Search Results for: scale

Maintenance of Forest Restoration: The Fragility of Promised Futures

Syed Shoaib Ali December 10, 2024

As a growing area of inquiry in STS, maintenance studies brings two critical insights to the post-Actor Network Theory (ANT) landscape. First, relations are not a state of nature, but once established, take a great amount of ongoing, behind-the-scenes effort to maintain and mend (Star, 1991; Denis and Pontille, 2019). Second, a greater locus of scientific research and innovation is invested in the assemblies of maintenance and repair than in the creation of novel ones (Edgerton, 2011). Stability is ever produced through a constant recognition and remediation of the material fragility of things (Denis & Pontille, 2023). In their seminal article in Theory, Culture & Society, Graham and Thrift (2007) dug forth the ever-expanding arena of maintenance and repair that constitute infrastructures and objects which otherwise remain invisible to the public eye, doing their job. Moments of breakdown cast socially unacceptable ruptures in the fabric of life, inviting all forms of labor, learning, and innovation to keep going. Their dig on the inevitable politics of maintenance, “to invent the train is to also invent the train crash” (p. 4), struck me as a gut-churning reflection on the state of Himalayan forests in the aftermath of large-scale tree plantation programs. On one hand, global afforestation and nature restoration programs aim to repair the historical excesses of extractive industry and empire. On the other hand, the science which guides these programs tends to be far removed from the place, history, and nature of the contagion. This dissonance instills a deep sense of fragility on the promise of restored futures in the Global South. What if the “politics of maintenance” never takes place, and rural populations are forced to live with the inevitable crash? (read more...)

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“Work together, eat bread together”: Stardew Valley and the Dream of the Commons

Henry Snow December 3, 2024
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“There will come a day,” proclaims the player character’s grandfather in the popular video game Stardew Valley, “when you feel crushed by the burden of modern life . . . and your bright spirit will fade before a growing emptiness.” Several centuries before the game’s release, 17th-century English radical Gerrard Winstanley explained that the English peasant “looks upon himself as imperfect, and so is dejected in his spirit, and looks upon his fellow Creature of his own Image, as a Lord above him.” Winstanley and Grandpa propose similar solutions: farming. Modernity is the “thieving power” of the landlord and the insipid consumerism of Stardew’s Joja Corporation—an obvious Amazon analog, down to the eerie smile in its logo and the resigned but-the-prices-are-so-low loyalty its uneasy customers display. The farm, by contrast, is a place for spiritual regeneration via hard work. Grandpa sends you there to grow crops and tend animals, while Winstanley’s Digger movement began cultivating land together. (read more...)

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Green Lady Cambodia: A Small Initiative for A Big Change on Menstrual Health and Hygiene Education

Aikaterini Mitselou, Isabell Hedke November 21, 2024
ខ្លឹមសារនេះក៏មានជាភាសាខ្មែរផងដែរ។
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Authors’ Note: The following essay uses the words “women” and “girls” in order to mirror the phrasing and experiences of cited literature as well as the responses of the participants in our studies. We wanted to represent and relay the insights provided by all parties in the manner in which they were expressed to us directly or as they were published. This wording was not chosen to deliberately exclude the range of people who experience menstruation in Cambodia and around the world, as we recognise and understand that menstruation is not a gender-specific experience by any means. If anything, we support that MHH is an effort to be tackled by all. Achieving menstrual health is crucial for attaining good health and well-being, ensuring quality education and promoting gender equality. Although it is slowly gaining recognition on a global scale, menstrual health and hygiene (MHH) needs are still not met in many countries. Particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), many girls are not informed or prepared before experiencing their first period (Chandra-Mouli & Patel, 2017). In Cambodia, girls and women follow strong cultural beliefs about menstruation, such as avoiding certain foods and drinks when on period (Sommer et al., 2014). Information is seldomly provided, as the topic is not openly discussed at home and teachers lack confidence to educate about reproductive health (Conolly & Sommer, 2013). WASH infrastructure in schools is inadequate with not enough toilets and a lack of privacy, leading to feelings of discomfort and avoidance of facilities (Sommer et al., 2014, Conolly & Sommer, 2013). This results in menstrual accidents like leakages, and being labeled as unhygienic (Daniels et al., 2022). If MHH needs are not met, girls experience fear and shyness throughout menstruation, impacting their lives by having to miss social activities, transit locations to change sanitary pads, and missing school days (Daniels et al., 2022).  (read more...)

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Geoengineering: De Facto Environmental Governance and Alternative Future Making

Cody Skahan September 24, 2024
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I first heard about Solar Radiation Modification (SRM)—a form of geoengineering meant to address climate change through planetary cooling—during the 2023 Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik, Iceland, at a networking lunch for youth working in environmentalism. My Master’s thesis in Anthropology at the University of Iceland focused on Ungir Umhverfissinnar (English translation: the Icelandic Youth Environmentalist Association), which I (from the United States) had joined the board of both as a climate activist and engaged anthropologist. During my interviews and participant observation with the organization, geoengineering had never come up until my colleague from Ungir Umhverfissinnar and I were approached by representatives from Operaatio Arktis (OA). Intent on “ the polar ice caps and preventing global tipping points,” OA has followed prominent research advocates in fostering discussion around an SRM technique called Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI). (read more...)

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From Foraging to Keeping Bees in Northeast Brazil

Cydney Seigerman August 27, 2024
Este conteúdo também está disponível em português.
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“This,” explained Chico Filho, gesturing to the lush, flowering Caatinga shrubland surrounding us, “is the bees’ pasture.” Chico Filho, a state extension officer and avid beekeeper, was reflecting on the changes in small farmers’ perception and actions toward the Caatinga, the biodiverse ecoregion unique to Northeast Brazil characterized by shrubs, thorn trees, and ongoing deforestation. The faint buzzing of bees accompanied our conversation as Chico Filho led a farmhand (and fellow beekeeper) and me along a path through the Caatinga to one of the apiaries (bee yards) on Fazenda Normal. (read more...)

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Commodifying Disability as an Experience

Mine Egbatan August 20, 2024
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Since February 2023, I have been conducting fieldwork on disabled women’s access to and experience of infrastructure under the current populist authoritarian government in Turkey. My research has taken me, among other places, extensively throughout Istanbul, the city with the largest disabled population in the country. I have traveled primarily by public transportation to meet with my interlocutors, most of whom are blind, allowing me to experience urban infrastructures alongside them. While passing through Gayrettepe Station, one of the busiest subway stations in Istanbul due to its location in a business district and near an upscale shopping mall, I observed a sentence written on a black background with white neon points: “Learning is possible through encounters” (Öğrenmenin yolu karşılaşmaktan geçer). This area is home to a museum called “Dialogue in the Dark” and “Dialogue in the Silence,” which provides a multisensory corporeal experience of blindness and deafness targeting non-disabled people as an audience. The museum draws inspiration from other “Dialogue in the Dark” museums located in Europe, and was established by a civil society organization. These museums are significant initiatives aimed at helping non-disabled people understand how “others” experience the built environment, thereby raising awareness about the inequalities and injustices that disabled people may encounter in their daily lives. Disability activism is relatively new in Turkey and values any effort that contributes to the recognition of disability as an identity, which has not been widely acknowledged. Indeed, creating a space for encounter is crucial for cultivating a culture of pluralism, understanding, and care for one another, all of which are crucial for a democracy. In some countries, populist movements are explicitly hostile to disabled folks, and/or ridicule them (e.g. Trump in the US), however, this is not the case in Turkey (disabled women face other challenges, as we will see). So, such initiatives regarding disabled people are quite welcome, as they may contribute to Turkey’s democratization and the inclusion of non-normative bodies and existences. (read more...)

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Medicine Disoriented

Amanda Quan August 15, 2024
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Once a week, I get to play doctor. Setting aside the endless anki cards and slide decks familiar to all medical students in their preclinical training, I turn instead to my patient interview skills and exam maneuvers as I enter the Kanbar Center. Located on the lower floor of the UCSF campus library behind an unassuming door, the Kanbar Center opens into a large simulation center where we hone our clinical skills with the help of standardized patients. Inside, the quiet, carpet-lined hallways of our library give way to a busy assemblage of medical cabinets, recliners, assorted supplies, and sterile rooms outlined by equipment-adorned walls. This signals our official entry into The Clinic. Against this backdrop, my peers and I don our white coats and adjust our stethoscopes before stepping into the simulation. (read more...)

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The Cloud is Too Loud: Spotlighting the Voices of Community Activists from the Data Center Capital of the World

Madelyn Zander August 13, 2024
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What does it mean to speak about the cloud? While the term tends to conjure images of fluffy white objects, the cloud in technological terms is a complex physical infrastructure that comprises hundreds of thousands of servers distributed around the globe that provide on-demand access to data storage and computing resources over the internet. The problem with describing this physical infrastructure as the cloud is that it abstracts away the data centers, subsea fiber optic cables, copper lines, and networked devices that enable our digital interactions, as well as the consequences that the expansion of this infrastructure poses to people and to the environment. Scholars of infrastructure have written about the cloud’s incredible energy and water consumption to power and cool servers, as well as its massive carbon footprint (Carruth 2014; Edwards et al. 2024; Hogan 2018; Johnson 2023). However, less attention has been given to the cloud’s auditory presence, a problem of growing concern for people who live alongside cloud infrastructure. In this post, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork that began in 2021 with community activists in Northern Virginia, a place known as the “data center capital of the world,” to bring the cloud’s emerging sound pollution problem into focus. (read more...)

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