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FREE sample issue of Environment and Society!

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In celebration of World Environment Day, Berghahn Journals is delighted to offer free access to a virtual journal issue of Environment and Society: Advances in Research, Volume 1. And don’t forget that Berghahn Books is also offering a 25% discount on all Environmental Studies titles for the next 30 days. At checkout, simply enter the code WED15.

As always, EnviroSociety offers free access to all five volumes’ introductions, which are available as PDF downloads on the site’s Journal page, as well as access to a new featured article every month. This month’s article, “Fair Trade and Fair Trade Certification of Food and Agricultural Commodities: Promises, Pitfalls, and Possibilities” (Volume 2, 2011) by Debarati Sen and Sarasij Majumder, features stunning new photos of fair trade–related women’s activities in Darjeeling and further reading on related topics from the authors. Download a free PDF of the article here.

Happy World Environment Day!

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The Environment and Military Conflict: A Critical Review of the Environmental Security Discourse in the Himalaya

Recently, wide-ranging claims have been made about the relationship between the environmental change in the Himalaya and Indian national security, providing space for a broader debate concerning the concept and practice of environmental security. It has been claimed in the environmental security discourse that the climate change and resource scarcity in Himalaya threaten national security of India and can possibly lead to violent conflict in the Indian subcontinent region. Such causal assumptions have profound implications in which the Himalaya and its environmental issues are likely to be understood and addressed in the future. The dominance of this discourse and the concomitant neglect of important social and political factors, which embody any environmental change in the Himalaya, make it crucial that the environment security paradigm be critically examined.

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World Environment Day 2015

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World Environment Day is held each year on June 5. It is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations (UN) stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action.

To mark this year’s observation, Berghahn Books is pleased to showcase new and forthcoming titles in its Environmental Studies range. Each title delivers informed comment on a number of key issues, and we are delighted to offer a 25% discount on all Environmental Studies titles for the month of June. At checkout, simply enter the code WED15.

Browse Berghahn’s newly released  Geography and Environmental Studies 2015/2016 Catalog or visit our website­ now with new enhanced subject searching features­ for a complete listing of all published and forthcoming titles.

Also in time for World Environment Day is this month’s featured article from Environment and Society Volume 2, “Fair Trade and Fair Trade Certification of Food and Agricultural Commodities: Promises, Pitfalls, and Possibilities” by Debarati Sen and Sarasij Majumder, featuring stunning new photos of fair trade–related women’s activities in Darjeeling and further reading on related topics from the authors. Download a free PDF of the article here.

As always, EnviroSociety offers free access to all five volumes’ introductions, which are available as PDF downloads on the site’s Journal page, and a free special virtual issue on climate change can be found here.

Be on the lookout for new content as the celebration continues June 5 with a new blog post and another free virtual issue!

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The FoxNewsization of GMOs

When I first began to look at the issue of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) several years ago, my interest was in the larger contexts of their development and spread, as well as their impacts on the Global South. But the developments in the Global South are very much a part of the GMO story back home, where various versions of them are deployed in the GMO wars. The wars, rather than being settled, have only intensified over time. As I write this, a Monsanto-funded Missouri senator is grilling a prominent Ivy League physician about statements he made on the radio about the safety of GM foods. It’s interesting to turn my attention back to my own country to see how GMO issues are being used.

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Working With

One of the ways my professors in graduate school modeled the nebulous territory of contemporary anthropological ethics was to consistently refer to their incalculably diverse ethnographic subjects as those whom they “work[ed] with.” This was instead of referring to things they “work[ed] on,” but also instead of the perhaps disingenuous word “interlocutors” (Said 1988) or the clandestine suggestion of “informants”—all words and phrases that were and are still very much in circulation in anthropological texts and classrooms. The ready appeal of using the phrase “working with” is that it allows us to rhetorically sidestep the problem of the object, to step down from above or over from across to take up a position alongside another. The less-than-ready appeal of the phrase is that it renders radically indeterminate if not just plain absent the content of the work to be done. When I was a graduate student planning my first field study, this situated indeterminacy of “working with” afforded me the patience I needed to stay with the unexpectedness of fieldwork and to “slow down” (Stengers 2005) the rationalizing impulse of my thinking when it was inevitably confronted with something that disrupted my theoretical purposes. I still believe and teach my students to believe in this radical openness that characterizes the best, and perhaps most enduring, face of our somewhat tortured discipline.

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Toxic Ecologies of Occupation

Brian Boyd: In June 2012, with a small group of Palestinian colleagues, I entered the Wadi en-Natuf in Palestine for the first time since 2000. In June 2000, it looked like this:

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Since 2000, I have been involved in an archaeological project centered in and around the small (population 4,500) Palestinian town of Shuqba in the West Bank (Ramallah and Al-Bireh district). Shuqba gives its name to a large cave in the nearby Wadi en-Natuf, a river valley that runs close to the town. This cave was excavated by the British archaeologist Dorothy Garrod in 1928, during the turbulent early years of the British Mandate. Garrod is a central figure for women’s involvement in the history and practice of archaeology.

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Building Bridges to Where?: Sustainability Collaborations and the Arts of Ethnography

I was in a group of ten or so engineers, business representatives, nonprofit workers, and a government employee, discussing whether we could develop a definition of social sustainability, which we understood as the third and neglected leg of the sustainability “stool” of environment, economics, and society. Like some other topics, it seemed that while we knew it when we saw it, we were hesitant to draft a definition or even a broad characterization. The reasons for and the degree of hesitancy varied from person to person, making the conversation even more difficult. Defining something meant limiting it, and our readings in the area warned us away from a specific delineation; we all seemed to shy away from a strict definition. Yet whether or not to characterize it was still up for debate—some in the group argued that this too would limit the scope of “social sustainability,” preventing us from engaging with those outside of this scope. Others found it a practical necessity to have some way to describe social sustainability, even if the characterization focused on its processes rather than its elements.

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The “Three Cultures” Problem in Global Change Research

Has academic life become notably less balkanized since C. P. Snow delivered his famous “two cultures” lecture in 1959? Apparently not. In this week’s issue of Science (6 March 2015) appears an article extolling the virtues of the humanities. It argues that scientists too often define research problems narrowly, leading to technical “solutions” that address only symptoms (not causes) or even make the problems worse for those in society affected by them. Kevin Boehnke, the author, commends historians, philosophers, literary critics, and anthropologists to his readers—who are mostly physicists, chemists, engineers, and the like. Humanists’ focus on the intricacies of peoples’ identities, relations, values, and disputes, Boehnke argues, can allow scientists to better link their work to the wider world it so often alters (by accident or design). Nearly sixty years after Snow’s lecture, Boehnke’s article suggests that academic specialization cuts deep—so deep that the editors of Science have seen fit to let him reprise rather old arguments about the need for better links between STEM researchers and those who study the rich tapestry of “the social.”

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Problematizing Protected Areas by Introducing Edge-Dwellers

Similar to botanic gardens, protected areas such as nature reserves or game parks often appear as quaint institutions that are useful for public education and entertainment, not to mention their centrality to environmental conservation efforts. Indeed, nature reserves, safari parks, and marine protected areas are places that people flock to for holiday adventures. Visitors revel in the notion of being “in nature” or “in the wild” because it is “simple” or “serene.” Entire economies are built around eco-tourism, a growing global trend. Public health research even touts the benefits of living near green spaces for mental health and pollution-related health issues (Maas et al. 2006; Mitchell and Popham 2008).

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