Many, if not all, of the foods humans consume on a daily basis (from kimchi to yogurt and beer) are the result of both human and nonhuman labor. Nonhuman labor refers to “work” that is done by nonhuman actors to produce food and other valuable products. This labor can take many forms, including living, eating, growing, reproducing, and metabolizing nature to meet one’s biophysical needs.
Mainstream biodiversity conservation continues to emphasise the rapid disappearance of charismatic megafauna. Fungi are ignored, partially because many are invisible. However, their conservation is of growing concern because their decline signals a decrease in overall biodiversity and losses in ecosystem integrity and function. Social science engagement with microbes is of growing interest because the diverse characteristics of fungal bodies create new entry points for conservation.
The climate crisis is full of marginalized human and more-than-human voices who are systematically silenced by solution-oriented, universalizing discourses. Listening as method is the opposite of silencing; it is an experiential form of knowledge production that conveys intention and care when done cautiously. We posit climate studies can learn from feminist listening practices how to listen rather than silence. Reviewing relevant theory and case studies, we situate listening among diverse actors as becoming-in-common in-place through sound, with a focus on Arctic waters.
Many formulations of economy, even those that substantially challenge the narrow confines of market-centered economism, tend to assume a discrete human subject at the center of the action. Whether maximizing, optimizing, making ethical decisions, or just “getting by,” rational or quasi-rational humans enact the economy through their work of making a living—laboring, producing, transacting, saving, investing, and negotiating various forms of care and access. Recent developments in posthumanist and radical ecological thought, however, challenge this image.
The Urban Wellbeing project team developed their ideas in this piece on wellbeing-led governance frameworks and transformative Indigenous tools. In this paper we position our research project in a wider global context.
In this piece based on Huong's PhD fieldwork, we think about what a diverse economies and more-than-human approach might offer our thinking on climate change adaptation in Vietnam. While a lot of climate change adaptation interventions have been remodelled modernist development projects reminiscent of the green revolution, we deliberately seek out some of the embodied and local strategies that farmers are using to pay attention and adapt to a changing climate.
In this chapter, Kelly lays out the case for proliferating and valuing caring labour, so that all kinds of different people might share in it.
Environments and ecosystems around the world support human life, culture and basic needs in myriad ways. Indeed, the ‘labour’ of non-humans, or Earth Others, as we refer to them here, is hugely diverse. But ecological descriptions of Earth Other interdependencies demonstrate that rethinking labour to build sustainable futures should not be a purely human-focused project. Much of the work that keeps our planet going has nothing to do with humans. We humans benefit from it but it is not for us.
This review essay engages with Maria Puig de la Bellacasa's book Matters of Care: Speculative ethics in more-than-human worlds. I discuss the style of affirmative critique she uses in her work.
Literature review of Urban Political Ecology. Focuses on the need for more work on environmental imaginary, governance, and the non-human.
