Environmental anthropology, waste, material culture, science and technology, urban studies, development, China.
Amy Zhang
Assistant Professor
Amy Zhang is an anthropologist and political ecologist whose research investigates environment, technology, labor, and urban life. Her first book Circular Ecologies: Environmentalism and Waste Politics in Urban China (forthcoming Stanford University Press), is a study of the implementation of technologies and infrastructures to modernize a mega-city's waste management system, and the grassroots ecological politics that emerged. Based on long-term research in Guangzhou, Circular Ecologies traces ecological experiments in the early 2010s, in which Chinese policy makers came to waste management as an issue of environmental governance central to the creation of “modern” cities. In Guangzhou, waste’s transformation revealed uncomfortable truths about China’s approach to the environment: a preference for technology over labor, the aestheticization of order, and the expropriation of value in service of an ecological vision. At the same time, waste provoked an unlikely political coalition of urban communities, from the middle class to migrant workers, that came to constitute a nascent, bottom-up environmental politics.
Articles based on this research appear in Current Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Science Technology & Human Values (forthcoming), Made in China, China Perspectives, Global Environment as well edited volumes such as Can Science and Technology save China?, Handbook of Political Ecology, among others. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (Canada). Prior to joining NYU, she was the An Wang Postdoctoral fellow in Environmental Humanities at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University.
Ph.D. 2016 Joint Degree in Anthropology and School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University
M.A. Globalization Studies, McMaster University
BA (Honors) English Literature, Simon Fraser University
Fellowships, Awards & Grants
2022 The Golden Dozen Teaching Award (NYU)
2022 The Goddard Junior Faculty Fellowship (NYU)
2021 Wenner-Gren "Collaborative Ecologies" Mini-Grant
2021 NYU Climate Change Initiative: Climate Research Seed Grant
2021 NYU FAS First Book Workshop Program
2020 Junior Scholar Award Anthropology & Environment Society American Anthropological Association
2016 Roy Rappaport Prize: Best Student Paper Anthropology & Environment Society American Anthropological Association
2014 - 2016 Yale University East Asian Studies Prize Fellowship for Dissertation Writing
2012 - 2013 Social Science Research Council (SSRC) – International Dissertation Research Fellowship
2012 - 2013 National Science Foundation (NSF) – Cultural Anthropology and Science, Technology and Society Programs Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant
2012 - 2013 Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Dissertation Fieldwork Grant
2012 - 2013 Wenner-Gren Foundation Osmundsen Initiative, Dissertation Fieldwork Grant
2009 - 2013 Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) – Doctoral Fellowship
Selected Publications
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Forthcoming. “Spectacular Technology, Invisible Harms: Witnessing Techno-science on Waste Tours in China.”Science Technology & Human Values.
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Global Environment. 16 (2). 222-257. Special Issue. “Irritations and Unforeseen Consequences of the Urban: Debating Natures, Politics and Timescapes.
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Current Anthropology 62(S24): S298- S310. Special Issue "Cultures of Fermentation."
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Cultural Anthropology 35(1):74–103.*Junior Scholars Award (2020), Roy Rappaport Prize (2016), Anthropology & Environment Society, American Anthropology Association.
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*Reprinted in 2023. Sustaining Natures: An Environmental Anthropology Reader.Edited by Sarah R. Osterhoudt and K. Sivaramakrishnan. University of Washington Press.
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2020 "The Black Soldier Fly: An indigenous innovation for waste management in Guangzhou.”Can Science and Technology Save China? Edited by Greenhalgh, Susan and Zhang, Li. Cornell University Press, 163-183.
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Made in China Journal. Under Construction: Visions of Chinese Infrastructure. Vol 4. Issue 2. Apr-Jun. 98-102.
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Theorizing the Contemporary. Cultural Anthropology.
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2016 Hebdon C., M. Lennon, F. Ludlow, A. Zhang and M.R. Dove. "Pedagogies of Climate Change"in Anthropology and Climate Change: From Actions to Transformations. 2nd Edition. Ed. Susan A. Crate and Mark Nuttall. Routledge, 388-398.
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2015 Claus, A., S. Osterhoudt, L. Baker, L. Cortesi, C. Hebdon, A. Zhang and M. Dove. "Disaster, Degradation, Dystopia: Political Ecologies & Epistemologies of Disasters."Handbook of Political Ecology, R. Bryant and S. Kim, eds. Edward Elgar Publishing, 291-304.
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China Perspectives2014(2): 45-52. Special feature: “Contested Urban Spaces: Whose right to the city?”
Updated July 2017
In the upcoming year, in addition to preparing my book manuscript and articles, I will be working on a project to examine the ecology of the scraps sector in southern China. In addition, I will conduct a collaborative project with visual artists and other scholars on a scrap yard in Philadelphia.
Contact Information
Amy Zhang
Assistant Professor amyzhang@nyu.edu 25 Waverly PlaceNew York, NY 10003
Office Hours: M 4:30pm-5:30pm or by appointment