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…
Tag: environment
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…
CFP for “Transecology: Transgender Perspectives on the Environment”
This volume seeks to provide novel insights into ecological and environmental issues by drawing on specifically transgender perspectives. Deadline for abstracts: March 1, 2016.
Which came first: people of colour or pollution?
A pair of new publications focus on the “chicken or egg” question in environmental justice: Are present-day disparities around hazardous sites the result of a pattern of placing…
The Politics and Ecology of Water: Notes on the Drought in California
Drowned trees in the dry bed of the Salton Sea. Image by Daniel Mayer from Wikipedia under Creative Commons License. California is great in size and diversity, the…
Building DIY citizen science technology to see invisible marine plastics
We’ve been working on the problem of making tiny, often invisible marine plastics visible through do-it-yourself (DIY) technologies. You can build your own and investigate your local environment.
And Still the World Pursued–The Management of Waste in Max Mad: Fury Road
By Emma Louise Backe Where must we go, we who wander this wasteland, in search of our better selves.” -The First History Man What are the roots that…
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s “The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins” by Timothy Morton
The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing Princeton University Press, 2015, 352 pages Yeah. What…
Article Alert! Legitimating the environmental injustices of war: toxic exposures and media silence in Iraq and Afghanistan
Along with Shiloh Krupar’s Hot Spotter’s Report: Military Fables of Toxic Waste, Bond’s article adds to a growing literature on the environmental effects of military discard practices.
Landscapes: Panel Selection #CFAS
Today our coverage of the Biannual Conference of the Finnish Anthropological Society continues with selected notes from panels – brought to you by Maija Lassila and Aleksis Toro,…
‘Auto-rewilding’ landscapes and the Anthropocene – Interview with Anna Tsing
Anna Tsing is professor of anthropology at the University of Santa Cruz, California and the Nils Bohr professor at Aarhus University, Denmark, where she heads the Living in…
DDT’s long shadow: Long-banned chemicals linked to abnormal sperm
A study of men from the Faroe Islands finds that high DDT and PCB exposure during adolescence and adulthood is associated with abnormal chromosomes in sperm. By Brian…
Summer Roundup: The Ethnographic Case, Part 1 by Deanna Day
In June, we debuted an extensive new series on Somatosphere, The Ethnographic Case. Edited by Emily Yates-Doerr and Christine Labuski, the series is organized on an expanding, virtual…
Roundtable reviews of “Banned: A History of Pesticides and the Science of Toxicology”
If you’re interested in the history of pesticides and toxicology, Banned provides a detail-oriented, close reading of key 20th century experiments, legislative hearings, events, and texts to investiga…
The Ocean Conservatory’s Call for Mass Incineration in Asia: Disposability for Profit, Fantasies of Containment, & Colonialism
The Ocean Conservatory would like to burn 80% of the waste in coastal Asia with US-made incinerators. According to a wide range of experts and grassroots organizations from…
The Power Behind Disposability: Why New York City’s ban on polystyrene was vilified, sued, and reversed
On July 1 New York City banned disposable Styrofoam containers. First they were sued over the decision, and last week the ban was overturned. What is the big…
Toxic Politics: A Collection of Research Projects
The global economy produces pervasive contaminants, harmful pollutants, damaging particles, and poisonous atmospheres, which are inescapably part of everyday life, though the harms and benefits are un…
LA’s Shade Balls: The ecological costs of plastics in water
Putting 20,000 black plastic balls in water after people have been warned against throwing plastic into waterways has sparked a number of questions. Our plastic expert talks about…