A blog published by the Anthropology and Environment Society, a section of the American Anthropological Association
Editorial Note: This post is part of our series highlighting the work of the Anthropology and Environment Society’s 2018 Roy A. Rappaport Prize Finalists. We asked them to outline the argument they made in their submission and to situate their work in relation to the field of environmental anthropology. By Andrea Marston, University of California at Berkeley § […]
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By Graham Pickren, Roosevelt University § The United States is seemingly on its way to “energy independence.” Since the oil price increases and gas lines of the 1970s shocked the sensibilities of an American population blissfully unaware of the inter-dependencies that structured their everyday lives, both Democratic and Republican regimes have aggressively pursued domestic energy production […]
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By Kristina Lyons, University of California, Santa Cruz § The president of the communal action committee whom I call Doña Marta ushered me to a more secluded corner behind the schoolhouse. She spoke in a low tone about the worsening water quality of the river flowing behind us. Over the last four years, downstream communities in […]
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By Lindsay Ofrias, Princeton University § In the shadow of the world’s worst case of oil contamination, the Sápara, a small group of indigenous people, are desperately protecting their island of pristine rainforest in the Ecuadorean Amazon. Once a nationality numbering in the tens of thousands, only a few hundred Sápara people survive today, their population […]
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By Mónica Salas Landa, Lafayette College § ‘‘How do you feel living right across from the oil and gas complex?’’ I asked Ms. Dora, a few days after I settled into her home in Poza Rica, Veracruz, a city transformed by the industrial apparatus of oil. ‘‘We have gotten used to smelling the gas and seeing all […]
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By Tara Joly, University of Aberdeen § Settler colonial relations construct the Athabasca region as extractive oil sands territory, yet the region remains homeland for Indigenous peoples, including Métis individuals. In my doctoral research, I argue that oil sands reclamation – the process of cleaning up extractive spaces by returning the land to a “productive” or […]
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By Nathalia S. Brichet, Frida Hastrup, and Felix Riede § From the late 1930s until 1970, low-grade brown coal was extracted at Søby in mainland Denmark. This activity carried out largely by manual labour massively transformed, if not destroyed, the surrounding landscape. The need for Danish brown coal extraction was spurred by increasing domestic demand, but even more […]
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