The Human Roots of Japan’s Cherry Blossoms
Most cherry blossom trees planted in Japan today are the iconic pale-pink somei-yoshino variety—but its reign may be coming to an end. SAKURA FEVER I was in Japan…
Tag: climate change
SAPIENS Podcast Season 5 Trailer
In the fifth season of the SAPIENS podcast, listeners will hear a range of human stories: from the origins of the chili pepper to how prosecutors decide someone…
Reconsidering Fragility in Museums—and the World
Following climate protests at art museums, a conservator considers museums’ role in the unsustainable exploitation of nature and cultural heritage. ✽ Over several months in 2022, climate activists…
Greenland’s South: Inuit pastoralists in a rapidly changing Arctic environment
The first thing flying into Kangerlussuaq, Greenland reminds us that this is ‘properly’ Arctic. For most people who call the North home, the Arctic is further up North…
What If Neanderthals Had Outlived Homo Sapiens?
An anthropologist considers how different the world might be if Neanderthals—and hence, their ways of navigating relationships with the environment and one another—had survived the gauntlet of evoluti…
SAR Alumna Publishes Award-Winning Book on Community & Ethnic Change in South Central L.A.
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo (Sociology, USC), a 2017-2018 Weatherhead Fellow, was recently honored for a book written during her time at SAR. South Central Dreams: Finding Ho…
Alive in the Flapping of Infinite Orange Wings
Monarch butterflies’ epic annual migration from North America to Mexico inspires an anthropologist to reflect on this insect’s precarious life cycles through the lens of “multispecies ethnography.” …
At a turning point – climate change and the responsibilities of humanitarian actors
Climate change is going to be the game change to the humanitarian world. How? By sheer necessity. There is no other way. Otherwise, the humanitarian system will be…
Why Indigenous Fire Management Works
Three researchers use a study of the cypress pine in Arnhem Land, Australia, to explain why large-scale, institutional fire management is inferior to sustainable cultural burning. This article…
Extracting Hominin Evolution From Fossilized Teeth
Two anthropologists explain how analyses of oxygen isotopes from 17-million-year-old ape teeth could lead to new insights on early human evolution amid environmental changes. This article was origina…
What Ended This Hub of Ancient Maya Life?
A bioarchaeologist reflects on how a team of scientists investigated various elements that contributed to the destabilization and ultimate breakdown of Mayapán. This article was originally published …
A Reader’s Question About Surviving the Ice Age
An anthropologist describes the multiple ice ages of the Earth’s past and how our species survived the most recent one. This article was originally published at The Conversation…
Resurrecting a wolf for conservation?
Many herders, especailly in the Sub-Arctic, are threatened by the increased number of wolves, eating entire reindeer herds. In Australia they go the opposite way now: they try…
Perimeter Protection: The Resiliency of Plantation Infrastructures in the South Carolina Lowcountry
Editorial Note: This post is part of our series highlighting the work of the Anthropology and Environment Society’s 2021 Roy A. Rappaport Prize Finalists. We asked them to outline the…
Rare job opening: Groningen Professor Arctic Studies
This blog is run by the anthropology team of the Arctic Centre, University of Lapland. But today we want to share a very rare job opening of our…
Images of Loss: Mapping the Future Coast
By Sheehan Moore, CUNY § Ten miles south of New Orleans, on the West Bank of the Mississippi, the trees flanking both sides of Highway 3134 stop abruptly. A…
What A 1993 Outbreak Can Tell Us About Interdisciplinary Approaches to Pandemic Preparedness by Rebecca Lynn Perez
In 1993, the Four Corners region of the Southwestern United States experienced an unknown virus outbreak that killed its victims within 48 hours. While the Centers for Disease…
Learning from Desert Dwellers: Patty Limerick and C. J. Alvarez on Life in a Desert Nation
Drought is now a way of life. As a result, argue Patty Limerick and C. J. Alvarez in their recent Washington Post article, people throughou…
Dimitris Dalakoglou, Georgos Poulimenakos: The Past is on Fire: Wildfires, (Un)imagined Communities and the Shift to the Tourism of the 1%
In Greece, during the summer of 2021, we saw again a proliferation of wildfires that went on for days, like in 2020. While the climate change argument makes…
A snapshot of contemporary indigenous life – with emphasis on Sámi perspectives
A new publication on Arctic Indigenous Peoples from The Sámi Council and German Arctic Office (at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research) was…
Arctic climate amplification and Siberia’s burning forests
Usually Arctic amplification is referred to as the reason why the Arctic is warming faster than the earth’s average, as the Arctic’s surface gets darker (due to less…
Review: Animal, Vegetable, Junk
Mark Bittman. Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of food, From Sustainable to Suicidal. Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, Boston and New York: 2021. ISBN: 9781328974624. pp.364. Richard Zimmer (S…
SAR Press Top Reads: Place, Environment, and Change
When life seems to be changing day by day, if not hour by hour, we look to sources of information that we have come to know and trust.…
The World Health Organization (WHO): A Problem of Trust
Over the past twenty years or so, what has been the record of the World Health Organization when it comes to major public health crises? Has the WHO…