Melanie Wiber
Dr. Melanie G. Wiber is an economic and legal anthropologist. She joined the University of New Brunswick in 1987 and was awarded Full Professor of Anthropology in 1995. UNB has granted Dr. Wiber two Merit Awards (1998, 2006) and a Research Professorship (2003). In 2019, she was awarded Professor Emerita.
Dr. Wiber’s research has focused on natural resource management, gender, local ecological knowledge, risk assessment and property theory. She has worked in the Philippines, Borneo and Canada on diverse resources that support farming and fishing communities.
Dr. Wiber has received both national and international research funding. She has been a regular visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany where she has collaborated on a number of book projects. She was co-applicant on the Coastal CURA (Community and University Research Alliance), funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), where she collaborated with Dr. Tony Charles (SMU) and other team members, on integrated coastal management. She led a Working Group on the Socio-Economics of Integrated Management for the Oceans Management Research Network (OMRN) that was collaboratively funded by SSHRC and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). Under Project 1.1 of the Canadian Fisheries Research Network, funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) she worked with Robert Stephenson on integrated fisheries management. And she has also received numerous individual grants from SSHRC, the most recent focusing on risk assessment in coastal management. Since 2017, she has worked with community partners on oil spill preparation in the Bay of Fundy.
Her many publications have focused on property theory, including new forms of property rights in dairy and fishing quota, in genetics, and in cultural property, as well as community-based management and local ecological knowledge in the fisheries, and gender issues in human evolution imagery (see publications below).
Since 1999, she has served as an executive member for the International Commission on Legal Pluralism, has served as Commission Secretariat (2001-2006) and until recently was Editor for the Journal of Legal Pluralism.
Books, edited volumes
In Press Wiber, Melanie and Bertram Turner, eds. “Science and Technology Studies and Legal Pluralism”, Special Section prepared for Science, Technology and Human Values.
2014 Melanie Wiber co-editor with Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Martin Ramstedt. Temporality and the Law. Special issue of the Journal of Legal Pluralism 46(1) (new series).
2009 Bertram Turner and Melanie Wiber, guest editors. Paradoxical Conjunctions: Rural Property Transformations. Anthropologica 51(1). Special Thematic Section.
2007 Melanie Wiber and Chris Milley, guest editors. After Recognition: Implementing Special Rights in Natural Resource Management. Special issue of the Journal of Legal Pluralism 55.
2006 Franz and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Melanie Wiber, editors, The Changing Properties of Property. New York and Oxford: Berghan Press.
2006 Melanie Wiber and John Kearney, editors. Proceedings of the Workshop: Learning Communities as a Tool in Natural Resource Management. Halifax, Nova Scotia. November 4-6, 2005. Coady International Institute at St. Francis Xavier University.
1998 Melanie Wiber. Erect Men/Undulating Women: The Visual Imagery of Gender, Race and Progress in Reconstructive Illustrations of Human Evolution. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
1998 Melanie Wiber, editor. Proceedings of the XIIth International Symposium, Commission of Folk Law and Legal Pluralism, Williamsburg, U.S.A., July 26-August 1.
1996 Joep Spiertz and Melanie Wiber, editors. The Role of Law in Natural Resource Management. 's-Gravenhenge: Vuga Press.
1993 Melanie Wiber. Politics, Property and Law in the Philippine Uplands. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Book chapters
In Press Wiber, Melanie, Donna Curtis Maillet and Allain Barnett. Contributions of Ethnography of Science to Judicial Assessment of Environmental Expert Testimony: Case Study from Risk Assessment in the Marine Environment. Invited chapter for Anthropological Expertise in Legal Practice, edited by Marie-Claire Foblets and Maria Sapignoli, Law and Anthropology Series (Routledge).
2020 Bertram Turner and Melanie Wiber. Law, Science and Technologies. In The Oxford Handbook of Law and Anthropology. Edited by Marie-Claire Foblet, Mark Goodale, Maria Sapignoli, Olaf Zenker (Oxford). doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198840534.013.44.
2013 Melanie Wiber, Donna Curtis and Maria Recchia, Consultation and Integrated Coastal Management: The New Brunswick Aquaculture Site Allocation Policy. In Kieran O'Doherty and Keith Culver, eds., Fishing and Farming Iconic Species: Cod and Salmon and Social Issues in Genomic Science. Captus Press. Pp. 25-44.
2010 Melanie Wiber. Intellectual Property Rights and Food Security: the International Legal Battle Over Patenting Staple Crops. In Otto Hospes and Irene Hadiprayitno, editors, Governing Food Security: Laws, Politics and the Right to Food. Wageningen: Wageningen Academic Press. Pp. 273-294.
2009 Melanie Wiber and John Kearney. Learning Communities and Legal Spaces: Community-Based Fisheries Management in a Globalizing World. In F. and K. von Benda-Beckmann and Anne Griffiths, editors, The Power of Law in a Transnational World. New York and Oxford: Berghan Press. Pp. 137-155.
2009 Melanie Wiber and Arthur Bull. Re-scaling Governance for Better Resource Management? In F. and K. von Benda-Beckmann and Julia Eckert, editors, Rules of Law and Laws of Ruling. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Pp. 151-170.
2009 Melanie Wiber. The Spatial and Temporal Role of Law in Natural Resource Management: The Impact of State Regulation of Fishing Spaces. In F. and K. von Benda-Beckmann and Anne Griffiths, editors, Spatialising Law: An Anthropological Geography of Law in Society. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Press. Pp. 121-154.
2007 Melanie Wiber. Power, Property and Panarchy: Opening the Black Box of Cultural Capital. In Benjamin Tapang, editor, Cordillera in June, Essays Celebrating June Prill-Brett, Anthropologist. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Pp. 215-257.
2006 Franz von Benda-Beckmann, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Melanie Wiber. The Properties of Property – An Introduction. In Franz and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Melanie Wiber, editors, The Changing Properties of Property. New York and Oxford: Berghan Press. Pp. 1-39.
2006 Melanie Wiber. Relative Publics, Repatriation, and Cultural Property: Which Public? Whose Culture? In Franz and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Melanie Wiber, editors, The Changing Properties of Property. New York and Oxford: Berghan Press. Pp. 330-348.
2006 Melanie Wiber. Reversing the Deskilling Process in Natural Resource Management: Protecting Local Knowledge under State Regulation of Fishing Spaces. In John Kearney and Melanie Wiber, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on the Role of Learning Communities in Natural Resource Management, Halifax, November 4-6, 2005. Coady International Institute at St. Francis Xavier University. Pp. 58-69.
2005 Melanie Wiber. Mobile Law and Globalism: Epistemic Communities versus Community-Based Innovation in the Fisheries Sector. In Franz and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Anne Griffiths, editors, Mobile people, mobile law: Expanding legal relations in a contracting world. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Press. Pp. 131-151.
2002 Melanie Wiber and Peter Lovell. Property, Kinship and Using Vision to Think: Theorizing the Importance of Kinship to Sustainable Resource Management. In Rajendra Pradhan, editor, Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law in Social, Economic and Political Development, Volume III. Kathmandu: International Center for the Study of Nature, Environment and Culture. Pp. 317-328.
1999 Melanie Wiber. Gendernye problemy i pravovoy plyuralizm (Gender Problems and Legal Pluralism). In N. Novikova and V. Tishkov, editors and translators, Chelovek i pravo: Kniga o Letney shkole po yuridicheskoy antropologii (Zvenigorod, May 22 - 29, 1999) [Man and Law: A Book about the Summer School in Legal Anthropology]. Moscow: Strategia Publishing House. Pp. 99 - 105.
1998 Melanie Wiber. Caught In The Cross-Hairs: Liberalizing Trade (the M.A.I.) and PrivatizingThe Right to Fish (Bill C-62). Implications for Canada's Fisheries. In Melanie G. Wiber, ed., Proceedings of the 12th International Congress of the Commission on Folk Law and Legal Pluralism, Williamsburg, July 26-August 1. Pp. 81-96.
1996 Joep Spiertz and Melanie Wiber. The Bull in the China Shop: Regulation, Property Rights and Natural Resource Management, an Introduction. In Joep Spiertz and Melanie Wiber. eds., The Role of Law in Natural Resource Management. 's-Gravenhenge: Vuga Press. Pp. 1-16.
1996 Melanie Wiber and John Kearney. Stinting the Commons: Property, Policy or Powerstruggle? Comparing Quota in the Canadian Dairy and Fisheries Sectors. In Joep Spiertz and Melanie Wiber, editors, The Role of Law in Natural Resource Management. 's-Gravenhenge: Vuga Press. Pp. 145-166.
1993 Melanie Wiber. Violence at the Heart of Cumulative Contingencies in Regulementation: The New Brunswick Dairy Farmers and Canadian Supply Management. In Harald Finkler, editor, Proceedings of the IXth International Symposia, Commission on Folk Law and Legal Pluralism, 13th World Congress of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, Mexico City, July 29 - August 5. Volume One. Publication of the Foreign Ministry of the Netherlands. Pp. 241-262.
1989 Melanie Wiber. The Cañao Imperative: Changes to Resource Control, Stratification and the Economy of Ritual among the Ibaloi, Northern Philippines. In Susan Russell and Clark Cunningham, editors, Changing Lives, Changing Rites: Ritual and Social Dynamics in Philippine and Indonesian Uplands. Ann Arbor: Michigan Papers in South and Southeast Asia Monograph Series, University of Michigan. Pp. 44-62.
Refereed journal articles
In press Bertram Turner and Melanie Wiber. Legal Pluralism and Science and Technology Studies: Exploring Sources of the Legal Pluriverse. Introduction to Special Section, Science, Technology & Human Values.
2021 Melanie Wiber, Charles Mather, Christine Knott and María Andree Lopez Gomez. Regulating the Blue Economy: Challenges to an Effective Canadian Aquaculture Act. Marine Policy 131
2021 Melanie Wiber and Allain Barnett. (Re)Assembling Marine Space: Lobster Fishing Areas under Conditions of Technological and Legal Change in Atlantic Canada. Science, Technology & Human Values: DOI: 10.1177/01622439211042416
2020 Melanie Wiber, Evelyn Pinkerton, Paul Foley and Robert Stephenson, eds. Full-spectrum evaluation of sustainability: Insights from fisheries in Canada. Ecology & Society 25(2):1.
2018 Stephenson, Robert, Melanie Wiber, Marc Allain, Stacey Paul, Eric Angel, Ashleen Benson, Anthony Charles, Omer Chouinard, Dan Edwards, Paul Foley, Dan Lane, Jim McIsaac, Barb Neis, Courtenay Parlee, Evelyn Pinkerton, Mark Saunders, Kevin Squires and U. Rashid Sumaila. Integrating diverse objectives for sustainable fisheries in Canada. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 76(3).
2018 Parlee, Courtenay and Melanie Wiber. Using Conflict Over Risk Management in the Marine Environment to Strengthening Measures of Governance. Ecology & Society 23(4):5.
2018 Robert Stephenson, Melanie Wiber, Stacey Paul, Marc Allain, Eric Angel, Ashleen Benson, Anthony Charles, Omer Chouinard, Marc Clemens, Dan Edwards, Paul Foley, Lindsay Jennings, Owen Jones, Dan Lane, Jim McIsaac, Claire Mussells, Barbara Neis, Bethany Nordstrom, Courtenay Parlee, Evelyn Pinkerton, Mark Saunders, Kevin Squires and U. Rashid Sumaila. Comprehensive implementation and evaluation of a socio-ecological systems approach to sustainable fisheries. Fish & Fisheries.
2018 Squires, Kevin and Melanie Wiber. Distribution of fisheries benefits and community well-being: a review of increased access to the Eastern Nova Scotia snow crab fishery. Ecology and Society 23(2):25.
2018 Barnett, Allain and Melanie Wiber. What scientists say about the changing risk calculation in the marine environment under the Harper Government of Canada (2006-2015). Science, Technology & Human Values 1-23. DOI: 10.1177/0162243918781269
2017 Rehn, Carson, Allain Barnett and Melanie Wiber. Stabilizing Risk Using Public Participatory GIS: A case study on mitigating marine debris in the Bay of Fundy, Southwest New Brunswick, Canada. Developed for a special issue in Marine Policy.
2017 Curtis Maillet, Donna G., Allain Barnett and Melanie Wiber. Actions towards the joint production of knowledge: the risk of salmon aquaculture on American Lobster, Journal of Risk Research, DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2017.1351471
2017 Stephenson, Robert L., Ashleen J. Benson, Kate Brooks, Anthony Charles, Poul Degnbol, Catherine M. Dichmont, Marloes Kraan, Sean Pascoe, Stacey D. Paul, Anna Rindorf and Melanie Wiber. Practical steps toward integrating economic, social and institutional objectives and indicators in fisheries management. ICES Journal of Marine Science. https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsx057
2016 Allain Barnett and Robin Messenger. Enacting and Contesting Neoliberalism in Fisheries: The tragedy of commodifying lobster access rights in Southwest Nova Scotia. In a Special Issue of Marine Policy, edited by Evelyn Pinkerton, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2016.03.002i.
2016 Allain Barnett, Michael Rooney and Donna Curtis Maillet. The Role of Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) and Fishermen's Perceptions of Risk in Marine Debris Mitigation in the Bay of Fundy, Canada. Ocean and Coastal Management 133:85-94.
2016 Rob Stephenson, Stacey Paul, Martin Pastoors, Marloes Kraan, Petter Holm, Steven Mackinson, Dorothy J. Dankel, Kate Brooks, Ashleen Benson. Integrating Fishers’ Knowledge Research in Science and Management. ICES Journal of Marine Science, doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsw025.
2015 Property as Boundary Object: Normative versus Analytical Meanings. Invited paper in a Special Issue of the Journal of Legal Pluralism 47(3):438-455, in Memory of Franz von Benda-Beckmann, edited by Maarten Bavinck, Bertram Turner, Marc Simon Thomas. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07329113.2015.1109380.
2014 Courtenay Parlee. Institutional Innovation in Fisheries Governance: Adaptive Co-Management in Situations of Legal Pluralism. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability (COSUST) 11:48-54.
2014 Courtenay Parlee. Whose Audit Is It? Harnessing the Power of Audit Culture In Conditions of Legal Pluralism. Journal of Legal Pluralism 46(3): http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07329113.2014.990808.
2014 Syncopated Rhythms? Temporal Patterns in Natural Resource Management. Special Issue of the Journal of Legal Pluralism, edited by K. von Benda-Beckmann, M. Ramstead and M. Wiber. Journal of Legal Pluralism 46(1): 123-140. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07329113.2014.888906
2012 Courtenay Parlee and Melanie Wiber. Who is governing food systems? Power and legal pluralism in lobster traceability. Journal of Legal Pluralism 64: 121-148.
2012 Melanie Wiber, Liz Wilson and Sheena Young. Impact of Aquaculture on Commercial Fisheries: Fishermen’s Local Ecological Knowledge. Human Ecology 40(1):29-40.
2012 Melanie Wiber, Kate Bigney, Tony Charles, John Kearney, Melissa Landry and Lisette Wilson. Reflection as Key to Community-Based Integrated Management: Lessons from the Canadian Maritimes. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management. DOI:10.1080/09640568.2011.646679 Available online: March 30, 2012.
2012 Melanie Wiber, Liz Wilson and Sheena Young. Response to Comments on Policy Brief by Wiber, Wilson and Young. OCN Canada Policy Briefs Volume 2 (February 2012):15-16.
2011 Melanie Wiber, S. Young & L. Wilson. Aquaculture-Traditional Fishery Interactions in Southwest New Brunswick: Implications for Future Research. OCN-Canada Policy Briefs, Volume 1 (January – April 2011).
2010 Melanie Wiber, Tony Charles and the Coastal CURA team. Integrated Management: A Coastal Community Perspective. Horizons 10(4):26-34.
2010 Melanie Wiber and Maria Recchia, Legal pluralism and integrated management in Saint John Harbour, Canada. MAST Vol.9:81-101.
2010 Melanie Wiber and Bertram Turner. Moral Talk: the ontological politics of sustainable development. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Working Paper Series, No. 123.
2010 Melanie Wiber, Murray Rudd, Lyn Pinkerton, Arthur Bull, and Tony Charles. Coastal management challenges from a community perspective: the problem of ‘stealth privatization’ in a Canadian fishery. Marine Policy. Available online 13 January 2010.
2009 Melanie Wiber and Lisette Wilson. Community Perspectives on Integrated Management: A case study from the Annapolis Basin area, Nova Scotia, Canada. Ocean and Coastal Management 52 (11): 559-567
2009 Bertram Turner and Melanie Wiber. Paradoxical Conjunctions: Rural property and access to rural resources in a transnational environment. Introduction. Anthropologica 51(1): 3-14.
2009 Melanie Wiber. What Innocent Bystanders? The impact of law and economics reasoning on rural property rights. Anthropologica 51(1): 29-38.
2008 Melanie Wiber, Tony Charles, John Kearney and Fikret Berkes. Enhancing Community Empowerment through Participatory Fisheries Research. Marine Policy 33:172-179.
2007 Melanie Wiber and Chris Milley. Seeking Clarity, Legitimacy and Respect: The Struggle to Implement Special Rights. Journal of Legal Pluralism 55:1-10.
2007 Melanie Wiber and Chris Milley. After Marshall: Implementation of Aboriginal Fishing Rights in Atlantic Canada. Journal of Legal Pluralism 55:163-186.
2007 John Kearney, Fikret Berkes, Anthony Charles, Evelyn Pinkerton and Melanie Wiber. The Role of Participatory Governance and Community-Based Management in Integrated Coastal and Ocean Management in Canada. Coastal Management Journal 35(1):79-104.
2005 Melanie Wiber. The Voracious Appetites of Public versus Private Property: A View of Intellectual Property and Biodiversity from Legal Pluralism. CAPRi Working Paper 40 (online at http://www.capri.cgiar.org/pubs.asp#wp).
2004 Melanie Wiber. Finding Common Ground in the Fisheries Field: Agency in the Ethnographic Encounter. Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie 129:49-70.
2004 Melanie Wiber and Peter Lovell. Property, Kinship and Cultural Capital: The Ethics of Modeling Kinship in Sustainable Resource Management. Anthropologica 46:85-98.
2004 Melanie Wiber, Fikret Berkes, Tony Charles, and John Kearney. Participatory Research Supporting Community-Based Fishery Management. Marine Policy 28 (6): 459-468.
2003 Melanie Wiber, Tony Charles, Fikret Berkes and John Kearney. Participatory Research Supporting Community-Based Fishery Management. Marine Policy 28(6): 459-468.
2002 Melanie Wiber. Messy Collaborations: Methodological Issues in Social Science Research for Fisheries Community Based Management. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Working Papers, No. 46. Available on-line at www.eth.mpg.de.
2002 Melanie Wiber. Survival in the Andes: Ritual, Security, and Consumption in the Uplands of Peru and Ecuador. Reviews in Anthropology 31(3): 263-275.
2001 Melanie Wiber and Julia Kennedy. Impossible Dreams: Reforming Fisheries Management in the Canadian Maritimes After the Marshall Decision. Law and Anthropology 11: 282-297.
2000 Melanie Wiber. Fishing Rights as an Example of the Economic Rhetoric of Privatization: Calling for an Implicated Economics. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 37(3): 267-288.
1999 Melanie Wiber. Caught in the Cross-Hairs: Liberalizing Trade (Post M.A.I.) and Privatizing the Right to Fish. Implications for Canada's Native Fisheries. The Journal of Legal Pluralism 44: 33-51.
1996 Melanie Wiber and John Kearney. Stinting the Commons: Property, Policy or Powerstruggle? Comparing Quota in the Canadian Dairy and Fisheries Sectors. In Melanie Wiber and Joep Spiertz, editors, The Role of Law in Natural Resource Management. 's-Gravenhenge: Vuga Press. Pp. 145-166.
1995 Melanie Wiber. Everyday Forms of Violence: Farmer's Experiences of Regulation in the Canadian Dairy Industry. Journal of Legal Pluralism and Folk Law. Vol. 35:1-24.
1994 Melanie Wiber. Undulating Women and Erect Men: Visual Imagery of Gender and Progress in Illustrations of Human Evolution. Visual Anthropology 7:1-20.
1991 Melanie Wiber and June Prill-Brett. Constraints on the Sharing of Power: Whose Self-Determination Shall Prevail? Issues from the Northern Philippines. Law and Anthropology 6:197-210.
1991 Melanie Wiber. Levels of property rights, levels of law: a case study from the Northern Philippines. Man 26(3):469-492.
1990 Melanie Wiber. Who Benefits From Custom? Jural Constraints on Land Accumulation and on Social Stratification in Benguet Province, Northern Philippines. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 21(2):329-339.
1990 Melanie Wiber. Abandoning 'Guilt Causes' in Social Theory: Conditions for and Consequences of Legal Pluralism. Law and Anthropology 5: 43-65.
1988 Melanie Wiber and June Prill-Brett. Perfecting Plural Societies: Lessons from the Comparative Study of Property Systems and Jural Disparity in Two Philippine Ethnic Minorities. Culture 8 (1): 21-34.
1985 Melanie Wiber. Dynamics of the Peasant Household Economy: Labor Recruitment and Allocation in an Upland Philippine Community. Journal of Anthropological Research 41(4): 427-441.
