Ethologies of Animal Politics
Do animals have political cultures?
Consider the growing ethological evidence of how animal communities themselves do face-to-face politics....
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A Botany of Decolonization
An excerpt from Maria Thereza Alves: Seeds of Change
Colonization is built into the very soil of New York....
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A Globe, Clothing Itself with Ears
Stories of speaking with animals are as old as human history
Human ambivalence about animal language persists and is linked with our uncertainty about human status: Are we one animal among others, or does something truly set us apart? Debates over animal language are a touchstone for human uncertainties about our role in the cosmos....
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Why We Need to Care About Animal Ethics in a Time When Humans Suffer Too
Alice Crary and Lori Gruen share their “critical animal theory” in a conversation with Public Seminar
The division between “humans” and “animals” is not a natural division, but a conceptual one that privileges humans over animals, and not even all humans. This divide operates in a way that justifies the oppression of animals and humans thought to be “closer” to animals, which has often meant women, ...
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Crisis / Orangutans
A case study excerpted from Animal Crisis
From 2000 to 2015, 150,000 orangutans on Borneo died as their forest homes were destroyed and they became exposed to humans. And orangutans aren’t the only creatures to suffer from this massive destruction....
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Fuel for Thought: Climate Change as Class War
The climate crisis has its material foundations in the capitalist system of production; Syracuse University geographer Matthew Huber proposes that tackling the problem requires changing how production is organized
Huber is essentially correct that the climate crisis is for all intents and purposes a class war, that of the transnational national capitalist class against the rest of us...
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Eco-anxiety Is a Threat to Global Mental Health—and to the Planet
If we are so overwhelmed that we turn away from climate change, it will defeat us
I see the climate clock on Union Square almost every day: on my way to the grocery store, when I stop by the farmer’s market, and even on my morning quest for caffeine before I am ready to face the day much less impending climate catastrophe. In bright orange neon ...
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A Near-Future Novel for Our Gorgeous and Beleaguered Present
Alexandra Kleeman chats with Helen Schulman about her new book, Something New Under the Sun
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Upon the publication of her new novel, Something New Under the Sun (Hogarth, 2021), New School faculty Alexandra Kleeman sat down with Helen Schulman, faculty and fiction chair at the Creative Writing program, to talk about Los Angeles, the climate crisis, and writing about the very near future. The interview was presented by the Creative Writing ...
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A Patch of Moonlight
Darwin’s warning
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Rustles of the night in the Nilgiri Hills. I sit behind the low wall of a veranda beside Priya who invited me here, her husband Jean Philippe, and her brother Peter. They are scientists and naturalists. This is what they do every night. I am very lucky to be their ...
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Chimpanzee Culture Wars
Cultural primatology in the Anthropocene
Photo Credit: Observing chimpanzee cultures in the wild, Bossou, Guinea / Nicolas Langlitz
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As the culture wars became more heated in the 1980s, significant parts of American cultural anthropology broke ties with evolutionary anthropology. Supposedly, the evolutionists’ Panglossian perspective regarded human life as perfectly adapted and thereby naturalized the status quo ...
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Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta
A webinar view, featuring author Debjani Bhattacharyya and commenter Kasia Paprocki
The event was hosted and moderated by Claire Potter, co-executive editor at Public Seminar & professor of history at The New School for Social Research.
Save the date: our next Public Seminar book talk is on Wednesday, July 22, featuring Ted Widmer, author of Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to ...
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Let’s Make Sure We Get the Green New Deal Right
Covid-19 will force us to rethink many of the assumptions underlying existing GND proposals
Advocates of the Green New Deal (GND) are looking to change the way we handle a range of problems facing society, especially in the wake of environmental challenges occasioned by climate change. In response, policymakers have suggested a variety of programs designed to deal with these challenges. Should any of ...
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