John Wagner

Associate Professor

Anthropology

Office: ART 262
Phone: 250.807.9318
Email: john.wagner@ubc.ca

Research Summary

Environmental anthropology; political ecology; water, food security and food sovereignty, local ecological knowledge, conservation and development, language documentation, Okanagan Valley, Columbia River Basin, Papua New Guinea.

Courses & Teaching

environmental anthropology; political ecology; development; anthropological theory, research methods. Specifically, ANTH 245: Culture and Environment; ANTH 300 Contemporary Theory in Anthropology; ANTH 355 Ethnography of Development; ANTH 455 Political Ecology; IGS 515 Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences

Degrees

PhD, McGill
MA, University of Victoria
BA, University of Victoria

Selected Publications & Presentations

Wagner, John and Jerry Jacka (eds.). 2017 (in press). Island Rivers: Fresh Water and Place in Oceania. Canberra: ANU Press.

Wagner, John. 2017. Rivers of Memory and Forgetting. In Island Rivers: Freshwater and Place in Oceania. J. Wagner and J. Jacka, eds. Canberra: ANU Press.

Wagner, John, Jerry Jacka, Edvard Hviding, Alex Mawyer, and Marama Leigh Muru-Lanning. River as Ethnographic Subject. Introduction to Island Rivers. J. Wagner and J. Jacka, eds. Canberra: ANU Press.

Mettler, C., A. Dulic, J. Angel, J. Coble, J. Marshall, J. Wagner, K. Holland and L. Digby. The Social Life of Water in the Okanagan Valley: Past, Present and Future. A museum exhibition hosted by the Kelowna Museums Society at the Okanagan Heritage Museum, Kelowna, BC, Oct/2016 – May/2017.

Schreyer, Christine and John Wagner. 2015. The Kala Film Project: Kala Walo Nua. Written and produced by John Wagner and Christine Schreyer. Edited by Randy Grice. Published online Oct 22, 2015. http://www.christineschreyer.ca/Research.html.

Schreyer, Christine and John Wagner. 2013. Kala Biŋatuwa: A Community-Driven Alphabet for the Kala language. Ottawa: Foundation for Endangered Languages (conference proceedings).

Wagner, John (ed.). 2013. The Social Life of Water. New York. Berghahn Books.

Wagner, John 2012. Water and the Commons Imaginary. Current Anthropology 53(5):617-641

Wagner, John and Kasondra White. 2009. Water and Development in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. Journal of Enterprising Communities 3(4):378-392.

Wagner, John. 2008. Landscape Aesthetics, Water and Settler Colonialism in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. Journal of Ecological Anthropology 12:22-38.

Wagner, John and Malia Talakai. 2007. Introduction to Customs, Commons, Property and Ecology: Case Studies from Oceania. In John Wagner and Mike Evans, guest editors. Customs, Commons, Property and Ecology: Case Studies from Oceania, a special edition of Human Organization 66(1):1-10.

Wagner, John. 2007. Conservation as Development in Papua New Guinea: The View from Blue Mountain. In John Wagner and Mike Evans, guest editors. Customs, Commons, Property and Ecology: Case Studies from Oceania, a special edition of Human Organization 66(1):28-37.

Wagner, John. 2005. The politics of accountability: an institutional analysis of the conservation movement in Papua New Guinea. In Anthropology and Consultancy: Issues and Debates. Edited by Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern. Studies in Applied Anthropology. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.

Davis, Anthony and John Wagner. 2003. Who knows? On the importance of identifying ‘experts’ when researching local ecological knowledge. Human Ecology 31(3):463-489.

Selected Grants & Awards

Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation, UBC Okanagan sub-award, 2016-2019, Documentation of the Kala Language (KCL) through an Interdisciplinary, Community-Based Study of the Aquatic Environment.

Principal Investigator, SSHRC Connections Grant, 2016-2017, The Social Life of Water in the Okanagan Valley.

Principal Investigator, SSHRC Insight Development Grant, 2012-2014, Water Governance and Agriculture in the Columbia River Basin.

Co-Investigator, National Geographic Genographic Legacy Fund, 2013-2014, Kala Vernacular Education and Local Ecological Knowledge Project. Principal Investigator Christine Schreyer.

Principal investigator UBC Hampton Collaborative Research Grant, 2009-2011 Vernacular Education and Local Ecological Knowledge in Papua New Guinea. Co-investigator Christine Schreyer.

Principal Investigator, SSHRC Standard Research Grant, 2005-2009, From Abundance to Scarcity: the Political Ecology of Water Use in the Okanagan Valley.