Wild Ones #10: Green Communication and China
"How does China speak for nature?"
Photo by Peter Vanosdall on Unsplash
What I’m listening to:
The Sustainable Nation Podcast. I recommend checking out the most recent episode where the host of the Podcast, Josh Prigge of Sustridge Sustainability Consulting (who also happens to be a good friend of mine) talks with Scott Paul, the Director of Natural Resource Sustainability at Taylor Guitars. Their discussion offers some really fascinating insights into how sustainability is being addressed in the musical instrument industry.
Scott Paul has an extensive career in environmental communication, environmental policy, and environmental campaign organizing, such as a senior position with Greenpeace. Among many other interesting things that come up, Scott recommends to listeners an older book on the history of the environmental movement I hadn’t heard of before: Reclaiming Paradise: The Global Environmental Movement.
What I’m reading:
Green Communication and China: On Crisis, Care, and Global Futures. This book is hot of the press and is an edited volume in the series US–China Relations in the Age of Globalization with Michigan State University Press. I’ve only just opened up the first chapter, but it looks like a fascinating read so far! And the editors, Jingfang Liu and Phaedra Pezzullo are both well-known scholars in the field of environmental communication. Here’s a description:
How does China speak for nature? How are the pollution and climate change crises being addressed? What are the possibilities and limitations of mobilizing publics to care about the environment through new media, tourism, and government policy? Green Communication and China is the first volume to identify the importance of studying environmental communication in, about, and with China, a rising global environmental leader whose ecological and political controversies often make international headlines. Organized into three sections on communicating crisis, communicating care, and environmental futurity, these essays span multimodal communication practices and methods in green public culture and address topics ranging from The North Face advertisements to NGO advocacy to global governmental policy…Green Communication and China will inform new agendas for environmental communication in China, the United States, and beyond.
What I’m watching
Language Keepers: The Struggle for Indigenous Language Survival in California. This collection of short documentaries absolutely blew my mind, so powerful and well produced. In Hawai‘i, I’ve done some research in the pst on Hawaiian language maintenance and loss, so I was keen to learn more about these efforts of Indigenous language revitalization in California. In particular, linguistics and communication scholars are increasingly investigating the relationships between linguistic diversity and biodiversity, in a newly emerging field of research called ‘biocultural studies.’ I was lucky to be involved with this initiative at the University of Haawi‘i, but if this topic strikes your interest, I also recommend checking out Terralingua’s Langscape Magazine.
As always, don’t hesitate to share any questions/comments you have about environmental communication. And please share Wild Ones with others who you think might find it useful:)
Until next week!
Gavin