Leah Horowitz

Position title: Faculty, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies

Email: lhorowitz@wisc.edu

Research Summary

My research sheds light on how to achieve environmental protection that also supports Indigenous Peoples' efforts to achieve recognition of their rights and sovereignty. As a critical cultural geographer, I examine environmental governance – decision-making processes about socio-environmental issues, involving a range of stakeholder groups at multiple scales. Building on Polanyi’s “double movement,” I show how the movement toward greater environmental protections and Indigenous rights, or toward economic neoliberalism and environmental degradation, results from the co-production of ideologies, policies, and power relations. Toward this end, I have used ethnographic methods to examine the governance of nickel mining and refining near Indigenous Kanak communities in New Caledonia; and biodiversity conservation through ecosystem protection in New Caledonia, Malaysia, and the US. Currently, I am investigating the governance of oil and gas pipelines near Indigenous communities in the US, and solar geoengineering research on or over Indigenous lands in Sweden.

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