What Modern Extremes Taught Me About Noise in the Ancient World
Today the cacophony of modern life makes it difficult to find, much less achieve, true silence. In our electrified world, there is always a rattle or hum somewhere.…
Tag: environment
Humans in 2019—From Discoveries to Disasters
This image shows various views of the pinky bone of a Denisovan-Neanderthal hybrid found in Siberia. Thomas Higham/University of Oxford Denisovan Deluge This year brought a host of…
Book Forum: Daniel Renfrew’s Life Without Lead: Contamination, Crisis, and Hope in Uruguay by Andrés Romero
Introduction Daniel Renfrew’s Life Without Lead: Contamination, Crisis, and Hope in Uruguay (2018) is a masterful undertaking on the anthropology of disaster and its everydayness. An ethnograp…
Why Did Chinese Farmers Switch to Wheat?
Wheat is now a favored crop in many parts of China. Jie Zhao/Getty Images Today China is the world’s biggest consumer of wheat, which the country uses to…
The Flygskam Scam
In reading and thinking about my eco-anxiety, I’ve recently learned of a Swedish neologism that describes a new way of thinking about air travel: flygskam: flight guilt. I…
The Flygskam Scam
In reading and thinking about my eco-anxiety, I’ve recently learned of a Swedish neologism that describes a new way of thinking about air travel: flygskam: flight guilt. I…
Placing discard studies in Australia
Australian discard studies scholars Catherine Phillips, David Boarder Giles, and Gay Hawkins discuss intellectual traditions, settler colonialism, and the future of the field.
Archiving for the Anthropocene: Notes from the Field Campus
On a chilly Sunday afternoon in March, our Field Campus group walked through downtown Granite City, Illinois. Located just 6 miles north of St. Louis, the downtown was…
Florida’s Indigenous Heritage Faces a Watery Grave
Six ancient Native American mounds lie in Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park near Tallahassee, Florida. Ebyabe/Wikimedia Commons This article was originally published at The Co…
Neanderthal Legs and Feet—Suited to Sprinting
If you’re like me, you view long-distance running as a somewhat unrealistic aspiration and see those people who do it well as remarkable creatures. The truth, though, is…
How Long Have We Been in the Anthropocene?
For millennia, humans have been altering the Earth—for example, through agricultural adaptations such as these rice terraces near Pokhara, Nepal. Erle C. Ellis This article was originally…
Sundarbans, Climate, Tigers, Law.
Liquidity of the Sundarbans: If the Tigers and Cyclones Don’t Get You, the Law Will This forms the first part of a new research concentration for me, and…
Case Closed: You Can’t Make a Knife Out of Frozen Poop
Researchers tested the cutting potential of knife-shaped frozen human feces. Michelle R. Bebber In what might constitute the year’s strangest salvo against the scourge of “fake news,” ant…
Waste is not “matter out of place”
Douglas’ theory of matter out of place is about power. Something in the wrong spot, something poisonous, is not matter out of place. Unless it threatens power.
anthropology of environments: what I learned from the horseshoe crabs
Long Island sunset (winter 2019) “Would you believe me now If I told you I got caught up in a wave? Almost gave it away Would you hear…
Can Anthropologists Propel Astronauts Toward Mars?
Jack Stuster poses with a NASA space shuttle. Jack Stuster In the fall of 1957, the Soviet Union satellite Sputnik 1 streaked across the night’s sky. The event kicked off…
The Tragedy of the Tragedy of the commons
A Twitter essay by Matto Mildenberger (@mmildenberger) Something I’ve been meaning to say about The Tragedy of the Commons. Bear with me for a small thread on…
Rethinking Remediation
Mining is, as some in the industry quip, primarily a waste management industry.
Disposability
by Gay Hawkins ‘Disposable’ usually describes minor ephemeral things from take-away coffee cups to plastic bags. More recently, it has been applied to furniture, fashion, technologies and even…
The Car Free Day in Surabaya: a pro-environment event?
By Freek Colombijn Every Sunday morning from 6 to 10 a.m. part of the main street of Surabaya is closed for all motorized traffic for an event that…
Meet nitrous oxide: the fun drug that, because of prohibition, is terrible for the environment
The War on Drugs is an expensive, harmful disaster. It’s the most destructive and racist set of policies that exist in the modern era. But! Did you know that…
Our ‘Fashion Fast’: 6-week Reflections
**We are thrilled to have completed our 6-week, 6-item ‘fashion fast’ and have raised more than £600 for the labour rights NGO, Labour Behind the Label. If you would like…
Queering chemicals (EDCs): A bibliography
Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs) are a class of environmental toxicants that may impact sex, gender, and sexuality. Here is our bibliography on queering EDCs.
Climate Change Ain’t the First Existential Threat
A Twitter essay by Mary Annaïse Heglar: Sorry, Y’all, but Climate Change Ain’t the First Existential Threat