Carol MacLennan
Senior Scholar — 2018 to Present
Carol MacLennan is a socio-cultural anthropologist whose research is on policy and industry in the United States. She was a SAR Ethel J. Westfeldt Bunting Fellow in 2014 and is a Professor of Anthropology Emerita and Research Professor at Michigan Technological University (MTU) where she taught anthropology and environmental policy. She continues work on transdisciplinary research teams with environmental scientists and engineers at MTU’s Great Lakes Research Center, and supervises PhD student research on how communities contend with water pollution caused by legacy mining sites. She also collaborates with the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (Ojibwa), EPA, and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality on projects to foster the cleanup of mining waste. While in residence at SAR, Carol is focused on her research on mining policy in the US and completion of her manuscript, Laid to Waste: Lessons from 100 Years of Mining Her research for this project focuses upon copper mining in New Mexico and Michigan.
Carol is active in the American Anthropological Association where she currently serves as the Co-President of the Association of Anthropology of Policy (ASAP) for 2018-2020. She is also a Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology. Her PhD and MA degrees in anthropology are from UC Berkeley, and a BA in history from UC San Diego. She also worked as a social scientist in the US Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on automotive safety and fuel economy.
Carol’s publications focus on industrial history and the development of environmental policy where she shines an anthropological light on the social and economic forces that shape how we govern. Her most recent book Sovereign Sugar: Industry and Environment in Hawai`i won the 2015 Ka Palapala Po`okela Award for Non Fiction. She is also co-author of The State and Democracy: Revitalizing America’s Government, written after her experience with a major shift in regulatory policy during the Carter and Reagan Administrations in Washington DC. Her articles and book chapters cover questions pertaining to the tension between market-based regulation and democratic practice. More recently she has written articles and papers that address the history and problems of industrial pollution and how citizens respond to resulting environmental and public health consequences. Her research has been funded by Wenner-Gren, NEH, NIH, Michigan Sea Grant, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, National Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the School for Advanced Research.
Sovereign Sugar: Industry and Environment in Hawaii
Carol A. MacLennan