Biography
B.S. (Conservation and Natural Resources), M.A., Ph.D. (Geography), University of California, Berkeley.
Joshua Muldavin was recently named an SSRC/Abe Fellow for 2006-08 to continue his work analyzing Japanese environmental aid to China, and was awarded an NSF grant for 2006-07 to pursue his research in the Himalayas on comparative international environmental policy between China and India. The former holder of a Luce-funded professorship in Asian Studies and Human Geography at Sarah Lawrence College, former Chair and Director of International Development Studies at UCLA where he taught and carried out research for a decade, he has conducted research in China for over 24 years, and is currently writing a book on the social and environmental impacts of China’s reforms and global integration.
He has special interests in China and East Asia, the Himalayan region, comparative rural development, international development aid policy, agriculture, environment, political economy, social theory, and political ecology. His current research projects analyze globalization, changes in national-level policies, and their environmental and social impacts on localities in China; comparative socialist transition; vulnerability and resource use in the Himalayan region; resource and development conflicts in Central Asia, and international aid to China since 1978.
In addition to China, Professor Muldavin has completed more than 20 years field research in Japan, Nepal, India, Russia, Hungary, northern Europe, Cuba, and Mexico. Previous grants and fellowships received from the Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Fulbright, UCLA, and Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. Muldavin has been an invited lecturer at Oxford, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Columbia, UC Berkeley, University of Havana, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Russian Duma and Finnish Parliament, among other noted institutions. In addition he gives frequent interviews for media, and leads intensive seminars on contemporary issues in China for a wide range of interested groups. Other activities include organizing film and lecture series on contemporary issues, and a forthcoming course curriculum on a new DVD release of “The Future of Food”,” a documentary film by Deborah Koons Garcia on GMOs and agriculture.
He is the author of numerous scholarly publications including, most recently, “Creating a useful dossier for policy work,” co-authored with Piers Blaikie, Policy Working Paper, ICIMOD, Katmandu, Nepal, 2006, “The Paradoxes of Environmental Policy and Resource Management in Reform Era China,” in Economic Geography, “The Geography of Japanese Development Aid to China, 1978-1998,” in Environment and Planning A, and”Upstream downstream, China, India: The Politics of Environment in the Himalayan Region,” a joint article with Piers Blaikie in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Additional articles include: “Aiding Regional Instability?: The Paradox of Japanese Development Assistance to China,” “The Limits of Market Triumphalism in Rural China,” and “Assessing Environmental Degradation in Contemporary China’s Hybrid Economy: State Policy Reform and Agrarian Dynamics in Heilongjiang Province,” among others. Selected recent and past articles in media sources include: “In rural China, a time bomb is ticking” (Op-Ed), International Herald Tribune, January 1, 2006; “Beyond the Harbin chemical spill” (Op-Ed), International Herald Tribune, December 1, 2005; “Blaming the Symptoms, Not the Disease: Population Action International on Violent Conflict,” by Joshua Muldavin and Joseph Nevins, Counterpunch.org, January 17/18, 2004; “China’s health care works best for the wealthy, SARS outbreak shows” (Op-Ed), Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 18, 2003; “China’s poor left behind: SARS in the hinterland” (Op-Ed), International Herald Tribune, May 8, 2003; “The World Should Help to Avert Turmoil in China” (Op-Ed), International Herald Tribune, June 3, 1999; “Market Reforms Breed Discontent” (Op-Ed), Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1999. SLC, 2002-