The New School -- an absolutely essential space for scholarship -- is being unmade through brutal cost-cutting and restructuring. Learn more here:
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
And sign the petition:
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
New semester. Offered to print all the readings for students who wished to try to work in a less distracted way. Did not appreciate how long actually doing that printing would take...
"There is something... self-defeating about an approach to political strategy that takes so much of our political life as fixed and preordained and thereby minimizes the significance of doing actual politics"
from citizens to subjects, alas.
@spokes.org.uk I recall seeing something about e-bikes not being allowed overnight at Waverley. Is that the case?
the newest issue of Hau has a special collection on the late, great economic anthropologist Jane Guyer: www.haujournal.org/index.php/ha...
"Looking across all sectors, the key dynamic appears to be a well-worn story: women opt in much greater numbers for healthcare jobs, where employment continues trending steeply upwards...
Perhaps “learn to care” could replace “learn to code” as the go-to career advice for the next generation."
Indeed. Runciman made the case for an even larger expansion, though as a father of a five year old I’m suspicion of six year olds: www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
There are also some good books focused on the river and its inhabitants, including Stephen Most’s River of Renewal and Kari Marie Norgaard’s Salmon & Acorns Feed Our People
www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/salmon-and-a...
osupress.oregonstate.edu/book/river-o...
See also the documentary work of Swiftwater Films: www.youtube.com/@swiftwaterf...
@opb.org's archive of reporting www.opb.org/search/#gsc....
Including these films: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLnI...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZMS...
@americanrivers.bsky.social did a terrific podcast: open.spotify.com/show/0IKmzyD...
The Klamath saga has been subject of excellent journalism, including from @highcountrynews.org, @opb.org, @ahofschneider.bsky.social of @grist.org, @jacquesleslie.bsky.social, and @mongabay.com. I'll include some links below.
As the Trump regime works to eliminate such programs, the Klamath has important political lessons, some of which I tease out in the essay for @bostonreview.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...
When I visited, I was surprised at how much heavy machinery goes into restoring ‘nature’—bulldozers, excavators, dump trucks, and quite a bit of dynamite were needed.
But so did a lot of scientific and indigenous knowledge, carefully selected seeds, and legal manoeuvring.
A 2020 agreement — between states, power companies, tribes, and others — paved the way for an incredible project of deconstructing four dams.
This has been a highly contentious project but also a remarkable project of engineering and re-wilding.
Salmon are a keystone species, essential to ecological flourishing, but they’re also at the core of indigenous identity—diets, ceremonial life, and leisure. When dams inhibit nutrient flows, raise the temperature of water, and block upstream salmon habitats, it is therefore an issue of sovereignty.
Native Americans (from @yuroktribe.bsky.social and others) have fought for decades to restore the Klamath River which runs from Oregon through California to the Pacific. Central to this are salmon which used to be bountiful and are now threatened with extinction.
Dams, in other words, are sacrifice zones. In the American west, they were central to colonisation; in postcolonial states, they were what Nehru called “temples of modernity.” Countries from China to Ethiopia to Brazil have, in recent years, seen them as ‘clean’ energy.
In the 20th C, humans built a large dam a day. Some are controversial; some are charismatic mega-infrastructure. Many are relatively small.
But damming a river is always a partisan act. What dams offer in electricity, irrigation, or flood control comes with displacement and ecological costs.
I wrote about dams, using new books by @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social, James C. Scott, and Yuvan Aves to discuss a remarkable transformation on the Klamath River where four large dams have been removed to restore the watershed. 🧵
www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...
“When Jawaharlal Nehru called dams ‘temples of modern India’ in 1954, he was expressing a belief shared by all the dominant faiths: to dam a river was to develop a nation. Over the course of the twentieth century, humans built, on average, one large dam a day.”
New from @kevindonovan.bsky.social:
while Cooper shows how this changes 'capitalism', there's must less insight into how it changes 'families'
the stuff on 'family capitalism' in Cooper's book is really important--hope it gets more attention
this is excellent!
🚨 My next book, EXTRACTION: THE FRONTIERS OF GREEN CAPITALISM is out 9/23 with @wwnorton.com
Today and tomorrow, you can pre-order it at 25% off 😊 Use code PREORDER25 at www.barnesandnoble.com/w/extraction...
