Habitats Archives - Page 7 of 17

Migration

Why the U.S. Needs Migrants

Migrant workers have an important role in the economy

November 9, 2022 • by Steve Max

Contrary to what the Republicans would have us believe, foreign-born workers, nearly half of whom are Spanish speaking, participate in the workforce at a higher rate than their native-born counterparts: 65 percent compared to 61 percent of the native-born. ...

Migration

The Dilemma of a Fragmented Self

Mass migrations, language, and the future of identity

November 9, 2022 • by Ken Hu

How can language create such a convoluted way of experiencing the everyday world? We can explore this phenomenon with two linked concepts: the speech act and the discourse community. ...

Climate & Ecology

A Globe, Clothing Itself with Ears

Stories of speaking with animals are as old as human history

November 3, 2022 • by Karen Bakker

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....

Interviews

Documenting the City of Refugees

An interview with Susan Hartman on her new book about Utica’s transformation by refugees

October 4, 2022 • by Susan Hartman and Marisa Budlong

I wanted to put in perspective what these refugees had gone through, what the countries they left had gone through, what the refugee camp experience was like. So, there is this part where I talk about when they were each on the run: it is very traumatic material and this ...

Migration

A City on Fire

Arson and neglect in 1970s Utica, New York

October 4, 2022 • by Susan Hartman

Some residents still remember the bumper sticker: “Last one out of Utica, please turn out the lights.” Absentee landlords bought houses at auction—then hired people to burn them so they could collect the insurance money. And some owners torched their own homes. “Arson rates just skyrocketed,” Chief Ingersoll said. In ...

Migration

Migrants Need Safety, Not Stunts

There are two big stories behind DeSantis chartering planes to move migrants from state to state

September 20, 2022 • by Heather Cox Richardson

DeSantis apparently dispatched the migrants with a videographer to take images of them arriving, entirely unexpectedly, on the upscale island, presumably in an attempt to present the image that Democratic areas can’t handle immigrants (in fact, more than 12% of the island’s 17,000 full-time residents were born in foreign countries, ...

Climate & Ecology

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

September 14, 2022 • by Claire Potter, Lori Gruen and Alice Crary

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, ...

Why We Need to Care About Animal Ethics in a Time When Humans Suffer Too

Climate & Ecology

Crisis / Orangutans

A case study excerpted from Animal Crisis

September 14, 2022 • by Lori Gruen and Alice Crary

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....

New York City

Good Jewish Boys Gone Bad

Did the sexual monstrosity of Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein have cultural roots?

August 31, 2022 • by Mitchell Abidor

Harvey Weinstein—like Jeffrey Epstein—was the product not of a liberated sexuality gone haywire but of a liberated sexuality that passed them by when it mattered most. ...

New York City

Reimagining Nature—The High Line Experiment

How plant design preserved the High Line for a city craving natural space

August 17, 2022 • by Yasmin Arquiza

Meandering around the gardens, it is easy to imagine the trees, shrubs, and ferns just sprouting between the rusty tracks. In reality, it takes a lot of effort from the gardening team, working behind the scenes, to maintain the pastoral ambience. ...

Reimagining Nature—The High Line Experiment

Climate & Ecology

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

June 7, 2022 • by Vince Carducci

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...

Fuel for Thought: Climate Change as Class War

Climate & Ecology

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

June 2, 2022 • by Lindsay Myers

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 ...