If we want to move towards ecological sustainability, we cannot ignore the life-worlds of people who make their living in the fossil fuel industry, says Thomas Hylland Eriksen, currently on fieldwork in the industrial town of Gladstone in Australia.
It has taken us several hundred million years to produce this compressed sunlight, and it has been the driving force of modern civilization for two hundred years. It cannot be eliminated without further ado, writes Thomas Hylland Eriksen.
Elephants clashing with human beings on their paddy fields, people dying from kidney failure, climatic uncertainty, increased jealousy leading to sorcery attacks, and the nearing end of small-scale farming: Results of a global crisis of desire?
China’s economic growth does not always benefit its national minorities. Instead, it strains ethnic relations.
A discipline that is obsessed with cultural differences will be nothing but a burden to humanity, says Ronald Stade who is researching human waste and humans as waste in Ghana’s largest slum.
Social anthropologists are not only crossing disciplinary boundaries. They have also started studying other species.
Thomas Hylland Eriksen is getting ready for fieldwork close to The Great Barrier Reef that may be about to become a victim of Australia’s economic growth.
Our models for learning are inadequate. To solve humanity’s biggest crises we have to learn how to learn together in new ways, says Fred Steier who will be holding the next Overheating seminar.
More specific knowledge is not always the most imporant thing. What we really need is to train our mind to think outside the box. That's the aim of the second Bateson symposium at the University of Oslo, 11-12 september.
Research in the zoo about the origins of human cooperation can be relevant for understanding the economic crisis. Also “the harder sciences” can contribute to less inequality in our world, says Chris Hann, the new Professor II at the Overheating project.
What happens when international companies develop large-scale projects in poor rural areas in Sierra Leone? How do people respond to the changes? Who gains and who loses? That’s what anthropologist Robert Pijpers wants to find out.
Why has water increasingly become a source of trouble and conflict? Why is the driest continent on earth one of the world’s biggest water exporters? – I am interested in the drivers of overheating, says anthropologist Veronica Strang.
They chained themselves to bridges and went on hungerstrike. What people wanted was a road that connects them to the wider world. – Roads are perfect spaces for studying connections and crises, says anthropologist Penny Harvey.
Why are so many people who are fully aware of the climate crisis staying silent and inactive? Sociologist Kari Marie Norgaard travelled from the US to a small town in Western Norway to find the answer.
It was one of the worst economic crashes in history: A conversation with anthropologist Gísli Pálsson about the meltdown in Iceland, dubious entanglements between universities and business, racist and sexist neoliberal discourses, and the need for academic activism.
Poor people are most affected by climate change, economic crises and discrimination. Anthropologist Astrid Bredholt Stensrud wants to find out how people go about it.
– We can reduce our energy use only through a radically different vision of what it means to be modern, says anthropologist Harold Langford Wilhite.
Many poor people have been forcibly evicted from their homes in the name of nature conservation. "To protect nature we have to transcend the separation of humans from nature", argues anthropologist Knut G. Nustad.
An increasing number of companies move their businesses to low cost countries. Elisabeth Schober is studying what offshoring means for workers and local communities.
Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen has been invited by MILEN to speak about humanity's biggest crisis and how researchers can contribute to an original and alternative perspective on globalisation. The seminar will take place on 15 March 2013, 13.15-14.15, in Auditorium 6, Eilert Sundts Building.
A new research project looks at how some of our world’s most serious crises are interconnected and what can be done about them. “It is about time that anthropology begins to address the large issues confronting humanity”, says Thomas Hylland Eriksen.