Environmental Crisis in China

Stevan Harrell is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Washington. Steve is one of the most well known anthropologists of China. He has been doing empirical research in China and Taiwan for more than four decades. He has published a large number of books and journal articles on diverse topics such as family, kinship, fertility, aging, and gender, as well as religion and ethnicity. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Steve started doing fieldwork with ethnic minority communities in Sichuan province. Work in Liangshan, Sichuan, led Steve to develop a strong interest in environmental sustainability and community development. He is currently writing a new book on the history of modern and contemporary china from an ecological perspective. In this podcast, Steve shares his insights on China’s environmental crisis, its historical roots, as well as some of the future challenges faced by the country in the age of the Anthropocene.