The Flint Knapper Who Cried “Snake” By Sarah Pike During the Closing Circle of Rabbitstick Primitive Skills Gathering, a flint knapper (who shapes rocks by hand to make stone tools) asked the participants, “How do you react if someone in a crowd yells snake?” “Food!” said one. “Hide!” answered another, Read more
Our Hitch-Up Culture By Anna Mercedes I teach in an American university culture where there is a lot of concern about the students’ casual hook-up culture—a too-fast coupling without long-term commitment. But I’m worried about another problem, a too-fast acceptance of marriage culture, a “hitch-up Read more
What It Means to Deny Climate Change By Susannah Crockford On 26 August 2018, sixty academics, environmentalists, and politicians released an open letter asserting that they will no longer debate with those who deny anthropogenic climate charge, refusing to enable any false equivalence between the two positions. As happens with Read more
Perception and the Platypus By Jay Johnston I was desperate to see a platypus. Standing on riverbanks I would look out, simultaneously expectant and forlorn, scanning for signs of this notoriously shy monotreme. The platypus eluded me until I was taught how to see platypus. The onus, all along, was Read more
Social media as religion – a tale of unexamined desire and (mis-in)formation by Dion Forster It could be said that social media is the most prevalent religion of our time. Like other faiths, it forms us, and we use it to form our world according to our desires, values, and Read more
Uncoupling Democracy’s Forms from their Purposes: A Crisis for Governance and a Boon for Populism by Marcia Pally I’m still pondering this bit of data: Americans who, under the proposed Republican replacement for Obamacare (Obama’s healthcare program), would have lost $1000 in government subsidies voted for Trump by 7 Read more
Counterpoint: Conducting Edward Said’s ‘And Also’ by Alissa Jones Nelson Binaries are bogus constructions. We live in a world of continuum, of three-dimensional spiral. Linear progress is a myth we’ve told ourselves almost to death. It’s hardly original to suggest that contemporary approaches to the complexities of globalization–multiculturalism, populism, cosmopolitan Read more
Berlin’s Contrapuntal Agency: Or, How Admitting the Knowledge of Place Can Change Science, Politics, and Culture by Kocku von Stuckrad Do places have knowledge? Do they have memory? If places convey these to us, is this in some way agency? And what would science and politics look like if we Read more
The Time of Loneliness by Whitney A. Bauman We live in a world of sped-up reality. Sociologists describe the fossil-fueled pace of our world as a “space-time” crunch. This means that the communities near to us are intersected by global flows of energy and information on a daily basis and Read more
Beyond Epistemicide: Toward Multiple Forms of Knowledge by Joram Tarusarira Knowledge production, authentication, and dissemination require transcending a universal, fundamentalist[1] canon of thought that privileges one knowledge system at the expense of others. With modernity, a particular knowledge system came to occupy and dominate the academy and claim universality, neutrality, Read more