Originally published in Section Culture: Newsletter of the ASA Culture Section. Summer 2019. Vol. 31 Issue 1. Kevin Loughran Rice University As philosopher Henri Lefebvre ([1974] 1991: 30) wrote: nature, despite its material erasure by urbanization, “is still the background of the picture; as decor, and more than decor, it persists everywhere, and every natural detail, every natural object is valued even more as it takes on … Continue reading Nature, Race, and Cultural Power

Originally published in Section Culture: Newsletter of the ASA Culture Section. Summer 2019. Vol. 31 Issue 1. Maricarmen Hernandez and Javier Auyero Ethnography Lab — Sociology Department UT-Austin In October of 2018, I (MC) arrived in the coastal city of Esmeraldas, Ecuador to carry out a year of ethnographic fieldwork in a contaminated informal community located next to the largest refinery and electric plant in the country. … Continue reading Living At Risk: Relations, Routines, and History

Originally published in Section Culture: Newsletter of the ASA Culture Section. Summer 2019. Vol. 31 Issue 1. Chandra Mukerji UC San Diego It seems as though cultural sociologists have been moving away from studying culture and nature. But modernity is changing as the earth changes, and we need to pay attention. It is not a happy subject—the evidence of what moderns have done too often is a … Continue reading Vulnerabilities of Nature and Culture

Originally published in Section Culture: Newsletter of the ASA Culture Section. Summer 2019. Vol. 31 Issue 1. Introduction: When Culture Meets Nature Hillary Angelo UC Santa Cruz Stefan Bargheer UC Los Angeles Nature is a topic that stands at once at the center and at the margins of cultural sociology. From its inception in the late 1980s until it gained the (somewhat short-lived) status as the ASA’s … Continue reading When Culture Meets Nature