Andrew P. Vayda

Andrew P. Vayda is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Ecology at Rutgers University and Senior Research Associate of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Bogor, Indonesia. Formerly a professor at Columbia University, he has taught also at the University of Indonesia and other Indonesian universities and at the University of British Columbia. He specializes in methodology and explanation at the interface between social and ecological science and has directed and participated in numerous research projects on people’s interactions with forests in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Currently he is taking part in a CIFOR research project on anthropogenic carbon emissions from Indonesian peatlands. He has published some hundred articles and several books, including, most recently, Explaining Human Actions and Environmental Changes, a selection of his essays on explanation and explanation-oriented research in the social sciences and human ecology, published by AltaMira Press in 2009, and Causal Explanation for Social Scientists: A Reader, co-edited by him and Bradley Walters, published by AltaMira Press in 2011. The journal, Human Ecology, was founded by him, and he was its editor for five years. He serves at present on the editorial boards of Anthropological Theory, Borneo Research Council Publications, Forests, and Human Ecology. A festschrift in his honor, Against the Grain: The Vayda Tradition in Human Ecology and Ecological Anthropology, with a concluding chapter by him on “Causal Explanation as a Research Goal,” was published in 2008 by AltaMira Press.

Work

His works include:

• Causal Explanation for Social Scientists: A Reader (with Bradley Walters, eds.), Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press. 2011 ISBN 978-0-7591-1325-1
• Explaining Human Actions and Environmental Changes, Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press. 2009 ISBN 978-0-7591-0323-8
• War in Ecological Perspective, New York: Plenum Press. 1976.
• Environment and Cultural Behavior, Garden City, NY: The Natural History Press. 1969
• Peoples and Cultures of the Pacific, Garden City, NY: The Natural History Press. 1968
• Maori Warfare, Wellington, NZ: Polynesian Society. 1960.

Graduate and PhD students

Past graduate and PhD students include:

• Kevin Flesher, Research Director, Centro de Estudos de Biodiversidade, Michelin Ecological Reserve, Ituberá, Brazil.
• Bonnie J. McCay, Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor, Rutgers University.
• Christine Padoch, Director, Forests and Livelihoods Program, Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).
• Iwan Tjitradjaja, Head, Department of Anthropology, University of Indonesia.
• Bradley B. Walters, Professor of Geography & Environment at Mount Allison University (Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada), lead editor of Against the Grain and co-editor of Causal Explanation for Social Scientists: A Reader

See also

• Progressive contextualization