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From the Archives

In our "From the Archives" Series, we link archived blog material to current themed collections.

Thinking about Ownership of the Sea

Stephanie Weir

The notion of property has had many accolades assigned to it. In some iterations, it is the bringer of freedom (Anderson and Huggins 2003); in others it is a wielder of power (Underkuffler 2003). It is also a way of distinction between culture and nature, boiled down to the ownable and unownable. Land, a cultural… more...

The Afterlife of Coal

Andrew McGrath

This post was presented as part of a series recognizing Earth Day, Saturday, April 22, 2017. It is being re-featured on the blog in 2021 as part of the Themed Collection: Pollution & Toxicity. Coal mining communities in Appalachia have been framed as both victims and villains within the discourses of our emerging Trumpian late… more...

Themed Collection: Toxicity

This series of posts will accompany the 2021 special issue of Environment and Society on “Toxicity.”

“Images abound of plastic bags riding the currents of the Pacific Ocean and collecting in the Mariana Trench; stockpiles of nuclear waste pumped deep into earth’s outer crust; smoke and smog (a fusion of particulate matter and ozone) settling in above sprawling urban colonies, slowly killing its denizens; spent oxygen containers pockmarking the snows of Everest; and billions of pieces of space debris endlessly falling in Low Earth Orbit, just beyond a thin and rapidly changing breathable atmosphere. So goes the narrative of the Anthropocene, a purportedly new geological epoch demarcated by the planetary effects of human activity…” Call for Papers for the Environment and Society Special Issue on Toxicity (Jerry Jacka & Amelia Moore).

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Themed Collection: Oceans

This series of posts builds upon and expand the issues raised in the 2020 special issue of Environment and Society on “Oceans.” Featuring new content as well as additional perspectives from the authors of the special issue.

“For many, the ocean is the epicenter of evolution as well as the ultimate bellwether for the continued vitality of living systems. It is vast, deep, and mysterious, and simultaneously familiar, intimate, and personal… It is also the site of scientific exploration, geopolitical territorialization, Romantic imagination, capitalist extraction, and shifting everyday relations of love, death, and livelihood… The ocean is both an epic backdrop and an active agent in human activities, at times teeming with living beings and at times emptied of all agency. It is at once dangerous and endangered.” Introduction to the Environment and Society Special Issue on Oceans (Jerry Jacka & Amelia Moore).

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