CULTURE
Lisa L. Gezonis a cultural anthropologist who graduated from the University of Michigan in 1995. She has been teaching Anthropology at the University of West Georgia since 1996 and is currently a Professor in the Department of Anthropology. Her primary research area has been in Madagascar, but she has also conducted research in the state of Georgia (U.S.A.) and in Senegal, West Africa. She is interested in many facets of humans and their relationship to the material environment, including conservation and protected area management (Madagascar), management of water commons (coastal Georgia), and the contribution of peanut farming to deforestation (Senegal). She is currently interested in the commodity chains of the drug khat in Madagascar, considering land cover change, rural and urban livelihoods, and the cultural politics of drug policies and perceptions. Her research has been funded by the National Geographic Society, National Science Foundation, and a U.S. Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship. Significant publications include Gezon, Lisa L. 2006. Global Visions, Local Landscapes: A Political Ecology of Conservation, Conflict, and Control in Northern Madagascar, AltaMira Press; and Paulson, Susan and Lisa L. Gezon 2005. Political Ecology, Across Spaces, Scales and Social Groups (coauthored with Susan Paulson), Rutgers University Press.Conrad Phillip Kottak(A.B. Columbia, 1963; Ph.D. Columbia, 1966) is the Julian H. Steward Collegiate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, where he has taught since 1968. He served as Anthropology Department chair from 1996 to 2006. In 1991 he was honored for his teaching by the University and the state of Michigan. In 1992 he received an excellence in teaching award from the College of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts of the University of Michigan. In 1999 the America Anthropological Association awarded Professor Kottak the AAA/Mayfield Award for Excellence in the Undergraduate Teaching of Anthropology.Professor Kottak has done ethnographic fieldwork in cultural anthropology in Brazil (since 1962), Madagascar (since 1966), and the United States. Conrad Kottak's articles have appeared in academic journals including American Anthropologist, Journal of Anthropological Research, American Ethnologist, Ethnology, Human Organization, and Luso-Brazilian Review. He has also written for more popular journals, including Transaction/SOCIETY, Natural History, Psychology Today, and General Anthropology.In recent research projects, Kottak and his colleagues have investigated the emergence of ecological awareness in Brazil, the social context of deforestation in Madagascar, and popular participation in economic development planning in northeastern Brazil.Recently, Kottak was inducted to The National Academy of Sciences. This is a private organization of scientists and engineers dedicated to the furtherance of science and its use for the general welfare.