The Myth of the Virgin Rainforest
The little village of Pa Lungan sits in a grassy clearing, high in the hills of Malaysian Borneo, in a region called the Kelabit Highlands. The people here—a…
Tag: environment
Environmental historians get wasted: ASEH conference report
What’s my take on this torrent of waste at ASEH? I think it really signals a maturation of a second generation of waste scholarship in environmental history that…
Flora of Qatar
For anyone interested in photographs of the flora of Qatar, there is a fine website produced by Dr. Alexey Sergeev. You can even search by species. Overall the…
CFP: Transecology: Transgender Perspectives on the Environment
Chapter proposals are invited for the edited book Transecology: Transgender Perspectives on the Environment, due by May 15, 2016. This volume will explore the intersection between transgender studies…
Tactics of Power and Empowerment in Knowledge-Making Infrastructures
By Kirk Jalbert, Manager of Community Based Research & Engagement, FracTracker Alliance and Visiting Research Professor, Center for Science, Technology and Society, Drexel University § Energy extr…
CFP: Living and Dying with “Waste Infrastructure”: Affect and Practicalities (AAA)
This panel takes seriously the way of living or dying near the waste infrastructure, showing explicitly ethnographic inquiries of despair, anxiety, hope, and sense of purity, safety, and…
CFP: Ambient Matter: Sensorial Engagements with a Toxic World (AAA)
CALL FOR PAPERS American Anthropological Association Meetings Minneapolis, MN. November 16-20, 2016 Panel title: Ambient Matter: Sensorial Engagements with a Toxic World Panel abstract: An anthropolog…
Refusal as Research Method in Discard Studies
Ethnographic refusal is a practice by which researchers and research participants together decide not to make particular information available for use within the academy. Its purpose is not…
Exploring Boundaries: From Access to Female Sexworkers to the Question of Research
When designing a research project, a researcher’s initial plans are often interrupted by what data we actually can access. Whether negotiating political structures, cultural taboos, necessary permissi…
Conference Report: ‘Comment penser l’anthropocène?’ at Collège de France, Paris by Yannick van den Berg
November 5 & 6, 2015 – Conference Program and Videos The two-day conference ‘Comment penser l’anthropocène?’ (‘How to think the Anthropocene?’) at the Collège de France in Paris…
History Lost to Sea
On a bright and buggy day in July 2014, Max Friesen, whiskered and encased in denim and Gore-Tex, inched across a stretch of tundra overlooking the East Channel…
Airplane Food
Late in January, I boarded a long-haul flight, 27 hours and 5 minutes, 9,405 miles, three connections. I packed emergency Larabars (food for quick energy), ordered gluten-free meals…
Webinar in Islamic Material Culture “The Rise of an Agricultural Empire”
Economy and Material Culture in the Early Islamic Empire Bi-Weekly, Wednesday, 4-6 pm CEST Starting April 6, 2016 Islamic Material Culture The Universität Bonn (Bethany Walker), the Ludwig-Maximilian…
Municipal versus Industrial Waste: Questioning the 3-97 ratio
We do not have an idea of the quantity of non-household solid waste produced in North America. When we do have ideas of (sub)quantities, we do not have…
Cold Enough for Ya?
Every winter, on either the first or second cold snap, I hear the question “Cold enough for ya?” as I get on the bus, exit the Metro, or…
Happy #WorldAnthropologyDay! Celebrate with these great episodes! #WorldAnthroDay
Happy World Anthropology Day! To celebrate #WorldAnthropologyDay we here at TaL have curated some of our favorite past episodes covering how we approach anthropology and where we see…
Seafood Fight
On the wild west coast of Vancouver Island, the tiny hamlet of Kyuquot lies nestled in the folds of British Columbia’s rumpled shoreline. It’s a wilderness paradise with…
New book alert: Mining and Communities in Northern Canada
Mining, as the human activity responsible for some of the planet’s most dramatic landscape transformations and the largest proportion of total industrial waste flows, is a particularly salient…
Fernando Vidal’s and Nélia Dias’s Endangerment, Biodiversity and Culture by Frédéric Keck
Endangerment, Biodiversity and Culture By Fernando Vidal and Nélia Dias (editors) Routledge, 2016, 264 pages What do natural reserves, botanical and zoological parks, anthropology museums and depart…
Anthropologists in Outer Space
Anthropologists studying outer space might sound like fringe science, like something from “The X-Files” or some “ancient aliens” TV show, but we have been studying outer space as…
Piping as poison: the Flint water crisis and America’s toxic infrastructure
Over the past few decades, we have met with much success in curbing some of Americans’ exposure to lead. Yet they have struggled to contain this continuing danger…
Wandering Among the Stars
We dedicate this post to the crew of the space shuttle Challenger, whose intrepid wanderings were tragically cut short 30 years ago today. Growing up in rural…
Call for Posts: The Nature of Infrastructure
The concept of infrastructure draws attention to as-yet-unseen synergies between technology, culture, and materiality. What does this concept have to offer environmental anthropology? While we can saf…
Article Alert! Redefining pollution and action: The matter of plastics
From the specific case of marine plastics, Liboiron’s paper offers a more general point that those of us who study discards need to remember to take seriously: How…