A blog published by the Anthropology and Environment Society, a section of the American Anthropological Association
By Janelle Baker, McGill University § In Memory of the late “Cibomb” Clement Auger Rattling down a dusty oil field road in his little aqua truck headlights on as company safety protocols mandate Me, 8 months pregnant nervously remembering his accident last winter on the South Wabasca Lake ice in which he lost sight in one […]
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By Rachael Wakefield-Rann, University of Technology Sydney § The choreography of daily life dictates how bodies are exposed to toxic chemicals. Since the 1950s, everyday consumer products from furniture, to electronics and cleaning products have become imbued with new classes of toxic chemicals. The unprecedented intimacy between industrial chemicals and human bodies in the domestic realm […]
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By Sophia Jaworski, University of Toronto § A middle-aged woman in the Greater Toronto Area wears a charcoal mask in her bedroom to prevent asthma spurred by breathing in the circulation of floor varnish, cigarette smoke, and cleaning chemicals in an apartment building air vent. Needing to wear the mask is intimately tied to shortness of […]
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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 reindeer—in order to cleanse the landscape of anthrax-carrying bacteria—has triggered tense debate among policymakers, scientists and indigenous Nenet reindeer herders. The Nenets are refusing to allow the […]
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By Timothy Neale, Deakin University § *All photographs are by the author Two propositions to start: there is a significant parallel (or companionship) between settlers and weeds; and, there is also a significant parallel (or companionship) between the structures of settler colonialism and those of weed ecology. These are the propositions that I want to work through […]
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By James Maguire, IT University of Copenhagen § Walking through the Hengill volcanic zone (figure 1) with my geologist companions in the southwest of Iceland is a powerful experience. Dark basaltic lava-encrusted rocks are strewn all about us. Diminutive craggy structures blend together like multi-layered mobius strips such that it’s hard to distinguish where one rock […]
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By Jeremy Trombley, University of Maryland, College Park § My research looks at the entities and interactions that constitute the Chesapeake Bay watershed – specifically the role that computational models have played in the process. In this post – departing somewhat from my comfort zone talking about lines and knots and rhizomes – I want to engage […]
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By Barbara Quimby, San Diego State & UC Santa Barbara § To enter the village of Haloban, a fishing community of about 1,500 people in the islands of Pulau Banyak in Aceh, Indonesia, you must step from your swaying boat onto the stable wooden planks of the docks. Most days, you will also need to navigate […]
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By Kirk Jalbert, Manager of Community Based Research & Engagement, FracTracker Alliance and Visiting Research Professor, Center for Science, Technology and Society, Drexel University § Energy extraction has become a topic of contentious debate due to the use of unconventional drilling practices known as hydraulic fracturing—often referred to as “fracking”—to retrieve oil and gas from shale bed formations. Along […]
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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 safely say that infrastructures shape the natural world, they surely do so in ways particular to their times and places. The Engagement blog calls for submissions that can help […]
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