many vessel transits as the other (VHMBS). Most recorded vessels were small watercraft (mean length 26 ± 17′, mode 18′), and vessels at the high-traffic site were both shorter and faster on average. One in six vessels were classified as ‘noisy’, of interest given that noise is an important component of vessel disturbance of waterbirds and other marine animals. Few vessels (7% of all recorded) were of the type required to carry AIS transponders, which highlights the monitoring gap created by using AIS-based approaches alone in nearshore waters, and allows for correction of AIS-derived vessel counts. Waterbird community composition also varied by locality, with one site dominated by gulls (Laridae), cormorants (Phalacrocoracidae), and seaducks (Tribe Mergini), and the other by gulls, cormorants, and alcids (Alcidae). Our results demonstrate that fine-scale local variability must be taken into account when managing for vessel traffic disturbance of waterbirds, particularly at sites of high human population density and increasing coastal development
More than just a roof under their feet: How spatial and structural features of a coastal city predict nest site selection in the urban-nesting Glaucous-winged Gull (Larus glaucescens)
(Ecological Modelling, 2024) Kroc, Edward; Blight, Louise K.; Cao, Min Hai
How birds use and interact with an urban environment has been of interest for a variety of species across the globe. This has particularly been the case for gulls (Laridae) as species in this family nest and otherwise occupy habitat in urban areas on six continents, often coming into conflict with humans as they do so. In this study, we combine survey data of urban-nesting Glaucous-winged Gulls Larus glaucescens in Vancouver, Canada with detailed information on architectural and spatial features of the structures on which they nest to build an explanatory and predictive statistical model for nest-site selection in our study city. We find that building height is by far the most important explanatory variable in this selection process and that rooftops of higher structures are generally more attractive to nesters, but only up to a certain point. Flat rooftops in non-residential areas that are near water are also highly valued. However, complex relationships exist between these and other variables that offer detailed insights into urban nesting patterns. We use our modelling approach to predict that roughly 1,800 pairs of Glaucous-winged Gulls nested in the city in 2017 and over 2,000 pairs nested in the city in 2023. Combining this with high exact nest and rooftop recurrence rates derived from additional survey data taken between 2015 and 2019, and with historical population data, we argue that this urban population is likely to continue to expand in the near future at roughly 4% per annum. As this species has suffered declines in its natural breeding colonies across the region, this suggests its future in the region may be increasingly urban-centric.
Using drone imagery to obtain population data of colonynesting seabirds to support Canada’s transition to the global Key Biodiversity Areas program
(Nature Conservation, 2023) Lalach, Lindsay A. R.; Bradley, David W.; Bertram, Douglas F.; Blight, Louise K.
Identifying of global or national biodiversity ‘hotspots’ has proven important for focusing and prioritizing conservation efforts worldwide. Canada has nearly 600 Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) identified by quantitative criteria to help guide avian conservation and management. Marine IBAs capture critical waterbird habitats such as nesting colonies, foraging sites, and staging areas. However, due to their remote locations, many lack recent population counts. Canada has begun transitioning IBAs into the global Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA) program; KBAs identify areas that are important for the persistence of biodiversity and encompass a wider scope of unique, rare, or vulnerable taxa. Assessing whether IBAs qualify as KBAs requires current data – as will future efforts to manage these biologically important sites. We conducted a pilot study in the Chain Islets and Great Chain Island IBA, in British Columbia, to assess the effectiveness of using drones to census surface-nesting seabirds in an IBA context. This IBA was originally designated for supporting a globally significant breeding colony of Glaucous-winged Gulls (Larus glaucescens). Total nest counts derived from orthomosaic imagery (1012 nesting pairs) show that this site now falls below the Global and National IBA designation criterion threshold, a finding consistent with regional declines in the species. Our trial successfully demonstrates a flexible and low cost approach to obtaining population data at an ecologically sensitive KBA site. We explore how drones will be a useful tool to assess and monitor species and habitats within remote, data-deficient IBAs, particularly during the transition to KBAs.
Corrigendum: Using drone imagery to obtain population data of colony-nesting seabirds to support Canada’s transition to the global Key Biodiversity Areas program
(Nature Conservation, 2023) Lalach, Lindsay A. R.; Bradley, David W.; Bertram, Douglas F.; Blight, Louise K.
A comparison of historical and contemporary reproductive traits in a declining population of Glaucous-winged Gulls (Larus glaucescens)
(Avian Conservation and Ecology, 2022) Blight, Louise K.; O'Shea, William; McClelland, Gregory T. W.
Understanding how organisms manage life history trade-offs under variable environmental conditions is an aim that is central to ecology. Comparing modern reproductive data with those from historical studies can increase understanding of the range of historical conditions that have acted on a given species over time. We use recent (2008-2010) and historical (1960s-1980s) reproductive data from a single study colony, Mandarte Island, Canada, to help understand the recent population declines experienced by the Glaucous-winged Gull (Larus glaucescens) in North America's Salish Sea, a highly urbanized area. Because this long-lived species has also undergone regional long-term declines in reproductive investment via decreasing egg and clutch size, we assessed whether modern reproductive outcomes were similarly affected. Although our statistical power was hampered by small sample sizes, it appears that hatching success declined over time, from 0.83 (1960s) and 0.76 (1970s-1980s) to 0.60 (2008-2010). An apparent decline in nesting success, from 0.63 (1962) to 0.52 (this study), was not statistically significant. Recent clutch sizes showed intra-seasonal declines, a pattern unchanged from historical trends. In contrast, egg mass historically was constant within a given nesting season, but recent egg-mass data show intra-seasonal declines. We conclude that most gulls currently breeding on Mandarte Island cannot attain historical levels of reproductive success — perhaps because of declining environmental quality in the form of reduced availability of high-quality fish prey — although some high-quality pairs in this population are still able to maximize reproductive output. Our study highlights the importance of long-term study systems for identifying consequences of large-scale ecosystem changes; however, methodological clarity is essential to ensure data comparability through time. Ultimately, further study is needed to identify the drivers of reproductive changes in this population, something that could be used to inform future management decisions.
Economy in practice: Islamic finance and the problem of market reason
(American Ethnologist, 2014) Rudnyckyj, Daromir
Proponents of Islamic finance are working to make Kuala Lumpur the “New York of the Muslim World”: the central node in a global Islamic alternative to the conventional financial system. Amidst this ambitious project, I document how Islamic finance experts represent economic rationality as an object of reflection and I examine their responses to the economism intrinsic to market reason. Islamic finance is not wholly opposed to economic rationality, but the market calculations endemic to what experts term “conventional finance” serve as an unavoidable point of reference, comparison, and differentiation. I refer to reflection on economic rationality as “economy in practice,” a conceptualization that seeks to illuminate the various techniques through which humans are made economic subjects.
Circulating tears and managing hearts: Governing through affect in an Indonesian steel factory
(Anthropological Theory, 2011) Rudnyckyj, Daromir
This article argues that moderate Islamic spiritual training programs in contemporary Indonesia entail ‘governing through affect’. This formulation captures the embodied dispositions and ritual forms through which affect is mobilized to serve as a modality of government. Based on over two years of ethnographic research in Indonesia, most of which took place at Krakatau Steel in western Java, I examine the affective incitements that took place in ritual settings dedicated toward corporate productivity and self-improvement. The article argues that this process of subjectification took place in three stages. First, what participants referred to as ‘opening the heart’, which involved making participants receptive to the message of work as worship through recourse to affective enactments in Islamic history and discourse. Second, the circulation of tears, which refers to deep collective weeping which simultaneously represented and physically enacted the adoption of a new subjectivity. Finally, ‘managing the heart’ — the ultimate goal of spiritual training — was a form of self-management in which one exercised ‘built-in control’ and acted in ways that were deemed simultaneously conducive to corporate competitiveness and other-worldly salvation. I conclude that affect constitutes the virtuality of ritual insofar as it is the medium through which spiritual reform enters into the vital processes of human life.
Market Islam in Indonesia
(Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2009) Rudnyckyj, Daromir
This paper argues that in contemporary Indonesia development is increasingly being posed as an ethical, rather than a political and economic, problem. I demonstrate this change by describing one of several moderate Islamic ‘spiritual reform’ movements that are active in state-owned enterprises, government offices, and private companies. These initiatives combine business management principles and techniques from popular life-coaching seminars with Muslim practice. I term this assemblage ‘market Islam’ and contrast it with what has been labelled ‘civil Islam’. I argue that market Islam seeks less to create commensurability between Islam and democracy and is instead designed to merge Muslim religious practice and capitalist ethics. Market Islam is thus less concerned with state power and the articulation of politics and religion, and more focused on eliciting the ethical dispositions conducive to economic liberalism. It is thus designed to create a form of effective self-management by making ‘people better from the inside’ and ‘breaking boundaries’ that are seen to afflict Indonesian development, such as those between Indonesia and other countries, between religion and work, and between individuals and the corporations for which they work. I conclude that market Islam is neither fundamentalist nor conservative, but rather involves breaking a series of boundaries that were constitutive of Indonesian modernity. Résumé Le présent article soutient que dans l’Indonésie contemporaine, le développement est de plus en plus présenté comme un problème éthique plus que politique et économique. L’auteur met en évidence ce changement en décrivant l’un des multiples mouvements de « réforme spirituelle » islamiques modérés à l’œuvre dans les entreprises d’État, les administrations et les sociétés privées. Ces initiatives combinent les principes et techniques de gestion d’entreprise issues de séminaires de coaching populaires avec la pratique de l’islam. L’auteur désigne cet assemblage par l’appellation « islam de marché» et le confronte à l’islam dit « civil ». Il affirme que l’islam de marché essaie non pas de créer des repères communs entre l’islam et la démocratie, mais de fusionner pratique religieuse musulmane et éthique capitaliste. L’islam de marché s’intéresse donc moins à la puissance de l’État et à l’articulation de la politique et de la religion qu’à la mise en place des dispositions éthiques conduisant au libéralisme économique. Il est donc conçu pour créer une forme d’autogestion efficace, en « rendant les gens meilleurs de l’intérieur » et en « brisant les barrières » qui grèvent le développement de l’Indonésie : barrières entre l’Indonésie et les autres pays, entre religion et travail, entre les individus et les entreprises pour lesquelles ils travaillent. L’auteur conclut que l’islam de marché n’est ni fondamentaliste ni conservateur, mais vise plutôt à abattre diverses cloisons inhérentes à la modernité en Indonésie.
From Wall Street to "halal" street: Malaysia and the globalization of Islamic finance
(The Journal of Asian Studies, 2013) Rudnyckyj, Daromir
Malaysia's plans to become a transnational hub for Islamic finance represent an effort to mobilize religion to create new global networks for the circulation of capital. This article first contextualizes such efforts within the broader contours of Malaysia's political history, addressing the classification of ethnicity and religion by both the colonial and postcolonial states. The article describes how Islamic finance is defined by practitioners in Malaysia and explains the key features they invoke to distinguish it from what they call "conventional finance". Finally, it identifies the steps undertaken by the state to make the country a global center of Islamic finance. As the recent financial crises have shaken confidence in North Atlantic financial systems, Malaysia is geographically and culturally well-positioned between two emergent economic regions currently at the forefront of global economic growth.
Regimes of self-improvement: Globalization and the will to work
(Social Text, 2014) Rudnyckyj, Daromir
This article examines two projects of subjectification that seek to inculcate a will to work that animates contemporary globalization. Based on ethnographic research at Krakatau Steel, one of Indonesia’s largest state-owned companies, the article contrasts the differing implementation of the American Mormon Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits training program and the Indonesian Muslim Ary Ginanjar’s Emotional and Spiritual Quotient leadership training program. The article focuses on the different ways in which religion is mobilized in each project of subjectification and the opposing manner in which affect is deployed. Both projects seek to create a regime of self-improvement that is simultaneously demanded by, and constitutive of, economic integration and increasing transnational competition. Both of these techniques for work on the will were deployed to resolve the inescapable specter of corporate competitiveness and the calculative rationality upon which it is premised. The broad appeal of these programs lies not so much in their content as in their object: a will to work that is elicited to meet the demands of the day.
Technologies of servitude: Governmentality and Indonesian transnational labor migration
(Anthropological Quarterly, 2004) Rudnyckyj, Daromir
This paper examines the techniques and networks that enable the transnational movement of migrant laborers from Indonesia. Theoretically, the paper argues that governmentality is an effective concept through which to understand political economic relations across national borders and outside state institutions. The concept is useful not only in analysis of abstract policy prescriptions, but also in the apparently mundane methods that are intended to rationalize the training, delivery and security of migrant laborers. The intervention herein is in part methodological, in so far as the paper argues that the concept is useful in analyzing the everyday practices that are a frequent focus of ethnographic fieldwork. Empirically grounded in interviews and observational fieldwork in Indonesia, the paper describes the networks that facilitate transnational labor migration from the country and demonstrates the interconnection of the "global" economy with localized moral economies. Thus, the paper argues that transnational flows of migrant laborers are in fact dependent upon supposedly traditional patron-client networks. Furthermore, I suggest that some NGOs advocating for the rights of migrant workers are not inimical to state power, but in fact work to enhance it. Strategies to protect the rights of migrant laborers may bring about greater state [End Page 407] intervention in their lives. The paper proposes two technologies deployed by non-state entities, specifically human resources companies and NGOs, that facilitate transnational labor migration. The first are termed technologies of servitude and are intended to impart the skills and attitudes necessary to conduct domestic labor. The latter are technologies for rationalizing labor flows to wealthier countries of the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions.
Islamic finance and the afterlives of development in Malaysia
(PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 2014) Rudnyckyj, Daromir
Government regulators, Islamic scholars, finance professionals, and secular academics have recently taken steps to turn Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's capital, into a global hub for Islamic finance. This article describes some of the actions these actors have taken to position Kuala Lumpur as the central node in this emerging financial system. This article highlights key principles of Islamic finance and the debates in which practitioners are engaged while developing a shariah-compliant financial system. It shows how these plans draw on previous efforts by the Malaysian state—in part in response to Islamist political critiques—to design techniques for the provision of capital commensurable with both Islam and capitalism. In so doing, Malaysia's Islamic finance project expresses four dimensions of the afterlives of development: the creation of alternative political and economic networks; a managerial role for the state; the creation of new forms of expertise; and the assemblage of religious and economic practices, two domains that earlier efforts toward secular modernization had presumed separate.
Islamizing finance: From magical capitalism to a spiritual economy
(Anthropology Today, 2016) Rudnyckyj, Daromir
Anthropological analyses of the assemblage of religious practice and economic action have often been viewed as evidence of mystification and have focused on the ‘occult’ dimensions of late capitalism. In contrast, this article approaches the magic of capitalism not in terms of occult or millennial practices, but rather as the tricks and sleight of hand techniques deployed by economic experts. The article describes how the initial iteration of Islamic finance in Malaysia relied on what experts refer to as ‘tricks’ (hiyal) – legal stratagems that transformed impermissible contracts into ones capable of being deemed permissible by Islamic scholars. The article describes how today, experts are seeking to reform Islamic finance in Malaysia by creating a spiritual economy that moves away from a regime based on tricks to one based on eliciting the ethical practices conducive to neoliberalism: entrepreneurship, risk calculation, and cost-benefit analysis. In so doing, the article argues that the spiritual economy of Islamic finance seeks to create a regime of production and capital circulation grounded in the ethical principles and ascetic pieties of neoliberal Islam.
Econography: Observing expert capitalism
(Current Anthropology, 2024) Rudnyckyj, Daromir
In recent years anthropologists have increasingly conducted fieldwork among economic agents and on financial practices that would have seemed foreign to our predecessors of just a generation ago. This work can be broadly categorized as the analysis of expert capitalism. Expert capitalism is the knowledge-intensive, abstract, and often technical pursuit of profit. Anthropologists conducting such research have produced germinal insights regarding the contingent factors that make up expert capitalism, the key role of representations, language, and narrative in constituting the object referred to as an economy, and the unstated assumptions that frame the actions of expert capitalists. However, there have been as yet few systematic reflections regarding how to conceptualize expert capitalist fields and objects in such a way as to make them amenable to empirical, anthropological analysis. This article seeks to develop the anthropological documentation and analysis of expert capitalism by outlining a set of strategies useful in facilitating such research. These strategies fall under the rubrics of (1) mesoanalysis, (2) institutionalization, (3) reflexive practice and problematization, (4) subjectification, and (5) representations as economic facts. The article concludes that, taken together, these strategies constitute what might be termed econography: a mode of analysis suited to analysis of and writing about expert capitalism.
Subjects of debt: Financial subjectification and collaborative risk in Malaysian Islamic finance
(American Anthropologist, 2017) Rudnyckyj, Daromir
This article argues the Malaysian state has developed Islamic finance in conjunction with two distinct strategies of subject formation. In its first phase, in the 1980s, a central objective was the financial inclusion of Malays. Islamic finance was part of an identity-building project and intended to integrate this disadvantaged indigenous majority into the national economy. By the 2000s the state had succeeded in fostering a Malay Muslim middle class through aggressive affirmative action policies. Currently, Islamic finance is being redeployed as a technique for the neoliberal entrepreneurialization of the Malay Muslim population. Empirically, this shift is evident in efforts by experts to move Islamic finance away from a reliance on what they call “debt-based” devices to ones referred to as “equity based.” This entails substituting devices that reformers contend replicate the credit and lending instruments characteristic of “conventional finance” with instruments instead premised on investment, partnership, and risk sharing that they argue more faithfully adhere to the discursive tradition of Islam. [Islam, development, neoliberalism, Islamic finance, debt]
The Protestantism of neoliberalism
(Culture, Theory and Critique, 2023) Rudnyckyj, Daromir
This essay illuminates the affinity between of Protestantism and neoliberalism. Drawing on the insights of Max Weber and Michel Foucault, the essay demonstrates how both Protestantism and neoliberalism are premised on a common set of norms and ethical practices. In so doing, I seek to diagram the points of convergence between these two formations to account, in part, for the persistence of neoliberalism. The affinity between Protestantism and neoliberalism is evident in the fact that both entail the rationalisation of a totalising system, reflexive responsibilisation, recasting the pastoral function, the assimilation of labour, the compulsion for action in conditions of unknowability, and the economisation of power.
Reconsidering recipocity and capitalism
(Ethnography, 2023) Rudnyckyj, Daromir
For nearly a century, anthropologists have been preoccupied with the gift. So much so, that one of the signature contributions of the subfield of economic anthropology has been to remind the human sciences at large of its importance, not only in non-industrial societies but in contemporary settings as well. By illuminating the importance of gift-giving in Kwakwakaʼwakw potlach ceremonies to understand social and political relationships, the discipline was able to cast a reflection by which it could better grasp the role that reciprocity plays in the contemporary world. Thus, the role of Christmas or birthday presents in forging social relations or the ostentatious white tiger and cheetah furs (later determined to be fakes) presented to former US president Donald Trump on his first diplomatic visit with the Saudi royal family could be understood through the optics afforded by attention to the gift. The central insight that the foregrounding of gift exchanges generated was that not every transaction, even in liberal market societies, could be reduced to rational economic calculations. Rather, social or political systems were produced through material-semiotic relationships mediated through gift exchange.
Spiritual economy as mesoanalytics: An ethnography of a global problem space in Indonesia
(HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2020) Rudnyckyj, Daromir
This essay develops the method of mesoanalysis to comprehend problems shared at divergent sites, but that are not reducible to universal or general forces. Drawing on fieldwork at a state-owned steel factory in Indonesia, the essay describes a specific assemblage of capitalist restructuring and Islamic reform. The essay argues that the term “spiritual economy” conceptualizes the affinities between particular interventions to mobilize religious piety for economic practice with analogous efforts elsewhere.
Co‐benefits of and trade‐offs between natural climate solutions and Sustainable Development Goals
(Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 2024) Mariani, Gaël; Moullec, Fabien; Atwood, Trisha B.; Clarkson, Beverley; Conant, Richard T.; Cullen-Unsworth, Leanne; Griscom, Bronson; Gutt, Julian; Howard, Jennifer; Krause-Jensen, Dorte; Leavitt, Sara M.; Lee, Shing Yip; Livesley, Stephen J.; Marcreadie, Peter I.; St-John, Michael; Zganjar, Chris; Cheung, William W.L.; Duarte, Carlos M.; Shin, Yunne-Jai; Singh, Gerald; Louiseau, Nicolas; Troussellier, Marc; Mouillot, Davoid
Combating climate change and achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are two important challenges facing humanity. Natural climate solutions (NCSs) can contribute to the achievement of these two commitments but can also generate conflicting trade-offs. Here, we reviewed the literature and drew on expert knowledge to assess the co-benefits of and trade-offs between 150 SDG targets and NCSs within 12 selected ecosystems. We demonstrate that terrestrial, coastal, and marine NCSs enable the attainment of different sets of SDG targets, with low redundancy. Implementing NCSs in various ecosystems would therefore maximize achievement of SDG targets but would also induce trade-offs, particularly if best practices are not followed. Reliance on NCSs at large scales will require that these trade-offs be taken into consideration to ensure the simultaneous realization of positive climate outcomes and multiple SDG targets for diverse stakeholders.
Potential adverse equity consequences of coastal climate adaptation interventions in Canada
(Frontiers in Marine Science, 2025) Potier, Chantelle; Keefer, Justine; Singh, Gerald G.
Coastal communities around the world are facing increasingly severe climate change impacts that threaten their current and future livability. To address these impacts, coastal climate adaptation projects have taken various approaches to decreasing climate vulnerability through nature-based solutions and hard infrastructure centered around minimizing stormwater flooding, coastal erosion, and sea-level rise; as well as coastal retreat programs for when vulnerabilities cannot be mitigated. While these adaptation projects are important in addressing current climate impacts, many adaptation projects run the risk of exacerbating pre-existing social inequalities and/or creating new ones. We surveyed current coastal climate adaptation projects in Canada, which include a mix of nature-based, hard infrastructure, relocation, and hybrid projects, and performed a literature review to assess adaptation projects’ potential social equity risks based on the information available. We find that all adaptation plans have the potential of generating equity risks, with different kinds of interventions potentially generating different risks, such as redirecting climate impacts to other communities, displacing communities, and promoting development in risky areas. Adaptation projects are more likely to experience maladaptive social outcomes when they are planned and implemented by people removed from the impacted communities, as this removal often creates oversights in exactly who and how people will be impacted. Maladaptive outcomes may also be the result of processing and funding limitations. Conversely, we found that there are important mediating steps that can limit or avoid maladaptive outcomes, most importantly inclusive planning processes where marginalized groups are involved in decision-making. We argue that this risk-based approach to purposely outline potential maladaptive outcomes are important to assess how adaptation projects may perpetuate the historical marginalization, dispossession, and displacement of marginalized communities. If potential risks can be outlined in advance, there are opportunities for planning processes to mitigate and avoid these risks

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