2005 John Phillips Award Recipient
Citation for Thayer Scudder '48
Awarded at assembly on October 11, 2005
Thayer Scudder—At one time in your life, you
imagined you would become a mountaineer in the Arctic.
Instead, you have spent more than half a century in
Africa, Asia and the Middle East studying socioeconomic
issues surrounding large-scale water resource development
projects. Your research and influence have resulted
in millions of displaced people achieving a better
standard of living.
Exeter played an important role in this journey,
for it was here that you developed many of the interests
and skills that led toward your vocation. You followed
your brother to Exeter on a scholarship in 1944. During
four years here, you discovered biology under the
inspired teaching of Richmond Mayo-Smith, and pursued
ornithology and mountain climbing in the company of
fellow student and faculty enthusiasts. You were the
first president of the Academy’s mountaineering
club, and you captained a New England Championship
cross country team. Through these and other activities,
you developed the confidence and the inclination to
build a life around your interests.
You then graduated cum laude from Harvard with a
degree in general studies and a great deal more mountain
climbing experience, but circumstances scuttled your
plans for a job at the Arctic Institute. You began
studying Africa first during a year as a special student
at the Yale Divinity School and then as part of a
doctoral program in social anthropology at Harvard.
In 1956, anthropologist Elizabeth Colson invited you
to help conduct a benchmark field study in Northern
Rhodesia where a dam on the Zambezi River would necessitate
relocating 57,000 Gwembe Tonga people about whom little
was known. Thus you began the project that would shape
your career. During a one-year period, you traveled
extensively, living in and observing villages, mapping
fields and kinship systems, studying agricultural
practices and collecting and identifying the wild
food plants that local populations used. Using scientific
methods, you captured important information about
a way of life that might be lost by the forced relocation.
You returned to the region in 1962 for a follow-up
study that continues to this day. It is the most systematic
long-term study in Africa extant and one of the top
long-term anthropological studies in the world, and
it laid the groundwork for more successful resettlement
projects in the future.
Following post-doctoral work in African studies,
anthropology and ecology at the London School of Economics
and a post at the American University in Cairo, you
joined the faculty at the California Institute of
Technology and continued to study the impact of dams
on the communities that must make way for them. Over
time, your focus expanded from science to include
policy and the alleviation of poverty. You believe
large dams are a flawed but necessary development
option for the immediate future. At least 80 million
people worldwide have been forcibly relocated as the
result of dams being built, and most have been impoverished
as a result. After 40 years of research and progress,
you are hopeful that large dams can, if well managed,
have a positive impact on resettled communities.
Much of your career has been devoted to making this
a reality. Indeed, the participatory resettlement
model you developed with Dr. Colson is considered
a benchmark and a standard against which other approaches
are measured. As a frequent consultant for the World
Bank and other organizations that evaluate the feasibility
of dams, you have used your expertise and your reputation
as a scientist to influence resettlement policies
on at least half of the largest mega dams built in
the last 20 years. On the strength of your achievements,
in 1997 you were named one of 12 international commissioners
on the World Commission on Dams, a two-year project
to undertake a global review of large dams and hydropower
projects, to examine alternatives, and to formulate
guidelines and criteria for future water resource
development.
Ted, you are recognized as an expert without peer
and a voice of hope, reason and compassion at the
often troubled intersection of economy and human ecology.
Among the awards you have received from professional
organizations is the Bronislaw Malinowski Award for
lifetime commitment to the application of social sciences
to contemporary issues, which you received in 1999.
It is no surprise that you have dedicated your recent
book, The Future of Large Dams, to the tens
of millions of people who have been unfairly impoverished
by large dams. In honor of the spirit of non sibi
that has characterized your pursuit of knowledge and
your application of it to improve the lives of poor
and disenfranchised people, we are pleased to present
you with the 2005 John Phillips Award.
Read Ted Scudder's
remarks
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