In the US there is some controversy on what to call the “immigrant detention centers” where people are held who crossed the Southern US border and want to apply for asylum. Adam Hodges at Anthropology Nows provides his reflections on “What to Call US Border Detention Centers?” and if it is appropriate to name them as concentration camps:
If we could entertain the complexities of the type of historical comparison that [Emil] Kerenji suggests, we would recognize how the “banality of evil,” as described by Hannah Arendt, allows bureaucrats, border agents, and government staff to go about their jobs while eschewing responsibility for the policies they have been charged with implementing. We would recognize the role dehumanizing rhetoric plays in enabling the mistreatment of others, how that rhetoric coupled with the force of law and a sense of duty sways otherwise good people to do abhorrent things, and how that rhetoric keeps the public indifferent and silent in the face of atrocities carried out in their name.
The Museum of Modern Art published the following great video on why people used to be able to marvel at very first movies made. We may think they were of pretty bad quality because we’ve only seen bad reproductions. But the originals must have looked startlingly realistic. Via Aeon.
For the latest edition of How to See, we visited MoMA’s film archives in Hamlin, Pennsylvania to learn more about the incredible quality and clarity of this newly discovered nineteenth-century movie, and the efforts archivists make to preserve such irreplaceable snapshots of history. Curator Dave Kehr joins the discussion to help us look at the early film with the same awe-inspired, expanded view of the world of its first audiences.
Fun little historical tidbit on “hacking” of technology in eighteenth century France. Apparently there were some brothers who used the semaphore telegraph system for their own gain. They used a mechanism for correcting errors when messages were relayed to transmit information. With the help of some insider person they could use to transmit their own information about the stock exchange in Paris to Bordeaux which allowed them to make a lot of money! I read the translated article at Courrier international.
Les messages relayés par les tours prévoyaient la possibilité d’une correction, une sorte de touche “retour arrière” pour effacer la position précédente quand, pour une raison quelconque, un opérateur avait fait une erreur. Les Blanc ont compris qu’ils pouvaient soudoyer l’un des opérateurs pour qu’il introduise une “erreur” quand le marché de Paris clôturait à la hausse, et une autre “erreur” lors d’une clôture à la baisse. L’“erreur” se propageait d’une tour à l’autre, jusqu’à ce qu’un complice des frères, muni d’une lunette, la détecte et en informe aussitôt les deux banquiers, qui gagnaient des fortunes à Bordeaux et semblaient toujours deviner avec un instinct surnaturel ce qui s’était passé à Paris.
Having fun looking at two posts from Sociological Images on gendered products:
Watching a video with excerpts from the Chomsly-Foucault debate via Aeon.co. These shorts segments give a good quick look on the diverging view of Chomsky and Foucault and their views on power and human nature.
With the Vietnam War near its height, Chomsky and Foucault agree that contemporary power structures need to be attacked and dismantled. However, while Chomsky advocates for a system of ‘anarcho-syndicalism’ rooted in justice, sympathy and human creativity, Foucault argues that these concepts are products of the same bourgeois system that needs replacing. Probing age-old philosophical questions as well as the politics of the moment, the interview offers a revealing glimpse of the divergent styles, attitudes and outlooks of two enduringly influential thinkers.
A TED talk from Emma Marris, a writer who focuses on environmentalism, where she proposes us to redefine what is considered nature. I particularly enjoyed the section where she urges to rethink how we look at wild nature (“novel ecosystems”) in for example abandoned places cities. Watch the whole talk on the TED website.
How do you define “nature?” If we define it as that which is untouched by humans, then we won’t have any left, says environmental writer Emma Marris. She urges us to consider a new definition of nature – one that includes not only pristine wilderness but also the untended patches of plants growing in urban spaces – and encourages us to bring our children out to touch and tinker with it, so that one day they might love and protect it.
It took me a while to find the time, but finally started listening to the new Big Thief album, “U.F.O.F.”. The lyrics are as curious as always with short mysterious vignettes filled with names, colours and animals. Overall the albums sounds magical, with some wonderful moments like the screams from the guitar in the song “Contact”. Favorite track of the albums currently is “Orange”.
Exploring some videos on by forest ecologists on how trees communicate via Open Culture. The following is a short educational Ted-Ed video in which Camille Defrenne and Suzanne Simard explain how trees communicate through their complex root system and the symbiotic relationship with fungi.
For a longer video on the same topic there is also TED talk by Suzanne Simard on “How trees talk to each other”.
Surprised to see an interview with Donna Haraway on The Guardian. In the interview she discusses the science wars and her current focus on climate activism. Read the full article here.
Claire Walkey from the Oxford Refugee Studies Centre writes about why we should rethink refugee registration. Registration is the first moment when asylum-seekers become known by the state, so we might assume that states will always want to implement registration procedures to monitor people. But her fieldwork in Kenya shows that this is not always the case as here the government actually stopped the registration procedures. According to her we therefore need to “look for answers in the meaning and politics of registration itself”, as registration can be a form of empowerment for refugees:
Acknowledging the legal recognition that registration can offer refugees sheds light on why states, resistant to hosting refugees, might choose not to register them. It is too easy to assume, given security practices especially in the West, that states will always pursue bureaucratic surveillance and monitoring of refugees. In Kenya, it is politically prudent to resist legal recognition, even at the expense of bureaucratic surveillance. The promotion of registration by the international community may therefore find little traction by focusing purely on the security gain for states, particularly in contexts with weak administrative infrastructures. It is prudent instead to rethink registration and recognize that at times it offers more to refugees than to states.