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Burnout

 Clara del Junco, Hannah Eisler Burnett, Mathilde Gerbelli-Gauthier, Riley Linebaugh  February 9, 2021

Clara del Junco and Mathilde Gerbelli-Gauthier In this post, we’re sharing some excerpts from Burnout: a zine about academia, travel, and climate change that we put together over the course of the past months, in the time freed up by the hiatus in travel. The excerpts we’ve chosen for Platypus include 1) Our C*****n F*******t Calculator, along with our reflections on the limited utility of any carbon footprint tool; 2) Part of an essay by Riley Linebaugh, putting academic air travel into the context of global inequalities perpetuated by academic institutions; 3) A comic by Hannah Eisler Burnett that documents her transatlantic trip on a cargo ship. (read more...)

Indian Food Delivery Networks During the COVID-19 Pandemic

 Nirupama Jayaraman  February 5, 2021

Over the past decade, the concept of the gig economy has gained momentum in academic discourse. Often linked to temporary employment created by multinational technological corporations through digital platforms, the gig economy has transformed conventional discourses of labor and economy. It brought to the fore the increased precarity in employment, transformed modes of mobilization, fueled workers’ unionizing efforts, and produced new vocabularies (Vallas and Schor 2020; Khreiche 2018). In India’s dynamic economic landscape, these changes are particularly visible. One can argue that the use of digital technologies has reached a new peak in the ongoing global pandemic–as we have observed the changes in techno-bio-political regimes associated with COVID-19-tracking and increased reliance on mobile applications (Battin 2020; Segata 2020). In this light, focusing on India in the times of the COVID-19 pandemic becomes especially useful considering the narratives of hegemony and precarity often associated with gig labor within this geographical context, (read more...)

Covid-19, Fatness, and Risk: Medico-Media Discourses and Stigma

 Tina Sikka  January 26, 2021

Contemporary English speaking media and popular medical discourses on Covid-19 have been notable in their stigmatization of fatness by implicitly and explicitly arguing that susceptibility to Covid-19 is causally increased by fatness qua fatness. This is accomplished by the assertion that a causality exists between BMI, a problematic gage on its own, and comorbidities like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and asthma. Headlines like “HEAVY BURDEN: The truth about obesity and coronavirus – from ‘crushed lungs’ to organ failure as bodies put under ‘severe strain'” (Pocklington 2020), and “Coronavirus: Obese people at greater risk of death and may stay infectious for longer” (Urwin 2020), are indicative of a media landscape that relies on ambiguous and ill-communicated science to produce clickbaity headlines that are both harmful and misleading. (read more...)

The Spectrum of Research and Practice in Guatemalan Science Studies

 Melanie Ford Lemus  January 19, 2021

Este contenido está disponible en español aquí

On November 21, 2020, protestors flooded the historic and political center of Guatemala City over the congressional approval of a budget bill of nearly twelve billion dollars (or ninety-nine billion Quetzales). The proposed budget not only significantly decreased aid to dire and already underfunded public health initiatives but allocated money to ministries known for robbing and vacating government funds. While protestors gathered in the capital’s Parque Central, youth on the frontlines cathartically set fire to the Congressional building only several blocks away and confronted the National Civilian Police (PNC) in order to limit their advancement onto the much larger, peaceful crowd. Guatemala’s recently elected president and former director of the Guatemalan penitentiary system, Alejandro Giammattei, and his administration stood by as the PNC threw tear-gas, harassed, and arrested protestors in sight on charges of illegal protest and public disorder. (read more...)

2021 at Platypus

 Svetlana Borodina  January 12, 2021

The first weeks of 2021 brought no relief, even though so many hoped otherwise. Instead, the first twelve days clearly demonstrated that exclusion, inequity, violence, and multiply intersecting systems of oppression didn’t magically disappear into the thin air as the clock struck midnight on January 1. Neither in the US nor in other parts of the world. (read more...)

The Silence before the Silent Spring: Narratives of Modernity and the Silences around the Toxicity of Pesticide Use

 Abhigya, Abhigya  December 8, 2020

Pesticide-use and the control of pest populations with synthetic chemicals are a subset of the history of the “modernization” of agricultural practices. This narrative positions pesticides as an antidote to the food supply problem of the growing world population, but it remains eerily silent on the assault on the entire ecosystem that the continuous use of chemicals entails. These moments of silence in history act as heuristic devices that crystallize aspects of historical production that best expose when and where power gets into the story (Trouillot and Carby, 2015, p.15). The dominant narratives and silences around the question of pesticide exposure point towards the locus of power in the story of the development of modern agriculture. (read more...)

Quantum Arms Race

 Parth Sabharwal  November 24, 2020

A lot has been said and written about the impending unleashing of quantum technology in the world. Whereas many sing paeans to the potential of the technology to better the world, many a soothsayers forebode a much grimmer reality. While the future might sound alien, it evokes, frankly, familiar feelings in the minds of those who imagine. We’ve all witnessed the world transform in front of our eyes in the past century, from this tech revolution to that, from nuclear promises of infinite power to laser-sharp visions of cameras better than the human eye; such is the oxymoronic, remarkable mundaneness of technological progress that the more the world changes, the more it remains the same. One might even be forgiven for feeling a sense of security at the thought of a world run by quantum technology. After all, the great leaps forward have all served us well and promise more. (read more...)

Consumer Genetics and the Capitalization of Hope

 Matt Artz  September 15, 2020

In the twilight of the last millennium, an audacious scientific project was started by an international team of researchers. Their objective, like the countless scientists who came before them, was to advance humanity. But unlike all of the proceeding projects, this effort would map out what it meant to be human. The project, known as the human genome project (HGP), had the seemingly impossible goal of describing every gene within the Homo sapiens genome and mapping all 3 billion base pairs. If completed, the applications were said to be limitless. From social science research to medicine, the innovation gatekeepers of the world said that our lives would change for the better. But who has benefited from the HGP? Surely all of humanity, right? But at what point, and will it be equitable? These are questions I wrestle with, though I didn’t always. (read more...)