Anthropologist and STS scholar Mascha Gugganig and cultural geographer Judith Bopp discuss “Organic Farming in Thailand” and prevailing narratives about agriculture.
Writer and anthropologist Amitav Ghosh takes us to the Banda Islands to unravel “The Nutmeg’s Curse.”
Human geographer Mike Hulme looks at sociotechnical developments that have changed the climate and, at the same time, the way we experience the weather.
A reflection on borderlands by Nicholas Allen.
A reflection on swimming by Steve Mentz.
A reflection on the littoral as destination and pathway by Raquel Ferreira, Ana Luiza Souza, and Miguel Albuquerque.
In “Historicizing Risk,” historian Lawrence Culver explores Ulrich Beck’s theories on the nature of risk on a temporal scale, and asks how awareness and perceptions of risk changed from the “first” modernity to now, and how that relates to the global issue of climate change.
Historian Uwe Lübken examines how the perception of natural hazards and catastrophes shifts from being historically seen as “Acts of God” to now being viewed as side effects of modernization and a social responsibility.
In her personal essay “Compressed Cosmopolitanization,” Stefania Gallini’s recounts her feelings of dissonance of joining a reading group focused on risk and Ulrich Beck’s work in safe Munich, while coming from the megalopolis of Bogotá, where risk is a daily reality.
Gordon Winder’s “Market Solutions?” explores neoliberal market solutions to risk within the context of Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society and his personal conversation with the latter.
