đżWild Ones #33: Environmental Communication Digest
'The Patchy Anthropocene + effective sustainability communications + rethinking our relationship with nature + Place-based Climate Change Communication + more!
Hi everyone! Welcome back to Wild Ones, a bi-weekly digest by me, Gavin Lamb, about news, ideas, research, and tips in ecowriting, ecolinguistics, and environmental communication. If youâre new, welcome! You can read more about why I started Wild Ones here. Sign up here to get these digests in your inbox:
đ˛Environmental Keyword
âPatchy Anthropoceneâ
The environmental anthropologist Anna Tsing, in a recent article with her colleagues Andrew S. Mathews and Nils Bubandt, proposes the new environmental keyword âPatchy Anthropocene.â So what exactly is the âPatchy Anthropoceneâ? Here are a few of their key points:
The story of the âPatchy Anthropoceneâ tells the story of âthe uneven conditions of more-than-human livability in landscapes increasingly dominated by industrial forms.â
The Patchy Anthropocene asks: âCan we acknowledge catastrophe while also imagining possibility?âŚThe Anthropocene may be planetary, but our grip on collaborative survival is always situatedâand thus patchyâŚ.Patchy landscapes reverberate with the patchy hope of multiple histories.â
âPatchâ is a term we borrow, and modify, from landscape ecology; there, âlandscapesâ are units of heterogeneity whose componentsâat any scaleâare patches...Patches show us landscape structure, that is, morphological patterns in which humans and nonhumans are arranged. A forest, a city, or a plantation: each of these is a landscape structure [a particular kind of patch].â
âPatchesâ are sites for understanding inequalities among humans and their environmental consequences: âPatches show us histories of genocide, displacement, exploitation, and oppressionâtogether with the ecological consequences of these programs.â
The Anthropocene is a controversial term and a number of alternative proposals have been suggested (some have pointed out at least 80 alternative names so far).
However, Tsing and colleagues suggest, âDespite criticisms of the term âAnthropocene,â it seems likely that the conceptâin all its unruly polysemyâwill continue to inspire interdisciplinary conversation for some time.â
Read the article here: âPatchy Anthropocene: Landscape Structure, Multispecies History, and the Retooling of Anthropology.â
For more on communicating the Anthropocene idea, you might check out this short essay I wrote: âHow to Talk About The Anthropocene.â
đ Tools & Tips & Opportunities
âComplicating the Anthropocene.â A useful collection of essays and articles crowd-sourced by Min Hyoung Song, a professor of English at Boston College.
Climate Anxiety and Compassion Fatigue: An interview with environmental writer Emma Marris at the 28th Annual Animal Law Conference.
Words that work: a webinar looking at effective sustainability communications (with ecolinguist Arran Stibbe on the panel) February 10, 2021.
Society for Environmental Journalism's (SEJ) Awards for Reporting on the Environment. Submit entry by March 1, 2021.
Call for papers: The Environment, Science & Risk Communication Working Group (ESR WG) of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) invites the submission of proposals for single papers and multi-paper sessions for IAMCR 2021, which will be held online from 11 to 15 July, 2021âŚThe deadline for submission is 9 February 2021
Grist Climate Fiction Essay Contest: âWelcome to Imagine 2200 â a new climate-fiction contest by Fix, Gristâs solutions lab. What weâre seeking: short stories that envision the next 180 years of equitable climate progress. What weâre offering: $8,700 in prizes, publication, and a reason to stay hopeful.â
Postdoctoral research assistant writing job related to ecolinguistics:
đ° News and Events
Livestream with Dr. Carolyn Finney hosted by Chicago Wilderness: âA storyteller, author, and cultural geographer, [Finney] is the author of the best-selling book Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors.â
New professor at Harvard wants to expand understanding of environmental literature. By Kris Snibbe in The Harvard Gazette.
How creating wildlife crossings can help reindeer, bears â and even crabs. By Patrick Greenfield in The Guardian.
Visual Communication - The urban foxes of Whitehorse: Wildlife photographer Peter Mather took up a pandemic projectâcapturing unexpected stills of the city's thriving, resilient fox population. Photos by Peter Mather words by Prajakta Dhopade in Macleanâs.
Re-MEDIAting the Wild: The 16th Conference on Communication and Environment (COCE) âas youâve never seen it beforeâ Online everywhere June 21-24, 2021. (deadline for submission today Feb 1).
đ Research
Place-based Climate Change Communication and Engagement in Canadaâs Provincial North: Lessons Learned from Climate Champions. By Maya K. Gislason, Lindsay Galway, Chris Buse, Margot Parkes, and Emily Rees in Environmental Communication.
New freely accessible online book - Feral Atlas: The More-than-human Anthropocene. âFeral Atlas invites you to explore the ecological worlds created when nonhuman entities become tangled up with human infrastructure projects.â
Icarus starts first global animal migration research project: The scientific pilot phase of the earth-spanning animal observation system begins. Read a fascinating NYTimes piece about the new project here.
Measuring and developing ecological literacy to conserve the critically endangered Mariana Crow by Emily Cook and Alison Ormsby in Applied Environmental Education & Communication.
âLe terroir, câest la vieâ: Re-animating a concept among Burgundyâs wine producers by Rory Hill in Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space: âIn this article, I draw upon interviews and participant observation with wine producers in the French region of Burgundy to examine emergent tensions between [the media and rhetoric of] terroir and environmentally sustainable modes of production.â
đĄ Ideas
Nowâs the time to rethink your relationship with nature. By Professor Matthew Adams, Principal Lecturer in Psychology, University of Brighton. In The Conversation
A point by point analysis of John Kerryâs climate talking points in his 10-minute interview with CNNâs Fareed Zakaria about the Biden administrationâs recent climate actions. By Emily Atkin in Heated
This Is How Joe Biden Wins the Climate Messaging War. By Brian Kahn in Earther.
The Science of Reasoning With Unreasonable People: Donât try to change someone elseâs mind. Instead, help them find their own motivation to change. By Adam Grant in the NYTimes
đŹÂ Quotes Iâm thinking about
âIn all ethical problems, we must consider the rules for community formation, but in environmental disputes, we must additionally understand how the disputants construct their views of the natural or nonhuman worlds. One group will view nature as a warehouse of resources for human use, while an opposing group will view human beings as an untidy disturbance of natural history, a glitch in the earth's otherwise efficient ecosystem. Between such extremes, there are any number of conventional or idiosyncratic constructions of the person-planet relation.â
â Killingsworth, M. J., & Palmer, J. S. (1992). Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America. SIU Press. p. 4
âď¸Writings from my desk
Thanks so much as always for your interest in my work, and if you found this digest useful, please consider sharing with others who might find it interesting toođ I'd also love to hear from you. Leave a comment to let me know what you think about this digest:)
I just subscribed & got this edition. Such a useful and interesting read, thank you!
I especially liked the link to the place-based climate change communication article. Making it local helps make climate change easier to grasp, and makes it personal. Thanks!