This episode focuses on a cluster of issues of longstanding significance in Southeast Asia and in Southeast Asian Studies – plantation agriculture, global commodity chains or supply chains, exploitation of labour and environmental degradation, and resistance. To discuss these issues, we are joined by Dr. Alyssa Paredes, an environmental and economic anthropo ... Show More
Yesterday
Heather Davis, "Plastic Matter" (Duke UP, 2022)
Plastic is ubiquitous. It is in the Arctic, in the depths of the Mariana Trench, and in the high mountaintops of the Pyrenees. It is in the air we breathe and the water we drink. Nanoplastics penetrate our cell walls. Plastic is not just any material—it is emblematic of life in t ... Show More
1h 1m
Yesterday
Ilan Kelman, "Antarcticness: Inspirations and Imaginaries" (UCL Press, 2022)
Antarcticness: Inspirations and Imaginaries (UCL Press, 2022)
edited by Ilan Kelman
Antarcticness joins disciplines, communication approaches, and ideas to explore meanings and depictions of Antarctica. Personal and professional words in poetry and prose, plus images, present and ... Show More
42m 16s
Nov 22
Arpitha Kodiveri, "Governing Forests: State, Law and Citizenship in India’s Forests" (Melbourne UP, 2024)
In Governing Forests: State, Law and Citizenship in India’s Forests (Melbourne UP, 2024), Arpitha Kodiveri unpacks the fraught and shifting relationship between the Indian State, forest-dwelling communities, and forest conservation regimes.
The book builds on years of fieldwork ... Show More
1h 48m
Oct 2024
Bananapocalypse: Plantation Southeast Asia and Its Many Afterlives
This episode focuses on a cluster of issues of longstanding significance in Southeast Asia and in Southeast Asian Studies – plantation agriculture, global commodity chains or supply chains, exploitation of labour and environmental degradation, and resistance. To discuss these iss ... Show More
44m 22s
Nov 2024
Alice Rudge, "Sensing Others: Voicing Batek Ethical Lives at the Edge of a Malaysian Rain Forest" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)
How do we confront difference and change in a rapidly shifting environment? Many indigenous peoples are facing this question in their daily lives. Sensing Others: Voicing Batek Ethical Lives at the Edge of a Malaysian Rain Forest (U Nebraska Press, 2024) explores the lives of Bat ... Show More
1h 11m
Apr 2024
Paul Hansen, "Hokkaido Dairy Farm: Cosmopolitics of Otherness and Security on the Frontiers of Japan" (SUNY Press, 2024)
As an ethnography of a Japanese dairy farm while having theoretical values going beyond the specific context, Hokkaido Dairy Farm: Cosmopolitics of Otherness and Security on the Frontiers of Japan (SUNY Press, 2024) offers a historical and ethnographic examination of the rapid in ... Show More
49m 8s
Mar 2025
Brendan A. Galipeau, "Crafting a Tibetan Terroir: Winemaking in Shangri-La" (U Washington Press, 2025)
Aiming to explore the Sino-Tibetan border region, which is renamed “Shangri-La” by the Chinese government for tourism promotion, Crafting a Tibetan Terroir (U Washington Press, 2025) examines how the deployment of the French notion of terroir creates new forms of ethno-regional i ... Show More
1h 16m
Mar 2025
Brendan A. Galipeau, "Crafting a Tibetan Terroir: Winemaking in Shangri-La" (U Washington Press, 2025)
Aiming to explore the Sino-Tibetan border region, which is renamed “Shangri-La” by the Chinese government for tourism promotion, Crafting a Tibetan Terroir (U Washington Press, 2025) examines how the deployment of the French notion of terroir creates new forms of ethno-regional i ... Show More
1h 16m
Jul 2024
Oneka LaBennett, "Global Guyana: Shaping Race, Gender, and Environment in the Caribbean and Beyond" (NYU Press, 2024)
Previously ranked among the hemisphere’s poorest countries, Guyana is becoming a global leader in per capita oil production, a shift which promises to profoundly transform the nation. This sea change presents a unique opportunity to dissect both the environmental impacts of moder ... Show More
53m 52s
Dec 2023
Dolly Kikon and Joel Rodrigues, "Food Journeys: Stories from the Heart" (Zubaan Books, 2023)
Food Journeys: Stories from the Heart (Zubaan Books, 2023) is a powerful collection that draws on personal experiences, and the meaning of grief, rage, solidarity, and life. Feminist anthropologist Dolly Kikon and peace researcher Joel Rodrigues present a wide-ranging set of stor ... Show More
47m 19s
Apr 2025
Chiara Calzana and Valentina Gamberi, "Haunting Ruins: Ethnographies of Ruination and Decay" (Berghahn Books, 2025)
In the contemporary world, ruins, rubble, and decaying material have become increasingly iconic landscapes. They can foster a more layered theory of time, change and memory. The seven ethnographic case studies in Haunting Ruins (Berghahn Books, 2025) trace human engagements with ... Show More
45m 19s
Dec 2024
Victoria Soyan Peemot, "The Horse in My Blood: Multispecies Kinship in the Altai and Saian Mountains" (Berghahn Books, 2024)
A fascinating interspecies relationship can be seen among the horse breeding pastoralists in the Altai and Saian Mountains of Inner Asia. Growing up in a community with close human-horse relationships, in The Horse in My Blood: Multispecies Kinship in the Altai and Saian Mountain ... Show More
1h 1m
Sep 2024
Thomas White, "China's Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier" (U Washington Press, 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, enclosu ... Show More
1h 6m