Hello and welcome to the September newsletter of morethanhumanworlds! This month, I'm sharing three upcoming online talks on plantation biopolitics, multispecies resistance, and cosmopolitical symbols in West Papua, a couple of essays and a podcast on urban naturalism, phenomenologies of hunger, and anthropology in Covid-19,and three thought-provoking publications on ecologies of emblem eating in Australia, Indigenous anti-futurism, and the emergence of environmental and climate justice. In this month's Morethanhuman Matters interview, I speak with Kavesh Muhammad, a Sessional Lecturer at the Australian National University’s School of Culture, History, and Language, whose research explores the entanglements of care and violence in human-animal relationships in Pakistan. Kavesh is also the winner of the 2020 Australian Anthropological Society Postdoctoral Fellowship. Congratulations, Kavesh! If you'd like to share resources, news, or anything else related to morethanhumanworlds, please send them to me for inclusion in the October newsletter. Enjoy and thank you for subscribing to morethanhumanworlds! |
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UPCOMING EVENTS Join us on 16 September for an online seminar on multispecies biopolitics in the West Papuan Plantationocene. This event is part of the University of Melbourne's Department of Anthropology Seminar Series. Join us on 25 September for an online presentation on more-than-human parasitism and mutualism in capitalist natures. This event is part of the online symposium "Plantations and their Afterlives: Materialities, Durabilities, Struggles," organized by Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa. |
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Join us on 2 October for a seminar on multispecies resistance and collaboration in West Papua's oil palm nexus. This event is part of the London School of Economics' Department of Anthropology Seminar Series. Join us on 9 October for an online symposium on the anthropology of political symbols, organized by the University of Sydney's Department of Anthropology. I'll be giving a talk about monkeys as cosmopolitical symbols in the West Papuan anti-racism movement. Please contact me if you'd like to register for these events! |
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NEW PUBLICATIONS Read an op-ed on the phenomenology of hunger and satiety among Marind-Anim in West Papua, published by environmental advocacy and media organizations Mongabay and The Gecko Project. Listen to a podcast produced by the Australian National University's The Familiar Strange. This podcast, where I feature as a guest speaker, explores the practice of anthropology in Covid-19, the relationship between fieldwork and memories, and anthropological approaches to ontological difference. Read a short reflection on encountering the Traveller's Palm, published by the Urban Field Naturalist Project. The Project invites short contributions from the public that describe their encounters with biodiversity in everyday life. For more information, please click here. | | |
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“It’s important to understand how humans alternately or concomitantly define certain non-humans as “peaceful beings” or “personae of threat” and how such interpretations affect the status, well-being, uses, and values of the animal itself.” Kavesh Muhammad |
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MORETHANHUMAN MATTERS This week, morethanhuman matters interviews Kavesh Muhammad, a Sessional Lecturer at the Australian National University’s School of Culture, History, and Language. Kavesh's research explores the entanglements of care and violence in human-animal relationships in Pakistan. He is also embarking on a new project that examines the ethics of air-surveillance through "spy pigeons" on the Indian-Pakistani border. | | |
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TOP THREE READINGS Craw, Charlotte. 20080. “The Ecology of Emblem Eating: Environmentalism, Nationalism, and the Framing of Kangaroo Consumption.” Media International Australia 127 (1): 82–95. On the alignment of environmentalist and nationalist narratives in discussions of kangaroo consumption in popular media, including in newspapers and cookbooks. Indigenous Action. 2020. Rethinking the Apocalypse: An Indigenous Anti-Futurist Manifesto. Available online. On Indigenous survivance amidst histories of utopian fantasies and apocalyptic idealization, that have produced a pathogenic global social order of imagined futures, built upon genocide, enslavement, ecocide, and ruination. |
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Schlosberg, David, and Lisette B. Collins. 2014. “From Environmental Justice to Climate Justice: Climate Change and the Discourse of Environmental Justice.” WIREs Climate Change 5: 359–74. On the discourse of environmental justice from its development, through the range of principles and demands of grassroots climate justice movements, to more recent articulations of ideas for just adaptation to climate change. Co-written by David Schlosberg, Professor of Environmental Politics in the Department of Government and International Relations the University of Sydney, and Director of the Sydney Environment Institute. To read a morethanhumanworlds interview with David, please click here. |
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