Life Cairns: Embracing Grief, Building Hope By Kocku von Stuckrad We are living in a time of profound transformation. The powers east and west of the Atlantic—which, as Edouard Glissant pointed out, is the site of the largest unmarked grave in history—are losing their influence. Past privileges are being challenged, Read more
Gastrocolonialism and the Unmaking of Worlds By Marsekal Gimbo The relentless displacement of local food systems in Eastern Indonesia by standardized rice and ultra-processed foods (UPFs) is often narrated as a simple story of dietary change, a natural byproduct of modernization and national integration. However, viewed through the theoretical lens Read more
Ethics Without Transcendence: Criteria for Planetary Becoming By Whitney A. Bauman If we are going to have a radically immanent understanding of reality such as found in forms of new materialisms, among many other animist or pantheist ways of thinking, then we ought to begin to articulate how we navigate Read more
A Case for Ignorance By Annika Kraft Ignorance leads a shadowy existence in the modern cultural and scientific history of Europe and the West, which is built on opposites: culture–nature, science–religion, ratio–emotion, knowledge–ignorance. Ignorance tends to be seen as a state that can be overcome and is all too often Read more
Cooking up Change: A Hundred Years of World Animal Day By Teya Brooks Pribac Nonhuman animals have always preoccupied the human mind, some animal species—and some human minds—more than others. Communities throughout history have opted to leave animals off the menu. At the end of the 19th century and beginning Read more
A Watersheds Moment By Gary Slater The phrase “watershed moment” is used so commonly that it’s easy to forget how, if at all, actual watersheds come into it. If the metaphorical fit of watersheds with moments works well enough that the phrase has successfully become a cliché, there are nevertheless Read more
Porous Boundaries and Borders of Entangled Bodies A Counterpoint Conversation This year, Counterpoint is joining the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture conference at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The conference is devoted to the topic “Crossing Borders, Transgressing Boundaries: Religion, Migration, and Climate Change.” Read more
Doggerland Entanglements By Kocku von Stuckrad Imagine that the land between Great Britain, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands was not covered by water. Instead, it consisted of a landscape rich in plant, animal, and fungi life with hills and rivers, making it an ideal habitat for hunter-gatherer-fisher communities (human and Read more
Inside Out / Outside In: Returning our Bodies to the Commons By Whitney A. Bauman Often times the “work” of overcoming what Bruno Latour called “the great divide” between humans and the rest of the natural world is focused on externally relating to the rest of the natural world of Read more
Bridging the Human and More-than-human World A Counterpoint: Navigating Knowledge Research Colloquium Living root bridges are among the biggest tourist attractions in the Indian state of Meghalaya. The indigenous Khasi and Jaintia communities build these bridges together with the aerial roots of the Ficus elastica tree. They are essential to Read more