Dr Mette High
Reader
- Phone
- +44 (0)1334 461961
- mmh20@st-andrews.ac.uk
- Office
- Room 58
- Location
- United Colleges
- Office hours
- Wednesday 1pm?3pm
Biography
Mette High?s field research is in Mongolia and the United States, where she focuses on questions of ethics and economic life.
High is currently on research leave directing a European Research Council funded project: "The Ethics of Oil: Finance Moralities and Environmental Politics in the Global Oil Economy (ENERGY ETHICS)". Based on multiple ethnographic studies across the world, this 5-year research project considers how people in the oil economy make financial and ethical valuations of oil. As this project brings an anthropological sensitivity to issues of money, energy and climate change, its ambition is to provide a novel framework for investigating how oil valuations relate to political reforms and new climate economic initiatives.
Prior to this project, High was funded by the Leverhulme Trust to carry out a 3-year research project in the state of Colorado, USA. Building on her theoretical interest in ethical sensibilities and economic transformations in resource extraction, she examined how oil and gas company workers perceived the risks and possibilities involved when applying the technology of ?hydraulic fracturing?. Her fieldwork with on-site crew and executives in company headquarters informed her interest in topics such as energy industries, commodity markets and global finance, calculation and risk.
Before shifting her ethnographic focus to the United States, High pursued a research project on the involvement of Buddhist monks in a country-wide gold rush in Mongolia. Funded by the British Academy, she carried out ethnographic fieldwork in monasteries near the mining camps. In this project, she examined the institutionalisation of religious practice and self-transformational ethics in the context of a booming gold mining industry and drastic political reform.
For her study of the Mongolian gold rush, specifically the relationship between fundamental taboos related to the land and its spirits, she received her PhD in social anthropology from University of Cambridge in 2008.
Underlying all her research projects, where money, metals and energy travel far beyond national borders, is a keen and ongoing desire to understand how global economic processes intersect with intimate moral views. In addition to her academic publications, she also explores these issues in collaborations with artists and film makers as well as in her work as a committee member of the UK Future Earth.
Teaching
Teaching
SA1002 ? Section ?Oil and Economic Life?
SA2001 ? Section ?New Turns?
SA2002 - Section 'Virtual Worlds'
SA3065 ? Anthropology of Economic Life
SA5011 ? Introduction to Anthropological Theory
Research areas
Mongolia, USA, extractive industries, economic transformations, energy and climate change, wealth and value, Buddhism and Christianity, ethics and cosmology.
PhD supervision
- Roujing Wu
- Anna Rauter
- David Humphrey
- Sarah O'Brien
Selected publications
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Introduction: the ethical constitution of energy dilemmas
High, M. M. & Smith, J. M., Apr 2019, In : Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 25, S1, p. 9-28Research output: Contribution to journal ? Article
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Projects of devotion: Energy exploration and moral ambition in the cosmoeconomy of oil and gas in the Western United States
High, M. M., Apr 2019, In : Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 25, S1, p. 29-46Research output: Contribution to journal ? Article
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A question of ethics: the creative orthodoxy of Buddhist monks in the Mongolian gold rush
High, M. M., 2018, In : Ethnos. 83, 1, p. 80-99 20 p.Research output: Contribution to journal ? Article
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Exploring the anthropology of energy: ethnography, energy and ethics
Smith, J. & High, M., Aug 2017, In : Energy Research and Social Science. 30, p. 1-6Research output: Contribution to journal ? Article
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Fear and fortune: spirit worlds and emerging economies in the Mongolian gold rush
High, M. M., 9 May 2017, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. 180 p.Research output: Book/Report ? Book
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Human predation and animal sociality: the transformational agency of ?wolf people? in Mongolia
High, M. M., 14 Nov 2016, Anthropology and Cryptozoology: Exploring Encounters with Mysterious Creatures. Hurn, S. (ed.). Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, p. 107-119 13 p. (Multispecies Encounters).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding ? Chapter
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Gold mining in Mongolia
High, M. M., 2014, Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Selin, H. (ed.). SpringerResearch output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding ? Entry for encyclopedia/dictionary
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Believing in spirits, doubting the cosmos: ethnographies of doubt
High, M., 30 Mar 2013, Ethnographies of Doubt: Faith and Uncertainty in Contemporary Societies. Pelkmans, M. (ed.). I. B. Tauris, (Library of Modern Religion; vol. 32).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding ? Chapter
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Cosmologies of freedom and Buddhist self-transformation in the Mongolian gold rush
High, M. M., 1 Dec 2013, In : Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 19, 4, p. 753-770 18 p.Research output: Contribution to journal ? Article
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Polluted money, polluted wealth: emerging regimes of value in the Mongolian gold rush
High, M. M., 1 Nov 2013, In : American Ethnologist. 40, 4, p. 676-688 13 p.Research output: Contribution to journal ? Article