Episodes

  • Andrea E. Pia, "Cutting the Mass Line: Water, Politics, and Climate in Southwest China" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

    Andrea E. Pia, "Cutting the Mass Line: Water, Politics, and Climate in Southwest China" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)
    Sep 20 2024
    On the podcast today, I am joined by anthropologist Andrea Pia (London School of Economics and Political Science) to talk about his new book, Cutting the Mass Line: Water, Politics and Climate in Southwest China (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024). In recent years, the People’s Republic of China has seen an alarmed public endorsing techno-political sustainability proposals for water grabs from inland water-rich provinces such as Tibet or Yunnan. In light of some of the most ambitious inter-basin water transfer schemes in history and the biggest hydropower dam in the world, both Chinese and global environmental conversations seem beholden to the idea that legal and engineering schemes will provide us with answers to water-cycle hazards. Cutting the Mass Line goes against this view to portray the systemic processes of water management. Drawing on rich ethnography, archival materials and statistic data, Andrea Pia explores the vast opportunities that water bureaucrats and rural residents access in efforts to manage water resources as they struggle for sustainability and justice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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    1 hr and 17 mins
  • Azra Hromadžić, "Riverine Citizenship: A Bosnian City in Love with the River" (CEU Press, 2024)

    Azra Hromadžić, "Riverine Citizenship: A Bosnian City in Love with the River" (CEU Press, 2024)
    Sep 18 2024
    In this episode of the CEU Press Podcast, host Andrea Talabér sat down with Azra Hromadžić (Syracuse University) to talk about her new book with CEU Press, Riverine Citizenship: A Bosnian City in Love with the River. In the podcast we discussed how in the Bosnian city of Bihać, people’s connection to the river Una has shaped not only the river itself, but also its citizens. The conversation touched upon how the river provided a respite during times of war (and peace), how citizens gathered to protect it in 2015 when there were plans to build a dam on the river and how recent developments in ecotourism and greenwashing, threatening the river again. The book is a true love letter to the Una. This episode has a special intro and outro section, with Amir Husak's recordings of the Una river. You can listen to the full recording in the PDF version of the book. Riverine Citizenship is available Open Access on our site, thanks to the Opening the Future programme. You can download the book by clicking here. The CEU Press Podcast delves into various aspects of the publishing process: from crafting a book proposal, finding a publisher, responding to peer review feedback on the manuscript, to the subsequent distribution, promotion and marketing of academic books. We also talk to series editors and authors, who will share their experiences of getting published and discuss their series or books. Interested in CEU Press’s publications? Click here to find out more here. Stay tuned for future episodes and subscribe to our podcast to be the first to be notified. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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    41 mins
  • John Schofield, "Wicked Problems for Archaeologists: Heritage as Transformative Practice" (Oxford UP, 2024)

    John Schofield, "Wicked Problems for Archaeologists: Heritage as Transformative Practice" (Oxford UP, 2024)
    Sep 15 2024
    'Wicked Problems' are those problems facing the planet and its inhabitants, present and future, which are hard (if not impossible) to resolve and for which bold, creative, and messy solutions are typically required. The adjective 'wicked' describes the mischievous and even evil quality of these problems, where proposed solutions often turn out to be worse than the symptoms. Wicked Problems for Archaeologists: Heritage as Transformative Practice (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. John Schofield is a wide-ranging and innovative book that encourages readers to think about archaeology in an entirely new way, as fresh, relevant, and future-oriented. It examines some of the novel ways that archaeology (alongside cultural heritage practice) can contribute to resolving some of the world's most wicked problems, or global challenges as they are sometimes known. With chapters covering climate change, environmental pollution, health and wellbeing, social injustice, and conflict, the book uses many and diverse examples to explain how, through studying the past and present through an archaeological lens, in ways that are creative, ambitious, and both inter- and transdisciplinary, significant 'small wins' can be achieved. Through these small wins, archaeologists can help to mitigate some of those most pressing of wicked problems, contributing therefore to a safer, healthier, and more stable world. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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    1 hr and 8 mins
  • Thomas White, "China's Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier" (U Washington Press, 2024)

    Thomas White, "China's Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier" (U Washington Press, 2024)
    Sep 14 2024
    China today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism. On the country’s arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have targeted pastoralists and their animals, blamed for causing desertification. State environmentalism - in the form of grazing bans, enclosure, and resettlement - has transformed the lives of many ethnic minority herders in China’s western borderlands. However, this book shows how such policies have been contested and negotiated on the ground, in the context of the state’s intensifying nation-building project. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Alasha, in the far west of China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Thomas White describes how ethnic Mongols have foregrounded the local breed of Bactrian camel, mobilizing ideas of heritage and resource conservation to defend pastoralism. In exploring how the greening of the Chinese state affects the entangled lives of humans and animals at the margins of the nation-state, this study is both a political biography of the Bactrian camel and an innovative work of political ecology addressing critical questions of rural livelihoods, conservation, and state power. Thomas White is lecturer in China and Sustainable Development at the Lau China Institute, King’s College London. His research interests include China’s borderlands, political ecology, infrastructure, and Sino-Mongolian relations. China's Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier (U Washington Press, 2024) is his first monograph. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • Faizah Zakaria, "The Camphor Tree and the Elephant: Religion and Ecological Change in Maritime Southeast Asia" (U Washington Press, 2023)

    Faizah Zakaria, "The Camphor Tree and the Elephant: Religion and Ecological Change in Maritime Southeast Asia" (U Washington Press, 2023)
    Sep 4 2024
    Recurring tropes about fragmented communities living on frontier forestlands living in Southeast Asia are that they are either guardians of flora and fauna their destroyers. In much analysis gravitating to one or other position in this dichotomy the role of organised religion is absent. But as Faizah Zakaria shows in The Camphor Tree and the Elephant: Religion and Ecological Change in Maritime Southeast Asia published by the University of Washington Press (2023) shows conversions from animist belief systems to Islam and Christianity enabled human-centric views that helped alienate the natural world from Batak communities for wealth. Using a wide array of archival evidence from the 19th century from North Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, this book sheds light on the power of everyday religious practice to shape the Anthropocene. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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    40 mins
  • Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria, "Mumbai on Two Wheels: Cycling, Urban Space, and Sustainable Mobility" (U Washington Press, 2024)

    Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria, "Mumbai on Two Wheels: Cycling, Urban Space, and Sustainable Mobility" (U Washington Press, 2024)
    Aug 27 2024
    Mumbai is not commonly seen as a bike-friendly city because of its dense traffic and the absence of bicycle lanes. Yet the city supports rapidly expanding and eclectic bicycle communities. Exploring how people bike and what biking means in the city, Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria challenges assumptions that underlie sustainable transportation planning.Arguing that planning professionals and advocates need to pay closer attention to ordinary people who cycle for transportation or for work, or who choose to cycle for recreation, Mumbai on Two Wheels: Cycling, Urban Space, and Sustainable Mobility (U Washington Press, 2024) offers an alternative to the thinking that dominates mainstream sustainable transportation discussions. The book's insights come from bicycle activists, commuters, food delivery workers, event organizers, planners, technicians, shop owners, transportation planners, architects, and manufacturers. Through ethnographic vignettes and descriptions of diverse biking experiences, it shows how pedaling through the city produces a way of seeing and understanding infrastructure. Readers will come away with a new perspective on what makes a city bicycle friendly and an awareness that lessons for more equitable and sustainable urban future can be found in surprising places. In the episode, we make a reference to an essay Jonathan Anjaria wrote for Ethnographic Marginalia. You can read the essay here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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    53 mins
  • Hope Bohanec, "The Humane Hoax: Essays Exposing the Myth of Happy Meat, Humane Dairy, and Ethical Eggs" (Lantern Publishing, 2023)

    Hope Bohanec, "The Humane Hoax: Essays Exposing the Myth of Happy Meat, Humane Dairy, and Ethical Eggs" (Lantern Publishing, 2023)
    Aug 26 2024
    As consumers become increasingly aware of the animal agriculture industry’s cruelty and environmental devastation, clever industry marketers are adapting with alternative “humane” and “sustainable” labeling and marketing campaigns. In the absence of accurate information, it has never been more important to educate consumers on the realities behind the industry lies, and people are hungry for the truth. The Humane Hoax: Essays Exposing the Myth of Happy Meat, Humane Dairy, and Ethical Eggs (Lantern Publishing & Media, 2023) features a range of engaging and thought-provoking essays from eighteen notable experts who are at the forefront of this marketing and societal shift, chronicling every aspect with in-depth analyses and intellectual rigor. Among other timely topics, the book explores how the humane hoax intersects with feminism and environmentalism, how it is represented in the media, and the affects it has on human and non-human communities alike. The Humane Hoax will leave the reader questioning everything that they have been conditioned to believe as consumers. Hope Bohanec has been active in animal protection and environmental activism for thirty years and has published the book The Ultimate Betrayal: Is There Happy Meat? She is the Executive Director of Compassionate Living and the host of the Hope for the Animals Podcast. Hope co-founded the Humane Hoax Project, the Ahimsa Living Project, and has organized numerous online and in-person events including the Humane Hoax Online Conference, the Humane Hoax Chicken Webinar, and the Sonoma County VegFest. Over the last three decades, Hope has worked for the national non-profits United Poultry Concerns and In Defense of Animals and has contributed chapters to two anthologies. Kyle Johannsen is a Sessional Faculty Member in the Department of Philosophy at Trent University. His most recent book is Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering (Routledge, 2021). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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    1 hr and 14 mins
  • Damaging Rationality: Exxon-Funded Legal Research and the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

    Damaging Rationality: Exxon-Funded Legal Research and the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
    Aug 25 2024
    This is part #3 of a the (ir)Rational Alaskans, a Cited Podcast mini-series that re-examines the legacy of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. In the last episode of the (ir)Rational Alaskans, Riki Ott, Linden O’Toole, and thousands of other Alaskan fishers won over $5 billion in punitive damages against Exxon for the Exxon Valdez oil spill. In our finale, while Ott and O’Toole wait for their cheques, Exxon fights back with a legal and academic appeal. In that appeal, they marshal some of the most-respected scholars of our generation. The (ir)Rational Alaskans is a partnership with Canada’s National Observer. You can also read about this story in Jacobin. For a full list of credits, and for the rest of the episodes, visit the series page. Programming Note: This marks the end of our returning season, the Rationality Wars. We will back with another season shortly, sometime this fall. If you want to catch that season, make sure to stay subscribed to our podcast feed (Apple, Spotify, RSS). You can also stay updated by following us on X (@citedpodcast), and you can contact us directly at info [at] citedmedia.ca if you have any questions or any feedback. Finally, if you are impatient and just itching for more content, check out some of our other episodes, like: the other episodes in this season, if you joined up late; the episodes from last season, especially America's Chernobyl; or some of the highlights from our other podcast, Darts and Letters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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    1 hr and 14 mins