Western Professor Travels to Nicaragua to Study the Complex Web of City Life

By Alexander Van Valkenburgh, Office of Communications and Marketing Intern

Cities are complex. Interwoven webs connect each aspect of a city to others, and together
they form something that somehow functions as a society.

But, how does it all work?

Josh Fisher, an associate professor of Anthropology at Western, is figuring that out. He is

researching city environments to find out how pulling on the string of one part of the web affects
the others.

“What we find is that instead of focusing solely on water for instance, or food, or
education, all of these things are actually interconnected,” Fisher said. “If you want to improve
the aesthetics of a city, for example, then you also have to improve environmental education and
and waste collection.”

Eight times a year, Fisher flies south to Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua to do research, lead
workshops, and conduct follow-up interviews with participants. He has been running the
workshops for the past two years, and has been traveling to Ciudad Sandino for the past 16 years.

“Basically anytime we are on a break -- spring break, winter break, whatever -- I am

down there,” he said.

Fisher and his co-researcher Alex Nading of Brown University are funded by the
National Science Foundation and work with the Foundation for Sustainable Development a local
NGO in Ciudad Sandino. The workshops they put together bring individuals together from
different parts of the city. These people could be food producers, teachers, government
bureaucrats, sanitation workers or garbage pickers -- people who make a living by sorting
through the city dump. Fisher said the purpose of the workshop is to understand how these social
dynamics from different parts of the city link together.

“What’s interesting about that is that in many cases these are government bureaucrats
who make decisions about everybody’s lives; for instance, they often have never spoken to a
garbage worker,” Fisher said. “So they make decisions that affect these people’s lives, but have
never actually engaged with or understood what these people’s lives are.”
 Cities are intricate nets made up of thousands of links. He says that through their research
they are creating a transferable system that shines light on these networks. When their research is
complete, the evaluation system they are creating will be able to be packed up and used to test
other cities with the same kind of questions. Fisher said he developed parts of his research
methodology by taking student engagement methods taught to faculty at Western and retooling
them to be used in his research.

Fisher traveled to Nicaragua in June to bear witness to the political strife, but he was not
able to conduct the scheduled workshop due to ongoing conflict that ignited in April. Bringing
40 people together for a workshop could have been viewed the wrong way. Fisher said he is not
worried about the delay, has rescheduled the trip for August.

“As an anthropologist you don’t get to create a lab space in order to do this kind of thing.
So when things happen, they happen,” he said. “We want to understand how the world works,
and this is the world. What we have actually found is that many of the questions we have been
raising for two years have come into sharp focus with these events.”

Others are viewing his research with interest as well; on Sept. 17`, Fisher will travel to
Cambridge University for a presentation and discussion of his and Nading’s findings. After
presenting at Cambridge University, he will attend the annual Association of Social
Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth’s conference at Oxford University

And when the unrest in Nicaragua cools down, he said he hopes that they can continue
their research in Ciudad Sandino, and find out more about how all cities can grow and thrive.

For more information on Fisher’s research in Nicaragua, contact him at

Josh.fisher@wwu.edu.