Relevant research projects I have been involved in: Envisioning emergent environments: negotiating science & resource use in rural communities (ESRC) 2017-18 Belize is a small country on the Caribbean coast of Central America, currently addressing the challenge of developing effective policies to manage its vulnerability to environmental hazards. As part of efforts towards sustainable development goals, governmental and non-governmental bodies are undertaking data-led 'watershed management' projects to assess and manage not only water but also land, ecosystem and human aspects of resource stewardship. Belize's history of rural development and conservation interventions involves legacies of colonialism, indigenous land rights struggles, territorial disputes and past failed projects. Given this context, my research examines what contemporary watershed management interventions mean and entail for rural residents whose lives and livelihoods depend on the environments in question. Using methods and theoretical tools from anthropology, science & technology studies, and political ecology, the analysis traces interactions between rural residents and the scientists, government representatives, land developers, NGOs and civil society organisations with whom they negotiate environmental knowledge. The study examines the processes of translation and participation that may or may not occur during scientific environmental assessments and management interventions. It asks whether emerging technologies and scientific practices including remote data collection and 'citizen science' raise new challenges and/or opportunities for effective and equitable human-environment engagements in small developing countries. The ultimate aim is to advance original understandings of how tensions between different ways of knowing and valuing environments can generate new social and environmental outcomes. The Usability of Forecasts (Oxford Martin School, NERC) This programme of interdisciplinary research involved working with physicists and hydrologists to better understand the socio-technical dimensions of production, circulation and use (or non-use) of probabilistic weather and climate forecasts for resource and hazard management. I worked on case studies of drought modelling and management in the UK, and weather/climate forecasting for water management and agriculture in Belize. My study of weather and climate knowledge for water security in Turkana, Kenya is also related to this body of work. This research has been funded by the Oxford Martin Programme on Resource Stewardship (OMPORS), and the NERC-funded project Improving Predictions of Drought for User Decision-Making (IMPETUS) REACH: Improving Water Security for the Poor (DfID) As part of a large multi-disciplinary research project, I collaborated with colleagues at the University of Nairobi to investigate the roles of information, infrastructures and institutions for water security and drought preparedness/response. The focus was on small towns in fragile environments (case study of Lodwar, Turkana County) An Ecology of Politics: Environment, sociality and development in southern Belize (ESRC) This project addressed relationships between ecology and politics that have proved hard to pin down in studies of environment and development, and related policy responses. By exploring the mutual constitution of resources and meanings in rural southern Belize, it examined resource-related issues, focussing on how local people perceive and engage with decision-making over highway construction, electricity provision, community forestry and the disputed national border, in a sensitive political climate in which the nation-state, indigenous groups and others are urgently debating land security within broader contestations of marginality and modernity. Proposals for a new international highway refracted many hopes and fears. Understanding the associated interactions, border processes and negotiations – comprising what I envision as an ecology of politics - can underpin a more nuanced, contextualized approach to studies of environment, sociality and development. List of publications: Journal articles & book chapters Di Giminiani, P. & Haines, S. 2020 Introduction: Translating environments. Ethnos 85(1):1-16 https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2018.1542409 (free access) Haines, S. 2019 Reckoning resources: political lives of anticipation in Belize’s water sector. Science & Technology Studies 30(4):97-118 https://doi.org/10.23987/sts.64650 (open access) Haines, S. 2019 Managing expectations: articulating expertise in climate services for agriculture in Belize. Climatic Change 157(1):43-59 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-018-2357-1 (open access) Taddei RR & Haines S 2019 When climatologists meet social scientists: ethnographic speculations around interdisciplinary equivocations, Sociologias 21(51):186-209 (simultaneously published in Portuguese) http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/15174522-0215107 (open access) Haines, S. 2018. Imagining the highway: anticipating infrastructural and environmental change in Belize. Ethnos, 83(2): 392-413 https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2017.1282974 (open access) Lopez, A. & Haines, S. 2017. Exploring the usability of probabilistic weather forecasts for water resources decision-making in the United Kingdom. Weather, Climate, & Society, 9(4):701-715 (open access) Haines, S. 2012. Meaningful resources & resource-full meanings: spatial and political imaginaries in southern Belize. In M. Janowski & T. Ingold (eds) Imagining Landscapes: Past, Present & Future. Ashgate. Pp 97-120 Edited collections Haines, S. & Di Giminiani, P. (eds) 2020. Translating environments: translation and indeterminacy in the making of natural resources. Ethnos 85(1) https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/retn20/85/1 Working papers, reports & reviews Haines S, Cano A, Hislop A & Williams T 2019. Water: environmental knowledge and rural life in Belize. Report of a multi-stakeholder workshop. Working paper: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/pubs:980210 (free access) Haines, S., Imana, C. A., Opondo, M., Ouma, G. & Rayner, S. 2017. Weather and climate knowledge for water security: Institutional roles and relationships in Turkana. REACH Working Paper 5, University of Oxford. http://reachwater.org.uk/resource/weather-climate-knowledge-water-securi... (free access) Haines, S. 2016. An anthropological perspective on scientific predictions for water decision-making. In N. Encalada et al. (Eds.), Research Reports in Belizean History & Anthropology 4, 97-103. Belize: NICH
