Water Politics Syllabus & Resources
We have been seeing some very interesting discussions and resources emerging around water politics recently. Image from “The Rights of the Whanganui River” (Peeps) In addition to the…
Tag: environment
Review of ‘Love Canal: A Toxic History from Colonial Times to the Present’
Richard S. Newman’s recent book offers a new history of Love Canal, the neighborhood near Niagara Falls that became notoriously contaminated by buried chemical waste. As residents became…
We need to think about redefining citizenship in the Anthropocene
The concept of citizenship originally described inhabitants of (probably walled) towns. Some insistence on specificity of place certainly remains, although the concept today generally refers to nation…
Difference in the Anthropocene: Indigenous Environmentalism in the Face of Settler Colonialism
Both Todd and Whyte argue that achieving climate justice for and by Indigenous people requires addressing the ways in which global environmental change is intimately connected with— and…
Introducing the terrifying mathematics of the Anthropocene
In 2000, Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer proposed that human impact on the atmosphere, the oceans, the land and ice sheets had reached such a scale…
The case for a people’s smart sanctions campaign against Trump’s America
The forces arrayed against Donald Trump’s presidency in the US could soon encompass most of the world once Trump’s climate change threats meet resistance.
Reclaiming Native Ground
Theresa Dardar stands for a portrait on her dock in Louisiana’s Pointe-au-Chien Indian community in January 2017. Edmund D. Fountain This article was originally published at FERN and has…
Beast of Contention: The Polar Bear as National Symbol and Emblem of Conservation
Invited post by Michael Engelhard* The Icelandic artist Bjargey Ólafsdóttir painted this outline on Langjökull Glacier to draw attention to activists’ demands to reduce the amount of CO2…
Research challenges the view that environmental regulators are anti-business
Interactions between regulators and the private sector at the federal and state levels typically are collegial, and that both sides work to build and maintain cooperative partnerships.
Lessons From a Forgotten Amazonian Slaughter
For decades, conservationists have viewed subsistence hunting by Indigenous peoples in the Amazon as a contributing factor to “empty forests”—forests where trees remain but wildlife is all but…
Vulnerable Knowledge: DataRefuge and the Protection of Public Research
Judith Butler has written that “resistance is the mobilization of vulnerability,” arguing that precariousness animates action. This suggests that rather than a state of docile subjugation, vulnerabili…
An Anthropologist, a Climate Scientist, and a Geographer walk into NASA…
The joke introduces a recent news article describing a new project that brings together various scientists to study changing patterns of urbanization and land use in the Himalayan…
New Study: 60 Percent of Primate Species Threatened With Extinction
The Philippine tarsier, a small primate that is increasingly threatened by habitat destruction and the pet trade, is just one example of the many primates throughout the world…
chimps’ behavior following death disturbing to ISU anthropologist
Iowa State Anthropologist Jill Pruetz describes the disturbing behavior following the death of a chimpanzee at her research site in Senegal. She and her colleagues captured what happened…
Who Started the First Fire?
Neanderthals were able to manipulate fire well before they came into contact with Homo sapiens. Starting fire, however, was an entirely different matter. David Williams In the 1981…
Rice Reveals African Slaves’ Agricultural Heritage
Clues about the history—and survival—of African slaves in the Americas can be found in certain plants, such as rice. David Williams When Tinde van Andel purchased a small…
Bibliography for Critical Ecology
Since ecological metaphors, systems, and thinking are implicit to much of discard studies, we’re happy to share this crowdsourced bibliography on critical perspectives of ecology.
Take a deep breath – here’s what 2016 revealed about the deadly dangers of air pollution
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has confirmed that 92% of the world’s urban population now live in cities where the air is toxic.
Victory at Standing Rock reflects a failure of US energy and climate policy
Stopping the pipeline in one spot, after all, won’t stop oil altogether. Climate change, however, is a threat most of all to Indigenous peoples around the world.
The Limits of Environmentalism at Earth’s End: Reindeer Eradication and the Heritage of Hunting in the Sub-Antarctic
By James J. A. Blair, Brooklyn College, City University of New York (CUNY) § In the Arctic Circle, a Russian public health plan to cull hundreds of thousands of…
Bureaucrats and techies leading the pollution resistance against Trump
Some of Trumps efforts are literally to support and intensify environmental pollution, and some are efforts to make certain people disposable. But people are fighting back. A lot…
Gold Glimmers in the Amazon
For centuries, explorers have searched the Amazon for treasures. Today, gold lures thousands who dream of finding their own fortunes, or at least a better life. Michael Klingler…
Gold Glimmers in the Amazon
For centuries, explorers have searched the Amazon for treasures. Today, gold lures thousands who dream of finding their own fortunes, or at least a better life. Michael Klingler…
Fracking, mining, murder: the killer agenda driving migration in Mexico and Central America
Why negotiate with poor Indigenous communities sitting atop valuable oil, water, wood and ore if they can be pushed off their land with hidden criminal, political and misogynistic…