🌿Wild Ones #22: Environmental Communication Digest
Environmental Keywords + The Environment and Society Portal + The most radical thing you can do (virtual event) + Destination Anthropocene + more!
Chameleon, Chamaeleonidae (1596–1610) by Anselmus Boëtius de Boodt. Original from the Rijksmuseum, digitally enhanced by rawpixel.
Hi everyone, welcome back to Wild Ones, a bi-weekly digest by me, Gavin Lamb, about news, ideas, research, and tips in environmental communication. If you’re new, welcome! You can read more about why I started Wild Ones here. Sign up here to get these digests in your inbox:
🔆 Environmental Keyword
‘Becoming-with’
The philosopher of science and ‘multispecies scholar’ Donna Haraway writes: “[i]f we appreciate the foolishness of human exceptionalism then we know that becoming is always becoming with, in a contact zone where the outcome, where who is in the world, is at stake.”
What I find useful about the idea of ‘becoming-with’ is that it nudges us to take inventory of all the ideas about human beings (and being human) inherited from a Western Enlightenment tradition grounded in anthropocentrism, a view which tends to divide humans (culture) from nonhumans (nature).
For example, in an interesting series of blog posts in Engagement (a blog published by the anthropology and environment society), entitled Multi-Species Anthropology: Becoming Human with Others, the editors introduce the blog series like this:
“The Western notion of “the human” as we know it is unraveling. From fields as diverse as developmental biology, epigenetics, environmental history, science and technology studies, and anthropology, we are learning new ways that the histories and trajectories of humans are bound up with those of other species.”
For ecolinguists and environmental communicators, the concept ‘becoming-with’ asks us to tell new stories that move beyond our often unconscious reliance on the dualistic categories ‘humans’ and ‘nature’
(on a side note, for a helpful discussion about the problems with framing humans and nature as separate categories, especially for environmental advocates, check out this interview with environmental geographer Paul Wapner about his 2014 book: Living Through the End of Nature: The Future of American Environmentalism)
But what would such stories look like? And anyway, how would these new stories of ‘becoming-with’ serve us ‘better’ than the stories we already tell as writers and communicators concerned with addressing the ecological crisis?
Well, for me, I need good examples of stories using the environmental keyword ‘becoming-with’, or else philosophical discussions about nature/culture categories can get very abstract very fast. With this in mind, below are 2 stories from 2 anthropologists that use the concept of ‘becoming-with’ in enlightening ways: to tell stories from the perspective of the ‘contact zone’ where humans and nonhuman entities, processes, and beings meet:
The Mushroom at the End of the World: in her fascinating study, anthropologist Anna Tsing uses the idea of becoming-with to tell novel stories about the lives of people involved in the Matsutake mushroom industry in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. (and other places with a Matsutake market, like Japan and Finland). Here’s a passage that stuck with me:
“Species are not always the right units for telling the life of the forest. The term “multispecies” is only a stand-in for moving beyond human exceptionalism. Sometimes individual organisms make drastic interventions. And sometimes much larger units are more able to show us historical action.”
In her thought-provoking essay, Becoming-with, the environmental philosopher Kate Wright tells the story of two boys who went hiking on Moro Rock in California. At the top of the rock, they noticed their hair was standing on end, and their sister took a picture of them. Seconds later, the two boys were struck by lighting. Both survived but suffered severe burns. Through this story, Wright tells their story as a ‘becoming-lightning-storm’:
“Ultimately, this compelling photograph of two young men laughing in the face of powerful planetary forces is a reminder of how tragic and dangerous the cognitive illusion of human exceptionalism can be. We can never disconnect from Earth's ecological community, because we are always becoming-with, in a living multispecies world composed of phenomena and transitions. But we can terribly damage our ability to respond to that world.”
Sean and Michael McQuilken becoming-lightning at Moro Rock, California (1975). Photograph ©Michael McQuilken.
If you’re interested in more environmental keywords, and how they can be important communication tools in helping us tell new stories about environmental problems and their solutions, I’ve written more about this idea here in a short piece: The Case for Environmental Keywords.
🔭 Tools & Opportunities
Flourish. A new data visualization tool for journalists from Google.
Common Knowledge Project: Explore, visualize, and share data about important issues in your local community. Create your own chart from billions of public data points.
Fact Check Tool for journalists. Search fact check results from the web about a person or topic.
New Media and Public Humanities - Postdoctoral Fellowship (2021-2022) at the University of Toronto. (deadline Nov 30).
Shorter Thesaurus: enter a long word, receive shorter synonyms.
The Environment & Society Portal is a gateway to open access resources on the human-environment relationship
📰 News & Events
The Whole World Is on the Ballot: As American democracy teeters, so does the fate of our burning planet, by Mary Annaïse Heglar (co-host of Hot Take podcast and newsletter).
All the Lives in the Balance (podcast): A discussion about the climate crises below the equator whose stories we often don’t hear.
"I just want it to end." Life on the Colorado wildfire frontlines. “Becky Bolinger is a climate scientist. She's also in the path of the Cameron Peak fire, the largest in Colorado history.”
A Strategic Approach to Greening Urban Neighborhoods in Los Angeles: “Knology recently consulted with City Plants on the organization's proposed plan to plant trees in urban neighborhoods and communities in Los Angeles.”
The most radical thing you can do (virtual event): Join Orion Magazine and Point Reyes Books for a post-Election Day exchange between two of the world’s most prominent voices for justice and the environment, Rebecca Solnit and Terry Tempest Williams. Solnit is currently an advisor to Orion, while Williams is a contributing editor. Wed, November 4, 5-6pm (Hawai‘i Standard Time).
📚 New Research
More Plastic than Fish: Partisan Responses to an Advocacy Video Opposing Single-Use Plastics
Dialectic of Environmental Communication in Indonesian Conservation Area
The Value of Hawaiʻi 3: Hulihia, the Turning (open access digital book about issues of environmental justice and more related to Hawai‘i).
Destination Anthropocene: An interview with anthropologist Amelia Moore about her new book on “Science and Tourism in the Bahamas.” Find the book here.
💡 Ideas
‘The Prophecy’ photo series by Senegal-based photographer Fabrice Monteiro. Monteiro describes the project in an interview with CNN:
"Gaia, the mother earth, (is) exhausted by her incapacity to maintain the natural cycles of the planet in front of new modes of life and consumption. She resolves to send her djinns (children), to let them appear to the humans and deliver a message of warning and empowerment."
Explore our Nature: a non-profit organization exploring “the varied ways we can connect with nature and how this can be a positive influence on our lifestyles
Donna Haraway: Storytelling for earthly survival (a trailer for the 2019 documentary about the life and thought of Donna Haraway).
Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium: A Forgotten Treasure at the Intersection of Science and Poetry
New Animated Video from the Red Cross on the terrifying consequences of converging climate and war:
✍️ Writings from my desk
Five Writing Tools For Compelling Environmental Communication: Use these tools to guide you in making better communication choices in your nature writing and environmental storytelling
Thanks so much as always for your interest in my work, and if you found this useful, I'd love to hear from you, leave a comment to let me know what you think about this digest:)