Eric Thrift

Title: Faculty Member
Phone: 204.786.9716
Office: 4CM16
Building: Centennial Hall
Email: e.thrift@uwinnipeg.ca

Biography:

Eric Thrift is a socio-cultural anthropologist whose interests include environmental governance, social-ecological resilience, and the role of cultural diversity in development. Eric initially became involved in culture and development policy research while serving as a VSO volunteer at the Mongolian University of Arts and Culture. Inspired by his colleagues’ attempts to renegotiate cultural identities and Indigenous development trajectories in the post-socialist period, Eric contributed to a wide range of local and internationally-led projects in Mongolia, including the preparation of nomination dossiers and site management plans for Mongolia’s first UNESCO World Heritage Sites and intangible heritage properties.

Eric's ongoing research addresses mobile pastoralists’ ability to accommodate social and ecological change and uncertainty. By investigating the ways that small-scale adaptive practices are affected by governance policies or development interventions, this research engages practitioners and policymakers in promoting social-ecological resilience, biocultural diversity, and well-being as governable development goals.

Eric also works to promote the applications of collaborative ethnographic research in development practice and public discourse. Since 2011, Eric and his collaborators have produced over 100 hours of audiovisual records documenting resilient local knowledge and practices among mobile pastoralists in Inner Asia, partly in an effort to address knowledge gaps in current policy research. As curator of the Mongolian Digital Ethnography Archive, affiliated with the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit at the University of Cambridge, Eric has been contributing to the development of software tools, guidelines, and standards for collecting and appropriately sharing open ethnographic research.

Currently, Eric is working with Mongolian goat herders and other stakeholders to investigate how diverse understandings of "sustainability" come into conflict in the global commodity chain for cashmere.

Courses:

ANTH-1002 (3) Introductory Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics
ANTH-2100 (3) Method and Theory in Cultural Anthropology
ANTH-3100 (3) History of Anthropology
ANTH-3125 (3) Ethnographic Research Methods
ANTH-3133 (3) Public Anthropology
ANTH-3160 (3) Cultural Perspectives on Global Processes
ANTH-4100 (3) History of Anthropology

Publications:

Edited by Eric Thrift, Madu Galappaththi, Ratana Chuenpagdee, Raktima Ghosh, Wae Win Khaing, Mahfuzar Rahman, and Derek Johnson. 2023. Dried Fish Matters: Exploring the Social Economy of Dried Fish.. St John’s: TBTI Global.

Eric Thrift. 2023. “Dried Fish as Sustainable Gastronomy: A Semantic Analysis of Ræstur Fiskur”. In Dried Fish Matters: Exploring the Social Economy of Dried Fish. Edited by Eric Thrift et al. St John’s: TBTI Global,. pp. 351-405.

Eric Thrift. 2023. “Computer-assisted Research and the Construction of a ‘Dried Fish Literature’”. In Dried Fish Matters: Exploring the Social Economy of Dried Fish. Edited by Eric Thrift et al. St John’s: TBTI Global. pp. 433-463.

Eric Thrift. 2023 Reflections on Knowledge Co-construction in the Dried Fish Matters Project”. In Dried Fish Matters: Exploring the Social Economy of Dried Fish. Edited by Eric Thrift et al. St John’s: TBTI Global. pp. 407-410.

Eric Thrift and Derek Johnson. 2023. “Synthesis: Learning about Dried Fish”. In Dried Fish Matters: Exploring the Social Economy of Dried Fish. Edited by Eric Thrift et al. St John’s: TBTI Global. pp. 475-489.

Gayathri Lokuge, Madu Galappaththi, Mostafa Hossain, Nikita Gopal, and Eric Thrift. 2023. “Tastes and Smells of Dried Fish”. In Dried Fish Matters: Exploring the Social Economy of Dried Fish. Edited by Eric Thrift et al. St John’s: TBTI Global. pp. 411- 419.

Nireka Weeratunge and Eric Thrift. 2023. Dried Fish Stories: Reflections on Visualizing Social Economies of Dried Fish in the Time of COVID. In Dried Fish Matters: Exploring the Social Economy of Dried Fish. Edited by Eric Thrift et al. St John’s: TBTI Global. pp. 420-432.

Pagmadulam Mendmaa, Byambabaatar Ichinkhorloo, and Eric Thrift. 2023 “Тогтвортой ноолуур: ёс зүйг тайлах нь” судалгаа: Ноолуурын салбарын монгол хэлээрх судлагдсан байдлын тойм [Untangling the ethics of sustainable cashmere: A review of cashmere research in Mongolia].Ulaanbaatar: International Institute for the Study of Nomadic Civilizations.

Narantsatsral Khangaisaikhan and Eric Thrift. 2023. Монгол улсад ноолуурын салбрыг хөгжүүлэх чиглэлд төрөөс хэрэгжүүлж буй бодлого, эрх зүйн орчны тойм лавлагаа. [Review of legislative and policy measures concerning the development of Mongolia’s cashmere sector]. Ulaanbaatar: Culture and Development Research Centre.

Thrift, Eric. 2022. “Монголын нүүдлийн соёл ба тогтвортой бүтээгдэхүүний стандарт (тогтвортой ноолуурын жишээн дээр) [Mongolian nomadic culture and sustainable product standards: The case of ‘sustainable cashmere’].” Nomadic Studies 29, 235-243.

Belton, Ben, Derek S. Johnson, Eric Thrift, Jonah Olsen, Mostafa Ali Reza Hossain, and Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted. 2022. "Dried fish at the intersection of food science, economy, and culture: A global survey." Fish and Fisheries 23 (4), 941-962.

Thrift, Eric. 2020. Odea – Ethnographic Archives Toolkit, v1.0a. https://github.com/mcdrc/odea; documentation at https://odea.readthedocs.io/.

Thrift, Eric. 2020. Zotero meta-analysis toolkit, v1.0. https://github.com/DriedFishMatters/zotero-meta-analysis-toolkit.

Kalaba, Racheal and Eric Thrift. 2020. Literature Review: Dried Fish in Africa. Dried Fish Matters Working Papers. (83 pages)

Ichinkhorloo, Byambabaatar and Eric Thrift. 2015. “Who eats quality meat? Consumers and the national meat reserves program in Mongolia”. Health Environment 1(1), 1–15.

Thrift, Eric and Byambabaatar Ichinkhorloo. 2015. “Management of dzud risk in Mongolia: Mutual aid and institutional interventions”. In Building Resilience of Mongolian Rangelands , ME Fernandez-Gimenez, SR Fassnacht, and D Wilson, eds., Colorado State University / Mongolian Rangelands and Resilience Project, 136–141.

Thrift, Eric. 2015. “‘Pure Milk’: Dairy production and the discourse of ethnic purity in Mongolia”. Asian Ethnicity 15(4), Special Issue, “Mongolia: Civilization, Nationality, and Ethnicity”, 492–513.

Thrift, Eric D. and Khangaisaikhan Khuren-Alag. 2012.“Adaptive capacity and extensive livestock production in the Mongolian agricultural sector”. In Priroda i sel’skokhozyaistvennaya deyatel’nost’ cheloveka [Nature and Human Agricultural Activity] , vol. II, Irkutsk: Irkutsk State Agricultural Academy, 121–129.