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Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Cultural Anthropology

Beyond Risk: Emplacement And The Production Of Environmental Evidence , Joshua Reno Oct 2016

Beyond Risk: Emplacement And The Production Of Environmental Evidence , Joshua Reno

Joshua Reno

I offer a counterpoint to the prevailing risk literature that focuses not on (mis)perceptions of danger but on the production and circulation of different forms of evidence and the environmental claims they promote. Rather than reproduce the epistemic dichotomies associated with risk discourse, I discuss attempts by waste-industry technicians, government inspectors, lawyers, area residents, and activists to generate persuasive accounts of a large, U.S. landfill and its porous boundaries. I argue that the differential influence of their various claims is best understood by examining what it means to know and care for a place.


Managing The Experience Of Evidence England’S Experimental Waste Technologies And Their Immodest Witnesses, Joshua Reno Oct 2016

Managing The Experience Of Evidence England’S Experimental Waste Technologies And Their Immodest Witnesses, Joshua Reno

Joshua Reno

This article explores the technoenvironmental politics associated with government-sponsored climate change mitigation. It focuses on England’s New Technologies Demonstrator Programme, established to test the “viability” of “green” waste treatments by awarding state aid to eight experimental projects that promise to divert municipal waste from landfill and greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. The article examines how these demonstrator sites are arranged and represented to produce noncontroversial and publicly accessible forms of evidence and experience and, ultimately, to inform environmental policy and planning decisions throughout the country. As in experimental science, this process requires that some bear witness to the demonstrators, but …


Beyond Risk: Emplacement And The Production Of Environmental Evidence , Joshua Reno Oct 2016

Beyond Risk: Emplacement And The Production Of Environmental Evidence , Joshua Reno

Joshua Reno

I offer a counterpoint to the prevailing risk literature that focuses not on (mis)perceptions of danger but on the production and circulation of different forms of evidence and the environmental claims they promote. Rather than reproduce the epistemic dichotomies associated with risk discourse, I discuss attempts by waste-industry technicians, government inspectors, lawyers, area residents, and activists to generate persuasive accounts of a large, U.S. landfill and its porous boundaries. I argue that the differential influence of their various claims is best understood by examining what it means to know and care for a place.


Decolonizing Nationalism: Reading Nkrumah And Nyerere’S Pan-African Epistemology, Jesse Benjamin Apr 2014

Decolonizing Nationalism: Reading Nkrumah And Nyerere’S Pan-African Epistemology, Jesse Benjamin

Jesse Benjamin

Using the perspective of intellectual history, this essay explores the lives and philosophies of Julius K. Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah, heads of state in Tanzania and Ghana, respectively, as well as philosophers, activists, and Pan-African leaders throughout their lifetimes. The central focus is on their concepts and practices of nationalism, and their attempts to transcend the confines of colonial, Western epistemologies in formulating new African social practices. Their concepts of African socialism, pan-Africanism, and neo-colonialism are examined closely. Their lived experiences with injustice in Africa and the Black Atlantic shaped their perspectives. Their unfinished work bequeathed to us tools for …