Michael Hathaway: Andrews Fellow, Spring 2017

The Asian Studies Program’s Andrews Fellow in Spring 2017 will be Michael Hathaway.

Michael Hathaway is an associate professor of cultural anthropology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. His first book, Environmental Winds: Making the Global in Southwest China (University of California Press, 2013), explores how environmentalism was refashioned in China, not only by conservationists, but also by rural villagers and even animals. It also examines the ways that the politics of indigeneity and nature conservation emerged in China, and reflects on how these dynamics can illuminate struggles elsewhere.

His second major project examines the global commodity chain of the matsutake, one of the world’s most expensive mushrooms, following it from the highlands of the Tibetan Plateau to the markets of urban Japan. He works with other members of the Matsutake Worlds Research Group, looking at the social worlds this mushroom engenders in Canada, the United States, China, and Japan.

His work appears in The Journal of Asian Studies, Cultural Anthropology, American Ethnologist, Conservation and Society, and Humanities as well as several books. His research has been supported by the Toyota Foundation (Japan); Social Science and Humanities Research Council (Canada); and the Social Science Research Council, American Council of Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and Environmental Protection Agency.