Key Publications

CoP

Corridors of Power: The Politics of Environmental Aid to Madagascar. 2016. Yale University Press

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300212273/corridors-power

Corridors of Power explores the forty-year transformation of neoliberalism, environmental governance and their relationship to shifting resource rights and access in the Global South. Told through the history and politics of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s environmental program in Madagascar and based on a multi-sited institutional ethnography, Catherine Corson argues that the emergence of biodiversity conservation as a U.S. foreign aid priority in the mid-to-late 1980s was made possible by neoliberal reforms that increased involvement of non-state actors in state policy-making processes. These actors mobilized U.S. political and financial support for conservation by concentrating on biodiversity “over there,” threatened by slash and burn farmers and best conserved by enlarging protected area networks. The resulting conservation agenda—legitimized through global biodiversity targets—offered politicians and capitalists an avenue to become “green,” while failing to build the state capacity needed to manage Madagascar’s rapidly expanding commercial resource extraction industries.

Co-edited special issues of journals

  • Campbell, L.M., C. Corson and N.J. Gray. 2014. “Collaborative Event Ethnography at the Convention on Biological Diversity” Global Env. Politics 14(3)
  • Corson, C., K. Macdonald, and B. Neimark, 2013. “Grabbing ‘Green:’ Markets, Environmental Governance and the Materialization of Natural Capital.” Human Geography 6(1)

Peer-reviewed publications

Underline=undergraduate and bold=graduate student co-authors.

  • Gray, N., C. Corson, L. Campbell, P. Wilshusen, R. Gruby and S. Hagerman. 2021. Doing Strong Collaborative Fieldwork in Human Geography. in Geographical Fieldwork in the 21st eds. Antoinette WinklerPrins and Kendra McSweeney. Routledge. pp. 104-116.
  • Corson, C. Worcester, S. Rogers, and I. Flores-Ganley. 2020. From Paper to Practice? A Rights-Based Conservation Approach. Journal of Political Ecology 27(1): 1128-1147.
  • Corson, C., N. Gray, L. Campbell, and P. Wilshusen. 2019. Assembling Global Conservation Governance. Geoforum. 103: 56-65. doi: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.03.012
  • Gray, N., C. Corson, L. Campbell, P. Wilshusen, R. Gruby and S. Hagerman. 2019. Doing Strong Collaborative Fieldwork in Human Geography. Geographical Review. doi: 10.1111/gere.12352
  • Corson, C. 2018. Corridors of Power: Assembling U.S. Environmental Foreign Aid. Antipodedoi: 10.1111/anti.12479
  • Corson, C. 2017. A History of Conservation Politics in Madagascar. Madagascar Conservation and Development 12(1): http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/mcd.v12|1.4
  • Büscher, B., R. Fletcher, D. Brockington, C. Sandbrook, B. Adams, L. Campbell, C. Corson, W. Dressler, R. Duffy, N. Gray, G. Holmes, A. Kelly, E. Lunstrum, M. Ramutsindela, K. Shanker. Doing Whole Earth Justice: reply to Cafaro et al. Oryx. doi: 10.1017/S0030605317000278
  • Büscher, B., R. Fletcher, D. Brockington, C. Sandbrook, B. Adams, L. Campbell, C. Corson, W. Dressler, R. Duffy, N. Gray, G. Holmes, A. Kelly, E. Lunstrum, M. Ramutsindela, K. Shanker. Half-Earth or Whole Earth? Radical Ideas for Conservation and their Implications. Oryx 51(3): 407-410.
  • Corson, C. and K. MacDonald. 2015. Enclosing the Global Commons: The Convention on Biological Diversity andGreen Grabbing. Reprinted in the Special Virtual Issue in celebration of the 40th Anniversary of The Journal of Peasant Studies on “Greening Agrarian Studies” http://explore.tandfonline.com/page/bes/fjps-agrarian
  • Corson, C., Brady, A. Zuber, J. Lord and A. Kim. 2015. The Right to Resist: Subordinating Civil Society at Rio+20. in Land Grabbing and Political Reactions from Below, eds. Edelman, M., R. Hall, I. Scoones, B. White and W. Wolford. Routledge
  • Corson, C., Brady, A. Zuber, J. Lord and A. Kim. 2015. The Right to Resist: Subordinating Civil Society at Rio+20. Journal of Peasant Studies 42(3-4): 859-878
  • Wang, Y. and C. Corson. 2015. “The Making of a Pro-Poor Carbon Credit: Clean Cookstoves and ‘Uncooperative’ Women in Western Kenya” and Planning A 47(10); 2064-2079
  • Corson, C., Gruby, R. Witter, S. Hagermann, D. Suarez, S. Greenburg, M. Bourque, N. Gray, and L.M. Campbell. 2014. “Everyone’s Solution? Defining and Re-defining Protected Areas in the Convention on Biological Diversity.” Conservation and Society 12(2): 71-83
  • Corson, C., K. Macdonald, and L.M. Campbell. 2014. “Capturing the Personal in Politics: Ethnographies of Global Environmental Governance.” Global Env. Politics 14(3): 21-40
  • Campbell, L.M., C. Corson, N.J. Gray, K.I. MacDonald and J. P. Brosius. 2014. “Collaborative Event Ethnography at the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity.” Global Environmental Politics 14(3): 1-20
  • MacDonald, K. and C. Corson. 2014. “Orchestrating Nature: Ethnographies of Nature™ Inc.” in Nature™ Inc,: New Frontiers of Environmental Conservation in the Neoliberal Age, eds. B. Buscher, W. Dressler and R. Fletcher. University of Arizona Press
  • Corson, C. 2014. “Conservation Politics in Madagascar: The Expansion of Protected Areas.” Chapter 9, pp. 193-215 in Conservation and Environmental Management in Madagascar, ed. I. Scales. Earthscan Publishing
  • Corson, C. Macdonald, and B. Neimark. 2013. “Introduction to Special Issue: Grabbing ‘Green:’ Markets, Environmental Governance and the Materialization of Natural Capital.” Human Geography 6(1): 1-15
  • Suarez, D. and C. Corson. 2013. “Seizing Center Stage: Ecosystem Services, Live, at the Convention on Biological Diversity!” Human Geography 6(1): 64-79
  • Corson, C. and K. MacDonald. 2013. “Enclosing the Global Commons: The Convention on Biological Diversity and Green Grabbing.” in Green Grabbing: A New Appropriation of Nature, J. Fairhead, M. Leach, and I. Scoones. Routledge
  • Corson, C. and K. MacDonald. 2012. “Enclosing the Global Commons: The Convention on Biological Diversity and Green Grabbing.” Journal of Peasant Studies 39(2): 263-283
  • MacDonald, K. and C. Corson. 2012. “‘TEEB Begins Now’: A Virtual Moment in the Production of Natural Capital.” Development and Change 43(1): 159-184
  • Corson, C. 2012. “From Rhetoric to Practice: How High Profile Politics Impeded Community Consultation in Madagascar’s New Protected Areas.” Society and Nat. Res. 25(4): 336-351
  • Hagerman, S., R. Witter, C. Corson, Maclin. D. Suarez, M. Bourque and L.M. Campbell. 2012. On the Coattails of Climate? Biodiversity Conservation and the Utility of a Warming Earth. Global Environmental Change 22: 724-735
  • Corson, C. 2012. “Territorialization, Enclosure and Neoliberalism: Non-State Influence in Struggles over Madagascar’s Forests,” in New Frontiers of Land Control, N. Peluso and C. Lund. Routledge
  • Corson, C. 2011. “Territorialization, Enclosure and Neoliberalism: Non-State Influence in Struggles over Madagascar’s Forests.” Journal of Peasant Studies 38(4):703-726
  • Corson, C. 2011. “Shifting Environmental Governance in a Neoliberal World: U.S. AID for Conservation.” In Capitalism and Conservation. D. Brockington and R Duffy. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell
  • Gorenflo, L., C. Corson, K. Chomitz, G. Harper, M. Honzák, and B. Özler. 2011. “Exploring the Association between People and Deforestation in Madagascar.” in Human Population: Its Influences on Biological Diversity. eds. R. Cincotta and L. Gorenflo. Berlin: Springer
  • Corson, C. 2010. “Shifting Environmental Governance in a Neoliberal World: U.S. AID for Conservation,” Antipode 42(3): 576-602