another odd piece to all this is that many people are remembering a wave of "cancel culture" firings over insufficient wokeness that never happened.
Anthropologist. New project: Christianity and Fossil Fuels (what I call "Carbon Christianity"). Ongoing Research: Honduras, Christianity, Secularism, Race and Religion. https://mtholyoke.academia.edu/WilliamGirard
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another odd piece to all this is that many people are remembering a wave of "cancel culture" firings over insufficient wokeness that never happened.
I'm sure that you've already got some great plans, but Chapter 4, "White Skin, Black Hats, and Other Signs of Jews," is always a big hit in my Intro class. Among other highlights, the author shows how surprisingly difficult it can be to know who is "black" and who is "jewish" in Crown Heights.
#BookSky
Good summary of how the "Big Beautiful Bill" undoes (and then some!) the huge strides the Biden Administration made on climate.
NEW CHART: Trump's "big beautiful bill" & other efforts to dismantle climate policy means the US will add an extra 7bn tonnes of emissions to the atmosphere from now until 2030, compared to meeting its former climate pledge under the Paris Agreement đ« www.carbonbrief.org/...
The Biden Administration's failure (inability?) to convey what a massive leap forward the IRA was for combating climate change means that a lot of people: 1. Don't realize what was achieved. 2. Don't realize what's about to be taken away.
Just use footnotes. No one likes checking references at a later page.
Every time I think I've got a good sense of what Billy Graham was all about, I read something new that makes me feel like I don't get him at all.
Counterpoint: dishes
Excellent reflection on the state of critique in academia. About literary theory, but could easily apply to anthropology or much of the humanities, I imagine. One quote, "And beneath [the] impasse [in the debates about critique] lies a still deeper dilemma: what the fuck is all this even about?"
In old enough to remember the campaign to âfind the liberal Rush Limbaugh.â This will work as well. The GOP didnât build Rogan, and Democrats sure wonât be able to build a liberal one. They should focus on funding existing liberal outlets and local newspapers and Spanish language radio and TV.
"What is it about the way we frame manhood that, even today, it still depends so on "feminine" dependence for its survival?" (Faludi, Backlash 79)
Over the past 4 or 5 years, I must have read 150 or so books on US history. Here is one thing I can confidently report: nothing we're seeing today is new. From Susan Faludi's Backlash...
I can remember as clear as day taking a course on the Holocaust in college and the professor said that when the government starts asking you to identify yourself as Jewish, itâs time to start thinking about getting out.
If you've never read it before, today would be a perfect time to take a look at Pope Francis's moving encyclical on the perils of climate change, Laudato Si'. (Definitely don't need to be Catholic or even religious to appreciate it)
reagan/bush judges: "this administration's shocking arguments would reduce the rule of law to lawlenssness" neocons: abolish ICE david brooks: communist manifesto Dem leadership, top liberal consultants/pundits: the latest NYT/Ipsos has Trump up +4 on immigration, +9 with noncollege men
Out of a seeming endless parade of bizarro experiences over the past decade, few of them have been more disorientating for me then coming to the end of this article and having the thought, "David Brooks is right!"
The idea that we have âtrue selvesâ is not a pathway out of fascism, it is a way of moving fascism inside our own heads. Take a break if you need to, but this.. Also, trying to imagine MLK, Gandhi, or Cesar Chavez preaching that the best tool for resistance is taking care of your mental health.
For years theyâve been screaming about the victimization of âconservativesâ by âwokeâ âcancel cultureâ on university campuses, even though thatâs mostly fantasy; and theyâve been fantasizing about revenge â meaning instituting their own blanket cancel culture on all their perceived enemies.
Donna Haraway leading #StandUpForScience at #UCSC. Situating science in helping us live together in better ways. She's giving deets on cuts to science, incl #Indigenous science, ag, USAID, medicine, dangers to farm workers, dangers of data loss. Donna's a master at connecting all the relations. â€ïž
Important.
This is completely incredible. Thanks so much!
Would you mind sharing the syllabus for the class? Would love to see it!
âTrump voters who are finding out in very tangible ways that Trumpâs presidency is going to be materially bad for them.â If the Trump years have taught me anything, itâs that Republicans will find a way to convince people that Dems are to blame for the âmaterially badâ things.
We are so sorry to learn of the death of James Ferguson, author of "Give a Man a Fish" and "Global Shadows." Our thoughts are with his family, colleagues, students, and friends.
Would love it if you could add me!
Could you please add me? Thanks!
Are you an anthropologist working in Latin American or the Caribbean? Or maybe you just want to know more about the region? Here's a starter pack of some of the members of SLACA (The Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology): go.bsky.app/LGV4jHn
Portuguese editorial cartoonist Zez Vaz reaches back to Tiananmen Square to call on American defiance.
James Ferguson, a guiding light in the anthropology of southern Africa, has died. His prose and analysis offered a model of clarity and insight. He was only 65. Very very sad.
This is horrible news. He was only dissertation committee. Just the kindest, most intelligent, generous person. Just an absolute model of what an academic should be. The kind of person that made you feel smarter when you talked with him.
Just gonna leave this here...
is it good or bad that a billionaire oligarch with close ties to foreign dictators is currently downloading the most sensitive information the us federal government has about its citizens to his own private servers?
Post-Sept 11th was *real* bad.
Perspective of an anthropologist... --Every society in human history has had "reliable knowledge about how the world really works." --Yes, that's amazing! --What modernity seems to provide is a *sense* that we choose a life for ourselves, but there isn't much actual choosing going on.
"Big oil spent a stunning $445m throughout the last election cycle to influence Donald Trump and Congress, a new analysis has found."
Now that heâs back in the Oval Office, Trump is moving quickly to dismantle Joe Bidenâs fragile legacy. But as @davidklion.bsky.social writes, the one thing that canât be erased is Bidenâs record on Gaza.
Corruption, cynicism, capitulation, and, ultimately, collaboration. www.unpopularfront.news/p/welcome-to...
The New York Times says you must doubt the evidence of your eyes and ears. But the neo-Nazis don't doubt what they saw. It was a Nazi salute.
The rules, if you are keeping track: If a single left activist anywhere in the world says "defund the police," it becomes the official position of the Democratic Party, now and forever. If the president's top surrogate repeatedly sieg-heils on stage, it's ambiguous, impossible to interpret.
simple point i tried to convey in the post I just shared. if someone does a nazi salute at a political rally, i don't need to do a critical biography or do some deep dive on why they did it. if you want a research project, sure, whatever. but that doesn't matter. They did it. Thats all that matters.
Same with student feedback in courses. The 1% that are not positive will haunt me for decades.
"I have been prepared for evil, for greed, for cruelty, for injustice â but I did not anticipate that the people in power would also be such huge losers." đ€ www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Sleep well, king đ
Ruth Benedict: âNo one âever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking.â
The turn to ontology has made its way to the mainstream media.
What the hell happened around 2000?
Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes announces she's quit the paper because her editors wouldn't print a cartoon going after Big Tech and media oligarchs paying tribute to to Trump A new low in mainstream media's post-Trump meltdown anntelnaes.substack.com/p/why-im-qui...
Thermal energy networks are "the next big thing." @volts.wtf takes listeners on a most excellent deep dive into networked geothermal with @zeynebmagavi.bsky.social of HEET and @eversource.bsky.social 's Eric Bosworth. www.volts.wtf/p/thermal-en...
âChicago exceptionalismâ is the term I have been unknowingly searching for my whole life.
One thing I have learned over the past +8 years, the public will never react in horror against Trumpâs idiotic nihilism.
Good article about my favorite podcast: Know Your Enemy.
That sounds right. In fact, "evangelical" seems to increasingly just mean "a Christian who likes Trump."
NEW PAPER: The 2022 fossil fuel price jumps caused an oil and gas profit explosion. We show the US reaped the largest profit increase (USD 275bn) of any country. Big Oil claims this benefits the American people. In fact, 51% went to the richest 1%, only 1% to the bottom 50%. A đ§”
"Oil and gas is... one of the top industries funding [Trump's] campaign, according to the watchdog group OpenSecrets. Spending from the industry is outpaced only by conservative interest groups, *which themselves are heavily funded by oil and gas interests*." Amazing.
If I had to express my deep sense of dislocation about this political moment and the national mood, Iâd put it this way: I feel like the murder of a healthcare CEO probably has wider support than *actual* single payer healthcare.
I think this might honestly be the best book I've ever read about politics in the USA. Something just totally brilliant on every page.
Mount Holyoke! This is the syllabus from the previous time I taught the course (the more recent version has too many notes to myself to post). But this gives the basic idea. Thanks for your interest!
Finished Carbon Christianity course yesterday. I always ask students about their favorite books on the last day of class. As with the last time I taught the course, almost every student said Richard Callahan's Work and Faith in the Kentucky Coal Fields. Truly an excellent book.
In case this would be helpful to anyone, a timeline of "race" and "religion" in Latin America over ~500 years.
(1/6) It amazes me how apocalyptic conditions were in the Americas after European contact. The 16th century population collapse in Mexico, following the Spanish conquest, started with the smallpox epidemic of 1519-1520 where 5-8 million people perished. #Science #Anthropology #History #MedSky đ§Șđ§”
An article of mine that situates the events of Jan 6th as part of a recent pattern across the Americas, in which right-wing governments, in alliance with conservative Christian groups, employ violent and antidemocratic tactics to seize and maintain political power. #anthropology
Partisans is an incredibly good book for understanding the current moment.
One of the points I stressed in Partisans is how vital non-conservative media were to laundering right-wing commentatorsâ views: James Kilpatrick on 60 Minutes, Pat Buchanan on CNN/PBS/MSNBC, Tucker Carlson on CNN/MSNBC, Glenn Beck on CNN. Right-wing media matter, but arenât the whole story.
Thank you!!
Would love to be added. : )
Thanks!!!
Could you add me to this? : )
Readings for today's class "Christian Petro-Masculinity?": Klein, The Intercept, "Toxic Nostalgia." Daggett, âPetro-masculinityâ Kobes Du Mez, âDonald Trump and Militant Evangelical Masculinity.â Scott, Removing Mountains, âGendered Politics of Pro-Mountaintop Removal Discourse.â
When you start looking for connections between fossil fuels and Christianity, it's amazing how they start popping out. Most incredible recent example: After the famous trial (1925), John Scopes went on to become a petroleum engineer. Got his training at the Rockefeller-funded University of Chicago.
By far my favorite podcast, and more essential than ever as Trump returns to the White House. If you're interested in the history of The Right in the USA, I can't think of a better place to start. (Along with the @rickperlstein.bsky.social books!)
The best thing I've read about Trump's win...
Reading Robin Globus Veldman's The Gospel of Climate Skepticism in my Carbon Christianity class today. Always a massive hit with students. And, to my mind, the best thing that's been written on Evangelicals and climate change.
One thing I learned from the first Trump Administration: following the minute by minute chaos just ends up being exhausting and self-defeating. This time around, going to try to take a step back. Spend more time on reading thoughtful work and avoid endlessly glancing at headlines and newsfeeds.
I did it. I found the absolute worst NYT article of the election. www.nytimes.com/2024/08/25/u...
Yes, same here.
So true. Even small things. I grew up in a pretty conservative place, but the Housemartins had those few lines in the notes for London 0, Hull 4 that said something like âtake Jesus, take Marx, take hope.â And it really made me think, âif these guys are into Marx, he canât be as bad as people say.â
Those Housemartins videos still bring joy to my heart.
Never fails to amaze me.
Wow! Thatâs wonderful. Thanks!
Hahaha! Thats so funny. Didnât even notice!
Also, Anne Nelson, Shadow Network. And Joseph Witt, Religion and Resistance in Appalachia. Thanks so much for all of your amazing work!
Thanks so much for asking! Hereâs a syllabus I put together, but the topic is fragmented, so a lot of this isnât specifically about religion and climate: www.academia.edu/107240867/Ca... That said, this is a wonderful book: 283). Richard J. Callahan, Work and Faith in the Kentucky Coal Fields
In part, they also probably like that fact that it would make their jobs easierâa new and dramatic development to write about.
Tom Tomorrow rocks
I know that itâs dangerous to hold on too tightly to formative political experiences of your youth. But that said: I just canât get over how much all of the lessons of the post 9/11 era, War on Terror, Iraq and the protests against same are being just entirely excised from collective memory.
The reactions of two Jewish Columbia students, from today's New York Times report on the protests.
âAs for the students, [they had among them] those who, like ChĂ© Guevara, âtrembled with indignation every time an injustice is committed in the world.â⊠That's why I will never allow it to be said that youth is wasted on the young.â Chris Marker, Sans Soleil (1983)
I'll reiterate that I've been a college professor for 16 years, I make my living thinking about college students and interacting with them, and I still don't think about them as much as NYT and Atlantic writers seem to
No exaggeration to say that I've been waiting to read this book for almost 20 years! Roosbelinda Cardenas is brilliant; I know her book will be as well!
One of the most important sentences I ever read about "religion": "I assume...that there is nothing essentially religious, nor any universal essence that defines 'sacred language' or 'sacred experience.'" (T Asad, Formations of the Secular, 25).
But her emails
At the beginning of last semester, I asked the students in a course on climate change if they had heard about any of the various provisions in the IRA. Crickets. Message is definitely not getting through.
www.nationalreview.com/news/incomin...
Sometimes the depth of the connections between Israel/Judaism and Latin America is mind-blowing. Couple things I just happened to come across in the past couple days. Arévalo (hopefully soon to be president of Guatemala) lived in Israel for 10 years. Milei in Argentina plans to convert to Judaism
First they came for the university Presidents, and although I did not have much sympathy for the way those same presidents had overseen a regime of adjunctification, neoliberal austerity, and gutting of higher education it still seemed really fucked up and a frightening portent of what is to come.
The fact that the media will lambast a 19 year old college kid for saying dumb shit and treat it as a national crisis but tiptoes like this when it comes to the worlds richest man (who keep in mind has actual military contracts) really letâs you know none of this has anything to do with principles