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In this contribution, I provide an ethnography of the Maya New Year’s pilgrimage and sacrifice ritual, in which a delicate relatedness between people and animate mountains is established, enacted, and expressed.

This article offers a case study of the Russian-American pro-family organisation the World Congress of Families, explaining its emergence, strategies, and religious and political agenda from 1995 until 2019. The article adds to a growing body of research that sheds light on transnational networks of conservative and right-wing political and civil society actors. It zooms in on Russian pro-family activists as connected to such networks and thereby takes an innovative perspective on the Russian conservative turn as part of a global phenomenon. The article also makes the argument that a specific Russian Christian Right movement, comparable to and linked with the American Christian Right and conservative Christian groups in Europe, is taking shape in Russia.

BOOK SUMMARY: Though the scientific community has yet to formally declare the geological period that we live in the Anthropocene, the term has spread throughout both academic and popular culture as a shorthand for the way in which humanity has dominated the earth. Scholars of green political theory have been quick to respond, with works such as John Dryzek and Jonathan Pickering’s The Politics of the Anthropocene and Frank Biermann and Eva Lövbrand’s Anthropocene Encounters: New Directions in Green Political Thinking interrogating what the Anthropocene means from a political theory perspective and rethinking key political concepts in light of the environmental damage it reveals. Anne Fremaux’s book joins this growing sub-field to critique the Anthropocene from a green republican perspective. It is a valuable addition to our understanding of how ‘The Age of Humans’ came about, how the current political response is limited, and what we should be doing instead.

Stories belonging to Australian Aboriginal groups tell of a time when the former coastline of mainland Australia was inundated by rising sea level. Stories are presented from 21 locations from every part of this coastline. In most instances it is plausible to assume that these stories refer to events that occurred more than about 7000 years ago, the approximate time at which the sea level reached its present level around Australia. They therefore provide empirical corroboration of postglacial sea-level rise. For each of the 21 locations, the minimum water depth (below the present sea level) needed for the details of the particular group of local-area stories to be true is calculated. This is then compared with the sea-level envelope for Australia (Lewis et al., Quaternary Science Reviews 74, 2013), and maximum and minimum ages for the most recent time that these details could have been observed are calculated. This method of dating Aboriginal stories shows that they appear to have endured since 7250–13 070 cal years bp (5300–11 120 bc). The implications of this extraordinary longevity of oral traditions are discussed, including those aspects of Aboriginal culture that ensured effective transgenerational communication and the possibility that traditions of comparable antiquity may exist in similar cultures.

Background

This paper sets out a repertoire of repression operating to criminalise and repress recent climate and environmental protest globally. Deploying a novel mixed methods approach, involving a comparative quantitative and qualitative analysis of a sample of 14 countries, we identify that repression and criminalisation are global phenomena – spanning the Global South and North. The repertoire of repression includes: i) enactments of new anti-protest laws; ii) creative and strategic use of existing legislation and legal processes; iii) police action, such as arrests, surveillance, harassment and other forms of police violence; iv) disappearances and killings; and v) vilification. We argue that this repression is a complex eco-system involving state and non-state actors, laws and legal processes, social and media discourses which operate to deplete, deter and delegitimise protest, and distract attention from violent or harmful political structures.

While sustainable diets have predominantly been examined through the lens of individual decision-making, growing evidence underscores the critical role of relational dynamics in the adoption and maintenance of such practices. This study examined the role of relational climate (i.e. cohesion and flexibility) in governing how family units navigate dietary change. Eighty-four individuals who were pursuing a plant-forward diet participated in a 14-day smartphone-based experience sampling study, where they provided qualitative diary entries and quantitative ratings of food consumption, family support, coordination, and tension. Baseline, out-take, and 2-week follow-up surveys investigated the moderating effects of relational climate, as well as change in food consumption, dietary “stage of change,” goal achievement and commitment. Participants from balanced cohesive family systems reported receiving more support in their dietary goal, which in turn, was related to lower animal-product consumption and greater goal achievement and commitment. This work highlights the importance of family-based social support for bolstering more sustainable eating practices and offers novel insights for engaging household systems in the transition toward a greener food system.

This study explores the experiences of blind and low vision students at K-12 institutions. The students interviewed expressed choosing classes based on the accessibility of the materials. Teachers were frequently insensitive to them. They needed to navigate accessibility barriers in and out of the classroom constantly. Institutions should be more proactive about digital accessibility and offer more teacher training. Check out the full article for more info. #accessibility

A survey is used to test a stepping stone model for meat reduction and farm animal suffering elimination. People’s preferences to eat conventional meat, animal-welfare-certified meat and plant-based meat substitutes are measured in hypothetical situations where everyone else eats certified meat or plant-based meat substitutes. These preferences reflect social norms about food. When everyone else follows a harmful social norm, such as eating conventional meat, violating this norm by following a different diet becomes costly due to social sanctions. Either the survey method has a low sensitivity to detect real stepping stones, or the survey evidence suggests that animal-welfare-labelled meat is not a stepping stone towards the reduction and elimination of animal-based meat. If people transition to eating welfare-labelled meat, they may become less likely to eliminate meat from their diet. Everyone eating welfare-labelled meat is an absorbing state, which prevents a further transition to animal-free meat substitutes. The survey shows very weak and mixed evidence that the introduction of an animal welfare label could be counterproductive for animal welfare. In the long run it could result in a locked-in equilibrium with a less harmful social norm, i.e. a suboptimal state of animal farming that still contains animal suffering.

The science is in:

Recently, several private and political cloud initiatives emerged in Europe. This paper demonstrates how the sociotechnical imaginaries of three European cloud projects reveal a performative coupling of innovation and political ideas of control, territoriality and sovereignty. I ascertain three elements of the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries (innovation, boundary making and material properties) guiding the empirical analysis. Taking technology in the making and its role in (geo)politics seriously, this paper shows how imaginaries shape and interact with current geostrategic and political developments in Europe. The analysis of Microsoft’s cloud, Bundescloud and GAIA-X reveals that rising privacy and data security issues have been integrated into cloud imaginaries that traditionally highlight progress and innovation. More specifically, state actors and cloud providers link and sometimes merge allegedly opposing technological aspects of innovation and politicised ideas of control such as digital sovereignty. This shift constitutes a move towards erecting political borders and localising IT within a global infrastructure.

Karl W. Broman & Kara H. Woo write:

The production of meat and other animal-sourced foods, especially in their industrialized form, entails significant exploitation of animals, labor, and the natural environment. However, concern with animals is often sidelined in left and progressive politics, and veganism is often derided by leftists as a liberal project. Many contend that veganism is fixated on consumerism, asceticism, identity, and deontological ethics, and is insensitive to the oppressions perpetrated by Western, capitalist epistemologies and economic structures. Responding to these charges, this article argues that veganism conceived as a boycott aligns with existing Left commitments to social and environmental justice, and also those concomitant with a trans-species anti-exploitation ethic. The authors elaborate a specific definition of veganism as a boycott, situate it as a tactic within the broader political horizon of total liberation – schematized as a three-tier model for political action – and explain why it offers an effective form of eroding capitalism and other systems of domination. The authors conclude that refusing to consume animal products has tangible economic and social impacts, increases solidarity between human and nonhuman populations, and sensitizes individuals and communities to the socio-political effects of their consumer behavior.

Yes, as a boring person this is what’s catching my interest on merdeka day. Open access too.

Non-technical summary

ABSTRACT