Search Results for: CASTAC

¿Quién Protegerá la Papa Andina en el Futuro Cercano? Incertidumbres Sobre la Próxima Generación de Conservacionistas de la Papa Nativa

Sebastian Zarate April 8, 2025
This content is also available in English.
Listen to a reading of this post.

René Gómez fue uno de los más importantes curadores de papas del Centro Internacional de la Papa (CIP). Los curadores de papa brindan un asesoramiento confiable al resguardar la colección del CIP, realizando actividades clave como la adquisición, registro, limpieza, almacenamiento, regeneración y distribución de semillas y otros materiales de siembra. La trayectoria de 35 años de Gómez en el CIP dejó un legado valioso para la comunidad científica dedicada a la conservación de papas. Lo conocí en febrero del 2023 en Perú, mientras realizaba mi trabajo de campo para mi tesis doctoral. Pasé muchas horas escuchando su historia de vida, durante las cuales aprendí cómo su trabajo estaba vinculado a la historia y la investigación del CIP, la dedicación que le otorgaba a su trabajo y la preocupación que tenía sobre el futuro de la curaduría de papas. “Somos una especie en peligro de extinción, nosotros curadores y taxónomos”, mencionó. Gomez se sentía preocupado por la precariedad de su disciplina, especialmente la escasez de jóvenes capaces de continuar su trabajo después de su jubilación. (read more...)

share

Bodies as Proxies, or The Stratigraphic Evidence of Our Appetites, at Metabolic Scales from the Human to the Planetary, on the Occasion of the Anthropocene’s Ongoing Debate About Itself

Allie E.S. Wist April 3, 2025
Listen to a reading of this post.

The atmosphere of anxiety concerning the Anthropocene amplifies when considering how its eerie and unwieldy forces affect our bodies. Across posthumanist, science studies, and new materialist discourse, the concern about corporeal impacts seems to huddle around a particular set of words: porous, permeable, vulnerable, sensitive. These are invoked as scholars seek to describe the status of bodies threatened by invisible, global, and pernicious toxins. In a looping story of strata and sediment and edible rocks, this essay similarly seeks to articulate the material instabilities of bodies in an epoch that itself resists clear definition. (read more...)

share

Witnessing the Porous World

Misria Shaik Ali April 1, 2025
Listen to a reading of this post.

Pores compose materials around us such as gypsum, clay, lead, concrete, whose strength and durability are paradoxically analyzed in their capacity to resist porosity, or contain. Anthropogenic engagements with pores hold this ambivalence–resisting to perceive pore as a passage into the world and reducing them to their instrumental capacity to hold and contain. (read more...)

share

Following Primates

Virendra Mathur, Aarjav Chauhan March 25, 2025
यह सामग्री हिंदी में भी उपलब्ध है
Listen to a reading of this post.

Each day weaves its own tale, and no two days unfold alike in the Mandal Valley. The Mandal Valley is like any central Himalayan valley, rich and teeming with small villages, its air soaked in the mystical scent of its culture and tradition. The landscape of the valley is a gradient of human agricultural activity merging into the surrounding forest. It is the southern entry point to the adjacent Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary (Srivastava et al., 2020). Every morning, the villagers in this valley would take up their daily chores. A script was followed. Cleaning up the cowshed and tending to the cows, walking to the forest to collect wood, dry grass, and fodder, heading to the village market or Gopeshwar, the nearest town, or working the agricultural fields. In Mandal valley, there were a handful of activities likely to happen as the day unfolded. And yet, every day would unfold (read more...)

share

The Limits of Identity: How Race and Gender Constructs in Biometric Technology Narrow Who We Are

Brittany Fields March 18, 2025
Listen to a reading of this post.

This article provides a brief look into the ways identity can be constrained with regard to biometric technology.  It discusses technological limitations where biometric identification systems may fail to represent a person’s full identity, including bias in recognition as well as the inability to capture complex and changing human characteristics.  It also touches on political dimensions, where legal systems and governments may place limits on how identity is recognized and documented, particularly in the case of gender recognition. (read more...)

share

Metodologías Experimentales Para Escuchar el Presente: Entrevista a Alejandra Osejo-Varona

Alejandra Osejo-Varona, Karina Aranda, nicolás gaitán-albarracín March 13, 2025
This content is also available in English.
Listen to a reading of this post.

Este Mes de la Historia de la Mujer, queremos publicar una entrevista con la antropóloga colombiana Alejandra Osejo-Varona (Rice University). Su trabajo etnográfico tiene una importante influencia de las epistemologías feministas latinoamericanas y de los Estudios Sociales de Ciencia y Tecnología (STS), por lo que nos pareció valioso compartir su perspectiva sobre la investigación etnográfica multimodal. Esta entrevista fue realizada por Nicolás Gaitán y por mí, vía videoconferencia. En esta conversación, Alejandra Osejo-Varona nos cuenta cómo colabora con diferentes comunidades científicas para explorar nuevas formas de escucha de los seres que viven debajo del agua. Tecnologías como micrófonos, hidrófonos, algoritmos, modelos mapas y espectrogramas nos permiten imaginar otras formas de relación con las especies que viven en los ríos, especialmente aquellas a las que se ha catalogado como “invasoras”. Estas nuevas aproximaciones metodológicas abren formas de trabajo colaborativo e interdisciplinario para la construcción de nuevas sensibilidades y empatías, capaces de visionar otros mundos humanos y no-humanos. (read more...)

share

Experimental Methodologies for Listening to the Present: An Interview with Alejandra Osejo-Varona

Alejandra Osejo-Varona, Karina Aranda, nicolás gaitán-albarracín March 13, 2025
Este contenido también está disponible en español.
Listen to a reading of this post.

This Women’s History Month, we are publishing an interview with Colombian anthropologist Alejandra Osejo-Varona (Rice University). Her ethnographic work is influenced by Latin American feminist epistemologies and Science and Technology Studies (STS), so we thought it would be valuable to share her perspective on multimodal ethnographic research. Nicolás Gaitán-Albarracín and I conducted this interview via videoconference. In this conversation, Osejo-Varona tells us how she collaborates with different scientific communities to explore new ways of listening to the beings that live underwater. Technologies such as microphones, hydrophones, algorithms, model maps, and spectrograms allow us to imagine other ways of relating with the species living in rivers, especially those cataloged as “invasive” in socio-ecosystems of Colombia. These new methodological approaches open forms of collaborative and interdisciplinary work to construct new sensitivities and empathies capable of envisioning other human and non-human worlds. (read more...)

share

The Politics of Civic Education 

Elif Memis March 11, 2025
Listen to a reading of this post.

Cast Your Vote (CYV), a civic education game, aims to teach conscious voter behavior to youth, simulating a fictional election campaign. Reflecting on the relationship between humans and technology, I argue that both curriculum design and the educational software the curriculum informs are political. Critically analyzing CYV’s scenario, I discuss how representation politics shape CYV’s civics curriculum and the gameplay it provides. Focusing on CYV creators’ inclusion and exclusion decisions on societal issues, I offer some suggestions to produce a more inclusive and relevant educational experience for marginalized communities.   (read more...)

share