Brief CV

Thomas Kerlin Park

Chronology of Education

McGill University, Montreal, Canada

B.A. 1st Class Honors in Anthropology and Philosophy 1969-1974

University of Bergen, Norway

Studied Anthropology 1971-2

University of Wisconsin – Madison

PhD. Anthropology and History 1983

M.A. Agricultural Economics 1982

M.A. Anthropology 1977

Thesis: Administration and the Economy: Morocco 1880 to 1980. The case of Essaouira. 592 pp. Ph.D. thesis in Anthropology and History, (Directed by Aidan W. Southall and Jan Vansina) University of Wisconsin- Madison.

Employment:

1984-5 Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison

1986-present “Department,” then “School” of Anthropology, University of Arizona

2010, Chair, Human Subjects IRB, University of Arizona.

Languages

Arabic, English, French, Norwegian

Books:

Terrestrial Transformations. A Political Ecology Approach to Society and Nature. Edited with James b. Greenberg. Lexington Books , 2020.

Risk and Tenure in Arid Lands: the political ecology of development in the Senegal River Basin. Edited. University of Arizona Press, 1993

three editions of the Historical Dictionary of Morocco, last two with Aomar Boum (Scarecrow Press 1996–570pp, 2006–746pp, 2016–996pp). Fourth edition in two volumes forthcoming in 2025.

with James B. Greenberg) The Roots of Western Finance: power, ethics, and social capital in the ancient world and Hidden Interests in credit and finance: power, ethics, and social capital across the last millennium (Lexington Books 2017).

NSF Grants:

(with Mamadou Baro, Gary Christopherson and Stuart Marsh) The Six Cities Project: developing a methodology of surveying densely populated areas using social science assisted and diachronic remote sensing based classification of habitation in Marrakech, Dakar, Bamako, Niamey, Dodoma and Gaborone (NSF 1998: $500,000),

(with Stefanie Herrmann, Mamadou Baro and Randy Gimblett) “Desertification” or “Greening”? Human-Environment Relationships in the Face of Climate Variability: Case Studies in Mauritania and Senegal (NSF 2007 award for $400,000).

Founding editor (with James B. Greenberg) The Journal of Political Ecology.

Journal Articles

2020. Rip Van Winkle and the Pluriverse. Hespéris-Tamuda, Fsc 2:289-308.

2010 Review of, The Cultural and Political Economy of Recovery: Social learning in a post-disaster environment. By Emily Chamlee-Wright. New York: Routledge Advances in Heterodox Economics, 2010.

Conversations on Philanthropy. Volume VII, 2010. Reviews, pp. 92-96.

2010 Social Transformations and West African Forms of Slavery. Review of Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories. edited by Benedetta Rossi. Liverpool University Press 2009. Current AnthropologyVolume 51, Number 5, 2010 pp. 715-716.

2003 with Mamadou Baro, The Six Cities Project: developing a methodology of surveying densely populated areas using social science assisted and diachronic remote sensing based classification of habitation. Journal of Political Ecology Vol. 10: 1-23.

2003 Reflections on criminality and demographic structure: a multi-national examination of the links between youth and national crime statistics. Arizona Law Review: vol. 45 Number 3: 595-619.

2001 with Hsaïn Ilahiane. Sources for the socio-economic study of rural Morocco. International Journal of Middle East Studies 33 2001), 271-290..

1994 Political Ecology. Journal of Political Ecology 1:1-8. Inaugural article for the journal, co-authored with James B. Greenberg, the other co-editor.

1992 Moroccan Migration and Mercantile Money. Human Organization. Vol.51, No.3 1992:205-213.

1992 Early trends toward class stratification. Chaos, Common Property and Flood Recession Agriculture. American Anthropologist, March, Pp.90-117.

1989 Essaouira: The formation of a New Elite 1940-1980. African Studies Review. Vol.31 No.2. Pp.111-132.

1988 Rural North East Algeria 1919-1938. Peasant Studies vol 15 (2):117-128.

1988 Indigenous Responses to Economic Development in Mauritania. Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development Vol.17(1):53-74. Special Issue with an Afterword by Eric Wolf.

1985 Pyrrhonism in anthropological and historical research. History in Africa, 12 pp.225-252.

1985 Inflation and Economic Policy in 19th Century Morocco: the compromise solution. The Maghreb Review March-June vol.10, No.2 pp.51-56

1983 A report on the state of Moroccan archives. History in Africa, 10(1983), 395-409.

Chapters and Encyclopedia Articles

2013 Urban Sociology in Poor Cities of Africa and the Middle East: a New Methodology Inspired by Robert E. Park’s Urban Ecological Approach. Chapter in The Chicago School Diaspora: Epistemology and Substance. McGill Queens University Press).

2009 Entry for “Long Distance Trade” in the Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, (Brill, 2010: pp.280-286).

2009 Entry for “Peddlars” in the Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, (Brill, 2010:43-45).

2009 Entry for “Safi” in the Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, (Brill, 2010:208-210).

2008 Entry for “Samir Amin.” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Ed. William A. Darity, Jr. Vol. 1. 2. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008. pp.110-111.

2007 Fatima Mernissi. Entry in Biographical Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa. Ed. Michael R. Fischbach. Gale Cengage.

2006 Condorcet, Marquis de. In, H. James Birx, Editor. Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

2006 Demography. In, H. James Birx, Editor. Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

2006 Humboldt, Alexander Von. In, H. James Birx, Editor. Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

2006 Irrigation. In, H. James Birx, Editor. Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

2006 Herskovits, Melville. In, H. James Birx, Editor. Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

2006 Firth, Raymond. In, H. James Birx, Editor. Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

2004 Reflections on criminality and demographic structure: a multi-national examination of the links between youth and national crime statistics. Arizona Law Review.

1997 Indirass and the Political Ecology of Flood Recession Agriculture. Chapter 3 in The Ecology of Practice: Studies of Food Crop Production in Sub-Saharan West Africa. Edited by A. Endre Nyerges. Newark: Gordon And Breach Publishers, Pp.77-96.

1993 Arid lands and the political economy of flood recesssion in Fuuta Tooro. Chapter in Risk and Tenure in Arid Lands.

1993 Privatization and development: the case of the Dirol Plain. Chapter in Risk and Tenure in Arid Lands.

1993 Crisis of Nationalism in Mauritania. With Mamadou Baro and Tidiane Ngaido. Chapter in Risk

and Tenure in Arid Lands.

1993 Ecology and Risk Management: The case for common property . Chapter in Risk and Tenure in Arid Lands.

1992 The Sakalava. A Case for Religious Continuity in Madagascar. Chapter in a Festschrift for Aidan Southall titled Culture and Contradiction: the Dialectics of Wealth, Symbol and Power, edited by Minka De Sota Mellen Research University Press, San Francisco. Pp. 258-272.

1986 Mauritania: Senegal River Valley. Chapter in Land Tenure Issues in River Basin Development in Sub- Saharan Africa. pp.52-73. Edited by Peter C. Bloch, Madison: Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

1986 Mauritania. Chapter in Country Profiles of Land Tenure: Africa 1985. pp.120-127. Edited by James C. Riddell, Madison: Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

1981 Politics of the periodic market in small towns in Africa. Chapter in Politics of the Small Community. pp.343- 358. Edited by Richard W. Crockett, Macomb: Western Illinois University Press.

1980 Temporary migration as an index of urban underdevelopment in Northern Morocco. Chapter in Small Urban Centers in Urban Development in Africa. Pp.158-74. Edited by Aidan W. Southall, Madison: The University of Wisconsin African Studies Center.

1978 The Influence of regional economic networks on the development of small towns in Morocco. Chapter in The Small City and Regional Community. Pp.319-326. Edited by R.P. Wolensky and E.J. Miller, Stevens Point:The University of Wisconsin Press.

Selected scholarly presentations

2015 Technologies of Power and the Metrology of grain storage in the ancient Near East. Society for Economic Anthropology annual meeting, Lexington, KY.

2013 Aristotle’s critique of the Sumerian financial paradigm. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the SfAA in Denver, CO.

2012 Trust, power, and evasion in systems of credit. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the SfAA in Baltimore, MD.

Other Scholarly Presentations

2016 Bridging the chasm between Big Urban Data and contextual variables: using transformational Growth Matrices in an ABM. Presented at Argonne National Laboratory, 2 May 2016.

2015 Technologies of Power and the Metrology of grain storage in the ancient Near East. Society for Economic Anthropology annual meeting, Lexington, KY.

2015 Poster. Modeling Transformational Growth in Large African Cities. co-authored with John Murphy, Mark Altaweel, Luis Cisneros. Computational Social Science society – ASU

2014 Capability Theory and Refugees in the Sahel and North Africa. SfAA Albuquerque.

2013 Aristotle’s critique of the Sumerian financial paradigm. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the SfAA in Denver, CO.

2012 Trust, power, and evasion in systems of credit. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the SfAA in Baltimore, MD.

2011 Resilient Social Ecological Systems: bridging the rural urban dichotomy. CSSSA (Computational Social Science Society) Conference. Santa Fe, NM Oct 9-12, 2011. Peer reviewed paper.

2011 UrbanSociology in Poor Cities of Africa and the Middle East: A new methodology inspired by Robert E Park’s Urban ecological approach suggesting insights into resilience within urban and rural contexts. Paper presented as part of Panel 1: Types of Social Ecological Systems and the Tole of Place Based Resilience. 14 March 2011. Resilience 2011 conference ASU.

2009 Credit and Hidden Interest in the Ancient Near East and Classic Mediterranean. Invited Talk, Department of Near Eastern Studies and Center for Middle Eastern Studies. University of Arizona. Colloquium Series. October 9, 2009.

2009 Panning Panarchy: an urban political ecology take on panarchy’s Ptolemaic planet. Keynote address. NSF’s EPSCoR All-Hands Meeting, Anchorage Alaska, 14 May.

2008 with intellectual inputs from Luis Cisneros Edward Nell and Mourad Mjahed. Urban Sociology in Poor Cities of Africa and the Middle East : a New Methodology Inspired by Robert E. Park’s Urban Ecological Approach. Presented at theQualitatives 2008 conference (May 21-24) University of New Brunswick in Frederickton, New Brunswick Canada.

2007 29 January. Talk at Intel, Hillsboro, Oregon: Modeling the urban household: perspectives on development in Islamic Cities. (with some inputs from Mourad Mjahed and Luis Cisneros).

2005 with Mourad Mjahed and Luis Cisneros. Modeling complexity in urban spaces of the developing world: an ecological approach to socio-economic strategies. Presented at the conference, Next Generation Simulations of Human-Environmental Interactions Working Group. Santa Fe Institute, University of Arizona & Arizona State University, December 12-14, 2005, Tucson, AZ.

2005 Reflections on the threats and benefits of remote sensing of urban landscapes. SfAA annual meetings in Santa Fe, New Mexico. in Panel, Landscapes of Modern Techonology, Moderated by Thomas K. Park.

2003 with Mourad Mjahed and Luis Cisneros. Modeling household dynamics in Marrakech, Bamako and Niamey: perspectives on robustness in urban environments. Presented at the conference on Robustness of Coupled Natural and Human Systems at the Santa Fe Institute April.

2003 with Mourad Mjahed. Mapping household demographics in Marrakech, Bamako, and Niamey. SfAA annual meetings in Portland, Oregon.

2003 Reflections on Resilience, Risk Management, and Flood Recession Agriculture. Social Dimensions of Hohokam Irrigation: Perspectives Across Cultures and Time. Workshop. Feb. 27-Mar.1, Tempe.

2002 Mapping Urban Space and Place: The Six Cities Project. AAA annual meeting. New Orleans.

2002 Reflections on criminality and demographic structure: a multi-national examination of the links between youth and national crime statistics. Rogers College of Law, Conference on Youth, Doubletree Inn, Tucson.

Reviews

2011 Review of The Cultural and Political Economy of Recovery. Social learning in a post-disater environment by Emily Chamlee-Wright. In

Conversations on Philanthropy

,Volume VII 2010 forthcoming around 1 January 2011.

2010 Social Transformations and West African Forms of Slavery. Review of Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories. Edited by Benedetta Rossi.

Current Anthropology

Volume 51, Number 5, 2010.

2001 [50%] With Aomar Boum. Review of Remco Ensel. Saints and Servants in Southern Morocco. Leiden, Boston, Koln: Brill, 1999 in the Journal of North African History.

1999 Review of Mohammed Ennaji. Serving the Master. Slavery and Society in Nineteenth Century Morocco. Translated by Seth Graebner. New York: st Martin’s Press, 1998. for Middle East Studies Association Bulletin.

1993 Review of Mohammed Ennaji. Development in Rural Tunisia: the Bourguiba Years. New York: st Martin’s Press, 1998. for Middle East Journal. v.47 no.4:723-4.

1992 Review of Donald L. Donham, History, Power, Ideology: Central Issues in Marxism and Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990 for American Political Science Review. Mar. Pp. 209-210.

1991 Review of B.R.Pridhom, editor. Economy, Society & Culture in Contemporary Yemen. London: Croom Helm and Centre for Arab Gulf Studies, University of Exeter, 1985 in Canberra Anthropology.

1991 Review of Muneera Salem-Murdock and Michael M.Horowitz, Anthropology and Development in North Africa and the Middle East. The Middle East Journal. v45 n3:524-5.

1990 Review of Shlomo Deshen, The Mellah Society Life in Sherifian Morocco. Chicago Aldine 1989. The Jewish Quarterly Review.

1990 Review of Norman Stillman, The Language and Culture of the Jews of Sefrou. Jewish Quarterly Review January.

1990 Review of John P.Entelis, Culture and Counterculture in Moroccan Politics. Westview Press, 1989. The Middle East Journal Vol.44, No.2 Spring: 318-319.

1990 Review of D.Johnson and D.Anderson, The Ecology of Survival. Case Studies from Northeast African History. London: Lester Cook Academic Publishers, 1988. American Anthropologist. Vo. 92 No.1:220-221..

1989 Review of Donald Brown, Hierarchy, History, & Human Nature. University of Arizona Press. American Anthropologist, September. vol. 91:778.

1987 Review of Ann Elizabeth Mayer (ed.) Property, Social Structure and Law in the Modern Middle East. State University of New York Press 1985. Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, Vol.21, No.1 pp.31-2.

1987 Review of Lawrence Rosen Bargaining for Reality; The Construction of Social Relations in a Muslim Community. The University of Chicago Press 1984. Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, Vol.21, No.1 pp.33-34.