Tagged: Science and Technology Studies

Soft lit cow in a dark room

When Sacred Cows Become Tools of the State

In the midst of India’s beef ban, beef detection kits are supposed to help stop violence against Muslim and Dalit people accused of eating the meat. But do they? Clara Miller and A. Parikh argue that increased surveillance hurts both people and cows.

Close up of concentric circles in wood

Listening to What Trees Have to Say

Trees might have a lot to say, but how can humans hear them? Solvejg Nitzke reviews Valerie Trouet’s new book, “Tree Story: The History of the World Written in Rings.”

What Happens When Gamers Become (Digital) Geoengineers?

Elon Musk’s dream of colonizing Mars may be decades away, but video games allow us to practice geoengineering here and now. Doron Darnov explores how digital terraforming both shapes and reflects our desires for worldmaking at (inter)planetary scales.

A hand holds a fern leaf at the base of it

Recommended Readings for a Radical Life

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Cleo Woelfle-Erskine, and other activists and educators recommend books that challenge the divisions of life drawn by settler colonialism, racial slavery, and the natural sciences.

The two covers of Slobodian and Selcer's books, one a painting of a brown window and the other overlapping circles

Managing the Globe after Empire

New books by Perrin Selcer and Quinn Slobodian show how ideas about the global environment and global economy took shape in response to the end of empire.