SESYNC Postdoctoral Fellow Drew Gerkey Awarded Junior Scholar Prize by the Anthropology & Environment Society

The Anthropology & Environment Society (AES) has awarded its Junior Scholar Prize to Dr. Drew Gerkey, Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC). The AES Junior Scholar Prize is given annually to an early-career scholar for an exemplary article in the area of environmental anthropology.

Dr. Gerkey won for his 2013 article “Cooperation in Context: Public Goods Games and Post-Soviet Collectives in Kamchatka, Russia,” which appeared in Current Anthropology 54(2): 144–176.

This innovative article combines ethnographic research with economic experiments to investigate cooperation among salmon fishers and reindeer herders on the Kamchatka Peninsula. His research uncovered connections between the abstract structure of economic games and naturally occurring contexts of cooperation in Kamchatka, illustrating how cultural norms, values, and institutions shape expectations and frame strategies for solving dilemmas inherent in cooperation.

Dr. Gerkey’s postdoctoral project at SESYNC, Sustainable Social Networks in Alaska, investigates how social networks help people living in mixed market subsistence economies sustain natural resources, families, and communities. It investigates individual adaptability and community resilience by analyzing a unique and comprehensive set of household demographic, economic, social network, and natural resource data collected annually by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Subsistence Division (ADF&G).

Dr. Gerkey recently joined the Department of Anthropology at Oregon State University, where he will begin in February 2014.

The Anthropology & Environment Society is a major section of the American Anthropological Association.

Read the original announcement here: https://ae.americananthro.org/press-release-junior-scholar-prize-for-2013-2/

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