Associate Professor, Anthropology
Geographical areas of specialization
Madagascar; Africa; Indian Ocean; Northern Iraq; Kurdistan region; United States
Research Interests
environmental anthropology; agrarian studies; agroforestry systems; political ecology; ethnobotany; commodities and trade; ethnographic writing; anthropology of knowledge; climate change; cultural and ecological resilience and restoration; sustainability
My research takes an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to study the relationships between people and the environment, especially in times of political, economic, and ecological disturbance. For nearly two decades, I have worked with smallholder vanilla, clove, and rice farmers in northeastern Madagascar, investigating how agroforestry landscapes support ecological diversity, political memory, and cultural meanings. I have also investigated how commodity boom and bust cycles affect local environmental, economic, and social relationships, including the increase in vigilante violence events. In my research and teaching, I connect ethnographic data with broader questions of sustainability and resilience, asking how societies can better cultivate sustainable and equitable landscapes moving forward.
Currently, I am examining the links between cultural and ecological resilience and restoration, especially in post-disaster and post-conflict contexts. As a component of this research, I am collaborating with colleagues at the University of Duhok in Northern Iraq to take a cultural-ecological approach to restoration in the wake of political violence. We are partnering with five ethno-linguistic minority groups in the region to help strengthen links between agrarian landscapes, plant knowledge, and cultural exchange. This project supports community gardens, local workshops on medicinal plants, trainings in the use of wild plants for eco-printing, and the documentation of recipes that use local wild plants in traditional dishes. I am also leading a pilot project in Nashville, Tennessee with Kurdish communities, to trace the connections between landscapes, migration, and a sense of belonging.
My research has been supported by organizations including the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Fulbright-Hays Program, the Lewis B. Cullman Foundation, the Yale Program in Agrarian Studies, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, and the Faculty Fellows program at Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University. I have been published in journals including the American Ethnologist, the Journal of Peasant Studies, Development and Change, and World Development. My first book, Vanilla Landscapes: Meaning, Memory and the Cultivation of Place in Madagascar, was published by the Economic Botany series of the New York Botanical Garden Press. In 2023, I co-edited with Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan the volume Sustaining Natures: An Environmental Anthropology Reader, published by the University of Washington Press.
Along with my academic research, in 2007 I co-founded an organization that partners with farmer cooperatives in Madagascar to foster more integrated and equitable agricultural supply chains. This organization has received support from USAID, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Catholic Relief Services (CRS), and the Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency (SIDA).
2023. Sustaining Natures: An Environmental Anthropology Reader. Co-edited with K. Sivaramakrishnan. Culture, Place and Nature Series, University of Washington Press. https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295751450/sustaining-natures/
2017. Vanilla Landscapes: Meaning, Memory and the Cultivation of Place in Madagascar. Advances in Economic Botany Series, New York Botanical Garden Press.
2024 Osterhoudt, Sarah, Kate Eddens, Zubeida S. Abdulkhaliq, Remonda Eshaya Armia, Honar Safar Mahdi, Ahmed Mahmood, and Hassan Muhamed. The Role of Wild Plants in Cultural Restoration: Community Collaboration and Engaged Ethnobotany in the Nineveh Plain, Northern Iraq. Economic Botany (2024): 1—17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-024-09607-z
2023 Osterhoudt, Sarah. ‘Good’ Forests and Ambiguous Fields: Cultural Dimensions of Agroforestry Landscapes. In: Perceptions and Representations of the Malagasy Environment Across Cultures, eds. Gwyn Campbell, Jacques Pollini, and Caroline Seagle. Palgrave Macmillan, Series in Indian Ocean World Studies.
2021 Osterhoudt, Sarah. Bright spot ethnography: On the analytical potential of things that work. The Arrow Journal 8(1): 33 – 47.
2020 Osterhoudt, Sarah. Nobody Wants to Kill: Economies of affect and violence in Madagascar’s vanilla boom. American Ethnologist 47(3): 249-263. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12911
2020 Osterhoudt, Sarah, Dana Graef, Alder Keleman Saxena, Shaila Seshia Galvin, and Michael Dove. Chains of Meaning: Crops, Commodities, and the Spaces in-between. World Development 135 (November). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105070
2019 Neimark, Benjamin, Sarah Osterhoudt, Lloyd Blum and Tim Healy. Mob Justice and ‘The Civilized Commodity.’ Journal of Peasant Studies (December 2019): 1 – 20. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2019.1680543
2019 Neimark, Benjamin, Sarah Osterhoudt, Hayley Alter, and Adrian Gradinar. A New Sustainability Model for Measuring Changes in Power and Access in Global Commodity Chains: Through a Smallholder Lens. Palgrave Communications 5(1): 1—11. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-018-0199-0
2018 Osterhoudt, Sarah. Community conservation and the (Mis)appropriation of taboo. Development and Change 49(5): 1248-1267. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12413
2018 Osterhoudt, Sarah. Remembered Resilience: Oral History Narratives and Community Resilience in Agroforestry Systems. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, special issue: Agriculture, Food Systems, and Climate Change. 33(3): 252-255. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742170517000679
2018 Osterhoudt, Sarah. Land of no taboo: The agrarian politics of neglect and care in Madagascar. Journal of Peasant Studies 45(7): 1297-1313. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2017.1337001
2016 Osterhoudt, Sarah. Written with seed: The political ecology of memory in Madagascar. Journal of Political Ecology 23(1): 263-278. https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/JPE/article/view/20215
2015 Claus, Catherine, Sarah Osterhoudt, Michael Dove, Lauren Baker, Luisa Cortesi, Chris Hebdon and Amy Zhang. Disaster, degradation, dystopia: A political ecology approach to disaster research. In: A Handbook of Political Ecology, eds. Raymond Bryant and Soyeun Kim. Edward Elgar Publishers. pp.291–304.
2013 Baker, Lauren, Michael Dove, Dana Graef, Alder Keleman, David Kneas, Sarah Osterhoudt, and Jeffrey Stoike. Whose diversity counts? The politics and paradoxes of modern diversity. Sustainability 5(6): 2495-2518. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su5062495
2012 Osterhoudt, Sarah. Sense and sensibilities: Negotiating meanings within agriculture in northeastern Madagascar. Ethnology 49(4): 283-301. http://ethnology.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/Ethnology/article/viewFile/6087/6295
2010 Osterhoudt, Sarah. The field as labyrinth: Exploring ethnographic practices through the works of Jorge Luis Borges. Anthropology Matters 12(1). https://anthropologymatters.com/index.php/anth_matters/article/viewFile/190/313
The College of Arts