Author Archives: Alex Nading

Alex Nading is a medical and environmental anthropologist and Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. His co-author Josh Fisher is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Western Washington University. Co-Author Chantelle Falconer is an anthropologist at the University of Toronto. Together, the three authors are involved in the National Science Foundation funded study "A Political Ecology of Value: A Cohort-Based Ethnography of Urban Social Policy" (NSF Award 1648667). The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the NSF for this work, as well as that of the Nicaragua site team, Maria de Jesus Zepeda, Karen Lopez, and Haydee Abarca.
Photograph of a hand drawn image of tree stumps and plants in a river. It says "¿Cual es el valor económico del medio ambiente?" in English "What is the economic value of the environment?"

Ethnographic Designs for Buen Vivir: Fieldnotes from Nicaragua

Co-Authored by Alex Nading, Josh Fisher, and Chantelle Falconer What does it mean to find value in urban ecologies? This question sparked our collaborative research in Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua, a city of some 120,000 inhabitants just outside Managua. Residents of Ciudad Sandino face persistent poverty, and they are still dealing with the socio-ecological aftermath of the Hurricane Mitch disaster in 1998.  Despite other factors that might be divisive, including a chronic municipal waste crisis, gang violence, and the uncertain legacy of Nicaragua’s 1979 popular revolution, people in Ciudad Sandino remain adamant that fostering collective political and ecological responsibility is key to building a livable urban future.  They are concerned not just with surviving in the city but with living well, or Buen Vivir. (read more...)