Bridget Guarasci is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Franklin & Marshall College. She is an environmental anthropologist whose work examines how war and conflict creates ecological life. At first blush, nature and war might appear to be oxymoronic. We often think of nature as teeming with life. Wetlands in particular are valued as transitional spaces between land and sea where migrating birds alight unifying biodiversity hotspots across the globe during seasonal migrations. Nature conveys an image of peace and tranquility. War is conceptualized as almost its exact opposite. Rife with bombs, artillery, pain, and suffering, war tears through the social fabric to destroy life and livelihood. Guarasci’s work demonstrates that contrary to popular thinking nature and war are not paradoxical, but entangled processes of making and harnessing the biosphere. Her scholarship analyzes how biodiversity conservation of marshes has been an important avenue to knowledge and resource extraction in Iraq. Her work has been supported by foundations including the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities - American Center of Research, Amman.
bguarasc@fandm[dot]edu