Perspectives Article
Triumphalism and Unruliness during the Construction of the Panama Canal
This paper considers the construction of the Panama Canal in order to analyze the confluence of imperialism, modernity, and environmental control.
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Perspectives Article
Rain, Rain, Come Again: Cherrapunji, the Rainiest Spot on Earth
This paper considers Cherrapunji, a sleep hilltop village in the remote northeastern frontier of India discovered through the colonial search for a cool place for European sensibilities.
Perspectives Article
The Man-Eater Sent by God: Unruly Interspecies Intimacies in India’s Central Himalayas
Using accounts of man-eating leopards and changing, ungovernable landscape in India’s Central Himalayas, this paper makes sense of the complex and multiple dimensions of the interspecies companionship at the heart of human-wildlife conflict.
Perspectives Article
Woody, Thorny, and Predatory Forests: Grassland Transformations in the Nilgiris, South India
Looking at the pastoral Toda people of the Wenlock Downs, this paper considers grassland transformations in the Nilgiris, in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Perspectives Article
Unruly Paradise—Nature and Culture in Malibu, California
Looking at nature and culture in Malibu, California, this paper looks at how natural processes occurring in rapid succession—over months and years—have been subject to efforts to turn the area into a tame and orderly garden as part of a linear understanding of progress, closely linked to civility and the cultivation of nature.
Perspectives Article
Unruly Hinterlands and Settlement Histories of the Deccan Plateau
This paper uses the settlement histories of the early Deccan Plateau to highlight how heterogeneity, and a process of continual adjustment, shape historical settlements and lead to unruliness.
Perspectives Article
Line in the Sand: The Promises and Perils of Ordering the Ocean’s Edge
Looking at coasts, this paper reveals the extent to which unruliness occurs when the human need for stability negotiates with nature’s dynamism, highlighting how we will be forced to renegotiate our relationship with the sea.
Perspectives Article
Reflecting on Unruliness
This reflection on unruliness refers to all papers in the volume, demonstrating how the concept of unruly environments provides a perspective of human-nature relationships from the vantage point of humans.
Perspectives
Out of Sight, Out of Mind: The Politics and Culture of Waste
Waste is never completely or permanently “out of sight.” Once discarded, it undergoes transformations, often reappearing elsewhere in new forms. In this volume of RCC Perspectives, scholars from different disciplines—from history and art history, urban geography, environmental studies, and anthropology—investigate the traces waste leaves behind in the course of its travels.
Perspectives Article
Fresh Kills: The Making and Unmaking of a Wastescape
Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island, New York, was the subject of a struggle over where to dispose of the waste of a city strapped for space. While the landfill was closed in 2001, the events of 9/11 and the need to clear the large amounts of rubble and human remains from the site of the Twin Towers attack turned Fresh Kills into hallowed ground, which posed new questions about the future of the site.