The Land Ethic Revisited: Individualism vs. Morality
How can a community implement Aldo Leopold’s notion of the land ethic? Kenya’s Njuri Ncheke councils offer an example, balancing individual and group agency.
Category: Essays
Why We Don’t Like Wild Women
In American popular culture, from the colonial era to the present, women who venture out into wild places cannot escape the strictures of gender.
Remembering Lost Landscapes in Cambodia
Nearly forty years after the Pol Pot time, Cambodia’s landscape testifies to a tumultuous past and hints at an uncertain environmental future.
Crying Dugongs and Ocean Encounters in Southeast Asia
Stories of the dugong, a cousin of the manatee, offer important insight into human-nature encounters in the waters of Southeast Asia.
Loaves and Fishes at Standing Rock
A senior scholar of North American indigenous history visits the Oceti Sakowin camp and finds cause for hope. Up to a point.
Creationism, Mastodons, and Natural History in Kentucky
In northern Kentucky, conflicting stories about natural history mirror the religious and scientific debates of the late eighteenth century.
The Surveyor’s Stone: Unearthing Hidden Markers of the American Landscape
Buried in the nineteenth century, stone markers continue to serve as the official, and often elusive, demarcation points of the Public Land Survey System.
Playing With Fire in Indonesia’s Peatlands
Indonesia’s previously swampy forests have become unpredictable, fuel-rich fire traps.
Can Socialism Save the Planet?
Twentieth-century socialist countries get a worse environmental rap than they deserve, and some social theorists are attempting to reinvigorate Marx for the Anthropocene. Here’s where they go wrong.
Nature and the Rules of Race: A Conversation with Carolyn Finney
The importance of storytelling in elucidating and challenging understandings of race and the environment.
